Giant Bombcast 09-06-2011

[0] Hey, everyone.

[1] It's Tuesday, September the 6th, 2011, and you are listening to The Giant Bombcast.

[2] I'm Ryan Davis.

[3] Joining me today at the table, in the room, in the building, in the basement, one tired -ass Vinny Caravella.

[4] All of me is tired.

[5] The whole thing.

[6] Just tired.

[7] That's a cup of water.

[8] There's not even coffee in that.

[9] I already had coffee.

[10] Yeah.

[11] I love a three -day weekend.

[12] Yeah.

[13] I hate a four -day work week.

[14] Especially when that work week ends in the Whiskey Media Big Live Live Show Live, which it does this week.

[15] Just in general.

[16] Four days.

[17] Five days is hardly enough to get done.

[18] Yeah.

[19] Four days.

[20] Woo!

[21] So you need a three -day weekend.

[22] Does it help that this is like one of the busiest weeks for releases so far this year?

[23] That does not help.

[24] It makes it way easier, right?

[25] Yeah, totally.

[26] So, yeah.

[27] So this work week becomes a day.

[28] Because we have Thursday and Friday set up.

[29] We have today to kind of make sure we get everything done for the week.

[30] Everyone's just getting their bearings back today.

[31] And then people are out of the office tomorrow.

[32] It's crazy this week.

[33] It's a nightmare.

[34] It's crazy.

[35] Jeff Grissman, hello.

[36] He's part of this nightmare.

[37] I'm part of this out -of -this -office nightmare because I will not be here most of Wednesday and Thursday because I have to go see games that are not coming out this week.

[38] Never mind the five or six games that are coming out this week.

[39] Got to go see two more.

[40] Could just worry about those later instead.

[41] No. I don't worry about them now.

[42] Right now.

[43] Yeah.

[44] Brad Shoemaker, not worried about anything other than...

[45] Too much pickle.

[46] I think I was just assaulted by that lunch.

[47] You assaulted that lunch.

[48] I saw you would throw down that sandwich pretty quickly there.

[49] Well, I thought you had left the building.

[50] No, no. I was like, oh, you must be out going to the store or something.

[51] I have time to make and eat this lunch.

[52] No, I am here to make a podcast go.

[53] And then I made it, and I saw you were here, and then I had to eat it.

[54] Yeah.

[55] In five minutes.

[56] It's the end of that lovely story.

[57] Cool story.

[58] Pickle.

[59] Ate that sandwich, shoved that pickle inside of you.

[60] Pickle's sloshing around in there somewhere.

[61] Too much pickle for one man. You might have a case against that.

[62] Vinny Caravella, how do you feel about pickles?

[63] I love a pickle.

[64] How do you weigh in on pickles?

[65] I don't like the sweet or sour.

[66] I think the sweet pickle.

[67] You have to get that out of the way first.

[68] You can't have a sweet pickle.

[69] I'm kind of with you.

[70] What's a sweet pickle?

[71] It's sweet.

[72] Is that like a relish?

[73] No, it's, I mean.

[74] Well, there are actual names, right?

[75] Like a dill pickle is the sour one, and then.

[76] Are you going to bread and butters?

[77] Yeah, I think that's it.

[78] I don't know.

[79] There's a wide variety of pickles.

[80] There's one type of pickle.

[81] Because you can also just pickle anything.

[82] We call them pickles, but they're pickled cucumbers.

[83] You can.

[84] You can pickle a foot if you want to.

[85] That's what people do.

[86] You're breaking open this pickle conspiracy.

[87] My mom has pickled figs before.

[88] A lot of pickled carrots and radishes and stuff.

[89] Pickled okra.

[90] In Japan, that kind of thing.

[91] And what does that process entail?

[92] Pickling.

[93] Brining, I think.

[94] It's a spice mix and also a brine.

[95] Because you don't pickle a turkey when you brine it.

[96] No, you're just brining it.

[97] You can, in fact.

