Giant Bombcast 01-10-2012

[0] Hey, everyone.

[1] It's Tuesday, January the 10th, 2012.

[2] And you are listening to The Giant Bombcast.

[3] I'm Ryan Davis.

[4] We've got Vinny Caravella in the house.

[5] Hello.

[6] Hey, hey, hey.

[7] Hi.

[8] Patrick Klepik is here.

[9] I'm showing a lot of enthusiasm right now.

[10] Returning from his whirlwind trip around the globe, Mr. Jeff Gerstmann.

[11] Auf Wiedersehen?

[12] That's it.

[13] Guten Tag.

[14] That's right.

[15] Hey, hi.

[16] Tomo se dice, party time.

[17] I say it, party time.

[18] Very good.

[19] And Brad Shoemaker.

[20] It's a me. It's a you, Brad.

[21] I've been to Italy.

[22] Tiempo de party.

[23] Well, you've picked up the accent.

[24] Yes.

[25] I learned the local tone.

[26] It's the Firenze accent specifically.

[27] Just go to Google Earth and hang out in Italy.

[28] I find this all offensive.

[29] Why?

[30] Because, hey, look at me. I'm a guy.

[31] Obviously.

[32] It's not like I handed you some kind of receipt that says, like, man Italian eyes or something on it.

[33] I wish I got that receipt.

[34] Yeah, that would be way worse.

[35] Vinny, how are you doing?

[36] Doing all right.

[37] Fantastic.

[38] How are you doing?

[39] I'm good.

[40] Actually, let's talk to Jeff.

[41] It's been a while since you've been on a podcast.

[42] Good, Vinny.

[43] No, I've been out doing other podcasts.

[44] Start on my own.

[45] I don't actually release it to anyone.

[46] But every day I record it, a half hour with me. It's like Prince.

[47] You've got like hundreds of hours of podcasts in your vault.

[48] Trying out new material.

[49] Yeah, just kind of bouncing it off myself.

[50] Everything that you're going to say during this podcast here today, you've actually already worked out on your private podcast.

[51] Yeah, pretty much.

[52] Premium, premium podcast.

[53] That's right.

[54] It's like the Johnny Walker Blue of podcasts.

[55] It's really hard.

[56] The casks have to be a certain way.

[57] Yes.

[58] It's a whole thing.

[59] Recording to casks.

[60] Yeah.

[61] Jeff, how you doing?

[62] How was your break?

[63] It was good.

[64] Yeah, I don't know.

[65] I took two weeks off and hung out.

[66] That was cool.

[67] Right on.

[68] Did a bunch of hanging out.

[69] Did you play any games?

[70] Yeah.

[71] Very good.

[72] I'm going to sound real happy about it.

[73] Yeah.

[74] Let's talk about The Old Republic, Jeff.

[75] You played a shitload of The Old Republic.

[76] I did.

[77] Yeah, I did.

[78] It wasn't the only thing I did, so I did not hit the level cap.

[79] Okay.

[80] But I did get to level 40 and played it for, let's say, over 100 hours.

[81] Wow.

[82] Probably somewhere between 100 and 110.

[83] That's just over the break?

[84] Yeah, pretty much.

[85] All right.

[86] Yeah.

[87] I guess I maybe played like 5 or 10 before the break.

[88] Because it pretty much came out right before the break.

[89] And the cap is 50 right now, right?

[90] It is.

[91] Yeah, it's 50.

[92] So you're not super far from the cap.

[93] But it sounds like it would take about three days of playing time to get from 40 to 50.

[94] Another 72 hours.

[95] Kessler got there in seven days of played.

[96] Jeez.

[97] I would hope the guy whose name adorns the guild...

[98] Right.

[99] Would have seen it through to the end.

[100] Freaking guilds named after him.

[101] Might as well hit the...

[102] I love how they made a rank for him.

[103] Yeah.

[104] Everybody else in the guild is just whatever rank dude or whatever.

[105] He's the only guy that holds rank Kessler.

[106] And it actually has lower permissions than all the other ones.

[107] Accurate.

[108] It's somehow fitting.

[109] I don't know.

[110] I still get immeasurable joy from how pissed off.

[111] Star Wars people inside of the Old Republic get at the name of the guild.

[112] Oh, man. I just joined the guild yesterday, so I'm looking forward to that.

[113] Yeah, people...

[114] I never had that happen to me. People think it's a mistake.

[115] People think that people that run it are idiots and don't know that it's the Kessler run.

[116] You know it's the Kessler run, man. Well, the funny thing is there's gear in the game that says Kessler on it.

[117] There's like a Kessler...

[118] helmet and there's just straight up Kessler gear.

[119] Is that someone from Kessel?

[120] Yeah, maybe that's it.

[121] Like you're a Kessler if you Kessel?

[122] I don't know.

[123] I don't know.

[124] To Kessel?

[125] Did that all happen in 125 BBY?

[126] When does that all take place?

[127] Some kind of future trend for hustling.

[128] I'm a Kessler.

[129] Every day I'm Kessling.

[130] And you're getting deep in if you know about that stuff.

[131] Yeah, man. Timelines.

[132] The game is set.

[133] BBY.

[134] 3000 BBY.

[135] Something like that.

[136] BBY stands for it.

[137] I'm set BBW.

[138] Before the Battle of Yavin.

[139] Duh.

[140] Fuck you guys.

[141] I'm up, dude.

[142] I'm with Patrick.

[143] Fuck you guys.

[144] Yeah, I don't know.

[145] Like at some point I was looking at it and thinking like, when is this set?

[146] Because I had no idea because it doesn't say in the game like, this takes place this many years before the movie.

[147] Star Wars!

[148] It's a long, long time ago.

[149] It doesn't say.

[150] The only thing that's really relevant is...

[151] The writer that told us, though, Erickson told us before we interviewed him of the time frame.

[152] I blew all that information out of my head!

[153] Alcohol?

[154] No, I did not even need alcohol to do that.

[155] It was just Star Wars information, so it naturally escapes.

[156] It's before Wind Waker.

[157] That assumes that young Link went back in time.

[158] It's a split timeline.

[159] Vader and Ganon.

[160] So that's timeline B. Right.

[161] So I look at the sun to get the fire arrows, and then when Vader flashes and turns red, I have to shoot.

[162] That's how you become a Jedi.

[163] Duh.

[164] Oh, okay.

[165] It's in the holocrons, showing my guild.

[166] I mean, even if you do care about that stuff, the only thing that really matters is the proximity to KOTOR, right?

[167] Yeah.

[168] Like, that's actually kind of relevant.

[169] Yeah, and there are things in the game that reference events that happened in KOTOR, which I thought was pretty cool.

[170] Right.

[171] I mean, there are, like, descendants of characters from KOTOR in the game.

[172] Yeah, they put enough time between those two that it's like, yeah, there are characters from KOTOR in the game, but yes.

[173] But that's because people can live for a really long time.

[174] Do they make that really explicit?

[175] Or is it kind of like, if you played those games, you'll pick up on it?

[176] If you play Revan, you'll pick up on it.

[177] Like stuff about Revanites, like people who worship Dark Revan.

[178] But it's not characters saying that like, I was in Knights of the Old Republic.

[179] You remember me. Not the second one.

[180] HK -47 is in there somewhere.

[181] I'm a friendly robot.

[182] Well, like the head of the Jedi is a Shan.

[183] Her last name is...

[184] She's descended from Bastila.

[185] Anyway, it's an MMO.

[186] All that side, it is the very definition of we made an MMO.

[187] Everything we were just talking about constitutes about 5 % of the game.

[188] The other 95 % is running back and forth.

[189] The other 5 % is run out here and kill 10 guys and hope that they drop stuff.

[190] Did you get anything cool at 30 or 40?

[191] Well, you've got a ship.

[192] You ship.

[193] I got my mount.

[194] I just bought my second level of speeder training, but that cost so much money that I didn't have enough money left for the second level speeder.

[195] So I would need to go out and...

[196] Kessel?

[197] You get money in that game.

[198] You get paid.

[199] They fixed a bug with one of the crafting skills that was causing people to get too much money.

[200] I'd never even bother with that because I was already so damn paid.

[201] that it just didn't matter.

[202] I haven't played in a while, and I didn't really play over the break, but I'm 17 or something like that.

[203] I felt like in those levels, there was a real dearth of shit to buy.

[204] I was racking up money, and I'm like, you spend money on your skills.

[205] And at level 20, there's one of the...

[206] the tutorial pop -ups is, start saving for your speeder.

[207] That's 25.

[208] Oh, really?

[209] Like they put your money away?

[210] Yeah, which it wasn't that much.

[211] I was, like, saving all this money and didn't go look and see how much it actually cost or ask anybody or anything.

[212] Yeah, I think I've got, like, 7 ,000 and I'm only level, I think, 10.

[213] Yeah, that's, yeah.

[214] You get money.

[215] Indeed.

[216] Creds.

[217] I think what you think of that game will probably depend on your approach to, like, how you're kind of coming in.

[218] Wait, what do you mean?

[219] If you are an MMO player coming to this game...

[220] And then you want some more MMO?

[221] And you want some more MMO, you will find that.

[222] Though, I guess actually Dave kind of upset my theory on this because he played a little bit of it and said, I think I'm just going to quit because it's like a worse WoW.

[223] Like, he doesn't like it.

[224] Well, he may have crossed his personal inflection point where he doesn't want that anymore.

[225] Right.

[226] Like, plenty of people still do.

[227] Yeah.

[228] Or if you're going to do it, just go play more WoW.

[229] Well, yeah, maybe.

[230] You don't need to start the game.

[231] I think that game's running into its own issues.

[232] I would rather have this space sci -fi setting, even though I don't think the Star Wars sci -fi setting is any good.

[233] I would still rather take that than raw fantasy.

[234] That's fantasy with motorcycles, though.

[235] Yeah, that's worse.

[236] That was Star Trek.

[237] Are you checking with that anyway?

[238] I didn't.

[239] If you're the MMO player, you're getting a game that is going to feel pretty familiar.

[240] A lot of the ideas, even the stuff that deviates from WoW is stuff that kind of came from other stuff in a lot of cases.

[241] But you're going to get the story aspect of it, and it's probably the best story integration into an MMO because of all those cut scenes.

[242] Over 100 hours, though, that stuff starts to fall apart a little bit.

[243] Spread thinner and thinner?

[244] Yeah.

[245] Are you saying there is less of it or you're just less interested in it?

[246] Well, for me, it actually seems to be both.

[247] But your class quest goes.

[248] You always have that kind of driving you forward.

[249] But the thing is you get more used to hearing your guy say the exact same shit over and over again.

[250] Like if you say, you know, the option will be something like, you know, yes, I will kill them all or something like that.

[251] But then my guy says, like, there won't be a heart left beating over and over again.

[252] I've heard him say that like 30 times.

[253] He really blows it.

[254] Yeah.

[255] So they've got duplicate lines from out of your guy, multiple ways to say yes or yes, I would like to kill everyone or yes.

[256] It's not always super situational.

[257] Right.

[258] It is rarely super situational.

[259] I've also overheard some other characters speaking with my character's voice.

[260] Yeah.

[261] Oh, that's weird.

[262] Which really takes you out of it.

[263] Because you do get a little bit attached to that guy, or you start identifying with that guy as you.

[264] And then you hear another character, because I assume there's only one actor per race -class combination.

[265] It's not even race -specific.

[266] It's not even race -specific.

[267] Like the same kind of sinister British guys coming out of every Sith warrior?

[268] I think so, yeah.

[269] I think.

[270] It is class, though.

[271] It is class -based?

[272] Yeah, because my British dude sounds way different.

[273] Well, that makes sense, because the storylines are segregated by class.

[274] But yeah, running by a guy and hearing my voice coming out of somebody else just completely shattered any illusion I had.

[275] I haven't had that happen.

[276] I don't know how it happened.

[277] I was in a group at the time.

[278] That may have contributed with someone of the same class.

[279] Here's the problem, is that everyone else's characters suck.

[280] I don't know what it is.

[281] How do you figure?

[282] I don't know what it is.

[283] But, like, I think my guy is awesome and everyone else that I see is, like, you look ridiculous.

[284] Your voice doesn't suit you at all.

[285] Stupid name.

[286] And your name is dumb.

[287] Yeah.

[288] And I don't know if it's just that personal perspective thing.

[289] That's got to be it.

[290] That kind of has to be.

[291] Yeah, yeah.

[292] But that's what I'm saying is, like, there's an odd thing about the, I don't know, about design and combination of, you know, the different elements that.

[293] Maybe it speaks to how well, even with the limited number of parts, they're able to let you kind of make your dude the way you want him.

[294] Because, yeah, I like my dude and have not seen other guys that I thought looked particularly fly.

[295] I want to hang out with you.

[296] I'm almost up to your level.

[297] We should do a flashpoint or something.

[298] See, I really like those.

[299] I wish that I had access to more.

[300] How many have you done?

[301] There you go.

[302] That's why you like them.

[303] The ones that I'm getting to now, I guess, are good again.

[304] So that Blacktown Flashpoint, basically they front -loaded the game with the cool shit, which makes sense.

[305] But the three after that, there's one choice per, and it's not dialogue.

[306] It's like you walk up to a screen and you see a bunch of people in there.

[307] You could hit this button and kill them all.

[308] Are you gonna?

[309] That's literally the decision.

[310] And then the rest of it is you just going through a dungeon and killing people.

[311] Boring.

[312] That was really disappointing for me. That's disappointing to hear for sure, but I think a big part of the draw of the Flashpoint stuff for me is bite -sized, easily shared combat content.

[313] Yeah.

[314] The killing point for so many MMOs for me can be just like, you've got to load it up, you've got to get to the thing, you've got to start the quest, and if I want to do it with other people, there's the coordination.

[315] Just the time overhead.

[316] on accomplishing anything in MMOs can be staggering.

[317] And I like the flashpoints because it's like, I can hop in, there's people in my guild who wants to run this flashpoint.

[318] Everyone zaps there.

[319] They should take that the next step further and let you go into flashpoints like you go into PvP.

[320] Just directly.

[321] Just from anywhere without having to go back up to the fleet.

[322] Yeah, I agree.

[323] Because that's the thing.

[324] It's like, hey, we want to run this flashpoint.

[325] We need two more people.

[326] And then someone's at the far end of Hoth and they're like, okay, well, I gotta...

[327] You sit there and figure out your transportation.

[328] All right, I've got to blow my half -hour thing to get here.

[329] So the thing is every character actually gets a warp to fleet thing, but you can only use it once every 18 hours.

[330] Oh, that's even longer than the Hearthstone thing.

[331] Yeah.

[332] You know what all MMOs need is like a fucking 511 .org.

[333] They need some sort of just like, tell me what the transit route is that I need to take.

[334] To get from where the fuck I am to where the fuck I want to go.

[335] I've been there before.

[336] I just don't know what the efficient way to go is.

[337] And it's not, you know...

[338] Because it's always a weird...

[339] There's not great gameplay involved in me getting to this...

[340] in this space station.

[341] Right, it's like, well, okay, I can Hearthstone back to this cantina and then from there I can run and there's a speeder path that I can take from there and that'll get me to this other town where there's a spaceport.

[342] I can take the spaceport.

[343] It's like...

[344] I mean, the answer is to use your 18 -hour fleet pass thing.

[345] Right, right.

[346] But if you happen to be playing in such a way that you're still on while that thing is counting down and you have to do it again, then it becomes this, like, horrible, like, okay, so I Hearthstone here, Griffin to here.

[347] Right.

[348] Then run through the spaceport, right click on this, and then some planets...

[349] have a space port that sits between the planet and the fleet.

[350] So then you have to run from one end to that to the other one for no good reason.

[351] Sounds terrible.

[352] You should be able to get that 18 -hour thing validated.

[353] It's exactly the same.

[354] If you complete a Flashpoint, it should be like, alright, cool.

[355] Do you validate Fast Pass?

[356] Drain the cooldown on your Fleet Pass.

[357] That'd be smart.

[358] It is the same problem.

[359] WoW has the exact same issue.

[360] It's common to the genre.

[361] In this huge world, I have to figure out how to fucking get across.

[362] And they can't just let everyone in Fast Travel just do their bandwidth?

[363] concerns.

[364] It's because they have built a game that they want you to pay to play on a 30 -day basis.

[365] If you could get anywhere you needed to be at any point, you would finish all the content in 30 days.

[366] The longer they artificially keep you from seeing all the content, the longer...

[367] That's probably why they have all those stupid fucking elevators everywhere.

[368] It's a big world full of people, so they can't have elevators that you control.

[369] Instead, it's just a platform that goes up and down.

[370] Just add its own speed.

[371] You have to get on it.

[372] If you miss it, you can run and fall onto it and take some damage.

[373] Again, World of Warcraft has those too.

[374] It's stupid.

[375] It's stupid.

[376] It's bad.

[377] So if you're approaching it from the other end where you like Bioware games and want to see the story, they drip it out at such a slow rate that it's not enough.

[378] Like 100 hours.

[379] Yeah.

[380] I played it 100 hours and probably like the good parts of that story that I've seen so far are less than 10 hours of that.

[381] I mean the actual story cut scenes are way less than 10 hours of that.

[382] Because it sounds like you have to go through a lot of – filler to get to that stuff.

[383] It seems weird that they're, you know, if that's the pitch to Bioware fans, or like me, who's just like, I like playing RPGs, but I'm not a big fan of MMO stuff, that there wouldn't be a way to mainline that in some way.

[384] But then again, it wouldn't keep you into the game longer than a month.

[385] Exactly.

[386] Well, here's the thing, is that because it is so front -loaded, you won't have a, well, also because it's an MMO, like, you're never going to have the...

[387] finished experience.

[388] You're never going to see credits roll on your story.

[389] There is an end to the story.

[390] I imagine that they do leave it somehow.

[391] The class quests do complete.

[392] And like you said in that interview, they build up to crescendos and then go back down.

[393] I finished the first act, I thought it was really cool, and then as soon as the second act started...

[394] I was like, this is fucking boring, and it has not gotten better.

[395] So my point to you, Patrick, is that you could play that game for 20 levels or however many hours, and because it is front -loaded to a certain amount, you see some cool shit.

[396] Right.

[397] And then at the point that it gets boring, you're like...

[398] But you'd have to invest the 150 hours for the resolution.

[399] Yeah.

[400] Yeah.

[401] And, again, maybe there is a certain amount of class story resolution, but it is an MMO, so they are going to more so than...

[402] Yeah, it's always with a dot, dot, dot.

[403] But more so than even a game that they would set up for a sequel.

[404] I haven't seen how many of them end, so I don't know for sure.

[405] But, yeah, that sounds about right.

[406] Yeah, right.

[407] What?

[408] Yeah, I don't know.

[409] You wanted a good ending.

[410] Roll a new character.

[411] Right.

[412] Yeah, so I played a bunch of it because there was a lot of downtime when I was off for two weeks where I was like, all right, well, I don't really have anything to do today.

[413] Whoops, I spent 13 hours playing this bucket.

[414] Four days.

[415] Yeah, yeah.

[416] So, you know, yeah.

[417] I guess I'd say I enjoy it.

[418] It certainly filled that time.

[419] Yeah.

[420] You know, I did, you know.

[421] I did not dislike it so much that I was like, ah, fuck this, until the very end.

[422] Yeah.

[423] And then I was like, I don't want to do any of this.

[424] Like Hoth specifically is big and empty and dumb.

[425] There's just kind of nothing going on.

[426] It's Hoth.

[427] No one should be on Hoth.

[428] It's a she, please.

[429] Yeah, that's sort of the point, but they didn't, you know.

[430] Yeah.

[431] Especially when you look back and compare it to how Hoth has been viewed in other games.

[432] Like, Hoth was the thing.

[433] There have been some better Hoth levels in the past.

[434] What's the Hoth level in this?

[435] But if you actually think about, like, Hoth.

[436] Yeah.

[437] It's fucking ice.

[438] I mean, it's just fucking tauntauns.

[439] And they don't even aggro when you get near them.

[440] It's kind of a shame that they felt they had to shoehorn it in there if they couldn't think of anything good to do with it.

[441] Or maybe this is just commentary.

[442] Maybe that's just their way of saying, oh, yeah, you wanted your Hoth level.

[443] Here's your fucking Hoth level.

[444] Guess what?

[445] It's an ice planet when nothing happens.

[446] Fuck you.

[447] Seeing the loop of how they treat each one of the zones, too, it unfolds the exact same way every time, and that's pretty disappointing, too.

[448] How do you mean?

[449] So you finish up on a planet, and you get kind of the class quest.

[450] We'll point you at the next area you're supposed to go to.

[451] Okay, yeah.

[452] So you go there.

[453] You get there.

[454] And again, this is only Sith Warrior I can speak to, but it seems like it is identical across the board, from what I understand.

