Giant Bombcast 03-18-2008

[0] All right, it is Tuesday, March 18, 2008, and you are listening to the Giant Bombcast.

[1] I'm Ryan Davis.

[2] I'm Jeff Gerstmann.

[3] So yeah, let's get into it, Jeff.

[4] How are you doing?

[5] I'm doing pretty good.

[6] We just went and got sandwiches.

[7] We just got sandwiches to prepare.

[8] It's probably a good idea to get sandwiches to lay down a base for our drink taste testing.

[9] Yes, we have a double shot of drinks this week.

[10] I'm pretty scared of both of them, I think.

[11] All right, yeah, we've got two drinks here.

[12] Let's set this up.

[13] Which one do you want to talk about first here?

[14] Well, I think we should talk about...

[15] This one here, we ordered a case of this on advice of a ton of people in Europe, Scotland, around that area, somewhere that's not inside the U .S. Scotland seems to be the main place that this is popular.

[16] Scotland is where it's made, I guess.

[17] So it is Iron Brew.

[18] Spelt I -R -N hyphen B -R -U.

[19] Earn Brew.

[20] Earn Brew, and it's made by Barr.

[21] Yes, original and best, it says on it.

[22] And there's a, I think I brought it in.

[23] I ordered this case off their website.

[24] They actually have a U .S. operation that is more than happy to sell you cases of it.

[25] Yeah, I noticed it has all the U .S. nutritional facts and California redemption value.

[26] There's a sticker along with it that kind of bothers me. It's a picture.

[27] It's pretty typical.

[28] It's a picture of old white dude smoking a pipe, a couple of dogs, a rich guy near the fireplace.

[29] And then the quote is, I love Iron Brew and so do my bitches.

[30] Get it?

[31] Because they're dogs.

[32] Oh.

[33] Dogs, get it?

[34] Edgy.

[35] Yeah.

[36] Well, delightful.

[37] So I want to describe this drink in color.

[38] It is a terrifying orange, like a kind of neon lit.

[39] It looks like some sort of coolant.

[40] It looks like I should pour this into my car.

[41] Yeah, I guess it doesn't look quite like orange soda, does it?

[42] No, it's too clear.

[43] Right.

[44] I can see through it too much, and it has almost like a viscous quality.

[45] Like if you swish it around a little bit in the bottle.

[46] Mad viscous.

[47] It is mad viscous.

[48] It looks a little juicy.

[49] All right, let's crack these bottles open and get into this.

[50] Okay, now I've heard everyone who recommended this also said, you'll love it, it's terrible.

[51] All right, crack that open.

[52] Oh, I open it near my nose.

[53] How's that working out for you?

[54] Getting a little.

[55] Oh, I don't even have it near my nose, and I'm getting a little waft.

[56] All right, first smell.

[57] Vitamin -y.

[58] Bubble gum.

[59] Bubble gum.

[60] Bubble gum is the scent I'm getting out of that.

[61] All right, let's give this a go, Jeff.

[62] All right.

[63] This tastes like bubble gum soda.

[64] Yeah, this tastes like bubble gum soda as far as I'm concerned.

[65] The bottle says it's citrus, but that is a lie.

[66] This tastes like bubblegum soda.

[67] We are on board with Iron Brothers.

[68] Dude, awesome.

[69] You bought a case of bubblegum soda, Jeff.

[70] Good job.

[71] And it's orange for a reese.

[72] So I wonder if that means that oranges taste like bubblegum in Scotland.

[73] Yeah, that would explain why GTA is the way it is.

[74] Absolutely.

[75] All right.

[76] I'm going to keep drinking this because this is pretty good.

[77] Yeah, we can get to the second drink later.

[78] Let's just savor these, talk about some games or something.

[79] Yeah, I hear in Scotland it's a good hangover cure.

[80] This is used a lot for that.

[81] And then also on the other end of that fence, it's also used as a mixer.

[82] Yeah.

[83] So this will lead to bad things, I'm sure.

[84] Great.

[85] Yeah, we have a whole case of it.

[86] So that's, yeah, we'll do something stupid with the rest of these, like drink them.

[87] So I love that right here on the, so it's with iron, like you would think.

[88] My understanding is that this was some sort of health sports drink or had some kind of stuff in it.

[89] Oh, really?

[90] Because it says iron.

[91] And also, I thought I remember reading that somewhere.

[92] But right here on the front, not a significant source of iron.

[93] Well, that's good to know.

[94] They say made from girders.

[95] Yeah.

[96] But there's no iron in it.

[97] No, it has 5 % iron.

[98] Well, apparently 5 % is not a significant source of iron.

[99] Or 5 % of your daily value of iron.

[100] That sounds pretty significant to me. You'd have to drink 20 of these to get all the iron you needed in a day.