[98] Well, yeah, you're not pickling it, but you do brine it.

[99] You're right.

[100] Ask me anything about the pickling process.

[101] I don't know anything about the pickling process.

[102] Just know that you can pickle different stuff.

[103] When did they invent the pickling process?

[104] All I wanted to know, it was 1172.

[105] So you do know.

[106] It's just in there.

[107] It's just one of those fun facts.

[108] Whoa!

[109] How did that even just tumble out of me?

[110] Suddenly I know when they first perfected the pickling process.

[111] Can you pickle meats?

[112] Sure.

[113] Can you?

[114] Why not?

[115] I don't know.

[116] I mean, I don't know.

[117] Why not?

[118] You said they pickle a foot.

[119] Yeah.

[120] Why not?

[121] Yeah, pickled pig's feet.

[122] Yeah.

[123] Yeah?

[124] Pickling to a pickled egg.

[125] That's a thing people eat.

[126] Yeah.

[127] That's not meat.

[128] But no, but I'm saying you can pickle a pig's foot.

[129] You can pickle an egg.

[130] These are standard bar, fair, awful foods that...

[131] Eggs are meat -ish, insane people.

[132] They're meat -like.

[133] They could be meat, given enough time.

[134] They're proto -meat.

[135] Future meat.

[136] What do I use?

[137] Pickling.

[138] They're pre -meat.

[139] Yep.

[140] Man, all I want to know was how you felt about pickles, and then I was going to ask you about video games, and we had to get into this whole...

[141] I like pickles.

[142] I don't claim to be a pickle king or anything like that, but I enjoy a pickle.

[143] Well, there's only one of those.

[144] Yeah.

[145] Guys, I don't like pickles.

[146] I just figured I'd lay that out there.

[147] That's okay.

[148] I want to get that out there.

[149] That's okay.

[150] I think they're gross.

[151] I'm pretty...

[152] I'm pro -pickle.

[153] I'm situational about my pickles.

[154] Yeah, they have their place.

[155] Yeah.

[156] I don't always want a pickle on my sandwich.

[157] I hear you.

[158] I don't.

[159] What?

[160] Vinny Caravella, you came into this office this Saturday, this past Saturday, and you played a crazy game with Dave Snyder.

[161] Well, first I came in to do some work.

[162] Right.

[163] And then once that turned south, I was like, well, I'm not going to get any of this done.

[164] And was Dave also here for the purpose of doing other work?

[165] Dave was doing work.

[166] You guys were both doing things other than streaming a game.

[167] I was setting up a computer, and the migration process on that computer from the old Mac Pro to the new Mac Pro said it was going to take about three hours.

[168] So I was stuck then as the computer locks you out to migrate for three hours.

[169] And Dave was here.

[170] And I was like, what do you want to do?

[171] Three hours.

[172] What do you want to do, Dave?

[173] We've got three hours.

[174] And he was like, well, let's just go play some games.

[175] And I said, we're going to play some games.

[176] We might as well make some content out of it.

[177] Put some games out there.

[178] And he had told me that Daggerfall was free and said, let's take a look at that.

[179] That's the Elder Scrolls Daggerfall.

[180] Yes.

[181] Elder Scrolls 2, right?

[182] Elder Scrolls 2, which I had never played.

[183] So we took a look at that for about two hours.

[184] Solid two -hour chunk.

[185] We didn't do well.

[186] No. We got past the first starter dungeon in two hours.

[187] We died.

[188] So many times.

[189] So many times on the first rat.

[190] So was Morrowind your first exposure to the Elder Scrolls?

[191] I really liked Morrowind.

[192] Okay.

[193] This is different.

[194] Yeah.

[195] How so?

[196] Well, first of all...

[197] I mean, this is like non -polygonal.

[198] No, I think...

[199] Or is it just very simple polygonal?

[200] I think it's sort of like Doom era 3D graphics, right?

[201] Yeah, there's some mix, I think.