[455] You get to an area, you've got your class quest destination that'll kind of trigger the next one of those, but wait, there's a guy in the spaceport hanging out, and he's got a mission.

[456] You right -click on him, he's like, hey, I'm with the military, and shit's fucked up here, you should really talk to this guy if you want to help.

[457] Alright, later.

[458] And then there's so – you end up in this case where, for me, there's like the Sith storyline, which is me working for Darth Barriss and doing all that stuff.

[459] And then there's the Empire storyline stuff.

[460] Right.

[461] And that's all a lot of generic stuff like, oh, we really need help.

[462] Oh, you're a Sith.

[463] Man, you are so much more powerful than – we're just some fucking dudes, man. Like, seriously, if you could just go over there and fuck these guys up, that would be great.

[464] And you say, like, I won't leave a heart left beating.

[465] That's my thing.

[466] Does it seem like those quests are the ones that are built for every class to be able to do?

[467] Yes.

[468] Those are the ones you see characters of all classes saying, like, hey, let's group up for this shit.

[469] I think just generally speaking, that stuff is just not as interesting as the class -specific stuff.

[470] It's not.

[471] There are some things in there that have been decent.

[472] But it's nothing to really write home about.

[473] It's not where they put the bulk of their work, which is crazy because it's stuff that's going to be seen by every class.

[474] So you go off and you kind of do these two things in tandem usually.

[475] And then from there, the zone breaks out to like, there's a bunch of quests in this area.

[476] So I'm going to do all those.

[477] And then maybe if I do my class quest, like, oh, sure enough, that led me to the next speeder.

[478] area and there's a bunch of quests here so I do all these so you spend your you know however many hours clearing that area out you complete your class quest and then it says like go back to your ship and right click on the glowy thing so we can give you the next story bit so you're like great I'm done with this fucking planet Tatooine boring as shit I gotta get out of here you get back to the spaceport there's a guy he's got a mission you're like alright what the fuck's going on here you right click on him he's like hey you really saved the day on this fucking empire.

[479] It is like, thank God you came, because Jesus, we were totally fucked.

[480] But now we got it all together.

[481] But there's still some stuff that if you could kind of help out with, like for, you know, Corey, or, you know, like, there's things happening.

[482] It'd be really good if you just went out to this area that, whoops, you didn't make it to out there, because there were no missions leading you there.

[483] And why would you go there?

[484] But if you go there, there's a guy, if you could talk to him.

[485] And you go out there and there's like fucking nine more missions or something like that.

[486] And this stuff makes the stuff you did, the non -class stuff you did before, look amazing.

[487] Because there's like the most generic, like, that was the stuff that was like, go here and right click on the guns.

[488] Oh, right.

[489] Go out here and do this.

[490] And they literally call it the bonus series.

[491] So it'll be like Tatooine bonus series.

[492] Like they couldn't even come up with a name for it.

[493] Or didn't want to, or whatever.

[494] Or at least, or differentiated, like, you really don't need to do this stuff.

[495] Well, the thing is, you know, I kind of do need to do that stuff, because I'm not doing a lot of the heroic quests, because those are the ones that require groups, and it's been hard to find groups.

[496] I mean, well, whatever, I'm in a guild, I could probably...

[497] hit any of those guys up at any point but like most of the guilds not in the same area as me and like random dudes looking for guilds seem like they're having a real hard time finding or looking for groups are having a real hard time finding them a lot of the time.

[498] You went Marauder?

[499] Yeah.

[500] That's DPS?

[501] Yeah.

[502] Have you had a hard time grouping up or do you try?

[503] Are you into grouping?

[504] I have not had a hard time.

[505] It seems like actually that a lot of people are just straight looking for DPS.

[506] Really?

[507] Yeah.

[508] Okay.

[509] I thought it would be the opposite.

[510] I thought tanks would be in higher demand.

[511] Tanks were also in pretty high demand.

[512] I'm trying to decide which way to go.

[513] It seemed like tanks were in high demand for a good long time, but now it seems like I see a lot of people looking for DPS.

[514] They can't use two lightsabers.

[515] Tanks are so 2011.

[516] They can't use two lightsabers.

[517] DPS is what 2012 was all about.

[518] Yeah, you're right.

[519] Get together, man. And, you know, of course the argument is, well, you don't have to do those quests.

[520] But, like I said, I'm already kind of not doing some of the heroic quests.

[521] Sure.

[522] And the stuff you get, like the XP bump you get at the end of this bonus series and the credits and stuff is such that you kind of want to do it.

[523] Also, you're paying for the game.

[524] You should probably see as much of the content as possible.

[525] So I just don't feel like that's a good argument of, well, just don't do it.

[526] Like, no, that's...

[527] It's there.

[528] It's there.

[529] If it was bad, then they should have taken it out.

[530] And I'm not going to go to the next planet and be underleveled for that stuff.

[531] I'm basically kind of at or maybe sometimes one level above the class quest stuff.

[532] So characterize the progression of zones.

[533] Is it totally linear based on your class sequence where it's like zone, zone two, zone three?

[534] Like, does it ever split?

[535] Does it ever feel like you've got this wide galaxy to go explore?

[536] Absolutely not.

[537] The way that World of Warcraft solved that problem was that...

[538] There was always more content than you could ever consume.

[539] No. So you don't have your ship yet, right?

[540] No, I think I'm about to go get it.

[541] So when you get your ship and you look at the galaxy and hover over a planet, it says this is for levels X to X. So all the content is for that level, and there's no overlap.

[542] Really?

[543] On that stuff.

[544] So I got to a point where in my class quest, it was like, you need to go to these two planets and kill these two spies.

[545] But one planet is six levels higher than you are.

[546] So you literally couldn't go there and do that stuff, probably.

[547] That's no good.

[548] Because the thing in World of Warcraft, you could start a human character and get through the start zone.

[549] But instead of going to Westfall, you could go up to the Dwarven area and do their second level, or their second set zone.

[550] Your class quest takes you on a trip through the galaxy in a very specific way.

[551] That's a shame.

[552] Because you would always outpace a lot of the quests that you had in your log.

[553] Right, because you would just level too fast and they'd turn gray and then there was no point in doing it.

[554] Yeah, that was the thing.

[555] I kept all my heroic quests, the recommended for groups quests around, and then I realized they had all gone gray because in the time it took me to think like, oh, should I get a group?

[556] I overleveled all that shit.

[557] I actually did a couple of the flashpoints.

[558] I actually soloed a couple of the flashpoints because I was so far past that shit.

[559] That sounds like a little bit maybe of a compromise you have to make for what would...

[560] be pitched as a stronger narrative, right?

[561] They're kind of leading you around instead of giving you the option to explore.

[562] Yeah, I guess so.

[563] They do make some effort to have there be a through line.

[564] It isn't just like, hey, there's a random farmer here who needs your help, which is kind of the nature of a lot of WoW quests.

[565] You're right.

[566] There were some really good multi -part WoW quests, but they were in the minority.

[567] And it's always cool when you can find something that is its own little self -contained story, but a lot of At least early on, it seems like Flashpoint stuff is being designed to fill that role.

[568] And when your class quests are good, it is the perfect chain from one to the next.

[569] There is a logical progression to it and that stuff.

[570] Like the Act 2 for Sith Warrior, I don't think they do a good job of that stuff.

[571] Because it's like, basically the story of it is like, there are these four Republic dudes.

[572] They gotta die.

[573] And the quest will lead you in the exact order you need to kill the four of them as you work your way up.

[574] How many hearts should we leave beating?

[575] You shouldn't leave any hearts beating.

[576] Not even one?

[577] Yeah.

[578] Check your to -do list.

[579] But the real problem with that game is in a lot of the cantinas, there's some fucking dumb fuck just clapping.

[580] Why is that bad?

[581] Because you hear the clapping.

[582] So I'm sitting there like already the sound is annoying because it's all this ad -lib gold shitty sounding cantina music.

[583] I like the ad -lib gold sound.

[584] That sounds amazing.

[585] It sounds like the worst fucking MIDI shit ever.

[586] I like that because it sounds like old space instruments.

[587] We know what newer space instruments sound like.

[588] If I cared more about Star Wars maybe that would be a positive.

[589] But then there's in a lot of them.

[590] or enough that I noticed, there's some fuck just looking at a hollow dancer just going...

[591] Just one guy?

[592] Yeah, one guy.

[593] And it has this clapping sound effect the whole time.

[594] I don't understand the appeal of hollow dancers at all.

[595] Stupid.

[596] Is he typing in slash clap?

[597] No, it's not a player.

[598] It's just an AI dude just fucking clapping.

[599] There's no quest to kill that guy somewhere?

[600] Exactly.

[601] Well, he's just clapping.

[602] He hasn't had a heart for a long time.

[603] That's right.

[604] His heart's not beating at all.

[605] No, it is not.

[606] Sounds like an opportunity for violence.

[607] I think that's one of the other ones.

[608] That's a shame that that stuff gets...

[609] Well, you played a shitload more than I have, so I could see a lot of that stuff becoming annoying over the course of 100 hours.

[610] Yes.

[611] That's a lot of hours.

[612] It's really hard for anything that's become annoying after 100 hours.

[613] I guess so.

[614] I've been breathing for a while, and that's starting to get a little annoying.

[615] Every time you encounter one of those lines, or every time I do, I just shake my head.

[616] Obviously, a lot of work went into this game, but when you run into shit like that, you can't help but just have that knee -jerk reaction of like, man, that's so fucking lazy.

[617] It's not.

[618] I know, it's huge.

[619] But, you know, if they're already spending all this money recording all this dialogue and it's the same voice, or, you know, or I guess two voices, theoretically, because it would be a female version.

[620] I assume she just says the same shit.

[621] I don't know.

[622] Maybe it's, I won't leave lungs left inflating, you know, or whatever.

[623] Get him to record, like, five more lines.

[624] Like, ten more lines or something.

[625] And, you know, cycle them or something like that.

[626] Like, figure that part out.

[627] I wonder what the – back to kind of the quality of the quests and the disparity between the generic stuff and the class -specific stuff.

[628] Talking to the lead writer, he made it sound like there was real ownership with each quest line.

[629] There was one guy who wrote the whole Imperial agent.

[630] quest line.

[631] Right.

[632] And another guy wrote this whole other quest line.

[633] I wonder what the division of labor was like for just like the here are your one size fits all imperial missions.

[634] Yeah, I don't know.

[635] Like if that's just like B team or like they had to write it more generically because there wasn't anyone that had that kind of ownership.

[636] Yeah.

[637] So I could see that like talking to him about that like it makes sense and I think it does.

[638] have a real apparent impact on the quality of the writing in a lot of the class -specific quests.

[639] Yeah, for me it was really disappointing because you go through that whole first act and it's a really great build up to a really cool moment.

[640] And then he described it as like seasons of a television show or something like that, which totally made sense.

[641] So when I'm starting out the next one, it's like everything has kind of dropped back down and got to have this kind of new build.

[642] The heavy drop has happened.

[643] We're building back up.

[644] Got it.

[645] And I'm not there yet.

[646] I'm not to the end of this second act or whatever.

[647] So maybe it'll build to something awesome.

[648] But going through and killing these four guys, I think it actually ended up being five.

[649] Maybe that was the twist.

[650] Like, there's a fifth guy or whatever it was.

[651] The heaviest drop.

[652] That stuff is just building to nothing.

[653] It would be genius if in everybody's storyline at some point, at the end of the first act or whatever, they just, your guy got shot in the throat and can't talk anymore.

[654] That's it.

[655] Your guy just never responds anymore.

[656] Every class line.

[657] He's gone deaf.

[658] No more voice acting.

[659] That's it.

[660] Just can't hear anything.

[661] That's where they ran out of money.

[662] It's in the story.

[663] He decided he was going to learn alienese.

[664] Right.

[665] So now he talks alien language.

[666] That'd be...

[667] Oh, the alien language stuff is...

[668] Yeah.

[669] I didn't notice it.

[670] Like, people started complaining about it, and I hadn't really noticed too much of it yet, but yeah.

[671] It's just when...

[672] They stand there silently after they say their canned alien dialogue so that you have time to read the really long text that's the translation.

[673] I'm like, that's clearly not what that dude just said.

[674] They should fix that stuff.

[675] Even just like half loop it again.

[676] Make it fit the same amount of time at least.

[677] How do you know that the alien language doesn't have a single word that means I won't leave a single heart beating?

[678] The problem is that then...

[679] why is your dude not just responding immediately?

[680] He's reading it lower.

[681] He's not reading a subtitle.

[682] God damn it.

[683] Implanted universal translator.

[684] I still think that all the language stuff, like this person talks to you in some friggin' alien language and you respond in fucking English.

[685] Fuck Star Wars.

[686] Basically, is what that comes down to.

[687] That shit is so stupid.

[688] Star Trek didn't mess around with that stuff.

[689] Everybody spoke English.

[690] Exactly.

[691] Way smarter.

[692] Way smarter.

[693] Klingons.

[694] But when they speak that other shit, that's it.

[695] You understand it.

[696] I still want to be an alien.

[697] I understand why, no, but I still want to be an alien.

[698] I want to be a Rodian.

[699] I like those dudes.

[700] Crazy green dudes.

[701] I want to be a fucking evil Greedo.

[702] I ran into some alien dudes that spoke some of my characters and said, I've never seen an alien that speaks this language before.

[703] It's so weird that if you are not a human in that universe, you are an alien.

[704] That's what they call them.

[705] Yeah, they're aliens.

[706] What?

[707] Yeah.

[708] Who does?

[709] Humans are the fucking master race.

[710] Well, there's a description in there somewhere that humans are by far the most populous.

[711] Yeah, yeah.

[712] There's more of them.

[713] They're the standard by which all other races are judged.

[714] And also, there's a bunch of real crazy Sith bloodline stuff that is straight up racist.

[715] Like, we got this scanner.

[716] It's a quest pretty early on that's like, we got this scanner.

[717] We want you to go right -click on all these Sith guys so I can see which one of them are pure -blood Sith.

[718] Because I don't think they are.

[719] It's all thinned out.

[720] these guys aren't true Sith.

[721] It's just straight up Sith supremacist.

[722] So there's two things with Sith.

[723] Sith has grown to include multiple races and all this other stuff.

[724] Now it's just a way of life.

[725] Now it's just a way of life or whatever.

[726] There is still a Sith race.

[727] Those guys look human?

[728] The red -skinned dudes are Sith or whatever.

[729] Or pure blood Sith or whatever it is.

[730] They're not blood bloods.

[731] I'm waiting to find, like, right -click on something that's just like the Turner Diaries for Sith or some fucked up shit like that.

[732] There's a lot of space racism in that game.

[733] Totally.

[734] A lot of space British in that game, too.

[735] Well, they're the most space racist out there, man. So, yeah, I feel like large parts of it are pretty well made.

[736] It's, yeah.

[737] Well, you know, it's one of those things where who knows where that game will be in a year.

[738] Right.

[739] That could be completely different.

[740] But the one thing I did find, between the way it's instanced and I don't really see a whole lot of other players outside town.

[741] For better or for worse?

[742] Well, for better because it means that I'm not waiting to complete quests, but for worse because why am I paying a monthly fee to play this?

[743] And I had this moment where I was like, fucking Guild Wars, yeah.

[744] And then I went and tried to reinstall Guild Wars and that was a whole...

[745] process because the character recovered like so to log into your guild wars account you need to know a name of one of your guild wars characters now that's something they changed at some point over the process how long did you stand banging your head against the keyboard i was like i don't fuck i i didn't even bang ahead i was just i don't know no idea i started i just immediately went and contacted support and all this stuff and then it became like like one of their things is like check your screenshots folder maybe you got a screenshot of your character i'm like that's fucking It's like eight machines ago.

[746] It's like, this is foolish, what you're saying.

[747] So then it began like, okay, I need to have an address that might be associated with the account and a retail key, one of the things I may have redeemed.

[748] Apparently, I had enough of those things.

[749] They actually just sent me back the name of one of my characters.

[750] Really?

[751] No, because every time you log in, you need to have that field filled in.

[752] Wow.

[753] And you can opt to save it, but it's...

[754] That's funny.

[755] Yeah.

[756] Was it something completely ridiculous?

[757] Yeah, it was.

[758] I'm ashamed you even had to write this in.

[759] Yeah, exactly.

[760] It actually totally was.

[761] It really was like, man. I'm surprised you let me name it, fuck tits.

[762] I went back and forth with someone over this.

[763] It's really terrible.

[764] Can we confirm the spelling on that?

[765] It's F -U -S -T.

[766] Sparkly generals, that's what you were trying to get back to.

[767] This is actually a banned name now.

[768] We're going to ban you after we look this up.

[769] Right, yeah.

[770] We'll get back up and it's not banned for life.

[771] I'm surprised you forgot that because that's a really unique name.

[772] Against anyone's terms of service.

[773] But I think that game would be better if they just owned up to that stuff and didn't make it a proper true MMO.

[774] If they had gone either the instanced route that Guild Wars went or really just making this like a...

[775] primarily single -player game with some kind of co -op component.

[776] It really hurts it.

[777] And it destroys the argument for someone like myself that would want to just dive in and play the story stuff.

[778] There's a lot of good content in there, but unfortunately you have to play an MMO to get there.

[779] That sucks.

[780] And that was always my fear with that game.

[781] It does seem like I haven't played too much of it.

[782] I play less than Brad in a couple of hours, maybe five or six.

[783] But talking to people, it does seem like this is, if you're not playing WoW, this is the MMO game.

[784] to go into.

[785] It's very similar.

[786] Yeah, so it seems like they've done a competent job, if not a really good job, of building a platform that is competitive.

[787] So good on them, because it's a really tough market.

[788] And early on, I definitely had those feelings of just remembering the early days of WoW and enjoying that, and I think they launched pretty well.

[789] Some people complain about the queues, but...

[790] It's an MMO, man. That's how this shit fucking works.

[791] It was lasted like a week, too.

[792] I don't know if that's good or bad for them.

[793] Right, yeah, true.

[794] And the game was not actively on fire when it launched.

[795] I remember the WoW launch.

[796] The WoW thing was a disaster.

[797] Yeah, it was crazy.

[798] Yeah, looking back on it now, it was a disaster.

[799] But at the time, even that was a pretty good launch compared to how MMOs traditionally launch.

[800] That's not to say it's excusable.

[801] In that case, it was just a symptom of their runaway success because it was so popular.

[802] No, but there were areas that weren't done yet.

[803] I mean, the game itself.

[804] When we talk about launch issues, I'm thinking about data centers and servers and stuff.

[805] That stuff, the queues and that sort of stuff was an issue.

[806] Wow was fucking rotten with broken content for like a year.

[807] You don't get that impression.

[808] There are bugs and there are problems and stuff.

[809] but it seems far less.

[810] You run into any bugged quests yet?

[811] No. I have seen some complaints about that.

[812] I did, actually.

[813] There was one class quest where, after beating someone, I had to right -click on them to talk to them, but one of his buddies had gone down in the exact same spot, so it was like the two models were intersecting in such a way that I couldn't right -click on them.

[814] But that ended up fixed, and I logged out and logged back in five minutes later, and it was fixed.

[815] And they have since corrected that issue.

[816] It was in one of the patch notes for that stuff.

[817] But yeah, I haven't really had a problem with bugs.

[818] There have definitely been a few, but nothing totally destructive to the experience or whatever.

[819] I just think that the type of game that is does a real disservice to the content, and there's a better game that showcases that exact writing.

[820] And whether it's a single -player game or some kind of co -op -based thing or basically like paying a monthly fee to see that content is dumb.

[821] The content that you actually want to play could fit into a traditional retail $60 game.

[822] Yeah, exactly.

[823] It sounds like what you said earlier.

[824] There's so much filler in between it, like traditional kind of MMO filler.

[825] If you're coming to it as somebody who wants an MMO versus somebody who's coming to it as wants, like, a story.

[826] So you might be like Dave.

[827] I don't know.

[828] Like, I was surprised to hear.

[829] I mean, actually, at first I was surprised to hear he was going to play it at all because he seemed just, like, really cold on it.

[830] And then he ended up picking it up and saying, like, yeah, I might just quit because I don't like it.

[831] It sounds like if you really want a Star Wars MMO, it's a good bet.

[832] Sure, I guess.

[833] It's probably the best Star Wars MMO that's ever launched.

[834] Thomas really likes it.

[835] The problem is Star Wars MMO in concept sounds really cool, but I don't want to play a Star Wars MMO that's based on World of Warcraft.

[836] That's specifically what this is.

[837] The idea of a large -scale Star Wars experience sounds great, but it's also just World of Warcraft and a new skin.

[838] I think my impression of Thomas is that he's an MMO guy first.

[839] For him, it's like scratching that itch pretty well.

[840] He's also really invested in the Star Wars universe, too.

[841] I think he is both first.

[842] Yeah, I think he is real.

[843] So, I mean, if you love MMOs, this is probably going to do it for you.