[101] I think we only have 16.

[102] Well, 14 now.

[103] Damn it.

[104] Give me the rest of that one.

[105] No. So I can drink them all and get my iron for the day.

[106] Just eat your Flintstones chewables, Jeff.

[107] All right, fine.

[108] Get your iron from there.

[109] All right.

[110] You want to talk about the world of games?

[111] You want to talk about what we're playing right now?

[112] Yeah, sure.

[113] I just finished up Lost Via Domus for the Xbox 360.

[114] Wrote a review of it.

[115] You can find it on the site.

[116] Not great.

[117] Right, yeah.

[118] Best thing I can say about it is it's mad easy points if you're a points kind of guy.

[119] Yeah, and you slid this game my way where it sits now with CSI, which I'm currently playing, and Jumper, which I have not started on yet.

[120] Oh, yeah, I've got to stop giving you points games if you're not going to play them immediately.

[121] I'm going to play them.

[122] You've passed me too many all at once, so I need to make that happen.

[123] Ease off on that.

[124] So, yeah, the Lost game, it's kind of stupid.

[125] Because it's all about this character they made up and they just kind of like throw him into the story.

[126] Right.

[127] Like, what if there was another guy and he was a photographer?

[128] I mean, I can understand why they would have to do that because the mythology is so tight with the characters, like the core characters on the show.

[129] That they couldn't just go off in some weird direction.

[130] Yeah, they couldn't just like, all right, here are the other adventures of Jack because you pretty much see everything Jack's doing.

[131] Which also makes it weird for whenever your character interacts with other characters because you're like, wait.

[132] How come I never heard about any of this stuff if it's happening right in the middle of all the high drama of the show?

[133] That'll be explained next season, bro.

[134] I'm sure I could go find a lost wiki entry somewhere that totally explains how it figures in.

[135] They should have made this game...

[136] where you play as the smoke monster.

[137] You should just play as the smoke monster.

[138] That would be pretty good.

[139] I will say the smoke monster doesn't look bad, and neither does the jungle.

[140] Smoke monster.

[141] I've never seen Lost.

[142] I don't intend to start watching it.

[143] Yeah, then you're going to be so totally confused by this game because it is made for people who watch a lot of Lost.

[144] Like, there's occasionally, there will be little cues.

[145] You'll see something like, oh, okay, there was that explosion just then, which is when they were blowing open the hatch, which means that this is where you are in the storyline.

[146] But since they never say anything explicitly, you'll have no idea, like, why was there just that explosion?

[147] I don't know.

[148] So it's, in that regard, totally exclusionary.

[149] Well, that's kind of cool.

[150] You know, I think that there's something to be said for making a product that goes off the deep end and is explicitly for a certain audience rather than doing all the hand -holding and saying, like, well, this just happened and just explaining every single thing to death.

[151] Which tends to alienate the people that are super fans of everything.

[152] I mean, the only people that are going to play a Lost game are people that know what the hell is going on with Lost.

[153] Yeah, I guess that's not my primary issue with it.

[154] It's just that it's crap.

[155] It's not that good.

[156] It's like they have some good ideas.

[157] It's like, okay, we'll have this puzzle -solving stuff, and we'll have this part where you have to run from the smoke monster, and we'll have you go through caves.

[158] Smoke monster.

[159] I just love the idea of a smoke monster.

[160] This whole show, hearing you describe the show to me. Yeah.

[161] over the past day or so.

[162] It just sounds like someone took season two of Twin Peaks off the deep end and just is now...

[163] Just inventing a billion different things that have no hope of ever wrapping up in a satisfactory fashion.

[164] That's kind of my sensation of it.

[165] Like in the past two seasons, it's definitely turned into that.

[166] Which is disappointing because after the first season, like the producers came out and said, yeah, we're not going to fall into the X -Files trap of building up all this mythology without ever explaining anything.

[167] Yeah, and then you told me that there's a guy who's invisible on the show.

[168] I'm like, what the hell?

[169] And it's like they're just throwing every single like just played out sci -fi thing.

[170] It's like, oh, there's...

[171] magic, or that guy has telepathy, or there's time travel, or magnetic fields.

[172] Magnetic fields are real, man. I'm sorry to have to spring that on you, but those actually happen.

[173] No, it's a myth.

[174] That's a myth perpetuated by scientists.

[175] It's the smoke monsters at the North Pole right now.

[176] Actually, yeah.

[177] And in the show, they do stuff like they'll cut away to the North Pole and there's something happening there.

[178] And then they'll cut away to the desert and you'll see something that relates to the island.

[179] And it's like, ooh, what does that mean?

[180] I don't know because you never tell me, Lost.

[181] Thanks.

[182] I actually got into several heated arguments about this recently with some of our engineers and even my roommate.