[202] I mean, I guess that's what I mean, is that there's walls, but you're dealing with just still a lot of sprites.

[203] Yeah.

[204] This is kind of weird.

[205] I don't remember this from Morrowind, but man, it could be true.

[206] You have to hold down a key to swing your sword and then use the mouse to swing the sword.

[207] So you swipe...

[208] The mouse left to right to swing the sword left to right or top to bottom to swing overhead and stuff like that.

[209] Skyward sword is where it happened.

[210] Bottom to up for a skyward pickle.

[211] And then we did not realize that for a long time while the rat just decimated, killed us over and over.

[212] The rat knew something you did not.

[213] So not only did we die on the first rat, we lost our character that we had rolled for about.

[214] I don't know, let's just say a half hour rolling that character because we had not saved it yet.

[215] It was a mess.

[216] And so then at the end of two hours after we successfully made it through the starter dungeon, a prompt came up and said, hey, good on you.

[217] You made it through the starter dungeon.

[218] You're now ready to enter the world of Daggerfall.

[219] And that's when we stopped.

[220] Oh, God.

[221] Like, fuck this world of Daggerfall.

[222] Holy crap.

[223] Plus, since Dave and I were just doing it together and nobody else was here, The audio got real loud, and the screams of the skeletons were so loud.

[224] Because there's not a lot of music, but then it just gets really loud, and I couldn't get up and just be like, oh, I'll turn that down.

[225] So we were just haunted by screams of skeletons.

[226] But it was fun.

[227] So what was your takeaway from two hours with Daggerfall?

[228] I'm actually kind of looking forward to Skyrim.

[229] Yeah.

[230] Let's see what you guys did.

[231] Like now you are?

[232] After that, your fault?

[233] Yeah.

[234] Now I know what you guys are all about.

[235] Cut out Morrowind and Oblivion and be like, let's see where you took it from here.

[236] Right.

[237] If this was my last point of reference on the Elder Scrolls.

[238] Let's see where we've gone.

[239] Maybe you guys can actually pull something off this time.

[240] Also, there's some pretty sick FMV in that game.

[241] I saw some of that.

[242] I turned it on thinking, what the fuck are these guys doing?

[243] It's Saturday.

[244] Yeah.

[245] Of course, there I was playing Driver and working on a review on Saturday.

[246] But, yeah.

[247] Yeah, straight up just dudes acting with a torch and telling me about Daggerfall.

[248] Well, sonny.

[249] So we had to install DOSBox to get that going.

[250] That was fun and all sorts of craziness.

[251] That's always a fun process.

[252] So I did that.

[253] And then after that, then Dave was kind of sticking around as we continued to migrate that Mac.

[254] which wound up failing with less than a minute to go.

[255] Yeah, great.

[256] We sat there and it failed.

[257] I didn't know what to do at that point.

[258] Finally, about 10, this is about, I got there maybe around 1 or 2 or something.

[259] So it was about 10 o 'clock at night.

[260] Forget it is what I said.

[261] You're like, oh, heck to this.

[262] Heck to this.

[263] Dang.

[264] I'm just going to take the drive out of my computer and put it in this new computer.

[265] after installing the combo update, which has the entire package of drivers for all the Mac Pros.

[266] Because apparently when you just do the update, it just downloads the drivers appropriate to your computer, but you can manually just download a combo update.

[267] Just give me everything.

[268] Give me everything because I'm going to put this drive in a new computer.

[269] Did that.

[270] That took about 20 minutes.

[271] And then I left.

[272] In a huff.

[273] Then I did some more stuff.

[274] You stomp your feet.

[275] And then I left.

[276] Then I had to start installing the Final Cut and all that.

[277] Then I left.

[278] So how's the new computer?

[279] I think it's fine.

[280] Yeah.

[281] I don't know.

[282] It's not acting crazy the way the old one was?

[283] The old one wasn't that crazy.

[284] It was pretty crazy.

[285] It wasn't that crazy.