[844] I like the idea of logging into the Star Wars and then playing World of Warcraft.

[845] I'm going to log in because I really like Star Wars and it's MMO, but I'm going to log into my World of Warcraft character and play it for my Star Wars character.

[846] So you're going to find a terminal in...

[847] Old Republic.

[848] And play Space.

[849] That runs World of Warcraft.

[850] And Bejeweled.

[851] 15 ,000 credits every month.

[852] It's a lot of money.

[853] It's like making your sim play SSX.

[854] Yeah.

[855] I don't want to do that.

[856] No. Turn it off.

[857] So there's a lot of filler.

[858] I'll agree with you on that.

[859] But there's eight different classes.

[860] Between the two, it was like four and four, is that right?

[861] Yeah, I guess, yeah.

[862] So eight different classes, each with their own unique quest line.

[863] And then the advanced class stuff, I think that stuff...

[864] No, I guess that stuff doesn't split.

[865] That is the same.

[866] I guess I'm just trying to think, like, if you cut kind of the MMO bulk, like, that's still a crazy amount of story content.

[867] It is, but I would have rather purchased some kind of starter kit that let me play one of the class quests.

[868] And then sell the other ones as booster pack add -ons for that stuff in a Guild Wars sort of format.

[869] I'm just trying to think.

[870] I'm not saying it's not viable.

[871] I'm just trying to wonder.

[872] And then to their end, to the cost to produce and to make a product that would be viable as a non -subscription -based thing, how expensive would that have to be?

[873] How much money would you have to spend as a consumer on that?

[874] I don't know.

[875] Would you pay $60 for a thing that was a class and then build from there?

[876] I'm just not sure what would work.

[877] It would be a lot riskier.

[878] Exactly.

[879] Taking out the filler doesn't make that game any cheaper to produce because the environments all have to be there for your class quest stuff.

[880] The voiceover has to be recorded.

[881] It is a hard problem, but it's not the way I want to see that content.

[882] would like to see the rest of this class quest through.

[883] And kind of see how it goes.

[884] Jump through the hoops.

[885] Yeah, the notion of playing that game for another 72 hours or something like that to see all that stuff.

[886] Nah, you could do it.

[887] I could.

[888] I absolutely could.

[889] And I'll probably poke around at it.

[890] That thing's going to run for at least another 45 days or something for me, I think, is what it is.

[891] Yeah, you know, maybe I'll be bored enough to get back into it and it'll get its hooks back into me and stuff, but it's just kind of...

[892] Well, I'm still just...

[893] Spell broke at some point.

[894] I woke up and went, what the fuck am I doing?

[895] I'll be curious in the...

[896] Well, and, you know, none of us are living super MMO -friendly lifestyles.

[897] It takes a holiday break to really...

[898] fall deep into that hole.

[899] A lot of sweatpants.

[900] I'm still going to be curious to see how it lives going forward.

[901] I'm curious to see how they expand it, what the audience is going to look like going forward.

[902] It'll be interesting.

[903] Their first expansion pack, what they add.

[904] Is it going to be classes and races and planets?

[905] That's kind of the traditional thing.

[906] From an expansion, I would want another whole act for my character story, I guess.

[907] But you still have to have some low -level stuff.

[908] You can't build expansions strictly for high -level content.

[909] That's what Blizzard's been doing.

[910] But they did that after they established new races.

[911] New paths for you to build up through.

[912] Low -level stuff, yeah, is for new races and stuff, yeah.

[913] Right.

[914] Well, that's what I mean, is you have to have some sort of low -level thing.

[915] And then they eventually, correct me if I'm wrong because I haven't checked in in a while, but then they open up a lot of the classes to different races, too.

[916] So it's just kind of like mix and match.

[917] You pretty much do whatever you want.

[918] Any combination at this point.

[919] Yeah, that game.

[920] Well, the Warcraft is just...

[921] I bet it's real weird in there.

[922] It's pretty nuts from what I understand.

[923] It's pretty barren is the other thing.

[924] But it also took them several years to get to the point where it's like, okay, everyone that's playing this game is at a high level, or we've made the path so streamlined that it doesn't take you that long to get to the high level, but it's going to take a while before Old Republic is going to be anywhere near that.

[925] Anybody farming creds yet?

[926] Have you run across just dudes?

[927] Well, there's been some spam.

[928] All kinds of weird disciplinary actions taken with not a lot of clarity about why exactly.

[929] Cred farmers?

[930] I mean, it turned out that people were mostly exploiting, but a lot of...

[931] A lot of suspect emails basically got screenshotted and put on Reddit about people getting banned over things that seemed like they shouldn't be...

[932] Well, there were issues of people getting banned from being in areas that they weren't supposed to be.

[933] Like too high level for them.

[934] Because they were dancing their way in there.

[935] There was a bug in there.

[936] Yeah, that was the thing.

[937] There were factors that were not well publicized at first.

[938] Here, give me some hip -hop lessons.

[939] Give me some get -down lessons.

[940] When the robot CSR email comes in and just says, like, you were essentially amounts to you were too low level to be in the zone you were in, so your account has been terminated.

[941] I think the idea is that you should fucking know what you did.

[942] Yeah.

[943] Because...

[944] Well, I think those people probably...

[945] The public knew and just...

[946] They just decided to omit that information and put the emails out there.

[947] I was just dancing and then I wound up in this...

[948] I just love to dance.

[949] I think banning people for that stuff is total bullshit.

[950] Your game's fucking broken.

[951] This is on you.

[952] Don't fucking break your game.

[953] How about that?

[954] I mean, if it's an issue that was uncovered after release and they are racing to fix it as fast as they can, I kind of understand it.

[955] Whatever.

[956] If your game is fucked up, that's on you.

[957] People are going to exploit your game, but it's...

[958] Or, you know, like, yeah, like, find a way to police it and stop people, but straight up banning people from playing the game because your game's broken?

[959] Yeah, that's messed up.

[960] That's stupid, yeah.

[961] Or some sort of temporary restriction on the character, like, some sort of, like, we rolled back whatever you gained from doing this, because fuck you, and you should know better.

[962] And for the next 48 hours, you can't blah, blah, blah.

[963] Like, there are ways to have people continue to play your game and not have Reddit turn into...

[964] They already don't like EA.

[965] Permanently ban you from dancing.

[966] Yeah.

[967] I'm sorry.

[968] We took away your dance privileges.

[969] Dance ban.

[970] Dancing is a right, not a purpose.

[971] I quit.

[972] As long as I can still club dance.

[973] As long as I can still pizza.

[974] Sorry, you're not allowed to order pizza from within our game anymore.

[975] You might as well just ban me. Pizza doesn't work, does it?

[976] No, they don't have pizza.

[977] This is not EverQuest 2.

[978] EverQuest 2 exclusive.

[979] Damn it.

[980] I'm going to sign up for that, man. It's free now.

[981] So that's free access to pizza.

[982] Is that how that works?

[983] Yeah.

[984] I imagine.

[985] Free to pizza.

[986] Free to pizza.

[987] That's what FQP stands for, right?

[988] Pepperoni is premium content, though.

[989] Yeah, toppings.

[990] The only cheese pizza.

[991] I'll take a free cheese pizza.

[992] Fucking A, you would?

[993] Man. Free to pizza.

[994] That should be the promotion.

[995] Like, sign up for an EverQuest 2 account and get a free cheese pizza.

[996] From whom, though?

[997] It's a Pizza Hut.

[998] deal, I think, is what Slash Pizza brings you to, if I remember correctly.

[999] Fuck, there's no Pizza Hut.

[1000] They closed the Domino's.

[1001] They closed the Pizza Hut.

[1002] What?

[1003] They closed the Combinos.

[1004] It was not a fucking pizza -free zone, apparently, anymore.

[1005] There's gotta be something.

[1006] There's a round table.

[1007] There's an extreme pizza.

[1008] That's grim.

[1009] There's a good local place.

[1010] There's Old Chicago.

[1011] But how late are they?

[1012] Old Chicago does Deep Dish.

[1013] Yeah, they do this Deep Dish murder pizza.

[1014] Deep Dish is a whole different experience.

[1015] Double crust.

[1016] Like I need to fucking tuck in.

[1017] That's a double crust.

[1018] Take a run at it.

[1019] You actually want to just eat in your bed so you can sleep right after.

[1020] Wow, really?

[1021] Yeah, it's fucking awesome.

[1022] I'm not going to talk mess about a Deep Dish pizza because it's great, but it is...

[1023] It is not just grab a slice and then get on with your day.

[1024] It's like bring a fucking knife and that knife better be sharp to get that slice.

[1025] And then it's less a slice.

[1026] It's like a pizza cake.

[1027] It's like a quiche.

[1028] It's a lasagna.

[1029] You know what a Domino's pizza looks like in terms of thickness, right?

[1030] Domino's got a deep dish now.

[1031] That's a bunch of shit.

[1032] Their regular thickness.

[1033] You know kind of what that looks like.

[1034] This is probably seven pieces of that stack up.

[1035] It's double crust.

[1036] It's actually got like a lip on it.

[1037] like, it's a good, like, four inches tall, and then dive into that.

[1038] Do you take fall damage for diving into the swimming pool?

[1039] Who can take fall damage on the season?

[1040] Bodily jumping, so it's like a pizza bin?

[1041] Swimming pool full of deep dish pizza.

[1042] I mean, it's just like, it's not...

[1043] toppings, it's fillings.

[1044] That's the difference.

[1045] Lasagna is how deep dish pizza should be described.

[1046] Which is delicious, but yeah.

[1047] How much does it weigh?

[1048] 500 pounds of pizza?

[1049] Each piece is probably like a...

[1050] A pound and a half or something, right?

[1051] No, no. I don't know.

[1052] It's a pound pizza.

[1053] But I'll say it's like an eight -pound pizza or something.

[1054] Wow.

[1055] Do you have to pay extra for delivery, like transportation, fuel?

[1056] Yeah.

[1057] No, they include it.

[1058] I mean, that's the other thing is it's not cheap.

[1059] Yeah, it's not a delivery.

[1060] The delivery guy slipped a disc delivering this thing.

[1061] The health care cost her to work.

[1062] It is not some fucking $12 Domino's pizza.

[1063] But sometimes I want some fucking shitty pizza.

[1064] I don't like Mary's Pizza Shack.

[1065] That place sucks ass.

[1066] Their pizzas are bad.

[1067] They make those pizza hot dog things that are all right on the kids' menu.

[1068] I think their pizzas have to be had there.

[1069] I've never had good delivery stuff with them.

[1070] And then there's Mountain Mike's.

[1071] Mountain Mike's is all right.

[1072] There's no Papa John's up there.

[1073] No, there's no Papa John's up there.

[1074] I cannot be discriminated against.

[1075] Yeah, exactly.

[1076] The problem is just that there isn't the cheap...

[1077] So there's the Little Caesars, but you have to go get that.

[1078] See, the good thing about...

[1079] Little Caesars Pizza is not good.

[1080] It's not good, but it's $5.

[1081] The breadsticks are all right.

[1082] They still do the Bigfoot or whatever?

[1083] No. What is the current...

[1084] They just do regular pizzas.

[1085] Their whole thing right now is because there's no delivery or whatever, they have set hours and they're like...

[1086] If you walk in here, we will have these types of pizzas ready to go.

[1087] That sounds great.

[1088] You fucking walk in there and be like, I need three fucking pepperoni pizzas.

[1089] And they fucking go, dead.

[1090] Here you go.

[1091] And you walk out.

[1092] They've only been sitting here for an hour and a half.

[1093] These are EverQuest pizzas.

[1094] And the only thing is that they have such turnover.

[1095] I bet I haven't been to a Little Caesars in 20 years.

[1096] I don't think I've ever been.

[1097] It's much different.

[1098] Really?

[1099] Because it used to be you'd get the big board.

[1100] It had two pizzas on it, and it had the paper.

[1101] Oh, they don't do that anymore?

[1102] No, it's like box pizza.

[1103] Is it round?

[1104] Yes.

[1105] Yeah.

[1106] What?

[1107] It's regular pizza, except that it's horrible.

[1108] And they don't sell multiple sizes of pizza because it's just like, you want a pepperoni pizza?

[1109] It's $5.

[1110] You want a sausage pizza?

[1111] It's $5.

[1112] You want a sausage pizza?

[1113] It's $5.

[1114] You want all the meats on it?

[1115] It's $8, and you'll have to stand here for 13 minutes, which is way worse than the increased price.

[1116] If you can't get a gigantic rectangular pizza, why does Little Caesars still exist?

[1117] They do do a deep dish now that is not...

[1118] round.

[1119] But again, that would be one you would have to wait for.

[1120] The important points are $5 and you walk in and then you walk out.

[1121] There is no hanging out.

[1122] So you don't think about it.

[1123] Well, I already made this bad decision and it's happening.

[1124] Better go play Star Wars.

[1125] I could probably hit the McDonald's on the way home.

[1126] They have a drink machine in there that just takes dollar bills.

[1127] They don't have fountain drinks.

[1128] It's just like, you want a fucking 20 -out soda?

[1129] There's a fucking machine right there.

[1130] You want two liters, they got a case or whatever, and they'll ring you up for those.

[1131] But they don't have a pizza machine where you just put $5 in?

[1132] No. That's the next step.

[1133] A pizza machine.

[1134] The people who work there are the pizza machines.

[1135] I feel there's a guy who has to stand out on the street with his $5 pizza sign every day.

[1136] Is he wearing a toga?

[1137] And I feel no, no, no, no, it's not that committed.

[1138] Yeah, like the sign culture of we can't afford to actually put a real ad out here on this street, but we can't afford to pay a man to stand here and hold this fucking sign.

[1139] But he has to shake it because that's the law.

[1140] You look at these things and just think like – America is doomed.

[1141] This is a guy's job.

[1142] He gets to wear an iPod and he's kind of dancing around holding the sign.

[1143] It's really tragic to me because he's usually maybe 20 yards away from the homeless dude who's sitting next to the entrance to the mall with his little cardboard sign.

[1144] So you're not sure which one is homeless?

[1145] I'm just like...

[1146] The guy with the job is in the exact same position as the guy who doesn't have a home.

[1147] That's the level that his work has gotten to.

[1148] But I'm not sure.

[1149] And no one brings that guy dollars.

[1150] That guy never gets pity fries or anything.

[1151] He just has to stand out there and shake this $5.

[1152] He has a home.

[1153] Sensibly he has a home.

[1154] We don't know.

[1155] But that's the difference.

[1156] That's it.

[1157] Have you been to the K -marts that have the Little Caesars?

[1158] where they sell them almost like the tabloid things, like the Little Caesars connected to the Kmart, and then they put in pizzas in the checkout line, hoping you'll just pick up a $5 pizza, and they'll scan it on your way out.

[1159] That is...

[1160] Oh, my God.

[1161] Like, it's right next to, like, the people.

[1162] Like, you can buy pizzas, man. Jesus.

[1163] I'll take that pizza.

[1164] There's one in L .A. near my place.

[1165] Oh, you know what?

[1166] That's haunting.

[1167] On my way out, I use a pizza.

[1168] Pizza.

[1169] I'll just eat this.

[1170] Impulse pizza.

[1171] Yeah.

[1172] That sounds like a Star Wars thing.

[1173] Kmart impulse pizza.

[1174] Every time I order pizza, it is impulse pizza, though.

[1175] It just takes half an hour or something.

[1176] That's why Domino's is so fantastic because every step of the way, your soul is darker because you can do it online.

[1177] You can watch who is making it.

[1178] No human contact.

[1179] And then one day you log into the website and suddenly it's only available for pickup because it's the one in the next town.

[1180] That's where you ruined it.

[1181] Like, here's your local Domino's, the one eight miles away.

[1182] You ruined it, Domino's?

[1183] What?

[1184] What happened?

[1185] What?

[1186] What happened?

[1187] Why did...

[1188] Actually, I got a text message from someone who was in Tahoe that just said, I've got reason to believe that the local Domino's has closed.

[1189] I was like, that can't fucking be it.

[1190] I went to the website, and it was still listed there, but the delivery option was gone.

[1191] I didn't call.

[1192] That would have been the easy thing, but also the desperate looking.

[1193] I didn't want someone to pick up the phone.

[1194] Then you'd have to ask.

[1195] Yeah, exactly.

[1196] I didn't want to pick up the phone and have someone have to say, do you still exist?

[1197] While a guy is saying, like, no, I'm taking the ovens out.

[1198] So the delivery, that Domino's is closed?

[1199] Yeah.

[1200] So you're saying there's no Domino's service in that area?

[1201] There's no Domino's service.

[1202] That's what we're talking about here, man. I'm saying it's a new recipe that didn't work out so well.

[1203] I'm saying you guys should talk after this podcast because it sounds like there is a need in Petaluma for a franchise of Domino's.

[1204] Power vacuum.

[1205] I'm saying that the Pizza Hut closed first and now the Domino's has.

[1206] Is somebody, like, rolling in, like, Big Daddy Pizza?

[1207] Well, so the Little Caesars opened up right where the Pizza Hut was.

[1208] Like, not the same building, it's like a Scoobers restaurant there or something like that.

[1209] There's a story there somewhere.

[1210] But I have to imagine that it is some sort of, like, that locally people are into their fucking fancy bullshit pizza.

[1211] Driving out.

[1212] And can't eat a fucking man's pizza.

[1213] I want to open a Domino's franchise up in Petaluma now.

[1214] Fucking A, you do?

[1215] I'm just going to be the only one.

[1216] I will totally order from that once every couple of weeks to month.

[1217] I could support that.

[1218] One to two.

[1219] I will guarantee you one to two orders a month if you open.

[1220] A Domino's franchise.

[1221] That's a business model.

[1222] Yeah.

[1223] I got a guy.

[1224] Yeah, I got a guy.

[1225] He says, just do it.

[1226] Is it zoned?

[1227] I don't know.

[1228] How's your neighbor?

[1229] Just open it there.

[1230] You're zoned for commercial Domino's?

[1231] Are you running a bootleg Domino's operation out of my neighbor Tom's house?

[1232] I think that's his name.

[1233] It's this new residential Domino's.

[1234] It's this new pizza place, Dominion's.

[1235] Come on over.

[1236] Get some pizza.

[1237] That's right.

[1238] It's like Domino's with two O's at the end.

[1239] Domino's.

[1240] The 10 -gen version of Domino's.

[1241] Can you guys change your branding on the box?

[1242] Eat it.

[1243] It's written on the box in Sharpie.

[1244] It tastes okay.

[1245] You should have let me know.

[1246] I probably had some pizza boxes sitting around the house.

[1247] I could have saved so I could reuse them.

[1248] Domino's.

[1249] I'll order some pizza and I'll mark it up like a dollar.

[1250] Just go get some tombstones.

[1251] This says Little Caesars on it.

[1252] There are some decent frozen pizzas out there.

[1253] Yeah, there are.

[1254] They're not terrible.

[1255] There's a take and make place in town that I don't like.

[1256] But it does exist.

[1257] It does exist.

[1258] It still exists.

[1259] Which has a leg up on Domino's.

[1260] On Domino's, yeah.

[1261] Yeah.

[1262] I'm okay with Papa Murphy's, but usually when pizza strikes, it's after Papa Murphy's is closed.

[1263] How are there two major pizza franchises that both start with Papa?

[1264] How'd they get away with that?

[1265] I don't know.

[1266] I'm not sure.

[1267] Is Papa Murphy's a major thing?

[1268] I don't think.

[1269] I don't know.

[1270] I've seen TV commercials for it.

[1271] I've never had it.

[1272] There's a lot of them.

[1273] I don't know that it's nationwide, though.

[1274] It's big enough to have commercials.

[1275] I didn't know that.

[1276] It may be a regional thing, maybe, that Papa Murphy started on the West Coast.

[1277] Papa John's was on the East Coast.

[1278] Yeah, that's true.

[1279] I hadn't heard of that for most of my life.

[1280] And I still, it wasn't until we went to E3 and there was that Papa John's up the street.

[1281] That was the first time I'd ever had.

[1282] Also, what's a guy named Murphy doing making pizza?

[1283] I know, right?

[1284] I don't know.

[1285] I don't know.

[1286] What are you saying?

[1287] He should be drunk, passed out in an alley?

[1288] Is that what you're fucking saying?

[1289] Yes, exactly what I'm saying.

[1290] Here's a potato pizza.

[1291] Is that what you want?

[1292] Fucking racist.

[1293] Go back to Star Wars.

[1294] No delivery today.

[1295] We had to chase the snakes out.

[1296] You've been working on those lines all break.

[1297] You should hear.

[1298] The chunk he's got on Papa Murphy's is really good.

[1299] So yeah, please open good pizza in Petaluma.

[1300] Or please open bad pizza again in Petaluma.

[1301] Bring bad pizza back to Petaluma.

[1302] Raise original Domino's.

[1303] That's a political platform.

[1304] Raise famous Domino's.