[183] Oh, yeah.

[184] They're like, no, what are you talking about?

[185] Totally.

[186] I'm like.

[187] No, dude, this is just going to keep going up its own butt.

[188] There's no way.

[189] They have so many weird loose ends that there is absolutely no way that that show is going to wrap up satisfactorily.

[190] I will never know.

[191] You'll never know, and I'll watch it, and I'll go, meh.

[192] I was right.

[193] Or I'll be wrong.

[194] I would love to be wrong about this.

[195] I would love to have J .J. Abrams say, all right, check it out, dude.

[196] This is what we were thinking all along.

[197] We were thinking this all along.

[198] I mean, supposedly they came up with a Bible of what their major plot points were going to be at the beginning of the show and how that would run over a six -season run for the show.

[199] But I don't know.

[200] I just don't know.

[201] What is the smoke monster?

[202] We don't know.

[203] We don't know.

[204] It's a monster.

[205] For the first season, they showed people looking at the monster without showing it, and they showed from the monster's perspective.

[206] And then whenever anyone would ask, what did you see?

[207] No one would answer.

[208] That's the thing that makes me most crazy about that show is no one ever talks to each other, and when they do, they speak in ellipses.

[209] They always leave out the most important pieces of information.

[210] So it's like watching The Wonder Years without the narration in that video.

[211] So if two people are talking, they'll both know what they're talking about, but they won't include the viewer because they'll leave out the bits like, ooh, I wonder what they're talking about.

[212] I feel like that show just jerks you around nonstop.

[213] Yeah.

[214] As does the game.

[215] So in that regard, it's perfect.

[216] I guess, yeah.

[217] So that's what I've been playing.

[218] I'm also playing more Condemned 2, which is wicked awesome.

[219] Yesterday you got to see me put a dude's head into a giant pneumatic press.

[220] Yeah, that was awesome.

[221] And then you turned the wheel and dude's head exploded from being crushed in a damn press.

[222] And people curse really well in that game.

[223] Yeah, a lot of that good kind of muttering, like really angry sound.

[224] Yeah, it's the kind of swearing where it's...

[225] barely words, where they're just so into cursing and being angry at that moment, which is really satisfying.

[226] So I'm still enjoying that a fair deal.

[227] So Jeff, yesterday you got Rainbow Six Vegas 2.

[228] Vegas 2, the sequel to Las Vegas.

[229] Oh, the second Vegas.

[230] The second Vegas.

[231] Yeah, this is the latest Tom Clancy game.

[232] Everyone loves those damn Tom Clancies.

[233] Especially Tom Clancy and his paychecks.

[234] He goes, wow, I'm great.

[235] I'm so glad they put my name on this one.

[236] Yeah, but yeah, totally.

[237] Rainbow Six Vegas, the original game, a lot of people loved it.

[238] This game doesn't seem like it strays too far from the course of the first game, and obviously it's a different story.

[239] It starts out in the Pyrenees, which is pretty funny, because that's not at all Vegas.

[240] Yeah, no, during the first two levels, I just kept yelling at you, that's not Vegas.

[241] It's snow.

[242] No, this is near the dam.

[243] Outside of it, it's near...

[244] This is definitely not Vegas.

[245] Lying to me, Rainbow Six.

[246] Yeah, and he plays this dude, Bishop, who's kind of coming out of retirement to lead this squad.

[247] Yeah.

[248] Yeah, pretty much right off the bat, you're chasing after some dudes, there's some chemical weapons involved, and it goes from there.

[249] I'm somewhere, I guess I'm at the start of Act 3, and that's not meaning the final third of the game, it's just that they call every mission an act.

[250] Okay.

[251] And there are different scenes in the act.

[252] So this does not follow the three -act structure?

[253] Right, not at all.

[254] But it was weird seeing, like, Act 3, like, oh, I must be nearly done.

[255] Oh, wait.

[256] This is where I get my revenge and win.

[257] Yeah, it's cool.

[258] I need to go back to the first game and play it some more to kind of verify this, but I really get the feeling that they streamlined some of the stuff with the controls and basically made it a little bit easier to kind of pick up and shoot.

[259] It's not the easy kind of Call of Duty real basic shooter.

[260] It is still a more tactical game, a slower -paced game.

[261] Sure.

[262] Which you're having to adjust to because you're used to just walking into rooms and smoking dudes.

[263] Yeah, I want to walk into a room and shoot dudes in the face.

[264] And the game actually is pretty forgiving on a lot of stuff, cases like that, where you can just kind of go ahead and shoot a lot of guys.

[265] It definitely has those kind of higher action moments where you do get to shoot a lot of guys in a very short period of time and not really think too much about the tactics.