[286] It was starting to act real crazy there at the end.

[287] The computer might not have the right drivers.

[288] Who knows?

[289] All I need to do is get through this week.

[290] Yeah.

[291] Check spreadsheets.

[292] That's all I need to do this week.

[293] You got a spreadsheet sitting in front of you, in fact.

[294] I brought my work into this room with me because I haven't been able to put it down.

[295] Time is slipping away from me. Yeah.

[296] Soon we'll all be dead.

[297] Finally.

[298] Sweet release.

[299] Did you find any time on your Sunday or Monday to play any games?

[300] I did.

[301] I played a bunch of The Witcher 2.

[302] How's that going for you?

[303] It's great.

[304] We'll do the Vinnie Caravella Witcher check -in here.

[305] So I'm on The Witcher 2.

[306] Do we have music for that?

[307] No. It's a little weird because I've started Deus Ex, the human revolution.

[308] And I really want to play that game.

[309] But now I've got The Witcher 2 as well to kind of wrap up.

[310] But they're kind of similar in kind of that RPG way of like, well, you're going to sink a lot of time into this.

[311] You're going to read a lot of text and do all this stuff.

[312] So I feel like I kind of can't play them.

[313] You've got to make crazy choices.

[314] Can't play them at the same time.

[315] It's pretty hard swings going from the dark fantasy of The Witcher 2 to futuristic Montreal.

[316] Sure, but I think the main conceits are kind of the same.

[317] You're right.

[318] You're going to make some choices.

[319] You're going to role play somebody and do that stuff.

[320] So they're kind of the same.

[321] I can't play them at the same time.

[322] So now I'm just trying to get through The Witcher 2, which is kind of odd because they're going to release that big Witcher 2 2 .0 update.

[323] in end of September, I think it is.

[324] What does that do?

[325] So there's just a big kind of content update that's going to be free for The Witcher 2, which is going to add a couple of new modes.

[326] It's going to actually put a new tutorial at the top of the game.

[327] Oh, God, it needs that.

[328] Yeah, so they're patching that stuff in, some technical enhancements, some other stuff.

[329] Those dudes are not afraid to go in and fully retool, like, okay, yeah, we put out The Witcher, but now we're going to put out this other edition that changes a lot of significant shit about this game.

[330] More boobs.

[331] Including more boobs.

[332] There's some boobs and some lower lady parts all over that game.

[333] Oh, yeah.

[334] Witcher 2 gets real booby.

[335] Yeah.

[336] And lower lady parts.

[337] Boob city.

[338] Major boobage.

[339] Yeah.

[340] It is destination boob city for sure.

[341] So I kind of, you know, and they're going to make all the DLC free.

[342] I think they're going to do that.

[343] So it kind of makes me want to wait until this package comes out.

[344] I can't wait.

[345] You're already in so deep.

[346] You're really going to even benefit from it.

[347] Yeah.

[348] You have mods installed.

[349] It'll probably break.

[350] Don't break my mind.

[351] Just get it out of your life.

[352] So, yeah, there's that.

[353] I'm in a really weird situation, very analogous to yours.

[354] With two games, same time?

[355] Just playing, well, that too, yeah.

[356] Also, I wanted to play Deus Ex this weekend, but I'm playing another very long, complex Polish game that has a patch coming that I'm waiting for.

[357] Star Fox.

[358] But we'll get to that later.

[359] And, yeah, Witcher 2.

[360] I go to the Witcher books.

[361] I go to the Witcher fiction.

[362] I took a break on The Witcher Fiction.

[363] The Wiction.

[364] The Fitcher?

[365] Yes.

[366] Fitcher Wiction.

[367] I'm squinting my eyes and shaking my head.

[368] I burned through pretty much my second Warhammer book, though.

[369] I think I'm nearing the end of what I need to know about Warhammer, though, from the Horus Heresy.

[370] So it's been just the Horus Heresy?

[371] Two books into the Horus Heresy.