[1305] That's what I'm going to open.

[1306] That would be my platform.

[1307] It would be like, get that fucking bike lane off of Petaluma Boulevard North.

[1308] Fucking bring some shit pizza back.

[1309] And yeah, we're opening the Target where the junior high used to be.

[1310] Fuck you guys.

[1311] I guess, talking this out though, Jeff, the problem is that...

[1312] There's a lot of pizza in Petaluma.

[1313] It's not the pizza I want.

[1314] If it's quite the right pizza.

[1315] Bad cheap pizza, Little Caesars covers that in spades.

[1316] But I could go there, so it covers none of it.

[1317] I know.

[1318] Though I went there.

[1319] But you just go in and leave.

[1320] You can go to the Little Caesars in sweatpants.

[1321] No, I can't.

[1322] No, I cannot.

[1323] It's possible.

[1324] No one would say anything.

[1325] In fact, they'd be like, ah, friend.

[1326] Welcome.

[1327] You're going to be a regular, aren't you?

[1328] Here's some coupons.

[1329] Here's an employee contract.

[1330] Here's the sign.

[1331] Just get the fuck out there.

[1332] Got to keep it moving.

[1333] B -Y -O -I pod.

[1334] Look out for Murphy.

[1335] Yeah.

[1336] Murphy goes rolling by throwing potatoes at you.

[1337] Empty 40 bottles.

[1338] Yeah, it's Mickey's, okay?

[1339] Jeff, you put anything else over your break?

[1340] How's Track Media?

[1341] It's pretty good, yeah.

[1342] That server has been packed.

[1343] Oh, yeah?

[1344] A renaissance?

[1345] Yeah, it's been a real renaissance.

[1346] I added a bunch of tracks, some of which are real bad.

[1347] I need to go back and cut a few, but added some new music.

[1348] So another month.

[1349] New tracks.

[1350] Yeah, there's right about another month of money in that account right now, and then at that point, if people are still using it, I'll probably keep paying for it, I guess.

[1351] Played some of that.

[1352] Played a little bit of Guild Wars.

[1353] Like one?

[1354] Yeah.

[1355] Like after I recovered the account, I went like, oh great, now I can finally play Guild Wars.

[1356] But this was like a full week after I had the hot moment.

[1357] So here's how parts of the vacation went.

[1358] This is not necessarily indicative of the whole thing.

[1359] But there was a moment where I was like, maybe I'll just stay in bed all day.

[1360] And enough of the day had already gone past that that actually seemed like a totally feasible goal.

[1361] And then I had this moment where I'm like, I'm going to reinstall Guild Wars!

[1362] And jumped out of bed and went and did it all hot to see.

[1363] Because I was laying in bed pissed off about Old Republic.

[1364] And I was like, man, fucking Guild Wars doesn't charge a monthly fee.

[1365] That's how this should be.

[1366] And then I'm going to see what's going on in Guild Wars.

[1367] And then went and reinstalled it, downloaded the installer.

[1368] And it got to the point where it was like, you need a character name.

[1369] Fuck.

[1370] So a full week later.

[1371] So a full week had passed and then by that time the fever had passed and I was not sick anymore or anything like that.

[1372] And also not necessarily hot to play Guild Wars anymore.

[1373] So I got back in and played a little bit of it and went like...

[1374] It's kind of an old game.

[1375] Yeah, it's not aged particularly old.

[1376] But a ton of people playing it.

[1377] It's scary almost how many people are still in there playing it.

[1378] But I thought, weren't there a bunch of expansions?

[1379] Yeah, they expanded stuff.

[1380] They actually just released another $20 thing that adds stuff that ties into Guild Wars 2.

[1381] So I think there's people kind of back doing that stuff.

[1382] Did that stuff just roll in?

[1383] What do you have?

[1384] I have the first two things.

[1385] So I have the original campaign, which at some point they renamed to Prophecies, and I have Guild Wars Factions, which is like the Eastern -themed thing, where it's like, look at me, I'm a ninja lady.

[1386] Okay.

[1387] And then there's another...

[1388] Night something?

[1389] Yeah, there's a Nightfall is the third one.

[1390] I don't have that.

[1391] And then there's this Heroes of the Whatever or Halls of something that's the Guild Wars 2 tie and stuff.

[1392] So I ended up playing about half an hour of that and started a new character because I figured there's no way I'm going to be able to remember how my old character plays and how this really goes.

[1393] Because there's some weird classes in that game.

[1394] Yeah.

[1395] Mesmers.

[1396] Right.

[1397] And then you split class.

[1398] So it's like you're a warrior, but then you're also a monk.

[1399] And they have in -game store monetized that game all to hell.

[1400] If you want to just buy all the skills, you can.

[1401] It's like, pay this money and you'll unlock everything.

[1402] Because that's what happens when you don't have monthly fees.

[1403] That's the other route.

[1404] Right.

[1405] Yeah.

[1406] And they're selling costumes and all kinds of other stuff like that.

[1407] That's fine.

[1408] It's fine.

[1409] Those guys have done really well for themselves.

[1410] Yeah, totally.

[1411] Well, they sell like five or six million copies of that original package.

[1412] I think so, yeah.

[1413] ArenaNet, right?

[1414] Yeah.

[1415] It was a really cool game when it came out.

[1416] It has not aged especially well.

[1417] But it's also been.

[1418] Yeah, it's been like six years or something like that.

[1419] It's older than WoW, isn't it?

[1420] Yeah, totally.

[1421] It was like 2004, maybe?

[1422] Like early 2004?

[1423] WoW was late 2004.

[1424] It's kind of an old game.

[1425] It's kind of an old game.

[1426] It'd still be online.

[1427] It's impressive, really.

[1428] It'd still be that active.

[1429] Tons of people in there.

[1430] all standing around.

[1431] I don't really know what's, you know.

[1432] It might just be communal at this point.

[1433] Right.

[1434] It's just a community for people to go back to.

[1435] Well, it was awesome because I was in a guild when I played that game.

[1436] And so you open up the guild tab and it was like, you know, it was like me and like four friends or something like that.

[1437] It was like, last logged in six years ago.

[1438] I'm like, holy shit.

[1439] It's like this weird like returning to this.

[1440] Totally dead and seeing the character names of my idiot friends.

[1441] We all had shitty names.

[1442] It's really dumb.

[1443] Arrested Malevolent.

[1444] It was really funny at the time.

[1445] This weird time capsule.

[1446] Vinnie Caravella.

[1447] Yes?

[1448] How was your break?

[1449] I totally had dominoes.

[1450] Fuck!

[1451] And I had it delivered.

[1452] You're living in the right suburbs, apparently.

[1453] And it's got me with the, like, hey, you want to add this bread on top of your pizza?

[1454] Yeah, I want to add the bread on my pizza.

[1455] In fact, they're putting up a new Domino's.

[1456] It's too much.

[1457] That's right.

[1458] This one's overflushed with business.

[1459] They need double -story Domino's.

[1460] Overflow Domino's.

[1461] Apparently, this good dude from Petaluma just opened a Domino's on top of the Domino's.

[1462] Domino's walking.

[1463] Two -story Domino's.

[1464] Yeah, they packed it in for Petaluma and brought it over to Walnut Creek.

[1465] I wasn't sure if I was going to.

[1466] So I got a handwritten note on my doorstep.

[1467] This is the end of the pizza story, I guess.

[1468] Okay.

[1469] We miss you.

[1470] I'm sorry.

[1471] There was an envelope on my doorstep and I figured it was going to be like something weird from one of my neighbors saying like, hey, buy something or what are all these broken cars?

[1472] And it was coupons and a handwritten note.

[1473] Extreme pizza coupons.

[1474] A handwritten note that said, you know, like.

[1475] Dear friend, it was a person who had delivered for Domino's.

[1476] I said, like, thank you for the gratuities over the years.

[1477] You know, Domino's closed on this date.

[1478] I have taken my skills to extreme pizza.

[1479] Delivery guy remembered you.

[1480] Wanted to keep the business going.

[1481] Oh, my God.

[1482] That's fantastic.

[1483] I tip pizza drivers fairly well.

[1484] I believe in that.

[1485] Yeah.

[1486] Or any kind of, like, delivery, food delivery thing.

[1487] So I don't know if that just left an impression or what it was, but it was like this thing of just like – This weird personal relationship was like, oh, no. And it was like – I started kind of laughing out loud, and it was like this weird kind of like smiley, heartwarming moment.

[1488] But then I was like, this says a lot of really bad shit about me as a person.

[1489] Because you could say to yourself like, oh, well, I tip really well.

[1490] But also it's like – I have to have ordered a number of times.

[1491] One to two a month, probably.

[1492] There were probably some busier times and more desperate times that the number went over that.

[1493] But that's probably about the number of pizza orders that I was putting in a month.

[1494] I remember there were times when there was multiple a week when you were having to throw away pizza in your fridge.

[1495] to make room for a new pizza.

[1496] That did happen a couple of times.

[1497] That showed up.

[1498] But that was, you know, it was...

[1499] No, it was crunch, man. It was busy times.

[1500] A lot of games coming out.

[1501] It happens.

[1502] Not a lot of time to go get food.

[1503] It happens.

[1504] A lot of time to motivate like that.

[1505] All right, that is the...

[1506] Okay.

[1507] That's good.

[1508] So that was the...

[1509] It's a pretty amazing coda, though.

[1510] Yeah, that sounds...

[1511] That makes me sound like a fucking crazy...

[1512] Whatever, whatever.

[1513] So what sort of pizza did you get?

[1514] I got a deep dish and a super thin...

[1515] crust.

[1516] Hopefully those balance each other out.

[1517] I like the super thin.

[1518] It's cool.

[1519] It makes me feel less guilty after eating the super deep dish.

[1520] When you eat an entire pizza.

[1521] I'm like, well, this one's just like paper.

[1522] This is thin.

[1523] This is probably even healthy for me. This is probably getting rid of some of the bad stuff I ate.

[1524] And I got like the, you know, the wings and the cheesy bread, which is just basically pizza again.

[1525] Yeah, I'm buying the cheesy bread bullshit.

[1526] The whole thing is probably like 90 ,000 calories.

[1527] Yeah, it's about there.

[1528] Yeah, but it's also like 12 bucks.

[1529] You know, five bucks a pizza or something like that.

[1530] Like two for five.

[1531] It's always more expensive after I go to checkout where it's like, yeah, it's like 12 bucks for like 17 pizzas.

[1532] I'm like, great.

[1533] And it's like $47.

[1534] Like, wait, huh?

[1535] Well, deep dish.

[1536] I'm already here, so.

[1537] Right.

[1538] You got me. Got this far into the process.

[1539] Now I'm really hungry.

[1540] Sit here and watch the pizza tracker go.

[1541] I love that thing.

[1542] For as much bullshit as that thing probably is.

[1543] Yeah, but it's fun.

[1544] Leave a comment.

[1545] Just get it here fast.

[1546] Smart.

[1547] Smart.

[1548] Whoever invented that thing.

[1549] Send a comment to the team at your local pizza place.

[1550] I never did use it.

[1551] You're doing a good job, I think.

[1552] Every time, all I could think is writing like 30 extra dollars in it if you get it here in the next eight minutes.

[1553] Wear something nice.

[1554] Cash in for you if you bring me some 40s.

[1555] Bring me some 40s.

[1556] Yeah, right.

[1557] So, yeah.

[1558] I have pulled that off.

[1559] Can you stop at the Burger King on the way here?

[1560] I have had.

[1561] You've pulled off the 40 delivery?

[1562] Yes.

[1563] Nice.

[1564] Like on a phone call, though?

[1565] Yeah.

[1566] Well, I called in, I think this was years and years and years ago.

[1567] Was it before you were 21?

[1568] It was also before I was 21.

[1569] Nice.

[1570] But living on my own.

[1571] calling into the Domino's and placing the order.

[1572] I'm like, is the guy who's going to deliver it there?

[1573] Yeah, let me talk to him for a second.

[1574] Got a weird buzzer.

[1575] I'm like, no, let me talk to the driver.

[1576] I see some specifics.

[1577] I'm like, dude, there's like an extra five bucks and you bring a couple of 40s.

[1578] You just tack that onto the charge and it's there for you.

[1579] And sure enough, dude shows up with fucking, here's pizzas and then here's a bunch of 40s.

[1580] I'm like, this is the best!

[1581] Oh my god!

[1582] You need a handwritten note from that guy.

[1583] But that was a long time ago.

[1584] And I actually had to talk to people, so, you know.

[1585] Times have changed.

[1586] No. You don't need to do that anymore.

[1587] Not anymore.

[1588] The Caravella?

[1589] Skyrim.

[1590] Skyrim?

[1591] Skyrim.

[1592] All the time.

[1593] Pizza and Skyrim.

[1594] What's going on in Skyrim?

[1595] You know, still kind of mucking around in Skyrim.

[1596] What are you?

[1597] Like, what are you fighting with?

[1598] One -handed shields now.

[1599] I change it depending on what guild stuff I'm doing.

[1600] I'm like guild playing.

[1601] Basically, it's like when I'm doing the thief stuff, I'm a thief and I'm going to wear your thief stuff.

[1602] And then during the mage stuff, like, give me some robes.

[1603] I'll be a mage.

[1604] You're just a poser.

[1605] I'm totally faking my way through Skyrim.

[1606] I'm just going to act cool around whoever.

[1607] There are certain things I've gotten, though.

[1608] I'm going to act the way you think.

[1609] I think you think I should act.

[1610] Skyrim, yeah.

[1611] Except for the mage stuff where I was like, I'm going to wear this robe.

[1612] And then as soon as I'm in the quest, it's like, nah, I'm going to put my heavy armor in myself.

[1613] sword back on because I kill things a lot faster.

[1614] I got the one -handed with the shield and the slowdown time when they're going to do their heavy attack has made all the difference for me in that game.

[1615] A lot more fun, right?

[1616] Useful and more fun.

[1617] You have to be more attentive.

[1618] It keeps you engaged.

[1619] Because you have a second to bash a dude when he's about to hit your power attack and you stun him.

[1620] Yeah, Brad, that was the thing you were talking about last time.

[1621] It has made that game so much more enjoyable.

[1622] I'm actually enjoying the combat a lot more now, which is great.

[1623] Because there's a lot of it.

[1624] Yeah.

[1625] But, you know.

[1626] What quest line are you doing right now?

[1627] Oh, gosh.

[1628] I don't know.

[1629] All of them.

[1630] Like I said, Mages Guild.

[1631] Or kind of halfway through maybe the Thieves Guild stuff, I guess.

[1632] Yeah.

[1633] Maybe a little more than that.

[1634] That's all you're saying.

[1635] Some of the companion stuff.

[1636] Dark Brotherhood just got into some of that dark stuff.

[1637] How many cheese wheels are in your inventory?

[1638] I ate a bunch because I was over -encumbered.

[1639] I thought you got rid of encumbrance.

[1640] You can't get rid of it.

[1641] You can only type in a really large number and then try and meet that goal.

[1642] Did you hit that number?

[1643] It sure did.

[1644] Congratulations.

[1645] So my encumbrance was so high, it broke the line of the, like, it's like, oh, you're 1 ,045 of 1 ,030.

[1646] And it's just like the print is super tiny and breaking the line, and it's kind of breaking the game.

[1647] So I had to eat a cheese wheel to get home to sell all my stuff.

[1648] Because those things are like four pounds a piece.

[1649] Cheese wheels are real bad.

[1650] That's a lot of cheese.

[1651] That's what the cheese wheel is.

[1652] That's a whole wheel.

[1653] The problem is you're not even getting rid of it.

[1654] It's just going inside of you.

[1655] Like, technically, you should be more encumbered.

[1656] Yeah.

[1657] So there are still certain parts of that game where now that I'm doing better, like, I'll do really well, and then I'll hit a part of a dungeon again where it's like, dude, this guy's just killing me instantly.

[1658] But, you know, you back up to the point where he's going to get caught on geometry.

[1659] Yeah, I've done that way too many times to not feel, like, a little sad about it.

[1660] Yeah, get caught on a door or something and be like...

[1661] Well, you did it.

[1662] But he's just casting the spell in the wrong direction.

[1663] I should say, well, all right.

[1664] I'm sorry.

[1665] I'll sit here for five minutes.

[1666] I don't know if I'm going in the wrong dungeons.

[1667] I've never managed to make that happen.

[1668] Maybe I'm not kiting people around enough.

[1669] Well, once you do it, you kind of realize what you need to do it.

[1670] Sounds like you have to kind of lure him out.

[1671] Yeah, it takes a little trial and error sometimes where you're like...

[1672] Oh, fuck, yes, he got caught on that rock.

[1673] Oh, this is done.

[1674] Thank God.

[1675] And you quick save it right away, and then you just start hitting him with arrows.

[1676] I started rolling around with a companion.

[1677] I have Lydia with me now, and she's pretty cool.

[1678] She just takes a knee when things get too hot, and then she fights.

[1679] She's fine.

[1680] So...

[1681] My experience has changed since the last time, which is good because now the stuff that is kind of broken in that game is just kind of humorous instead of just making me completely mad because now I feel like I'm actually making some progress and not fighting against the game.

[1682] Still weird stuff though just in terms of the scaling where like the dragons are – I could take a dragon solo.

[1683] But, like, put me up against an ice wolf, and that's a fight.

[1684] Any of the bears.

[1685] The bears are super hard.

[1686] As soon as you see a bear, it's like, I might as well load again.

[1687] I might as well load again.

[1688] You will hit the next tier of dragons, and then it'll be back on.

[1689] I got the blood dragons, and they were harder.

[1690] But, you know, there's certain things.

[1691] And, like, the spells are super funny.

[1692] They crack me up.

[1693] But, like, freeze the dude, like the ice breath where he just kind of, like, dudes are like, I don't know, fuck you.

[1694] And then they just freeze and fall over.

[1695] It just kind of cracks me up every time it happens.

[1696] Because the weight's not quite right?

[1697] Well, they just like – because they freeze in place and then they do that slow fall over.

[1698] And you're like, I'm this dread whatever.

[1699] And it's like, I don't have – poof.

[1700] Now you're frozen.

[1701] Yeah, like what?

[1702] I like freezing them and then pushing them into a river and just watching them float away.

[1703] Well, yeah, there's other stuff like that.

[1704] And it's just like, the game is tracking that.

[1705] Right.

[1706] Like it's forced to, and like, what happens when they unthaw?

[1707] Right.

[1708] Do they wander back?

[1709] Probably.

[1710] Like I love when elk just kind of run into the river and go off a waterfall, like just kind of walking around.

[1711] So like that stuff is still really, really funny to me. Hilarious.

[1712] The comedy of Skyrim.

[1713] But, yeah, it's been mostly that.

[1714] I'm about 47 hours in, 45, 47.

[1715] How are you doing in the main story?

[1716] Jeez.

[1717] I learned the last part of that, the big push shout.

[1718] So I think I just learned that.

[1719] So that's fun, too, because now you can just blow guys off cliffs.

[1720] And that's really cool.

[1721] And that opened up a real dark brotherhood.

[1722] quest.

[1723] I believe that.

[1724] The darkest.

[1725] So, yeah, I don't think I'm very far along in the main quest at all.

[1726] I have no idea.

[1727] But I've been trying to go through my miscellaneous quest and manage that without taking on more miscellaneous quests.

[1728] So I'm kind of trying to trim it down.

[1729] It's impossible.

[1730] You're swimming upstream.

[1731] And my quest thing is just stacking up.

[1732] They make it really easy to kind of chew through.

[1733] In terms of like, alright, Track this quest.

[1734] Where do I need to fast travel to?

[1735] Just go waypoint, waypoint, waypoint.

[1736] Get that stuff done.

[1737] So at least in that regard, it's kind of easy to go through that list and just bang it out.

[1738] But you're always just picking up more stuff.

[1739] That's kind of it.

[1740] It's going to be Skyrim for a while.

[1741] Yeah.

[1742] Because you finished Skyward Sword.

[1743] I finished Skyward Sword.

[1744] Yeah.

[1745] There's so many good parts of that game.

[1746] I think we were talking.

[1747] We were.

[1748] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1749] But there's too much filler.

[1750] Yeah.

[1751] But there were like really interesting things that like – Like, oh, that's really that last dungeon.

[1752] Oh, the last Triforce dungeon.

[1753] It was like, great.

[1754] And you're just like, I don't know why it took me 15 hours of doing this other thing to get here.

[1755] The trick to the Triforce dungeon is, it's story story.

[1756] You're moving dungeon pieces around to get to different paths.

[1757] And the gates connect.

[1758] It's really interesting.

[1759] I actually was getting out, drawing it to figure it out.

[1760] Cool.

[1761] On paper, if you were to list all the really great things in Skyward Sword, you'd be like, oh man, that game sounds pretty great.

[1762] I think a lot of it, and I think we talked about this, was just getting to the things.

[1763] Yeah, everything just takes so long.