[266] But then there are cases where you want to slow it down and you're rolling with a pair of guys.

[267] that you can order around.

[268] And you have them stack up against doors and have them breach doors with flashbangs or grenades or different ways that they can run into a room and clear it of enemies.

[269] Yeah.

[270] And that's all...

[271] Pretty satisfying.

[272] It has the same kind of snake cam thing where you're sticking cameras under the door and tagging enemies so that when they do breach, they shoot the guys that are pointed at the hostages you're trying to save as opposed to just some guy who's smoking off in the corner or something like that.

[273] So it sounds like they're just kind of continuing to streamline the Rainbow Six tactical experience because the very first Rainbow Six game was crazy.

[274] Oh, yeah.

[275] No. I mean, I think Graw was the first.

[276] Actually, you know what?

[277] Graw was the first game with Tom Clancy's name on it that I thought was any good.

[278] Yeah.

[279] I don't care about Splinter Cell, never have.

[280] All those Rainbow Six games, all that stuff.

[281] I liked the last Splinter Cell game.

[282] I thought that one was pretty good.

[283] That was the first one I tried to play since the second one.

[284] I liked some of the multiplayer stuff in that game, but still didn't finish it, didn't want to.

[285] Just lost interest about maybe halfway through the campaign.

[286] So this may be another Tom Clancy game that you approve of?

[287] Yeah, I think that's pretty much where it's at.

[288] The Vegas series and the Graw series are the Tom Clancy games for the rest of us.

[289] Fantastic.

[290] In some sense.

[291] Yeah, some of the early word on the game that people have been putting out there is saying, oh, this is Rainbow Six Vegas 1 .5, not Rainbow Six Vegas 2.

[292] saying that the graphics haven't improved that much, which they really haven't.

[293] It still looks nice, though.

[294] But it still, yeah, it looks pretty good.

[295] You look weird.

[296] I look weird in the game.

[297] It has that same kind of camera feature where you can scan your head in.

[298] A little face mapping for you.

[299] Yeah, and you were saying it looks like if I was in an action movie and they made an action figure out of it, a crappy action figure.

[300] It's a little too plasticky, and it's like, oh, I can see what they were trying to do.

[301] They were trying to make it look like Jeff, but not quite.

[302] This is what happens when you don't let Todd McFarlane make your action figures.

[303] With his stunning realism.

[304] My ears are not that big.

[305] Yeah, it made your ears crazy big.

[306] And then also your hairline was really far back, which is really weird.

[307] Maybe it's because I stopped the picture at the top of my forehead as opposed to scanning in all of my hair.

[308] I don't know what you're supposed to do.

[309] I don't know where you're supposed to stop.

[310] It wasn't really clear what it defined as the top of my head.

[311] So I don't know.

[312] And I also noticed when you're doing the face scanning, it didn't really give you a lot of options as far as like looking at different angles of your dude.

[313] So that was a little bit difficult to get it perfect.

[314] Yeah, yeah.

[315] Yeah, there's a lot of weird little stuff like that, like kind of fit and finish things that you would expect from a sequel where, you know, when you get out of a ranked match or if you're trying to join a game that has already started and you can't join it, it dumps you all the way back out to the main menu.

[316] It's just weird usability issues.

[317] Yeah, as opposed to jumping you back into the, all right, well, I guess I'll find another game then.

[318] And when a ranked game ends, it drops you out and says, your connection to the host has been lost.

[319] And then you hit A on that and another screen comes up and says, you can't keep playing with the same people in ranked games because then you could cheat.

[320] Yeah.

[321] Effectively.

[322] And it's just weird.

[323] It's like, why are there these two screens?

[324] It seems like they just added that in at the last minute to get people to realize why it kicks them out to the main menu.

[325] Right.

[326] But it just shouldn't.

[327] It should kick you back to the join another game screen so you can just kind of keep going.

[328] Well, there you go.

[329] There's your immediate impressions.

[330] There's also, you have a first impressions of the game up on the site.

[331] Yes.

[332] Giantbomb .com.

[333] Oh, is that what it's called?

[334] That's where the website, we have a website.

[335] Thanks for plugging your website on my show.

[336] Sorry, dude.

[337] While we're on the topic of Rainbow Six Vegas 2, let's talk about the sweet Comcast map.

[338] Right.

[339] Yeah.

[340] Well, there is some weird advertising stuff in there.

[341] You go through a convention center that's covered with MLG logos.

[342] The major league gaming?

[343] Yes, I'm familiar with them.

[344] Those pro gamer types.

[345] So there's that in there, and then also there's a...

[346] On the menu screen, there's something that says, like, Comcast Extras.

[347] And if you go to that screen and type in Comcast Faster, two words, capital letters on Comcast and Faster, it unlocks a map called, like, Comcast Event.