[372] Things have started to turn south.

[373] I see where it's going.

[374] I think I'm going to get to the point where they're just going to have fights.

[375] All the time.

[376] Book three is just, and then this guy punched this dude.

[377] And his head exploded.

[378] And then there was a million orcs.

[379] Yep.

[380] They all spawn out of the guy's head.

[381] It's a weird one.

[382] A lot of words that end with A instead of E -R.

[383] Yeah.

[384] So I'll probably go one more deep just to kind of, okay, I think I know where this is going.

[385] I see the heresy.

[386] Yeah.

[387] So this is 3240, right?

[388] This is like the bridging the gap from.

[389] 3240?

[390] No, 30K to 40K.

[391] 30K to 40K.

[392] Well, this is pretty much 31, the 31st century.

[393] I don't think it spans.

[394] I'm not sure.

[395] I don't think it actually.

[396] That would be the 310th century.

[397] Yeah, I don't know.

[398] It's Ks.

[399] We're a few Ks past where we are.

[400] So you're a couple Ks before 40K.

[401] Yeah, at least like nine or ten Ks.

[402] Okay.

[403] But I don't think it spans that whole period.

[404] I could be wrong.

[405] There are like six more books after where I am.

[406] And they're continuing to go.

[407] The Horus Heresy.

[408] Horus Heresy.

[409] But I'm pretty much at Horus' heresy.

[410] He's all, this stuff sucks.

[411] This kind of sucks.

[412] And he's like, no, you're not supposed to say that, Horus.

[413] What are you doing?

[414] Is he going against things that are in the Codex?

[415] Or does the Codex not exist yet?

[416] I don't think that really exists yet.

[417] He's kind of going against the Emperor.

[418] Okay.

[419] But there are some things that...

[420] Heretic!

[421] It's almost like...

[422] He's committing heresy!

[423] Reading this is almost like...

[424] Who is?

[425] Horus is!

[426] Horus is heresy!

[427] What should we call that story then?

[428] Warhammer.

[429] The fall of Bend.

[430] Choppa.

[431] What is...

[432] There are no orcs so far.

[433] No choppas, no flyboys.

[434] No, this is no story about it.

[435] This is a story about heresy.

[436] I want to know more about these Warhammers.

[437] I don't think anybody really has a Warhammer yet.

[438] Yep.

[439] There is heresy, though.

[440] I think the real heresy is that there's no Warhammer.

[441] And it's not 40k.

[442] Yeah, there's not 40 ,000 Warhammers.

[443] It's not even a Warhammer as far as I can tell.

[444] Like playing the MMO, like, yeah, occasionally you could get a Warhammer, I guess, but it wasn't like a big central – it's not like everyone was fighting to go and get the fucking Warhammer.

[445] It's a metaphor for life.

[446] That would be a microtransaction.

[447] It should be a macrotransaction.

[448] Everyone has to put a dollar into the kitty so that everyone – Warhammer.

[449] So we can afford to get the Warhammer for the group.

[450] Reading these pretty much prequel books, right?

[451] I think there's an expectation that you already know something about the universe.

[452] Prequel to what?

[453] To 40K, I guess.

[454] Because it's setting up the universe for 40K.

[455] So it's almost like...

[456] But what part?

[457] Like the board game to the other books?

[458] To the universe.

[459] So it's like...

[460] All of it.

[461] How did the Emperor become...

[462] How did Chaos form...

[463] How did he become this pewter figurine?

[464] How did we get to the Warhammer?

[465] Who painted him?

[466] I maintain that pewter figurines look cooler if you don't paint them.

[467] I think they're mostly resin.

[468] Or plastic.

[469] They haven't been pewter in years, but I like talking about pewter figurines.

[470] Man, that's even worse if they're not pewter anymore.

[471] I don't think they are.

[472] That was the one thing that all that stuff had going for it.

[473] It was like, oh, these guys are kind of cool, and they're pewter.