[1764] It's fast travel, but really half -assed fast travel.

[1765] Especially because you can pick a spot when you first travel down, but then you have to travel back up.

[1766] and then back into the Spire to fast travel again because there's no decent way to fast travel at all times.

[1767] It's just everything takes so long.

[1768] It just feels like if they had streamlined that game, it would allow you to get to the good stuff faster.

[1769] I feel like it's a 40 -hour game that really should be about 25.

[1770] Yeah.

[1771] It would be a really, really good 25.

[1772] And a lot of that is just kind of a user experience of just like, why are you making this difficult for me?

[1773] Why does this take so long?

[1774] Is it just like that stuff?

[1775] It's not like...

[1776] filler mission stuff like is the quest stuff there's certainly some of that stuff but I don't think that's the main problem I think literally just getting to the content is a huge issue I think it makes that some of that content stuff feel more like filler because it takes so long to kind of do it where you're like oh fuck I've got to leave this place and go back to it just for this I just want to split my wrist with this master sword I just got to go talk to that one guy just so I can trigger the thing that I'm going to have to come back here for and I can't just fast travel there and back like in Skyrim it's like I've got to go up and I've got to find a statue then I've got to go in the sky then I've got to travel all the way across and I've got to talk to the dude and then I've got to travel all the way across again then go back down and fast travel to the spot Every 18 hours, you can use a thing that just teleports you to space.

[1777] That sounds like an MMO the more I talk about it.

[1778] Skyrim definitely has that single -player MMO feel to it.

[1779] I feel like that's what you were talking about, Old Republic.

[1780] I just want the story, and I can mainline it if I want.

[1781] It's kind of like Skyrim.

[1782] If you want that main story, there's your game.

[1783] Yeah, Skyrim has some really interesting stuff in it.

[1784] And I think I was talking to you guys before.

[1785] The world is realized well enough that when stuff goes haywire, it's hilarious because you're kind of invested in this real world where everybody's kind of walking around and talking and doing all this stuff.

[1786] And then when stuff goes batshit crazy, you're like, wow, that's fucking hilarious because this guy is just spinning around in a circle on top of a spire and nobody seems to mind.

[1787] I think the next step is somehow Bethesda making it so the world can acknowledge that, yeah, this is pretty weird.

[1788] Like, what the fuck is up with that?

[1789] I think that's the next AI behavior is someone going like, you see this?

[1790] Does anyone see this?

[1791] I think it's funnier that people just go about their business like it's not even happening.

[1792] Yeah, acknowledging it might actually be.

[1793] Just one guy looks over and winks at you.

[1794] I walked out of town and it was like, a dragon just attacked outside of Riften.

[1795] It was like, a giant dragon just came down.

[1796] We're all fighting it.

[1797] The stable master's fighting it and this guy's fighting it.

[1798] And we beat the dragon.

[1799] And then everybody's just like...

[1800] I love horses.

[1801] Dude, we just fought a dragon.

[1802] Everyone just turns on their heels and goes back to what they were doing before.

[1803] You suck the soul out of this dragon, and you just see all the characters turn and walk away and go back to their other AI pattern.

[1804] And they also go talk to the guy and be like, that was fucked up, right?

[1805] Like, we almost died.

[1806] And he's like, want to sell something?

[1807] He's like, did you talk to Mary?

[1808] Like, dude, no!

[1809] Do you remember just a second ago we were fighting that dragon together?

[1810] I did this one quest with this cat guy that was like, bring me three flawless amethysts or something.

[1811] I want to make a ring.

[1812] But in the...

[1813] So intervening time, I also did a Thieves Guild quest where I basically sold his wife out.

[1814] So he was really mad at me. I did that exact thing.

[1815] So I returned the ring, and he's like, oh, my God, thank you so much for returning this.

[1816] And then after the story beat, he said, just get out of here.

[1817] Yes, that exact thing happened to me. But it's kind of well done in a way where you kind of get involved.

[1818] You're just like, what?

[1819] Well, fuck you, dude.

[1820] And then you kill him.

[1821] That's right, I did.

[1822] And then you kill him.

[1823] That's right, I did screw up your wife.

[1824] Just walk away.

[1825] Well, I can club you.

[1826] Yeah, and so stuff like that is funny.

[1827] I don't know.

[1828] I'm having a good time with it.

[1829] Patrick, I'm just realizing now, I forgot that we didn't have you on last week's podcast.

[1830] You were in, like, Chicago.

[1831] Chicago.

[1832] You were in Chi -town.

[1833] How was your...

[1834] A true lasagna pizza.

[1835] How was the Midwest?

[1836] Busy.

[1837] Katie's parents are divorced.

[1838] They need all Christmas stuff.

[1839] I don't go home for Thanksgiving, so it's like...

[1840] Every holiday.

[1841] Every holiday, yeah.

[1842] So I need a break from my break.

[1843] And I've had people in town this past weekend, so...

[1844] Goodness gracious.

[1845] Heaven mean to ask you, how's your Neo Geo machine living these days?

[1846] It's good.

[1847] It made a hole in my floor.

[1848] Oh, no. I just didn't realize that it would fuck up the tile.

[1849] The weight?

[1850] We moved it.

[1851] So before I had set it up, because the screen goes, it just naturally blurs over time.

[1852] But if I just open up the back and there's one little spot I can just turn and it goes back and I just can't get it to stay.

[1853] So we had shifted it one time and not really been paying attention.

[1854] Hadn't put it on top of anything.

[1855] And then I went to shift it back one time.

[1856] Now I have a spot where I can just open the back up, just reach in and do it.

[1857] I just know where it is.

[1858] I'm going to not electrify myself.

[1859] And, yeah, looked at the ground and was like, oh, there's my security deposit.

[1860] I was like, well, I guess I don't have to worry about the scratch and the wooden floor in the other room because they're going to have to retile this.

[1861] We fucked this up already.

[1862] I haven't bought any games.

[1863] Oh, I discovered that a spider head.

[1864] I found a spider breeding in the Metal Slug X -Carts.

[1865] What, like eggs in there?

[1866] I don't know.

[1867] There was just a lot going on in there, and I just took a knife from scraping it.

[1868] Were there babies?

[1869] Probably.

[1870] I don't know.

[1871] There's just a lot of cocoons and I was just like...

[1872] I would much rather have a snake in there.

[1873] Yeah.

[1874] I think that's what I was hoping and I realized, no, it's a spider.

[1875] Yeah, it was real gross.

[1876] That sounds like bad Skyrim dungeon stuff.

[1877] One of those Skyrim spiders got into my Metal Slug X cart.

[1878] It could have it at that point.

[1879] I don't need no Frostbite Venom or Metal Slug X. You just take that and that's yours now.

[1880] You go have a good time.

[1881] Didn't need it that bad.

[1882] I didn't even discover that.

[1883] I had some people over on Friday, and someone picked it up to look at it.

[1884] It was just like, ah!

[1885] There's a spider breeding in your cart.

[1886] So other than not playing Metal Slug X, anything else catching your eye these days?

[1887] I've been playing a lot of Super Mario 3D Land.

[1888] I'd like to apologize for not playing that game sooner.

[1889] It's good, right?

[1890] It's an incredible game.

[1891] I've played over 20 hours of that.

[1892] The most interesting way to play that game is if you try and collect all the coins.

[1893] Because it really forces you to play the levels in a completely different way.

[1894] Especially the first eight worlds, which are, in terms of platforming, not challenging at all.

[1895] You can just fudge your way to the end.

[1896] If you just fudge your way to the end, it's not that interesting.

[1897] But if you're collecting everything, you're forced to appreciate the levels in a different way.

[1898] It's actually weird playing through that game.

[1899] having played Skyward Sword and the things about Skyward Sword I don't...

[1900] Like, I wish the...

[1901] Because the Galaxy team made Super Mario 3D Land.

[1902] Like, I wish those guys could make a Zelda game or something.

[1903] Because there's something about the way there's...

[1904] These games don't feel any different.

[1905] They capture the same nostalgia of what I love about old platformers, but they're totally different games.

[1906] Like, they have evolved...

[1907] but not evolved if that makes any sense to you.

[1908] They work in a modern context while still kind of holding on to the things that made those games great.

[1909] They don't feel stale because it has all the things I love about the old games.

[1910] They're taking the familiar parts and they're putting them together in different ways.

[1911] Yeah, like Galaxy was like a complete reinvention of the formula but still felt like totally a Mario game.

[1912] And this is more a 2D game that's in a 3D context.

[1913] And it's just as fresh and interesting.

[1914] I feel like the difference is with the Zelda team, they feel this compulsion to recreate the Zelda experience whole cloth of weird...

[1915] Telling the story again.

[1916] Yeah, telling the whole story again and including everything that you expect from a Zelda game in here.

[1917] It's a specific template that they're sticking to.

[1918] Right, right.

[1919] Well, it's also just like...

[1920] There's a slavishness to how it progresses and what happens.

[1921] This is going to happen and then you're going to find the triforce.

[1922] There's that...

[1923] Structure in Mario, but it's not so strict.

[1924] The difference is that they find something to focus on.

[1925] They say, okay, yes, we'll have jumping and there will be these types of enemies and there will be a lot of very familiar things in it, but we are going to focus on this one specific element more than others.

[1926] And we're going to build to highlight that rather than we are going to make every Mario game in this one.

[1927] And I think that allows them to...

[1928] have both that sense of familiarity with, like, settings and style and things like that and still have it feel completely fresh, which I really think 3D Land does.

[1929] Because it feels immediately familiar.

[1930] Like, all the skills from my old Mario games immediately apply, but, like, in totally new ways and don't just feel like a retread like sometimes Skyward Sword does.

[1931] Like, it makes me appreciate the game way more having played both because it's teams trying to do a similar thing but one just being, like, way more successful at...

[1932] evolving a familiar structure in a modern context.

[1933] When is Luigi's Mansion 2 supposed to come?

[1934] Maybe they gave it a date.

[1935] It's soon.

[1936] The game's done.

[1937] The game's been done since last fall.

[1938] I know.

[1939] I want it.

[1940] The breadth of content in Mario 3D Land, it's really tragic this game wasn't at launch.

[1941] I think it would have made a lot of difference in people's perception.

[1942] I think the whole conversation about that thing would have been really different.

[1943] This game has eight worlds that if you collect all the coins, which really aren't that much trouble, but they...

[1944] you spend more time in the levels because the levels are designed for a mobile platform.

[1945] Like some of the stages are 60 seconds long.

[1946] Like they're really well designed for what you're playing on, especially given the battery life.

[1947] Definitely.

[1948] But you finished the eight worlds.

[1949] You could tear through your battery life on that dude too.

[1950] Especially because you have the 3D all cranked up, which is spectacular.

[1951] Yeah, the first eight worlds take probably, like, five, seven hours.

[1952] But the second eight worlds, if you're collecting everything, like, that was an additional 12, 13 hours.

[1953] Super long.

[1954] I've collected all the coins and all the gold flags.

[1955] And now to get the super hard, like, secret stage, you have to run through all the stages again with the other carrot, with Luigi.

[1956] Yeah.

[1957] You get halfway through.

[1958] Right.

[1959] I know.

[1960] Go ahead.

[1961] They've never done that in a Mario game before.

[1962] But you don't have to get the gold flag again, so you can just beeline through the stage, finish it.

[1963] And I've done, even though I don't really want to do that, I've done this much at this point that when I'm watching TV, I can just sit and, like, fumble through the stages.

[1964] And it's just really good.

[1965] And the 3D is, like, awesome.

[1966] It's nice.

[1967] Because it has that weird, like, expanded view mode or whatever.

[1968] Like, you can hit the D -pad.

[1969] Is it the D -pad?

[1970] Yeah.

[1971] I've never quite figured out what the difference is.

[1972] It's very subtle.

[1973] Yeah, it didn't seem like a huge difference.

[1974] I was just wondering if you would mess around with that at all.

[1975] It seems like at least the little graphic that goes along with it implies that it's the difference between the depth kind of being under the screen versus above it.

[1976] That's what the icon implies.

[1977] I guess that would be more like popping out versus depth.

[1978] But it doesn't necessarily come across.

[1979] The 3D works because it was kind of what I always wanted from the 3DS, especially for platformers, is that it actually helps.

[1980] you to play like you actually get a sense of depth of where your character is going and it's been that's been helping me with push mode a lot too like yeah finding ways to make that matter and that's what i always wanted from 3d was was that was like an actual tangible depth to the game and it really does help especially when you're those second worlds like second set of the secret world i think is what it's called is just some of those are fucking brutal the dark mario ones where mario is chasing you through the entire stage is just terrifying.

[1981] There's a tiny Dark Mario that chases you and as he catches up to you he will kill you.

[1982] Sounds horrifying.

[1983] And some of the later ones are it's a Dark Mario that's chasing you and also they have these new 30 second stage.

[1984] So you have the timer that's going down but it doesn't come into play until the Secret World where you start with 30 seconds and you have to either collect coins or defeat enemies to add time and you have to be doing that.

[1985] And so you're You're jumping through all these crazy platforms.

[1986] You're trying to hit enemies to gain time, and then you also have this little asshole running at you the entire time, and then you're also trying to get these gold coins.

[1987] There's a lot going on, and I wish you could access that content sooner, especially for the people that get put off by it.

[1988] That was the part that kind of bummed me out about that game.

[1989] I didn't 100 % the first set of worlds or anything like that, but I got a ton of coins along the way.

[1990] Because they aren't difficult to get most of the time in that stuff.

[1991] But yeah, it just felt like – it didn't even really feel like a tutorial really.

[1992] Sure, you're getting used to the controls and getting used to kind of how the world works and stuff.

[1993] But it didn't take that long for me to feel like I was up to speed on how that stuff worked and like, OK, bring on the real shit.

[1994] I think it was in half.

[1995] Like it's eight worlds if it was four worlds.

[1996] Yeah, it was like four worlds of easy stuff and then like, all right, let's do this.

[1997] Yeah.

[1998] But I think at that point it's like – They're trying to hit different audiences.

[1999] If they're trying to appeal to a more mainstream person that might not be able to get the most out of the back half of the game, they have to make sure that the first half at least has something for them.

[2000] So it's kind of a hard problem.

[2001] Sometimes it made me wish that they would just say, like, all right, here's a Mario game.

[2002] And it's rough.

[2003] Like, don't get this game unless you're crazy.

[2004] Well, they were kind of doing that with the new Super Mario Brothers series and the Galaxy series.

[2005] Like, the Galaxy 2 especially was extremely challenging in some cases.

[2006] And it was like, here's the new Super Mario game for, you know, those are the ones that sell for the whole family.

[2007] And then the Galaxy games are like, all right, we're going to fuck some shit up.

[2008] Finding myself very bothered by this Dark Mario thing.

[2009] The music is terrifying.

[2010] Nintendo has just cultivated such a Disney -like image in the last few years.

[2011] The idea of an evil Mario that kills you doesn't seem like something they would let through.

[2012] That's what Wario was all about.

[2013] He was eating garlic.

[2014] Slitting throats.

[2015] Riding his motorcycle.

[2016] Wario really that bad.

[2017] He's the baddest.

[2018] It's got a W on the front of his name.

[2019] Sorry, he's throwing up a W. That M is upside down.

[2020] That's true.

[2021] There's one...

[2022] Mario killed Biggie.

[2023] Not a lot of people know that.

[2024] Not a lot of people know that.

[2025] And Tupac.

[2026] And a weird twist.

[2027] Like, actually...

[2028] Anyway, go on.

[2029] No, that's it.

[2030] There's a Dark Mario stage where it's one of the haunted house ones, and the haunted house trick is that you cannot see the platforms in front of you until you are basically walking on them.

[2031] So you don't know where you have to go, and you also have a guy chasing you.

[2032] So you're forced to go forward while a man is forced.

[2033] Usually you have to get right at the tiptoe, and then they appear so you know where to go next.

[2034] No quarter given there.

[2035] It is brutal.

[2036] It is a great...

[2037] If you're on the fence about 3DS, this is well worth it for this game.

[2038] Because there's a lot of good stuff coming out between Pushmo.

[2039] WayForward just put out Mighty Forward Force or something.

[2040] Mighty Twist Force.

[2041] Supposedly it's pretty good.

[2042] Party Pants Force.

[2043] Yeah.

[2044] There's a new game from...

[2045] There continues to be real games coming out on the eShop.

[2046] I was really afraid that Pushmo was going to be a one -off outlier, never going to happen again.

[2047] What was that?

[2048] There was a 2D...

[2049] It's from Renegade Kid.

[2050] Yeah, Renegade Kid game.

[2051] They made Moon for DS, which actually was a really atmospheric shooter game for the...

[2052] The DS, they have a 2D platformer coming out.

[2053] I forget the name right now.

[2054] Moon was not that much fun to play.

[2055] No, but it was really atmospheric.

[2056] I beat it.

[2057] I did like it, just for that.

[2058] There's a lot of good stuff.

[2059] WayForward is putting something out, then I will go look at that.

[2060] eShop!

[2061] WayForward does good stuff.

[2062] Yeah, Pushmo.

[2063] 2012, year of the eShop.

[2064] Pushmo's starting to fuck with me. I know.

[2065] It's tough.

[2066] It's really tough.

[2067] But I've heard plenty of anecdotal...

[2068] examples of people playing 3D land in 2D and not being able to beat levels.

[2069] Yeah.

[2070] And then popping on the 3D and going like, oh, wow, this actually serves.

[2071] I mean, I played that cranked up the entire time that I was playing it, so I never had that revelatory experience.

[2072] It never bothered my eyes either.

[2073] I played it for a whole five -hour flight and just, you know, except for the battery running out.

[2074] Yeah, that game will eat it up for sure.

[2075] Because the 3D works best at full blast.

[2076] Yeah.

[2077] And that just...

[2078] eats at the battery.

[2079] Does that drain the battery more?

[2080] Yeah.

[2081] I figured if it was 3D at all, it was draining the battery.

[2082] Oh yeah, I don't know if it matters.

[2083] But once you turn it on, once you turn 3D on, I think there is something there.

[2084] It's like a third less of the time with the battery.

[2085] I guess it's having to render two slightly different angles.

[2086] If not necessarily on everything, at least some of it.

[2087] Patrick, you play anything else?

[2088] Nah.

[2089] I played a lot.

[2090] I got a bunch of my family hooked on Spell Tower, this iOS game.

[2091] The basic premise is it's another word game, but it's like a gridded, kind of like Tetris -style screen that's got all the words on it, and you're dragging your finger to match up the words, but you can go diagonal, and there are different power -ups on the screen that can clear lines and stuff like that.

[2092] It's really simple, but really well done.

[2093] I think it's like $2.

[2094] So I should start getting a check for it because I sold like 15 copies of that game over break.

[2095] Start talking to that guy.

[2096] Look into a licensing deal.

[2097] Yeah.

[2098] Cool.

[2099] Partner with Domino's.

[2100] Well, Patrick, welcome back to the West Coast.

[2101] Glad to have you here, even if we don't have Domino's here.

[2102] Brad Shoemaker.

[2103] Hello.

[2104] How's it going?

[2105] Pretty good.

[2106] There's Domino's near my house.

[2107] It's actually not that far out of the way of your drive home if you desperately, desperately need Domino's.

[2108] No, I'm not.

[2109] That is not a line I'm willing to cross.

[2110] Go into a moving car.

[2111] Yeah, you'd have to find parking.

[2112] Yeah.

[2113] You'd have to go in there and get it.

[2114] That's not.

[2115] And then it would probably be cold by the time you got it home.

[2116] I have no interest in that.

[2117] All right.

[2118] I am at this stoplight.

[2119] Catch me. I've never gone to that Domino's.

[2120] Yeah.

[2121] You shouldn't go to Domino's.

[2122] I had never been to the Domino's where.

[2123] Yeah.

[2124] Not that there's any better alternative in the city.

[2125] Yeah.

[2126] San Francisco pizza sucks ass.

[2127] This town don't know pizza.

[2128] It's terrible.

[2129] Nope.

[2130] From a hole in the ground.

[2131] Pizza Delfina is all right.

[2132] There's a bunch of all right pizza.

[2133] Escape from New York is okay.

[2134] You know what?

[2135] Escape is probably the best.

[2136] But that's all relative to situational pizza.

[2137] I used to live literally across the street from that escape that was open until 2, and that was bad.

[2138] But that is strictly drunk by the slice.

[2139] I had Orgasmica a couple of times, but I was a little too fancy for me. I hadn't heard of that.

[2140] I had been drinking, so I don't know.

[2141] See, I didn't find it fancy.

[2142] I found it just overpriced and just kind of pizza.

[2143] Orgasmica?

[2144] Yeah, I haven't heard the best stuff about it.

[2145] It's like super thin crust.

[2146] Yeah.

[2147] And when I got delivered, it was like too thin, so it just soaked up all the grease.

[2148] And I was like, oh, now it's just floppy, thin pizza.