[348] And it looks like it's just like the same convention, like event center level or whatever, but with more Comcast logos.

[349] Advertising.

[350] Yeah.

[351] It's kind of, I don't know, it's kind of filthy.

[352] Why is that an unlockable if it's just the same damn thing?

[353] It's for the same reason that Burnout has a Circuit City car.

[354] That's true.

[355] You know, it's that same type of deal.

[356] Blah.

[357] So there's that.

[358] If you want to get your Comcast event map and you've got Rainbow Six Vegas 2, that's how you do it.

[359] Type that in.

[360] It'll unlock it.

[361] And then you can play as that in Terrorist Hunt and online and all that other stuff.

[362] I think the cool part for that game is it has co -op throughout, like Terrorist Hunt, also the storyline.

[363] And I guess it actually has the full storyline this time as opposed to cutting out cut scenes like the first one did.

[364] Our garbage bag.

[365] Our garbage bag just fell.

[366] We had a garbage bag.

[367] Okay, we don't have garbage cans in this office yet.

[368] We're supposed to get them.

[369] We'll do some video in a little bit to show people.

[370] Yeah, yeah.

[371] We'll shoot a video so you can kind of see how we're podcasting.

[372] And we actually have most of our new podcast equipment.

[373] We're just missing a few key pieces of it, so we're still using the old stuff.

[374] Yep, yep.

[375] So expect next week's show to sound maybe better.

[376] Hopefully.

[377] Hopefully.

[378] Better.

[379] We should spend all this damn money.

[380] It's not like $1 ,200 on mixers and mics and stuff.

[381] Yeah, so we had a garbage bag threaded through the...

[382] The circuit breaker box.

[383] There's a little loop on it.

[384] So I kind of pulled some of the bag through there and it just fell out because I think that means it's full.

[385] It's too heavy.

[386] I just put like a half empty drink in there.

[387] So that means that there's now potentially drinks sloshing around in that bag.

[388] Whatever.

[389] So moving on from Rainbow Six Vegas 2 and garbage.

[390] You want to talk about our next drink?

[391] You're still enjoying the Iron Brew.

[392] I'm still enjoying the Iron Brew.

[393] Keep riding that.

[394] We have way too many drinks on our desks.

[395] Yeah, I've got like a half -empty root beer over here that I had as kind of like my backup drink in case either one of these drinks is awful.

[396] Yeah, which so far, going pretty good.

[397] Although, I don't know, I've gotten maybe like halfway down to the label on this bottle, and I'm not sure that I can drink a lot of this at once.

[398] Yeah, it's a little.

[399] It's maybe a little much on the Iron Brew.

[400] You want to talk about our second drink now?

[401] Sure.

[402] Yeah, let's open it so I can have three open drinks over here.

[403] Let's do that.

[404] Let's make that happen.

[405] I've got two going as well, so let's up the ante.

[406] Passion fruit, pineapple, ginger, vitamins B12 and C, and guarana.

[407] Those are all the things on the top of this can.

[408] So I'll let you set this one up since, again, you were the point of contact on this.

[409] Right.

[410] It also says get it on down here by the ingredients, which I've been known to get it on, and I enjoy it.

[411] Well, Jeff, let's get it on.

[412] Okay, wait.

[413] I don't think that means what you think it means.

[414] Let's get it on.

[415] No, no, no, no. This is Mojo Energy Drink from the people at Mojo Sciences in Los Angeles.

[416] And actually, so we got two cases of this stuff from Mojo Sciences.

[417] They heard that we were talking drinks.

[418] Yep.

[419] And the president of the company wrote and said, hey, I want to send you a couple cases.

[420] I said.

[421] Hell yes.

[422] And it showed up yesterday.

[423] So here we are.

[424] So, Jeff, I think this is the sign for me that we've made it.

[425] This is really it.

[426] Starting to get free games in the mail again, like Condemned in Vegas.

[427] That was sign number one.

[428] But this is where the rubber hits the road, baby.

[429] This is a way better sign.

[430] Getting people coming to us, wanting us to taste their drinks and then talk about them.

[431] And I want to preface this by saying I feel no...

[432] obligation to be overly positive about this.

[433] I want to put the same harsh, critical eye towards this that I have.

[434] That's right.

[435] We take these drink tastings very seriously.

[436] Attempting to sway us with free drinks.

[437] We would have bought this drink eventually.

[438] Indeed.

[439] All right.

[440] So crack it.

[441] All right.

[442] Give it a scent.

[443] Give it a little smell.

[444] Kind of citrusy.

[445] Kind of citrusy.

[446] Yeah.

[447] It smells a little dangerous also.

[448] Maybe like a squirt, but yeah.

[449] It smells like something that would have liquor in it.