[474] How have we gotten that deep into it?

[475] Seems like plastic wouldn't have the right weight to it.

[476] Yeah.

[477] Like they don't sit still on the board.

[478] It's not like you're playing electric football and you have to make the dudes rattle across the field.

[479] But then you might be playing against that jerk who gets really mad when he loses and just takes a dive on the board.

[480] If I have to put up with them spelling orcs with a K, I at least want them to look substantial.

[481] I love that they spell orcs with a K. It's the worst.

[482] No, it's a great separation.

[483] I like it.

[484] I hate that.

[485] I hate the way the words ending in A. Like, that stuff, I figured it out.

[486] That is the stuff that makes me, like, snidely talk shit about Warhammer.

[487] Chapa, Nelta bombs!

[488] It's, like, fucking stupid.

[489] I don't know.

[490] There's not much of that in these books.

[491] Well, that's just an orc thing.

[492] It's all that stuff offset with, like, Space British.

[493] You know?

[494] Like, it's, yeah, I don't know.

[495] I played some Space Marine.

[496] Chappas.

[497] And that helped me to figure all this out.

[498] Melt the boys.

[499] Come to this realization.

[500] It's like, oh, right.

[501] This stuff's, like, so dumb.

[502] So, like, reading through these, I don't know much about the actual 40K universe.

[503] So it's almost like if you're watching the Star Wars prequels, like, with a vague notion of what happens in, like, episodes four, five, and six.

[504] Yeah, 4, 5, and 6.

[505] I think that's the guy that becomes Darth Vader.

[506] And at some point there's an emperor, I think.

[507] But if you're just kind of watching it, like Anakin, I don't really understand.

[508] Who is this kid?

[509] Why are we following him?

[510] Is he supposed to be important?

[511] Why do we keep following this guy?

[512] Is he the Star Wars?

[513] Oh, okay.

[514] So he's going to turn dark?

[515] Okay, so he's going to be the dark emperor.

[516] And then he'll get the Warhammer.

[517] And he'll have the Warhammer.

[518] There's a lightsaber somewhere.

[519] Lightsaber.

[520] How would you spell that?

[521] S -A -B -A?

[522] H. So yeah, it's kind of like that.

[523] Like, oh, okay, I think you're expecting me to know stuff that I don't actually know, but you're making hints to it.

[524] Plus some of the guys are just named things that are obviously going to turn bad because I think it started at 40K and then they were like, let's write the other stuff.

[525] So it started with these guys being really bad.

[526] So one guy's name is like Abaddon.

[527] And he's like a good guy.

[528] That's not going to last.

[529] It says bad right there in his name.

[530] Like Vipus.

[531] He's a real good guy.

[532] That's probably going to turn bad for him at some point also.

[533] And I could be wrong.

[534] Maybe they do stay as good guys.

[535] I have no idea.

[536] But with names like that and knowing that they're going to fall into quote unquote chaos or somebody's going to, my money's on Abaddon turning into a chaos guy.

[537] So it's just kind of weird, that kind of stuff.

[538] But it's fun.

[539] And they cruise those books.

[540] They read fast.

[541] Does it make you want to play Space Marine?

[542] Yeah.

[543] I wanted to play it before.

[544] But, again, it's going to have nothing to do with what I'm reading.

[545] At least you'll understand who the fashions are and that kind of thing.

[546] Kind of.

[547] Not really.

[548] Again, this is so removed from where 40K is.

[549] There are 12, I think, roughly maybe 20 Space Marine legions at this point.

[550] I think in 40K there are thousands.

[551] But I think some of them are the same.

[552] I think you play the Ultramarines in Space Marine.

[553] I think they're around.

[554] But post Horus Heresy is a huge – that is the entire 40K universe.

[555] So everything before Horus Heresy or during is a completely different kind of universe.

[556] It's like Old Republic stuff versus like post Darth Vader.

[557] I love fucking sci -fi that deals in insane chunks of time like that.