[2149] Gross.

[2150] Yeah.

[2151] Not what I wanted.

[2152] Best thing I can think of is Little Star, but that's deep dish, so that's not even the same.

[2153] Okay, Little Star's pretty good.

[2154] Little Star's so good.

[2155] But again, that is not just pizza pizza.

[2156] That is not pizza, yeah.

[2157] You can get pizza from Little Star, though.

[2158] What's that?

[2159] You can get Thin Pizza from Little Star.

[2160] Yeah, but why would you?

[2161] I agree.

[2162] Where is Little Star?

[2163] There's two.

[2164] There's Vizadero.

[2165] The first one's on Viz. There's one on the Mission.

[2166] I remember I think I tried to go there.

[2167] It's usually really crowded.

[2168] It's super packed.

[2169] So it's one of those places that's never not packed.

[2170] There was like a burger place across the street or up the street.

[2171] It's better to order out from.

[2172] If I lived near that, that would be real bad.

[2173] So you played a little bit of Old Republic?

[2174] Yeah, I played some of that.

[2175] What are you playing as?

[2176] Almost the exact same thing as Jeff.

[2177] Sith Warrior.

[2178] Thought about going Marauder.

[2179] A bunch of people in the guild said that tanks are always going to be easier to group up with.

[2180] Because tanks are always in demand.

[2181] But being in that guild, it's never...

[2182] There's like 400 dudes in there.

[2183] Well, 400 characters.

[2184] Over 400 characters.

[2185] It's not hard to pick up parties if you need to.

[2186] Yeah.

[2187] And some people were just like, you know what?

[2188] Just pick what you want to play.

[2189] Don't worry about it.

[2190] The odds of me getting to the endgame raid stuff anyway.

[2191] Yeah, pretty slim.

[2192] Probably not going to happen.

[2193] That is a good call, though.

[2194] Just play what you want.

[2195] Don't worry about min -maxing.

[2196] I think two lightsabers looks cool.

[2197] So go for two lightsabers.

[2198] Especially if you start mixing and matching the colors.

[2199] I got a red one and a yellow one.

[2200] Is it fun?

[2201] Do you get fun dual -wielding abilities and stuff?

[2202] The abilities are fine.

[2203] I want to respec my dude, I think.

[2204] Yeah, I don't know.

[2205] The abilities are interesting to use and I feel like more so than when I was playing WoW, I feel like I have a better handle on how to play this class in terms of just like – I have over two full bars of abilities now and I actually use a lot of – like almost all of them.

[2206] Because there are so many that are just like, okay, this one is only after a parry.

[2207] I can do this.

[2208] And then if I get them into this state, then I can use kick, which is this ridiculous kick that does a ton of damage compared to the other typical abilities and stuff.

[2209] So there's like...

[2210] I can disable droids, which sometimes I'm starting combat by just controlling a droid and stopping him and then leaping in to take the other guys out.

[2211] And then when something's disabled, I can use pommel strike, which is kind of pretty heavily damaging also.

[2212] So, you know, it's kind of this cool one -hit kill at the end of a fight.

[2213] Like, here's this droid sitting there.

[2214] Pop, dead.

[2215] Sounds kind of cool.

[2216] Yeah.

[2217] Yeah, the combat's been okay.

[2218] All right.

[2219] When it's good, but when you're kind of just, like, grinding through a bunch of dudes that aren't difficult, it's just like the only difficult part is there's six of them.

[2220] Yeah.

[2221] Then it's just like you're sitting there, like, hitting the same buttons and just, like, playing just hot piano.

[2222] I mean, that's been my entire experience so far.

[2223] Yeah.

[2224] It's a lot more of that.

[2225] Yeah.

[2226] But, you know, there are a ton of abilities, and I thought it was kind of fun to use them.

[2227] I understand.

[2228] why there's no auto attack in that game now.

[2229] Marauder it is.

[2230] Very good.

[2231] Other games?

[2232] I think I'm most of the way through Batman now.

[2233] I've been making my way through it in fits and starts since October.

[2234] It has sounded like your Batman experience has improved.

[2235] I am going to give that game an honorable mention on my Game of the Year list.

[2236] I really like it.

[2237] It's going to be your 2012 -2011 game?

[2238] Yeah, I guess so.

[2239] Well, they're probably done putting a DLC out for that game, so this will probably be it once I finish it.

[2240] I really like it, but in spite of its issues, not that I've forgiven them or anything.

[2241] Didn't I read somewhere like you...

[2242] I think it was on a popular message board on the internet that you met like...

[2243] You didn't know about the dive bombing?

[2244] I wasn't using it to fly around.

[2245] Okay.

[2246] Like, I knew you could do it.

[2247] That's crazy.

[2248] I knew you could do it.

[2249] That totally changes it.

[2250] Yeah, it's definitely helped a lot.

[2251] When I went to the last preview meeting for that game, I asked.

[2252] They showed me all the features.

[2253] Like, you know, you can hold right trigger to dive while you're flying.

[2254] And I asked, can you use that to get extra lift?

[2255] And they said no. Oh, weird.

[2256] So I had never tried it once I had started playing the final game.

[2257] Until I read about it on that forum.

[2258] And that definitely helps.

[2259] The best way to play that game is not as an open world game, which makes you wonder why is it an open world game.

[2260] I'm not even sure if it's an open world game.

[2261] Well, it has the impression of being one.

[2262] If you try to play it as one, you're going to be disappointed, which I was.

[2263] Because the way I play one of those games is as soon as it opens up and I'm able to go anywhere, I'm going to ignore the story and go anywhere.

[2264] That's not fun.

[2265] Find stuff to do.

[2266] There's nothing to do with trophies.

[2267] Do the stuff the game tells you to do, and you'll be all right.

[2268] Well, especially the way it gates what it calls side missions, which are all unique and story -driven, so they don't even really fall into the typical slot of open -world side missions, because those are generic, kind of grindy activities, but you do them because they're there.

[2269] So you have to keep pushing your way through the story to even get the next deadshot victim.

[2270] Or...

[2271] Right, the trigger, the next.

[2272] Yeah, I'm trying to think of the other examples.

[2273] You know, all those little, like, kind of...

[2274] Right, the phone call.

[2275] The Riddler stuff is the most extreme with that stuff.

[2276] Like, you know, like, Bane has his thing, and there's Deadshot, and there's all those, like...

[2277] You don't even have access to that stuff.

[2278] It's weird that, like, some of them, like, the Bane thing is...

[2279] practically one thing, really.

[2280] It's like, go do this thing!

[2281] Yeah, but you can't get the last one until a certain point in the story.

[2282] I didn't do it until I beat the game.

[2283] Yeah, I did all the side stuff after I beat it.

[2284] I thought I was just missing the stuff to do, but it actually withholds a lot from you until you've passed certain story triggers.

[2285] Once I started making myself play the story stuff, which is the best stuff, because that's the Arkham Asylum stuff, it made me like the game a lot more.

[2286] I regret arguing against that game.

[2287] I'm glad that it's on our site -wide top ten.

[2288] And that combat is better than ever.

[2289] It's pretty good.

[2290] I'm having some trouble with the blade counters.

[2291] Yeah.

[2292] I just kind of gave up.

[2293] Specifically, I can dodge it fine.

[2294] It's the unlockable, the actual counterattack.

[2295] It's a hold.

[2296] Yeah, it's a tap or something.

[2297] Well, if you do the actual counterattack, you do have to tap between their swings.

[2298] I remember getting it at some point, but I remember having trouble with it as well.

[2299] For me, like, I...

[2300] Combat never quite clicked in Arkham Asylum.

[2301] I enjoyed it.

[2302] It was fun and it looks cool, but I never drilled into the depth that the combat offered.

[2303] I felt like, for whatever reason, that opened up a lot more easily for me in Arkham City.

[2304] I don't know if they just made it more accessible or what.

[2305] It's still so much fun.

[2306] I found myself just varying my combat so much more.

[2307] It's like, this is amazing because this looks so cool and real.

[2308] Maybe it was just by having the experience, but I hadn't quite realized that I keep this combo going that the look of the combat is going to get crazier and crazier.

[2309] It looks a lot cooler.

[2310] You start realizing all the different animations he has for the way he takes guys out.

[2311] There's a lot of them in there that you may have never even seen.

[2312] There's a ton.

[2313] You get more experience for changing it up a lot.

[2314] If you're doing those challenge rooms, you have to to beat them.

[2315] Right.

[2316] Like, to get enough points to get the three stars.

[2317] Well, that was where I hit the wall in Asylum was, like, I was getting to the Challengers and I can't get past, like, the first set of these because...

[2318] Once it clicks for you and you understand how you have to change things up to hit those high scores, like, it just...

[2319] It was the most satisfying combat of that type that I think I've ever played.

[2320] It's damn good.

[2321] That's kind of excluding, like, the Ninja Gaiden Devil May Cry school of, like, super...

[2322] technical but free form kind of stuff because that's like on a different plane and I can't even do that stuff because that's more like a fighting game which I'm just not into but like the Batman stuff I find my because it's more rhythm based and I like rhythm games Like, I find it, like, easier to pull complicated stuff on that off that I wouldn't be able to pull off in a Ninja Gaiden.

[2323] And it's also the kind of game where, I mean, you can die, but, like, you're basically Superman, you know?

[2324] Or, like, you are super -powered in that case, whereas, like, a Ninja Gaiden or something, like, you die all the fucking time.

[2325] It's Batman.

[2326] It's not Superman.

[2327] I know.

[2328] You know what I mean?

[2329] Superman's a pussy.

[2330] You are a Superman.

[2331] How about that?

[2332] All right.

[2333] Does that make sense?

[2334] Yeah, that game's pretty good.

[2335] I will finish it.

[2336] Well, good.

[2337] One more game.

[2338] Still playing Pushman.

[2339] Yeah, yeah.

[2340] That's my bus game.

[2341] I've been waiting for a bus that I can get a seat on in the mornings lately so that I can play Pushmo because you can't play that with one hand if you're standing up holding a rail.

[2342] Don't stop playing Pushmo.

[2343] No, I don't plan to.

[2344] Because if you stop playing and then try to come back to playing Pushmo...

[2345] Oh, it doesn't work so well.

[2346] My brain forgot some fundamentals about Pushmo.

[2347] So I'm like, oh man, I was kind of blown through these levels and I come back and I forgot how things...

[2348] work.

[2349] I might need to roll back and redo some earlier levels.

[2350] It will probably help because there are some pretty idiosyncratic tricks that they expect you to do to finish some of those.

[2351] A couple of the ones I've really gotten stuck on before, I was like, what am I missing here?

[2352] And I realized it was just a jump that I didn't think I could make.

[2353] Yeah, that happens a little too often.

[2354] That looks like that's one block too many for me to be able to make that gap, but you actually can.

[2355] Yeah, so you've got to get a feel for some of its quirks, but that game, that is a great game.

[2356] I'm glad I was playing it on the bus this morning, activating my prefrontal cortex and all that, because we did a quick look for Cube today.

[2357] Q -U -B -E?

[2358] That's quick understanding of block extrusion.

[2359] Yeah, I got a pretty quick understanding of it.

[2360] Yeah, I guess.

[2361] Yeah, the game gets you into its groove pretty quickly.

[2362] That sounds like Pushmo.

[2363] It is actually not at all unlike that.

[2364] Well...

[2365] Wait.

[2366] Yes.

[2367] Yeah, I know.

[2368] Okay.

[2369] Yeah, it's good.

[2370] Not at all.

[2371] All right, not at all.

[2372] Got it.

[2373] It's not exactly the same.

[2374] I mean, you know what?

[2375] It's like kind of halfway.

[2376] It's not exactly not the same.

[2377] Yeah, what you said.

[2378] What is this game?

[2379] Tell me this game in the context of what it is.

[2380] It's Pushmo meets Portal.

[2381] Not what it is.

[2382] Okay, all right.

[2383] Pushmo meets...

[2384] Okay.

[2385] Yeah?

[2386] Got it.

[2387] Does that help you?

[2388] Now I don't want to hear anything else about it.

[2389] You manipulate.

[2390] I just want to go and play it.

[2391] You manipulate.

[2392] He's good.

[2393] He's good.

[2394] I'm fine.

[2395] I'm fine.

[2396] I'm going to tell these other guys.

[2397] Watch the quick look.

[2398] All right.

[2399] Fine.

[2400] Fine.

[2401] Tell these other guys something.

[2402] Hey, here's this game that we know about, that I know all about.

[2403] How about this?

[2404] Jeff, tell me about it.

[2405] You're pushing and pulling colored blocks around.

[2406] You're pushing and pulling colored blocks around.

[2407] In this sterile, lab -like kind of test environment.

[2408] Kind of test environment.

[2409] Brad, I'm trying to listen to Jeff.

[2410] I can't hear him over.

[2411] Jeff can tell you.

[2412] Also, it's first person.

[2413] Also, it's first person.

[2414] Well, it sounds fantastic.

[2415] It's awesome, yeah.

[2416] You're a naked dude.

[2417] Well, Jeff, I can't wait to watch your quick look of this game.

[2418] Yeah, you should watch my quick look.

[2419] It rips.

[2420] Turns out it's just Jeff naked.

[2421] It rips!

[2422] I don't know, Vinny, what did you think of that game?

[2423] I think it would be really hard to describe.

[2424] Yeah?

[2425] Because, like, they're...

[2426] Yeah, like, first person pulling out...

[2427] Remotely, though.

[2428] You don't have to touch the blocks to pull and push them.

[2429] No, you're wearing, like, power gloves.

[2430] Excuse me, to extrude them.

[2431] And you're pulling out.

[2432] From the environment.

[2433] Red blocks come out in three stages.

[2434] Yep.

[2435] Yellow blocks.

[2436] Was it yellow?

[2437] Yellow blocks come in threes, but the block that you click on is the one that comes out the farthest.

[2438] And then you rotate the wall, sections of the wall.

[2439] You push the green thing.

[2440] I remember.

[2441] Vinny, when you came out of this quick look, you were kind of out of sorts.

[2442] Is that orange or green?

[2443] I think you said you felt a little ill at the end of it.

[2444] Well, there's the color parts, which as soon as there's a part where it's like, okay, this matte -colored white ball is going to roll through a red block, and then you've got to get it in the red zone.

[2445] It's going to roll through the blue block, because it turns into the color of whatever block it rolls through.

[2446] Yeah, get that in the blue zone.

[2447] And then once we realize...

[2448] Sounds kind of like Mercury.

[2449] Yeah.

[2450] It was one specific puzzle.

[2451] And then, like, once he did it, it was like, oh, shit.

[2452] It went through the red, the blue, and the yellow.

[2453] It came out brown.

[2454] And I was like, fuck, color mixing.

[2455] Check me out.

[2456] Everything I said about Cube?

[2457] I don't think you should play.

[2458] It's total bullshit.

[2459] But it looks great, and the puzzles, you just walk into a room, and there's just different colored blocks all over the place, and there's one of those things, like, fuck.

[2460] There are definite moments of, like, I don't want to go through.

[2461] It's overwhelming.

[2462] Definitely you will hit points where you're like, all right, I'm going to turn this off.

[2463] I'm going to come back later.

[2464] I don't want to parse everything that's going on in the scene right now.

[2465] Sit here and poke sticks at everything, like, what happens when I do this?

[2466] Okay.

[2467] But it's got a really cool aesthetic.

[2468] Yeah, it looks super cool.

[2469] I think Portal meets Pushmo is probably spot on.

[2470] There's zero story to speak of so far, but I keep waiting for the Portal -esque turn.

[2471] I didn't see the beginning, but you said you wake up, right?

[2472] So the beginning of the game is you on your side, your perspective, everything's all blurry, and you see your hands pushing yourself up off the floor, but then there's no dialogue, there's nothing after that.

[2473] But I looked at our achievement page and there's a bunch of people with achievements for finishing Sectors 1, 2, 4, and 5.

[2474] Nobody has the achievement for finishing Sector 3.

[2475] So now my mind is bending trying to figure out what happens.

[2476] How do you not finish Sector 3?

[2477] Because it's so linear.

[2478] It's DLC.

[2479] It's probably just broken.

[2480] It's probably broken.

[2481] It's probably just broken.

[2482] But I'm like, man, maybe you warp time and space and you play the end of the game before you play the middle.

[2483] I think I'm just projecting.

[2484] Zone 3 is the last zone.

[2485] I think I'm just projecting what I want it to be.

[2486] And not just persistence.

[2487] I think it's just a really neat puzzle game with one broken achievement.

[2488] Yeah.

[2489] This is an odd thing to say, but the animations of the blocks and stuff look kind of cool.

[2490] All they're doing is moving.

[2491] They're moving in a really incremental fashion, like one block at a time, but for some reason it looks really slick.

[2492] It's hard to explain.

[2493] Just watch the video.

[2494] It was funded by the Indie Fund, which is like Kelly Santiago and a bunch of other prominent Jonathan Blow.

[2495] They take a bunch of their own money and other people's money and invest it in different indie games.

[2496] It's on the Unreal Engine with all the UDK indie -focused stuff.

[2497] I think I understand that the terms are pretty favorable.

[2498] Yeah, with that stuff.

[2499] Isn't that why it's like a $99 license or something?

[2500] Up until you hit a certain sales count and then...

[2501] I think it's free.

[2502] It's royalty -based.

[2503] Yeah, I think the dialing and the tools is free now.

[2504] It's just a matter of, yeah, you sell enough, then you have to give something to Epic.

[2505] But it's something like most people won't.

[2506] It's something like $50 ,000.

[2507] It's quite a bit for you to have to hit.

[2508] Mike, if you were paying off Epic, you've done pretty well.

[2509] Yeah, yeah.

[2510] If you sell enough, then you're probably okay.

[2511] Mark Green gets his taste.

[2512] Get your pinky.

[2513] That's what you have to give.

[2514] It's in the license.

[2515] He gets Domino's whenever he wants.

[2516] I bet Mark Ryan owns Domino's.

[2517] Or is that Pizza Hut?

[2518] One was going to close down and he bought it.

[2519] And then just pays dudes for the pizza.

[2520] It's probably the Canadian Little Caesars.

[2521] Pizza Pizza.

[2522] Cracked cardboard.

[2523] Oh, yeah.

[2524] Isn't that just Pizza Pizza?

[2525] I think so.

[2526] Anyway, I hear that game is short.

[2527] But it was also $12 over the weekend.

[2528] I'm not sure what the regular price is.

[2529] That wasn't part of the bundle thing, right?

[2530] No, that was not the Indie Royale bundle.

[2531] Because all those usually are PC, Mac, and Linux.

[2532] I want to play that Nuclear Dawn game that was in that.

[2533] Anybody know what I'm talking about?

[2534] Yeah, it looks kind of interesting.

[2535] I'm going to try that at some point.

[2536] I realize with Steam I need to just take a two -year hiatus from all their sales so that – So it's awesome again?

[2537] Yeah, so that when it happens again, it's like I don't have any of these games.

[2538] I got like 500 games for $20.

[2539] The last two years of Steam sales have not produced much dividends for me because I – Because you bought it all the first year.

[2540] Yeah, yeah.

[2541] Or I have just enough that I'm like – I'd be rebuying more than half of these, and I don't want to do that.

[2542] And I remember buying these.

[2543] If enough time had passed, I'd just buy it again accidentally.

[2544] And then I didn't even play it after I bought it.

[2545] So what am I doing?

[2546] I bought Bully on there a month or two ago.

[2547] I haven't even installed it yet.

[2548] Nice going.

[2549] How much did you pay?

[2550] I totally did the same thing.

[2551] $3 .75 or something?

[2552] But I did play a little bit of it.

[2553] I bought KOTOR.

[2554] Nice.

[2555] I did that.

[2556] Played like an hour.

[2557] I bought it like two years ago, and it was a buck.

[2558] I was like, this feels, like, wrong if I don't buy it.

[2559] I paid, like, five, so still, like, next to nothing.

[2560] But I loaded it up and then realized how much trouble I would have to go through to actually get that thing to run in widescreen, which is considerable.

[2561] Yeah, that one is a primary offender.

[2562] And kind of gave up on it from there.

[2563] But usually, like, I find that they have, like, the big publisher bundles or whatever, and I look through those, and I'm like, okay, like, there's a handful of really cool games in here and then a bunch of bullshit.

[2564] I always own the handful of really cool games.

[2565] So it's like, well, all that other bullshit's really cheap, but I don't fucking care.

[2566] So, yeah.

[2567] It's got to take a little break.

[2568] Or they need other...

[2569] The problem is it's always exactly the same publishers.

[2570] Like, there has not been any change of who it is that offers up.

[2571] Like, I own every valve.

[2572] Everyone owns every valve.

[2573] There's no way that no one doesn't own...

[2574] All three of them?

[2575] Yeah.

[2576] I'd say there's probably a pretty good chance that people own a lot of 2K games.