[450] Or could have liquor in it.

[451] Or would be used to clean automotive parts.

[452] No, no, I know my solvents.

[453] I know very well what solvents smell like.

[454] This does not smell like a solvents.

[455] Alright, well this smells like the Gojo orange cleaner.

[456] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[457] It's got a refreshing...

[458] All right, here we go.

[459] Whoa.

[460] Whoa.

[461] I'm going to say immediately the ginger.

[462] It tastes like a Chinese restaurant.

[463] It's very prominent in the flavor.

[464] Yeah, yeah, definitely.

[465] I'm getting a very strong kind of ginger beer.

[466] Is that why I immediately equated this to eating Chinese food?

[467] Yeah, probably.

[468] Yeah.

[469] Probably.

[470] I'm going to give it another go here.

[471] I see what they were going for.

[472] Not great.

[473] At least it doesn't really give you a nasty aftertaste.

[474] It gives you everything that it's got right up front.

[475] It just punches you in the face and then says, all right, cool.

[476] It lets you know what it's all about right up front.

[477] It's kind of weird how it disappears so quickly.

[478] You're like, whoa, that's crazy.

[479] What happened?

[480] Every time I take another sip, it's like a surprise all over again.

[481] Whoa, this still tastes like that.

[482] I forgot what it tasted like.

[483] I'm not really, well, yeah, I don't know.

[484] I'm not really into it.

[485] Well, I don't know.

[486] It's definitely different.

[487] It's different.

[488] This does not taste like any other energy beverage that I've had, and I've had my fair share.

[489] I'm not really tasting the pineapple.

[490] Or the passion fruit.

[491] Or the vitamins B12 and C. Definitely not tasting the B12.

[492] The ginger, I think, is pretty forward.

[493] Oh, it's on there.

[494] Pretty forward.

[495] Ginger gets right up on top of you.

[496] This is very fruit forward.

[497] For sure.

[498] The heady nose.

[499] Nice earthy finish.

[500] Oaky.

[501] Oaky scents and hints of tobacco and cherry.

[502] Notes of, yeah.

[503] But, yeah, so if you like ginger.

[504] Yeah, definitely, like, yeah, if you're into, like, a ginger beer or Chinese food, I guess.

[505] I guess, yeah, and you want to be reminded of that while you're trying to stay up late, check out Mojo Energy Drink.

[506] Yeah, I guess we should just chug the rest of this and see how the energy portion works by the end of the show.

[507] We should know.

[508] No. Whatever.

[509] All right, Jeff, you can do that.

[510] I will, in the meantime, look at what our next topic will be.

[511] All right, what else do we want to talk about here?

[512] Oh, while we're talking about games, you want to talk about Space Invader?

[513] Yeah, yeah, totally.

[514] There's a video on the YouTube, which is a site on the Internet.

[515] Oh, the World Wide Web.

[516] Right, that's the one.

[517] where you can watch videos, and there's a video up for Space Invaders Extreme, which looks awesome.

[518] It looks like someone took Space Invaders and crossed it with Luminous.

[519] Yeah, it's got kind of a rhythm -based thing to it, and it's a lot faster than old -school Space Invaders.

[520] Yeah, and it looks like it's constantly changing up and has crazy color cycling background madness.

[521] So we ordered a copy of that, waiting for that to show up.

[522] I think that's going to probably end up...

[523] That's out on PSP and DS.

[524] I think that's going to end up being our first bit of PSP coverage unless something happens between us ordering it and it showing up.

[525] Right, which is the reason why there is not yet a PSP tab on the site for people who are wondering.

[526] Right, yeah.

[527] We don't have tabs on the site for platforms we have not yet covered because if you went and clicked on a PSP tab right now, you wouldn't get anything.

[528] It would just be busted.

[529] Yeah, it would just be, oh, what?

[530] What are you talking about?

[531] Yeah, it's been funny as we've been adding those tabs, people have been...

[532] We've basically been shutting people up.

[533] You're like, why don't you have a Wii tab?

[534] Do you guys hate the Wii?

[535] You guys hate the Wii, huh?

[536] It's like, no, we just haven't written the Smash Brothers review yet.

[537] And now there's a Wii tab.

[538] So there you go.

[539] It was great when we first started.

[540] And now we have a DS tab.

[541] When we first started, it was PC, arcade, Xbox 360.

[542] And arcade is still up there, which I think is hilarious.

[543] Well, you keep talking about the damn Street Fighter 4.

[544] Right.

[545] It's actually, yeah, it's more relevant now than it's been in a very long time.

[546] And you got shut down on your dream of buying an arcade board.

[547] Thank God.

[548] Yeah, yeah.

[549] I was actually very close to just writing a rebuttal to your post saying, dude, what?

[550] No. That is a poor expenditure of company money.