[558] I like that there's this sci -fi epic that takes place over – tens of thousands of years.

[559] I find that really appealing.

[560] Well, I still don't know if these guys are going to be around.

[561] How long do people live in this universe?

[562] Some of them live a really long time.

[563] Space marines live for centuries, right?

[564] With that, then the emperor is immortal.

[565] Time kind of doesn't mean as much as it would.

[566] I suspect the Space Marines I'm reading about are not going to be around.

[567] But again, some of these guys that are going to fall into chaos, who knows?

[568] I don't know.

[569] They're demons at that point.

[570] It's a weird, cool universe.

[571] I wish I knew more about.

[572] It's one of those places where I'm not really sure where to start.

[573] I'm starting as far back in the timeline beginning as I can go, but I think it's assuming I know things that are supposed to happen later on.

[574] Well, if you were going to start all the way back, you'd just be reading regular Warhammer stuff right now and working your way into...

[575] What's the first appearance of Horus in the original Warhammer?

[576] I don't think he's around.

[577] Where's the Emperor and all this stuff?

[578] I don't want to...

[579] Is he forging the Warhammer?

[580] He's...

[581] I don't know.

[582] Anyone talk about any other games?

[583] Anyone just lay your head down on this table for a little while?

[584] I had nightmares about Warhammer last night as I was reading it and being like, it's chaos.

[585] It's pretty dark.

[586] It gets...

[587] It makes me feel bad reading this book, watching these people all fall into darkness and, like, through pride and kind of jealousy.

[588] Because you start from, like, this book that's like, oh, things are pretty good here.

[589] This is all right.

[590] This isn't so bad.

[591] We've got these Warhammers.

[592] It's cool.

[593] You see where it's going into, like, oh, this is really going to suck.

[594] And one guy's like, I want two Warhammers.

[595] Avarice!

[596] You're reading this book of, like, oh, no. This whole thing is just one big misunderstanding with this one guy.

[597] Like you didn't realize that.

[598] Dude was in the other room when you decided to blow up the universe kind of thing.

[599] Yeah, yeah.

[600] You're literally watching just a series of misunderstandings turn into the worst nightmare for humanity.

[601] So you're saying that this is the dark sci -fi fantasy version of a Three's Company episode?

[602] Yes.

[603] Where at the end...

[604] Chrissy and Jack are in the kitchen, and Chrissy gets a splinter, and so Jack's got to try and pull it out, but Mr. Roper is standing in the kitchen.

[605] Exactly.

[606] And by the end of this, Jack becomes a guy who will cause mass genocide throughout the entire universe.

[607] Just like Three's a...

[608] Jeff Gristman.

[609] Yeah.

[610] I hear Driver San Francisco is interesting.

[611] Yeah, it is.

[612] But I should start.

[613] We should just clump all this together.

[614] I played a couple hours of Space Marine last night.

[615] Just lay it on us.

[616] Let's get into that.

[617] Tell me about the Ultramarines.

[618] What are they up to?

[619] There are some dudes in big armor, and they're space British, and they obey the codex, except at the very beginning of the game, the guy's like, I'm putting on this jump pack and jumping out of this ship.

[620] And then the other guy's like, the codex says, he's like, forget it, we're going, basically.

[621] And then you cut up a bunch of rogues with a K. With a K?

[622] With a K. With your chainsword.

[623] No, you don't get the chainsword until about 45 minutes in.

[624] Oh, my.

[625] 40K in?

[626] 45K in.

[627] So it's just shooting until then?

[628] No, you have a knife.

[629] Okay.

[630] There are basically four different melee weapons.

[631] I think one of them might be a hammer of some kind.

[632] It is.

[633] I've seen it.

[634] Do you use it for war?

[635] Dude.

[636] Is war going on?

[637] It's clobbering happening.

[638] It seems like it is largely a melee -focused game.

[639] Is that accurate?

[640] No. Or is it optional?

[641] A lot of it.