[2577] It seems like they're always at the top of the list.

[2578] 2K, THQ, Ubisoft, I feel like.

[2579] Eidos is that, their bundle.

[2580] Eidos, yeah, reps hard.

[2581] Finally bought Game of the Year, Arkham Asylum.

[2582] Yeah, Square Enix has a big bundle now, which I think incorporates all that stuff.

[2583] Yeah, it's both, but it's primarily Eidos stuff because it's PC.

[2584] Yep.

[2585] Yeah, I got some Valve coupons during all the crafting madness, and I wanted to give them away.

[2586] Who am I going to give them to?

[2587] Who doesn't own every Valve game on the market?

[2588] I've had a giftable copy of Half -Life 2 sitting on my account for years.

[2589] They gave Portal away for registering a Steam account.

[2590] How are you going to give that away?

[2591] Let me save these up and cash them in for a copy of Half -Life 3.

[2592] That stuff was...

[2593] Did we talk about that stuff last week, though?

[2594] That was...

[2595] Genius.

[2596] The stuff they did with crafting all the pieces of coal and the custom achievements and all that stuff.

[2597] I didn't dig into any of it.

[2598] They took a lot of the ideas from the Portal 2 ARG stuff, the early launch stuff.

[2599] And also some of the TF2 crafting stuff.

[2600] Because you were getting basically random loot, random drops and stuff.

[2601] So you were getting drops that were actually coupons.

[2602] Some people were getting drops of Dota 2 beta keys and stuff.

[2603] So was the idea that you were going to craft coal into stuff like that?

[2604] Was the idea that you were getting coal for buying shit?

[2605] I can't remember how the coal was being generated.

[2606] They got coal for different things.

[2607] They had achievements.

[2608] Some of them were game -specific.

[2609] So if you owned this game, you had to go in and get this achievement.

[2610] And there were games where they would put Christmas stuff into the game.

[2611] Sort of like how they put the portal stuff into other games when they were launching that.

[2612] So you'd go get your achievement in those games.

[2613] And you'd get a piece of coal for it.

[2614] you could, I guess, just turn the coal into random loot, or if you had seven of them, you could craft it into something specifically?

[2615] Is that what it was?

[2616] I thought they just gave you a gift, and there was either coal in it, or it was like, you know, the valve game.

[2617] Maybe that's what it was.

[2618] I didn't actually do a lot of it, so I'm not...

[2619] And then it was like, you save your coal up for the big, you know, win every Steam game in the world.

[2620] Oh, right, yeah.

[2621] Each piece of coal is an entry into a drawing for winning all the stuff, or you can craft the coal.

[2622] Yeah, I wonder if they gave that away yet, because that's pretty crazy.

[2623] Yeah.

[2624] Every game on Steam.

[2625] Is every game on Steam going forward or just up until that point?

[2626] I don't know.

[2627] Probably just up until now.

[2628] But still a lot.

[2629] It enters them into a really weird long -term contract if it's free in perpetuity.

[2630] Yeah, but just for like one dude.

[2631] Steam, you know, Valve can handle that.

[2632] I guess so.

[2633] Assuming that they only gave one another way.

[2634] Unless Steam becomes, you know, like 20 years down the line where Steam is just like, we got every TV show in the world and all this stuff.

[2635] Like at some point, you know.

[2636] You can order Domino's through Steam.

[2637] I bet their lawyers figured it out.

[2638] You should have saved up your coal, man. I know.

[2639] Crafted my coal into a Domino's franchise.

[2640] How much could a Domino's franchise be really?

[2641] $12 ,000.

[2642] I don't know.

[2643] What does anything cost?

[2644] I have no idea.

[2645] What specialty topping would your Domino's franchise offer?

[2646] Quarters.

[2647] It's an expensive pizza.

[2648] There's the genius in it.

[2649] You're making money.

[2650] Yeah, exactly.

[2651] You can craft those quarters into dollar bills.

[2652] You guys want to take a break?

[2653] Sure.

[2654] All right.

[2655] We're going to take a quick break.

[2656] And we'll come back and start talking about some news.

[2657] What?

[2658] What?

[2659] All right.

[2660] So, yeah.

[2661] Look forward to that, you guys.

[2662] Take a break.

[2663] Find some news.

[2664] On your side of this.

[2665] And we're back.

[2666] More of the Giant Bombcast.

[2667] Let's take it to some...

[2668] Oh, I wanted to say real quick.

[2669] Windows Phone 7.

[2670] Jeff, on your recommendation, I picked up Doodle God.

[2671] Yeah.

[2672] And started messing with that.

[2673] It's a weird game.

[2674] It is weird.

[2675] Because it's not really...

[2676] It's not super gamey.

[2677] It says, like, here's the premise.

[2678] Now go.

[2679] Right.

[2680] And it's like, okay, you have these basic elements and you combine them in different ways and you make new stuff.

[2681] And then you can take those elements and combine them with the existing elements and make more new stuff.

[2682] And kind of groups them into different, like there's...

[2683] Fire and air.

[2684] Fire and air and like, I don't know, like...

[2685] Beasts.

[2686] Right, so there's beasts, but then there's like amoebas are a different thing.

[2687] Yeah, like bacteria and stuff like that.

[2688] Right, right.

[2689] But it never has like a – it doesn't seem like it has like a greater context for any of that stuff.

[2690] Right.

[2691] It's not like – then a story unfolds.

[2692] Well, so then a story unfolds.

[2693] Oh, does it?

[2694] Yeah.

[2695] Okay.

[2696] Yeah.

[2697] So I'm still just in the early stuff.

[2698] Yeah, there are basically like four episodes of that stuff.

[2699] And so at some point when you get to – like there's the number of like how many total elements there are.

[2700] So, I mean, some of it's like real basic.

[2701] Like if you mix – oh, I'm trying to think of any example.

[2702] Well, air and water make steam.

[2703] Yeah.

[2704] Yes.

[2705] But then some of them get a little goofier, like fire and water makes alcohol because fire water.

[2706] Yeah.

[2707] So they're not super literal.

[2708] Worm and weed make snake.

[2709] Snake, yeah.

[2710] Yeah.

[2711] So it's not always – some of it's kind of punny and some of it isn't – directly logical necessarily.

[2712] Is this a previous iOS?

[2713] Yes, it was on iOS.

[2714] There's a Flash game also.

[2715] That explains it.

[2716] The description here says over 55 million players.

[2717] It's kind of neat.

[2718] It's real laid back.

[2719] There's a hint system if you need hints, but there are also achievements for not using hints.

[2720] We'll walk through online.

[2721] I thought it was kind of cool.

[2722] But eventually, yeah, you get to that number that's on there.

[2723] I think it's like 135 or something for the first tier.

[2724] And then when you get to that number, there's kind of a change where you actually lose a lot of those elements and kind of start over.

[2725] But it's like at a higher sort of level.

[2726] So at some point you're getting like a religion.

[2727] Religion plus human equals priest.

[2728] And magic plus human equals wizard.

[2729] Wizard plus power equals demigod.

[2730] But in the early going, it's not like there is no objective other than just find new combinations.

[2731] Right.

[2732] And that's the only objective, really.

[2733] But by the end of the game, it's like rocket plus void equals satellite.

[2734] It's just like it gets pretty nuts.

[2735] Yeah, so interesting.

[2736] I started playing with that some.

[2737] I bought the Zombies on the Phone game, but I haven't started messing with that yet.

[2738] I played some of that, yeah.

[2739] It's virtual joysticks all up on your screen, so it's kind of a bummer.

[2740] Actually, so that's a compilation.

[2741] It's not just, it's like a version of I made a game with zombies in it.

[2742] Yeah.

[2743] But then there's also something called Time Viking, which is a dual joystick shooter, but you're a Viking shooting.

[2744] frigging lasers out of your head.

[2745] Nice.

[2746] Like Vikings do.

[2747] Yeah, but you're on the ground, so it's like you're kind of shooting up at the sky with it, but it is still that kind of same dual joystick sort of control.

[2748] You're sweetening back and forth with your shoot thumb to take out stuff.

[2749] It looks kind of cool.

[2750] There's also a song with that as well.

[2751] Very good.

[2752] And that's the Ska Studios guys, right?

[2753] Yep.

[2754] Guy.

[2755] Or Guy.

[2756] Sorry.

[2757] Guy, rather.

[2758] I'll check that out at some point.

[2759] All right, let's talk about some news.

[2760] Patrick, we didn't really touch on much news in your absence.

[2761] I'm trying to see if anything's going to happen at this Microsoft press conference at CES that is occurring right now.

[2762] Right now!

[2763] Right now there is a choir singing tweets about Microsoft.

[2764] Gross.

[2765] Ryan Seacrest is also there.

[2766] Gross.

[2767] Yeah, it sounds like they talked about Windows 8 for a while.

[2768] Yeah, mostly Windows 8.

[2769] It sounds like they spent a lot of time talking about Bing.

[2770] Hey, man. Bing sure is awesome.

[2771] It's a search engine.

[2772] We made it.

[2773] I don't know if you know that.

[2774] You probably don't.

[2775] You probably don't.

[2776] Google it.

[2777] Google it.

[2778] Find out.

[2779] AltaVista, that thing.

[2780] Webcrawler.

[2781] Yeah.

[2782] Get on your webcrawler.

[2783] Lycos.

[2784] Man. All right.

[2785] So last week marked the beginning of the end for Shenmue City, which was the – Not even sure it had a beginning.

[2786] Where the forklifts are green and the sailors look shitty.

[2787] Yes, that's, I think, pretty accurate.

[2788] So this is a mobile -only thing.

[2789] Was this in China and Japan?

[2790] It was Asia.

[2791] It was Japan and stuff, too.

[2792] Yeah, it was on a couple different mobile services over there, but never came out.

[2793] But this was like Yu Suzuki's, like, if this takes off, then this will convince Sega to give me a budget.

[2794] Because he purposely was not putting any story stuff into this because he's saving it for...

[2795] Oh, he wants to make more Shenmue?

[2796] Yeah.

[2797] Wow.

[2798] Come on.

[2799] Come on, son.

[2800] Yu Suzuki's still holding that.

[2801] Well, I guess not anymore.

[2802] This is kind of...

[2803] I'm not confusing that, right?

[2804] That's not Yuji Naga, right?

[2805] No, it's Yu Suzuki.

[2806] What was the last game he put his name on?

[2807] VFR?

[2808] I suspect his name would have been on VF5.

[2809] That's pretty much it, though, right?

[2810] He hasn't been especially prolific the last few years.

[2811] Well, he's not there anymore.

[2812] Oh, wait, did he take off?

[2813] Yeah, he started his own thing.

[2814] Yujinaka's got what?

[2815] Probe, I think is what it is.

[2816] Probe?

[2817] They're the ones that made Let's Tap?

[2818] Yes.

[2819] That's Yujinaka that did that.

[2820] Yujinaka, yeah.

[2821] Yuzuzuki, I don't know.

[2822] Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

[2823] Probe made Let's Tap.

[2824] Yeah.

[2825] I don't know what Yuzuzuki's thing is.

[2826] Smoking dust somewhere.

[2827] I don't know.

[2828] With sailors.

[2829] This tragic series of Suzuki's attempts to get Shenmue off the ground again.

[2830] There was Shenmue Online, which went through all those budget troubles and then was just straight up canceled.

[2831] There was this, and then I want to say there was a third thing.

[2832] And now he claims he can buy the brand back.

[2833] He thinks he's just going to buy the franchise off of Sega.

[2834] Sure, why not?

[2835] Which is probably the better route to go.

[2836] I never played any of those games, so I don't really have an opinion on them one way or the other.

[2837] They were very ambitious.

[2838] I just remember the memes, and that's about it.

[2839] Yeah, those games existed before there was interactivity in...

[2840] Like environments.

[2841] That's just a thing you expect now, but it was novel, but you could open chess.

[2842] They're like going to a house and everything did something.

[2843] In the arcade, you could play arcade machines.

[2844] It was like, whoa, what the fuck?

[2845] But there was a lot of quick time events.

[2846] I mean, they're basically adventure games, right?

[2847] Yeah.

[2848] There was some fighting.

[2849] There was some air quote.

[2850] I mean, L .A. Noire has driving and shooting, but I would call it an adventure game.

[2851] Yeah, I played through the original Shenmue.

[2852] And that game was not great, but it did have some ambitious stuff in it.

[2853] Not to the point that it deserves the way people revere it, I think.

[2854] That was always the thing.

[2855] The reverence that people had for that franchise I always thought was fucking nuts.

[2856] Especially because it was announced as an eight -part series or something.

[2857] But then two had parts two through four.

[2858] All of a sudden it was like, oh god, we're not going to be able to make all eight.

[2859] Yeah.

[2860] Well, the first one was like – like you could tell it was so methodically paced and dealt in such a mundane world.

[2861] Like I think to me, even looking back on it, like that was kind of a bold thing about the original Shenmue was the idea that it – It wasn't dealing in the fantastical.

[2862] They were aiming for, like, this is set in Japan in the late 80s, and we're going to try and render it that way as much as we can.

[2863] If you are a weirdo Japanophile, then that is super appealing, I guess.

[2864] But also, there had never been anything that approached its subject matter in that way in games, which I thought was interesting.

[2865] Anyway, no more Shenmue.

[2866] Nope, it's probably no more Shenmue ever again, but I'm sure there'll be something in six months that gets your hopes up.

[2867] But yeah, as far as the long -term impact, I guess we can thank the term quick -time events.

[2868] I think so.

[2869] Yeah, that was where that term originated from.

[2870] But they were called quick -timers, as I recall.

[2871] Really?

[2872] And we just started calling them quick -time events.

[2873] No, I'm pretty sure the QTEs and all this stuff was very Japan.

[2874] But I think it was Quick Timer.

[2875] Quick Timer events?

[2876] Yeah, you might be right about that.

[2877] I think we just eventually said, no, Quick Timer, because Quick Timer.

[2878] 18 million connects.

[2879] That's a lot of connects.

[2880] Oh, it's coming out of the Microsoft.

[2881] Breaking news.

[2882] 18 million.

[2883] Breaking news.

[2884] The real important breaking news of right now, though, and this just got revealed via a Game Informer cover, is XCOM Enemy Unknown.

[2885] You're really excited about this.

[2886] I am fucking stoked about this.

[2887] Yeah, it's so cool.

[2888] It is.

[2889] Extremely cool.

[2890] Firaxis, the makers of Civilization, Sid Meier's studio, is making a strategy game set in the XCOM universe.

[2891] Yeah.

[2892] That's it.

[2893] There you go.

[2894] That's all I'm saying.

[2895] It is set in the reboot's fiction.

[2896] Right.

[2897] It's prior.

[2898] They have now officially said that this is the first invasion, and then...

[2899] No, I think the shooter is the first invasion.

[2900] And then the Earth's last stand is like this.

[2901] So it's a strategy game.

[2902] But it is not.

[2903] It's set in that same universe, but it won't have like the G -Man 50s aesthetic.

[2904] Right, not appear to.

[2905] Because it's years later.

[2906] Right, right.

[2907] Yeah.

[2908] And fucking A. Like, I feel like the only way that this could have been done better is if 2K had just announced this alongside of the original.

[2909] announcement of the XCOM first -person shooter because they cover all of their bases.

[2910] Like, look, we have a great strategy developer.

[2911] Well, you know, I'm trying to...

[2912] We heard about this game, like, hey, Firaxis is working on the real XCOM.

[2913] Like, I feel like it had to have been at least a year ago now.

[2914] I don't recall ever hearing about this stuff before, so...

[2915] Yeah, this was a surprise to me. Yeah, and I heard very specifically from someone that this is what Firaxis is doing, and it's going to be announced.

[2916] But the other part was it's going to be announced real soon.

[2917] And this was a fucking long -ass time ago, so I figured it had been long dead by this point.

[2918] The XCOM franchise was bouncing around from various studios within 2K.

[2919] Right, there was a talk that Ken Levine was going to be doing it.

[2920] So this was after that talk had already died down for a while.

[2921] Someone somewhere told, I wish I could remember who now at this point.

[2922] Since they very publicly had the shooter on their hands already, you have to imagine the release, like the timetable for this game is probably tied to the fortune of that game.

[2923] Yeah.

[2924] Right?

[2925] I would assume.

[2926] Probably.

[2927] And at some point they were like, all right, we've got to ship this thing.

[2928] It almost makes me wonder that if they backed off doing this for Axis game, and then the XCOM game went totally sideways, and now they're like, fuck it, put that game back on.

[2929] Like, we've got to.

[2930] I mean either way it's like this – it gives them the freedom to do kind of whatever the hell they want with that shooter because they are covering – I feel like they're covering that hardcore base.

[2931] The people that have the relationship with XCOM already would be pleased with this announcement.

[2932] This would be the new XCOM game that that crowd would want.

[2933] And then the first -person shooter lets 2K potentially take a crack at modernizing it and making it a more widely mainstream property.

[2934] You know what, though?

[2935] The degree of the rejoicing over this announcement has not even approached the degree of the outrage over that last announcement.

[2936] You're not even fucking close.

[2937] That's why I'm saying the only way they could have done this better is if they had handled it at the same time.

[2938] Because it would have stopped...

[2939] you would not have been able to have complained at all about the first -person shooter.

[2940] Yeah, that's true.

[2941] Like, oh, there's a first -person shooter.

[2942] I don't want that, but I do want this other game that's being made, so I don't even have to think about it.

[2943] And if you're tying them to get them together in a reboot universe or in some kind of storyline way, then maybe at that point people are like, well, you know, maybe I'll check out the first -person shooter because, you know, maybe it'll have some interesting stuff because I like Hexcom.

[2944] That's kind of what I'm thinking right now.

[2945] Yeah.

[2946] It's like, oh, yeah.

[2947] Well, whatever.

[2948] I mean, you know, I think that first -person shooter looks kind of cool.

[2949] I thought the demo they gave last E3 was pretty impressive.

[2950] Most E3s have not seen that game.

[2951] Like, it's changed a lot.

[2952] Yeah, I didn't see this last year, but I saw it the year before.

[2953] That looked neat.

[2954] Like, the combat is starting to look a little Mass Effect -esque.

[2955] Like, you've got guys that you order around with you.

[2956] stuff.

[2957] I kind of just don't know what to expect.

[2958] I've seen a couple of different versions of it, so I'm just kind of confused in my head as to what that game actually is right now.

[2959] My impression of it was very mission -based.

[2960] Like, you know, kind of missions spoken off of the central hub.

[2961] which is your, like, kind of G -Man headquarters.

[2962] Yeah, yeah.

[2963] A lot of, like, upgrade stuff going on.

[2964] Research still in there.

[2965] Like, researching.

[2966] Because that's kind of all I want from an XCOM game is do autopsies and research and make a jet.

[2967] Develop alien weapons and stuff.

[2968] And then when you go out on your missions, you've got these other guys with you that you can kind of, like, tell, hey, go over there and get behind cover there.

[2969] Right.

[2970] Attack this guy.

[2971] Mass Effect kind of stuff.

[2972] Yeah, like, kind of interesting enemy -esque thing.

[2973] Do they still have, like, the black, like, shadowy aliens?

[2974] I don't remember.

[2975] You saw it on the demo with me this past time.

[2976] I feel like I remember.

[2977] Did you see it too?

[2978] Yeah.

[2979] I think I remember some kind of monolithic, big, blocky -looking, weird alien stuff.

[2980] But the goo stuff might be in there too.

[2981] That's still, yeah.

[2982] They've evolved that aesthetic from just the weird black goo.

[2983] There's a bit more structure, and there's a lot of geometric kind of shapes.

[2984] Well, also humans being taken over by the stuff as well, and it seemed like kind of mutating from there.

[2985] I thought some of the aesthetic stuff of that shooter looked cool at E3.

[2986] Yeah, it looked neat.

[2987] It seems like it's been kind of a bumpy road for that game.

[2988] Just trying to find their footing on that.

[2989] I hope it turns out.

[2990] Man, I cannot wait to see more about this Fear Axis game.

[2991] Yeah, it sounds like the game's got some of the similar permadeath, like I was reading some of the stuff today.

[2992] It won't be as hardcore, but it seems like it's going to retain a lot of the elements that people are looking for.

[2993] But those dudes know their way around in a strategy game, so that's a great announcement.

[2994] That's just good times for everyone.

[2995] Great.

[2996] Yeah, nothing that I can't feel good about there.

[2997] It's a feel -good announcement.

[2998] As far as I'm concerned, yeah.

[2999] Patrick, what's going on with Kaz Harai?

[3000] Does he run Sony?

[3001] Not yet.

[3002] No?

[3003] He will eventually.

[3004] Okay.

[3005] The rumor has been forever that he's going to take over as president and eventually be CEO.

[3006] There was a newspaper in Japan that reported that it was going to happen right away, and then Sony was like, nope.

[3007] But it really just sounded like, oh, we're just not ready to talk about it.