[551] No, I probably would have.

[552] I don't think I would have put that on the company.

[553] That would have been poor expenditure of your money also.

[554] Yeah, I think I would have spent my money on it.

[555] You would say, oh, why did I do this?

[556] But, yeah, so NCS posted an offering saying that they were taking pre -orders for Street Fighter IV kits.

[557] These aren't the full cabinets.

[558] It's just the boards and basically the innards of a Street Fighter IV machine.

[559] And they were selling it for about $2 ,500, $2 ,600.

[560] And I guess it's going to ship in late August, August 20th.

[561] And so I posted a story to the site on Friday just saying, like, dude, who's with me?

[562] We're getting to Street Fighter.

[563] And Sean upstairs posted a comment saying, dude, can't we just expense this?

[564] Let's just do it.

[565] And I was like, yeah, we should do it.

[566] Let's just do it.

[567] And then, like, by the next day, NCS had posted something saying, like, sorry, our supplier was misinformed.

[568] These are actually only to be sold in kits of four.

[569] So you could only buy four.

[570] So if we wanted to buy four Street Fighter machines, we could probably do that.

[571] We could have the Northern California distribution for Street Fighter 4 machines on lock.

[572] Yeah, yeah.

[573] You want a Street Fighter.

[574] So I guess maybe, you know, if NCS can still get these from these suppliers, you could probably write them and ask.

[575] Maybe you and three other friends could go in and each buy a Street Fighter 4 kit.

[576] Oh, I hope no one has three friends like that.

[577] Oh, I wish I had friends like that.

[578] I hope that doesn't exist anywhere.

[579] That's the easiest way to spend a lot of money on dumb things is to have friends that are with you in doing it.

[580] I mean, that's, yeah.

[581] You push each other into just like, we should just do that.

[582] Yeah, let's just do it.

[583] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[584] Let's go get sidekicks.

[585] Like when we went and got sidekicks.

[586] When the sidekicks first came out.

[587] Or like when I bought my...

[588] My Sony Airboard, my future TV, my wireless TV.

[589] Yeah.

[590] That was all because we were in Japan and I was with Amir.

[591] Yeah.

[592] And we were both just like, yeah, dude, we're so going to go get those tomorrow.

[593] Let's go.

[594] And we went and I was like filling out the paperwork for mine.

[595] And I turned to him and go like, all right, dude.

[596] And he's like.

[597] Yeah, no, I can't.

[598] Oh, he punked you out.

[599] I was like, oh, dude.

[600] You got faced.

[601] That's a burn right there.

[602] He had to buy his car.

[603] He just bought his car.

[604] Some excuse.

[605] I don't know.

[606] That's fair.

[607] And then, of course, they came out with a better airboard like three months later.

[608] And I was like, ah.

[609] But it actually gets a lot of use.

[610] But he shouldn't have goosed you like that.

[611] I know.

[612] That's unfair.

[613] It was way uncool.

[614] Like, I'll do that.

[615] I'll tell you, dude, yeah, go do it.

[616] But I'm not going to try and fake like I'm going to do it with you.

[617] I think he was.

[618] I think he was just he thought that we would both forget or I don't know what he thought.

[619] We'll get him on here.

[620] When we get the rest of our equipment, we'll get a phone interview with EALA's own Amir and Johnny and figure out what exactly went down, man. Clear up the controversy.

[621] We had packed in Ike's apartment, man. If that doesn't mean something, what does in this crazy world?

[622] Well, I'll tell you something that does make sense, Jeff.

[623] It's free downloadable content for Burnout Paradise.

[624] Yeah.

[625] So everyone's favorite insane Englishman, Alex Ward, creative director at Criterion, the creators of Burnout, has come out and said, we're going to put out...

[626] Some expansions, including a couple of islands of actual new territory for gratis.

[627] There's a big chunk of water in that game, and they're going to fill that up with some islands, some stuff.

[628] And they're going to do that for free, which is totally cool.

[629] They had mentioned before that they were going to try and have some free DLC, and it's good to see.

[630] came the question when they were talking about having some paid, some free.

[631] It's like, okay, if it's going to be like locations are paid, then is that going to mess up the online?

[632] How is that going to affect who you can join with?

[633] Is that going to splinter the market?

[634] Right.

[635] Will they just be like, if you don't have it, will you drive up to the island and just see a big gate that says, no dude, pay us?

[636] And then you see your other players magically flying through the gate.

[637] Yeah, or if you're playing with someone who, if the host bought it, then you can drive on it, but you have to download it every time, like an Uno deck.

[638] But a non -issue, apparently, because they're going to give it out.

[639] And this is starting to make all the stuff about requiring a hard drive for online play a lot clearer.

[640] Sure.