[3008] Yeah, he's always been in line.

[3009] He's been operating the only profitable division, or one of the only other, I think the film division also does really well for them, but one of the only profitable divisions within Sony, and Howard Stringer has not.

[3010] performed at all.

[3011] Exactly set the world on fire.

[3012] No, he's just done a very poor job of unifying the country or the country.

[3013] The country of Sony.

[3014] Well, yeah, they're trying to unify all their branches and they thought by bringing in sort of an outsider that would work and has not really.

[3015] Sony as a bigger company is not really like the unsaleable juggernaut.

[3016] No, they're actually doing very poorly.

[3017] There's a lot of money on TVs.

[3018] There was an interesting stringer profile recently.

[3019] Yeah, I read that one.

[3020] Is that Forbes?

[3021] Yeah, I think so, yeah.

[3022] Yeah, they're just talking about not selling all these fucking TVs.

[3023] Like you're stuck with this TV division that you can't make any money off of.

[3024] All their TVs had a 20 % markup over all the competing brands for so long.

[3025] It sounds like they want to address that stuff and just getting their pipeline up to a point where they can do that without just taking a bath on it has been crazy.

[3026] I bet Vizio fucking killed them on that stuff.

[3027] And then, of course, all the stuff that happened in Japan definitely didn't help.

[3028] So...

[3029] And the PS3 stuff, like, I mean...

[3030] Oh, yeah.

[3031] You know, Kudaragi took the hit for that.

[3032] And now Harai has, you know, sort of run the business unit.

[3033] But he got elevated through natural divisional mergers to, like, he does more of...

[3034] Like, he does PlayStation, but also does, like, the bloggy.

[3035] He does some of their other consumer electronics that, like, I guess he's done well with.

[3036] And he's, like, a really personable guy.

[3037] Pretty well -liked, so it's...

[3038] Inevitably, he will eventually just take over the company.

[3039] Is it clear who's going to step up and run SCE?

[3040] I think the guy who's running that now is Andrew House.

[3041] That's who's running that.

[3042] Is that just America?

[3043] Because the top -level management is in Japan, right?

[3044] Yeah, I'm not exactly sure on what their successor pattern is.

[3045] I want to say he was out of Europe.

[3046] Yeah, I think so.

[3047] But I think he is the one basically running that unit.

[3048] But I'm not totally...

[3049] I'm not 100 % sure on that.

[3050] Hurray eventually.

[3051] Ridge Racer will take over the company.

[3052] Be in every Sony product.

[3053] They're going to just build it right in.

[3054] Just open a Galaxy loading screen, and then...

[3055] What's that?

[3056] Your TV runs Angry Birds?

[3057] Our TV runs Ridge Racer, bitch.

[3058] Fuck, I would buy a Sony TV if it fucking had Ridge Racer built in.

[3059] The first one?

[3060] Yeah.

[3061] One track, just here you go.

[3062] I bet the TV could run the first Ridge Racer at this point.

[3063] All right.

[3064] Well, good to know.

[3065] Just keep staring at your phone.

[3066] Anything else happen with Microsoft?

[3067] They're showing Sesame TV.

[3068] What?

[3069] I don't know.

[3070] It's like a Sesame TV shows you can interact with with the Kinect.

[3071] Guys, remember when Bethesda got the Fallout?

[3072] They bought Fallout from Interplay.

[3073] In 2004.

[3074] In 2004.

[3075] And that was the worst thing that ever happened and they ruined Fallout.

[3076] Except that Interplay.

[3077] They retained the license to make a Fallout MMO under terms that they would start full production.

[3078] Van Buren forever.

[3079] Fuck all this other stuff.

[3080] A Fallout MMO by July 2009 or something.

[3081] And then they blew past that and Bethesda said, you have to give us that back now.

[3082] And they said, no, no, we don't.

[3083] We're making it.

[3084] We're going to make it.

[3085] And so we'll have to sue you now because that's how this goes.

[3086] And so today it has been announced that rights have.

[3087] returned to, or I guess have finally been granted to Bethesda the Interplay Fallout MMO.

[3088] So they had to stop producing the MMO.

[3089] It's not mentioned why, but it's just like, eh, ZeniMax is going to give them $2 million.

[3090] Sure.

[3091] It's not disclosed for any reason.

[3092] I think it's just to get them to, like, guys, just fuss up.

[3093] You're not making this MMO.

[3094] I know you're funneling some money to this.

[3095] We'll give you $2 million if you admit that you're not going to make this MMO.

[3096] Well, then they had a separate suit against the company that was making the MMO because they weren't providing substantial proof that they were in full production and then also that they had to prove that they weren't just capitalizing on what Bethesda has done for the license to start taking advantage of it.

[3097] Interplay was saying, no, no, this is the original Fallout aesthetic, whereas Bethesda was arguing, actually, what we've done with it is what you're...

[3098] copping to and it's all weird.

[3099] Oh, the idea that they're building off of the Bethesda version of Fallout, not the original Interplay.

[3100] Interplays are being like, no, no, no, this is, you know, the original Wastelands.

[3101] There's a couple of screens that leaked from Fallout Online and it looks like Bethesda was doing.

[3102] Does this, to you, does this indicate anything on Bethesda's part other than clear intent to make a Fallout MMO or is this just like...

[3103] Let's get all those rights in here and figure it out after the fact.

[3104] It tied up a bunch of other things.

[3105] They don't make any money off of Fallout 1, 2, or Fallout Tactics.

[3106] Those convert at the end of next December in 2013.

[3107] They don't have any merchandising rights, so they can't do anything with toys and all that stuff.

[3108] I don't know how far that extends, but you would assume if they wanted to do a movie or something, they would have to broker that with Interplay.

[3109] All that stuff transfers at the end of December 2013.

[3110] No. So it's not immediately just saying, all right, we're going to get to work on that Fallout MMO now.

[3111] Also, you think from, like, you know, even if they weren't, they couldn't find proof of copyright infringement that, like, the clusterfuck for Bethesda of having to deal with a separate, similar -ish Fallout online game that they had no control over is just like this PR nightmare you can't even imagine.

[3112] The cycle of the way you're talking about that game would fall in line with, you know, inevitably another Fallout game.

[3113] from them.

[3114] So I think they just wanted to get rid of it.

[3115] And they knew the interplay was just straight up lying.

[3116] It was never going to really happen.

[3117] Or if it did happen, it would probably not be of sufficient quality that would harm the Fallout IP.

[3118] So it would probably make sense for them to just drop some money and make it go away.

[3119] So is there interplay now?

[3120] Yeah.

[3121] I don't know.

[3122] What is it?

[3123] There's still, like, they still own, like, the Earthworm Jim license.

[3124] Blackthorn?

[3125] The Descent license.

[3126] Like, their Descent WiiWare, they claim, is still coming out when I decided to check on it, like, three months ago.

[3127] Oh.

[3128] The Descent license.

[3129] The interplay didn't seem to get shut down so those licenses can go somewhere else.

[3130] Someone could actually make some damn games with that stuff.

[3131] Descent was a great game.

[3132] They were Fade to Black and, uh...

[3133] Flashback, right?

[3134] That was Interplay?

[3135] That was Eidos.

[3136] Or U .S. Gold.

[3137] Oh, maybe U .S. Gold.

[3138] They put out all the Black Isle games, like Planscape Torment and Baldur's Gate.

[3139] Was that Baldur's Gate under Interplay?

[3140] Yeah.

[3141] Interplay put out some of the most revered games of all time.

[3142] For a good long time, the Interplay brand.

[3143] They should almost just sell it.

[3144] Someone who will use it in a cool retro way or something at this point, because I just don't even know what Interplay is.

[3145] It's Delphine software.

[3146] Is that a thing?

[3147] They did a lot of the rotoscoping.

[3148] They did Flashback.

[3149] Wasn't it a French company?

[3150] Yeah, I think so.

[3151] They did that, and I think they did the sequel also.

[3152] Did they do Out of This World?

[3153] No. Out of This World was Eric Chahi.

[3154] And that was it?

[3155] Yeah.

[3156] Okay.

[3157] Yeah, I always, for years, I thought that those were all the same people, but they're totally not.

[3158] Patrick, anything else newsworthy?

[3159] How's rotoscoping doing?

[3160] Huge.

[3161] It's coming back.

[3162] It's finally coming back.

[3163] Connect for Windows on February 1st.

[3164] When's Windows 8 come out?

[3165] I think it's into the year, isn't it?

[3166] Yeah, it is this year.

[3167] Beta soon.

[3168] I think beta in February, I thought.

[3169] That sounds about right.

[3170] Yeah, probably RTM in the fall.

[3171] The Connect for Windows, I guess, is a different hardware.

[3172] Well, you'd want a smaller device.

[3173] I think it's improved.

[3174] I think it's actually a better, yeah.

[3175] You'd want a different lens that can work at desk lengths.

[3176] And also they have medical applications and things they're looking into.

[3177] So I think it's for more of that stuff.

[3178] That could be cool.

[3179] Be like two feet away, not eight.

[3180] Like two more full iterations of Kinect, it's probably going to be amazing.

[3181] Whatever ends up in the next box is probably going to be three to five, maybe 20 years from now.

[3182] But the concept itself has got enormous merit.

[3183] It kind of seems inevitable.

[3184] The one that they put out to me has always felt like it was not ready for conception.

[3185] It's kind of proof of concept.

[3186] But you've got to put it out there to have a reason to iterate on it.

[3187] I guess so, yeah.

[3188] 18 million, man. Something to be said for offering quality experience to the consumer.

[3189] Yeah, not making people hate the technology.

[3190] They sold 18 million.

[3191] Apparently, people don't care.

[3192] You've got to look at the second round sales.

[3193] I think all of us do.

[3194] Every time I go home and I see the people that are those 18 million, they don't.

[3195] It works for what they play in Central.

[3196] They don't understand what a Wii Motion Plus would do or why it would benefit them.

[3197] I know people who got them for Christmas.

[3198] their three -year -old can't play Fruit Ninja because it won't recognize them.

[3199] Nothing they do.

[3200] It's still not perfect.

[3201] I'm not arguing that it's ideal at all, but I think it's largely been a success regardless of whether it was ready for prime time.

[3202] So I think that's it.

[3203] No, no, Xbox 720.

[3204] Sorry, guys.

[3205] Of course there wasn't going to be anything like that.

[3206] It's Xbox 1080, though.

[3207] Stop listening to reports that there were going to be two new machines announced at E3.

[3208] Those are crazy people.

[3209] But if you want to know more about what's going on at CES, Tested .com is there in Vegas right now.

[3210] In their pimp -ass suite.

[3211] In their giant pimp -ass suite.

[3212] Freaking leathery couch.

[3213] That thing looks real nice.

[3214] Holy crap.

[3215] Go check them out.

[3216] They're doing all sorts of cool stuff.

[3217] They're doing nightly live shows and whatnot.

[3218] Drew's out there with them.

[3219] They've got a ton of dudes in the big suite.

[3220] Slim bags or something.

[3221] Roll them out.

[3222] They've got a posse.

[3223] As big as that suite looks, remember, there are like ten dudes.

[3224] Having to crash there somehow.

[3225] I don't even know how that part works.

[3226] He sleeps under the bar.

[3227] Yeah, they will be bringing you all sorts of crazy CES coverage.

[3228] So if consumer electronics are your thing, check them out.

[3229] All right.

[3230] If consumer electronics are your thing.

[3231] Love that shit.

[3232] CD players are dope.

[3233] If you like printer cartridges.

[3234] I'm only into medical grade electronics.

[3235] No, I don't like printer cartridges.

[3236] I printed like six things, and my printer says like, no, it's out of ink, man. Black and white laser printer.

[3237] Last printer you don't ever need.

[3238] Yep.

[3239] That's it.

[3240] Yeah.

[3241] If you like tech.

[3242] Does that sound better?

[3243] Yeah, it does.

[3244] I like gizmos.

[3245] Gadgets?

[3246] I love gadgets.

[3247] If you like gigas and gizmos, go on over to tested .com.

[3248] Or coffee.

[3249] Yes, gizmos.

[3250] Use the hashtag.

[3251] Tested Gizmos.

[3252] Make sure you let Will Smith know.

[3253] Gizmos .tested .com.

[3254] Go check them out.

[3255] Be sure to ask Will Smith on Twitter what his favorite gadget of the show is.

[3256] Also, welcome to IRF.

[3257] Yeah.

[3258] While you're at it.

[3259] New releases for this week.

[3260] Choplifter HD.

[3261] I love the original Choplifter.

[3262] Have you played this new one at all?

[3263] No. Okay.

[3264] Choplifter on the Sega Master System also pretty good.

[3265] I bet this game will not be very good.

[3266] I hate to say it, but here's to hoping, I guess.

[3267] If there are more than 64 dudes to rescue, they fucked up.

[3268] What if there are exactly 64?

[3269] Then good on them, good on them, faithful recreation.

[3270] Right.

[3271] All right, guys.

[3272] Let me do some emails real quick here.

[3273] All right.

[3274] Nice to meet you.

[3275] Bombcast at giantbomb .com.

[3276] First one comes in from John Renish, who works at Ubisoft Toronto.

[3277] He says, Hello, Bombcasters.

[3278] I recently moved to Canada, and the GameStop stores don't sell used games.

[3279] Instead, they started selling recycled games.

[3280] Is this happening in the States also?

[3281] Personally, I find the signage saying, Go green, buy recycled to be deceptive.

[3282] He included a picture here, and I'm going to turn it here so you guys can see it, where it's got a green label, like where the usual GameStop label would be, except instead of saying used, it says recycled.

[3283] And in this image, it is sitting right next to another copy of the same game, but it's used instead.

[3284] What?

[3285] So they are...

[3286] They sell both?

[3287] So they sell both used and recycled.

[3288] I bet the used copy came out of the U .S. somehow, and maybe it's just a...

[3289] But it's the same price on both.

[3290] Maybe...

[3291] Maybe recycled is just a better – like maybe it works better in French.

[3292] Like bad translation or something?

[3293] Maybe just the term recycled plays better in Canada.

[3294] But this notion of like bilingual – Because like used would mean it's worth – like it's used up maybe.

[3295] What the fuck does that even mean?

[3296] Like what does recycled – Used means dirty.

[3297] Does recycled mean that someone threw it away and they pulled it out of a garbage can?

[3298] Like to get to the – Maybe.

[3299] The garbage dump and they went, no, no, no, no. But he says in the email that there's a sign that says go green.

[3300] Yeah, the notion that you are like being environmentally friendly by buying.

[3301] Is the tag on the game green?

[3302] Yeah.

[3303] So maybe that's just, but is the tag on the used games green?

[3304] No. I think it's intentional.

[3305] Dude, it's absolutely intentional.

[3306] They're totally trying to make it seem like it's earth friendly and green.

[3307] Is it next to an organic game as well?

[3308] That's some fucked up marketing.

[3309] I only buy no free -range video games.

[3310] If you lack the capacity for human feeling, then that is a marketing masterstroke.

[3311] Cruelty -free video games.

[3312] That is unbelievable.

[3313] No L .A. Noire.

[3314] Definitely no Dark Souls.

[3315] Next email comes in from...

[3316] What the fuck is that?

[3317] Oh, my God.

[3318] I haven't been into a GameStop in the States long enough.

[3319] I need to go and see if this is happening here or not.

[3320] Go in and ask them, hey, did you guys need to recycle games?

[3321] Do you guys recycle your games?

[3322] Do you know where I can recycle games?

[3323] I have a bunch of games.

[3324] Is it fucking scratch discs?

[3325] It's just like, you know, you play the first half.

[3326] It's still fun.

[3327] It's still fun.

[3328] It's still fun.

[3329] Do you ever feel a sense of relief when the week's image selects itself?

[3330] Like it apparently just did?

[3331] No, because I usually forget by the time I'm actually making it and I just go with some other image.

[3332] I'll forget this one.

[3333] Yeah.

[3334] Recycled games, you guys.

[3335] Evil and genius.

[3336] Is it just only copies of E .T.?

[3337] See, to me, recycled game makes me think like...

[3338] This used to be another game.

[3339] Right.

[3340] And we took a bunch of copies of this other game, melted them down.

[3341] I have to know the answer.

[3342] Next week I'll have an answer to this.

[3343] All right, Patrick.

[3344] I'm going to look into this.

[3345] Rattle on some doors here.

[3346] Next email comes in from McP.

[3347] A question about wagering for steak dinners.

[3348] So obviously a topic that we are experts on, I guess.

[3349] A friend and I made two bets with each other last year, each for a steak dinner.

[3350] I was victorious in one bet and lost the other.

[3351] Question, do these steak dinners simply cancel out, or should both steak dinners be honored?

[3352] I believe the steak dinners should be eaten while my cheap -ass friend thinks we're all evened up.

[3353] Can you please offer your guidance on this important issue as we have a steak dinner riding on your answer?

[3354] Go get some fucking steaks, man. What's the point?

[3355] If no one eats any steak out of this, nobody wins.

[3356] Yeah, then you both lost.

[3357] Wouldn't you rather you both win?

[3358] Yeah.

[3359] If you only go out to one steak dinner and just both pay your own stuff or whatever, that's probably enough.

[3360] But ideally, you should go to two steak dinners and then one pays for one and then another.

[3361] Or just come up with one more bed that's double or nothing.

[3362] Yeah.

[3363] And then you have to eat two steaks.

[3364] You know what I'm saying?

[3365] Raise.

[3366] Go on.

[3367] The dinner.

[3368] Okay.

[3369] Yeah.

[3370] Yeah.

[3371] Don Pepe Jr. writes in.

[3372] Of course he does.

[3373] Jeff, this question is for you.

[3374] As one of the leading scholars in the Blitz field today, he was hoping you could shed some insight on a question that has haunted him for the past 10 years.

[3375] For those who aren't familiar with Blitz, normally after a touchdown, you could select to go for a conversion or take an automatic extra free point.

[3376] There was a single instance where I thought I saw the automatic free point attempt failed.

[3377] Is that even possible, or were my eyes playing tricks on me?

[3378] Yeah, totally.

[3379] Yeah, the automatic extra point can fail.

[3380] It is an attempt, and it's governed by a lot of the same rules that try to keep the scores close, that kind of rubber band AI stuff that is a hallmark of all the kind of midway sports games and stuff.

[3381] So if you're way, way, way, you usually only see it if you are super far ahead of the other team, it'll fail because you're so far ahead that it's just like the dice roll gets weighted further and further against you the further you are ahead.

[3382] All right.

[3383] So, yeah, that will happen.

[3384] It happens in the new one as well.

[3385] So confirmed.

[3386] Excellent.

[3387] Thank you, Jeff.

[3388] Dan.

[3389] This is going to be our last email.

[3390] Dan from Denver, Colorado.

[3391] Denver Dan says, Hey, Bombcast.

[3392] I got the chance to finally play Pac -Man Battle Royale at an arcade bar last night, and it was super fun.

[3393] After the X -Men arcade machine, it was the most popular game in the place with tons of people hanging out around it, waiting for a chance to play.

[3394] Have you ever heard anything about an XBLA or PSN release for this game?

[3395] Online play would be nice, but the local multiplayer mode would be great for parties.

[3396] Just throw it on the background, and everyone would want at least one try.

[3397] Have we heard anything more about that?

[3398] No, there's an iOS trial of one of the modes.

[3399] Yeah.

[3400] But that's it.

[3401] Yeah, I want them to.

[3402] I think it'll eventually happen.

[3403] It would seem weird for Namco to develop a new Pac -Man game in 2010 or 2011.

[3404] And monetize that shit.

[3405] Yeah.

[3406] And, yeah, I mean, I guess I get why you would make an arcade game, but it seems like an experience that translates pretty easily.

[3407] So I would hope so, sir.

[3408] But I guess we'll let you know when we know.

[3409] And that's it for emails.

[3410] That is?

[3411] That is.

[3412] Thanks to everyone who wrote in.

[3413] Bombcast at giantbomb .com is the address.

[3414] Gentlemen, that brings us to the end of the show.

[3415] Any closing thoughts?

[3416] Vinny Caravella?

[3417] Recycled games.

[3418] Recycled games.

[3419] Recycled games.

[3420] Really bothers me. Patrick, you'll come back next week and we'll figure out how they're recycling their games.

[3421] Jeff, good to have you back in the office.

[3422] Yeah.

[3423] It's good to be back.

[3424] I think.

[3425] You say it with a crazy glare in your eyes.

[3426] I think.

[3427] I don't know.

[3428] What the fuck?

[3429] What could they mean?

[3430] We'll find out next week.

[3431] Is it a cardboard sleeve?

[3432] Is it not the same?

[3433] No, it looked exactly the...

[3434] Leave this to the news hound.

[3435] Fuck.

[3436] And that's it.

[3437] So we'll see you guys next Tuesday.

[3438] Pizza, pizza.

[3439] With another edition of the Giant Bobcast.