[641] Sure, yeah.

[642] You can only play the online stuff, I guess, if you have a hard drive.

[643] Well, on the 360 version, of course.

[644] And people were kind of up in arms about that, which...

[645] I didn't really get too up in arms about it, because I think if you're serious enough to want to play a lot online, you were probably serious enough to buy the 360 that has a hard drive.

[646] Agreed.

[647] So there's that, and then you can imagine them maybe just charging for cars.

[648] Yeah, I mean, that's kind of the speculation.

[649] Like cars and challenges.

[650] I assume that they will have downloadable challenge packs, because one of the achievement for completing...

[651] challenges, references.

[652] Excluding DLC.

[653] Yeah, excluding DLC.

[654] So that was something that when they wrote those, they were at least thinking, hey, we could have challenges for online content, which I think would be great on account of I've already finished all 350 challenges.

[655] I'm still very close to being done with Burnout Paradise.

[656] I still have a few gates and jumps and challenges.

[657] I'm actually, at this point, I still have maybe 40 races to go to get my elite license, but I think at this point I'm just going to wait for the...

[658] the download stuff to come out and then go back to it and do all that stuff.

[659] So yeah, so Alex Ward also does officially say that, yeah, it's not all going to be free, but he doesn't really expand on that much.

[660] So people are speculating that that'll be these other things.

[661] That the cars will be paid.

[662] Yeah, charged for cars and challenges, but we'll see about that.

[663] And we still don't have any sort of release information about that.

[664] Yeah, the weird stuff, the whole downloadable content, free versus paid thing, is really kind of crazy because...

[665] You have companies that keep kind of coming out, like Valve came out and said, we would love it if all of the Orange Box content was free to download on consoles, but Sony and Microsoft have a say in that decision.

[666] And it's kind of on them.

[667] Right.

[668] And it's, I don't know, it's kind of a little messed up of Valve, but great in the long run that they came out and said that because it really does put the onus on Sony and Microsoft to say like, hey, do you want to...

[669] Do what the developer wants to do and actually do this for free?

[670] Or are you going to cover your bandwidth costs that you will have to pay to distribute this content and charge for it?

[671] And that's kind of the holdup is that they have to host those files on their servers and pay for that bandwidth.

[672] So it is costing them money to distribute even the free content.

[673] Though then theoretically isn't stuff like that supposed to be covered with my annual Xbox Live fee?

[674] Yeah, you would think at least on the Xbox side that that would cover it.

[675] Though, silver members can download that stuff.

[676] So maybe that's where they could have the split.

[677] Like it's free download for gold members, but not for silver.

[678] That seems reasonably fair.

[679] That seems like a good benefit for the people that are paying.

[680] Says the guys who have gold accounts.

[681] Right.

[682] I'd be down with that.

[683] Yeah, if it's free for me, that sounds great.

[684] I have two gold accounts.

[685] Do I get it free twice?

[686] I guess you could.

[687] I guess moving on from here.

[688] We talked a little bit about Street Fighter 4 before.

[689] I briefly want to mention they have released some information about some of the new fighters, some of their new abilities.

[690] And also El Fuerte.

[691] Yeah, the crazy Mexican wrestler.

[692] He's also a gourmet chef.

[693] Which you're into and I think couldn't be more played out.

[694] I feel like having the luchador, adding him to your game is like the desperate thing that it seems like all fighting games late in their lives are doing.

[695] Like Virtua Fighter 5 had Rey Mysterio Jr. in it, basically.

[696] Yeah, and yeah.

[697] Yeah, I just think he's a good -looking character, and I think that he could have interesting moves in that kind of 2D fighter, street fighter context.

[698] Yeah, I guess it's just kind of an archetype that I feel is quickly becoming played out.

[699] I think you're played out.

[700] Okay, fair enough.

[701] But I did want to mention out of this that they have mentioned some of the new characters' moves, and Crimson Viper has a move called the Thundernuckle.

[702] I had a bad case of Thundernuckle last summer.

[703] It laid you up pretty bad.

[704] Yeah, I was holed up in my house for a couple weeks.

[705] I had to go get some penicillin shots, cleared it right up.

[706] The device in her glove emits a powerful electric shock as Viper charges forward the jab version of this movie.

[707] The device in her glove?

[708] Yeah.

[709] What are we, like, trying to explain how Street Fighter works now?

[710] Midichlorians are how she uses...

[711] How does Ken throw a fireball?

[712] With Wu -Tang magic.

[713] Okay.

[714] Or Shaolin magic, I guess.

[715] Shotokan magic, dude.

[716] Totally different.

[717] Right.

[718] So, yeah, apparently she has a device.

[719] Dude, that's...

[720] I don't know how I feel about that.

[721] I don't know about...

[722] Controversial.