[642] You can play it how you want, basically.

[643] But the thing that they do that kind of does turn it into a melee game at times is they give you a lot of really cheap fodder enemies, but tons of them.

[644] So it would be like 12 little orc dudes just rushing you all at once, and you're just like, fuck these guys, and cut them all down in one or two swipes, which is really satisfying.

[645] And then the gunplay stuff is kind of as you expect from a third -person shooter like this.

[646] You get a sniper rifle equivalent.

[647] You get like a mine laying.

[648] You get like a launcher that you can do with – you have a detonate button on it so you can choose when to blow it up and that sort of stuff.

[649] Toss grenades.

[650] You can combat roll.

[651] Have you been running into – I only played the demo.

[652] Have you been running into pretty much just, like, arenas where, like, it locks you off and now, like, kill all the guys here and then move on?

[653] Yeah, kind of.

[654] That's sort of it.

[655] But, you know, it's in the very beginning of the game or near the beginning of the game, you're kind of trying to take back this big planetary gun that the orcs have taken over, which is weird because normally they would just bash it apart because they're dumb.

[656] So that's crazy, right?

[657] So you're kind of...

[658] infiltrating this facility, and you just kind of see orcs everywhere.

[659] And they'll be up two floors running somewhere.

[660] They don't necessarily even stop to deal with you or see you.

[661] And sometimes you'll see, like, the little guys.

[662] You'll see three or four of them, and as soon as they see you, they just take off.

[663] They're like, fuck this, man. These dudes are huge.

[664] We've got to get out of here.

[665] So you can, you know, shoot them, pick them off if you want or not.

[666] The thing is, the combat's really satisfying.

[667] Like, there's some weird kind of gamey stuff that they have to do to make it all work.

[668] And, you know, with the heavily armored dudes, it doesn't make sense for this to be a cover shooter.

[669] So it's not that.

[670] There's no cover system, which is fine.

[671] But, like, then to regain health.

[672] So your armor recharges.

[673] Your health does not auto recharge.

[674] So what you have to do is stun an enemy and do a finishing move to it.

[675] And that refills your or gives you a large chunk of life back.

[676] So it's almost this weird, like, vampiric thing.

[677] You're not, like, sucking blood out of them.

[678] But it is this weird, like, you must kill these guys to recharge your life.

[679] Creates that push -pull of if you hang back and shoot, eventually you'll take so much damage that you're going to start to eat into your health meter, which is going to require you to move forward and...

[680] deal with guys in a melee capacity to make sure that you're recharging that health.

[681] So kind of finding some balance between the melee and the shooters.

[682] I find the melee to be pretty satisfying.

[683] I'm playing the PC version.

[684] It is a nice looking game.

[685] I think I would recommend playing it with a gamepad even on PC.

[686] Maybe not in multiplayer because you'll have the mouse advantage or whatever probably.

[687] But, yeah, it looks very nice.

[688] And, you know, you go into, like, fury mode when you fill up your meter and just start running around swinging that chainsword, just ripping fools in half.

[689] And it's, yeah, dudes explode real nice when you cut them, and that stuff's all pretty cool.

[690] It's definitely, like, yeah, I just kind of fired it up thinking, like, oh, you know, see how this turns out.

[691] And, yeah, I don't know.

[692] Story kind of still whatever because, I don't know, the Warhammer, the 40K stuff just never really clicked with me at all.

[693] It's fun to run around and cut dudes and shoot them.

[694] From the demo.

[695] And stomp them from above.

[696] You get a jet pack and you can kind of boost up and then just come down on them.

[697] It seemed like there was good weight.

[698] Yeah.

[699] Like for big dudes, it felt like you were a big dude.

[700] Right.

[701] And you occasionally encounter some big dudes that are as big as you are.

[702] And basically you have to do a longer melee combo to stun them.

[703] And then once you do that, you can kind of engage in like a little kind of quick time event, sort of I'm killing you by mashing this button sort of deal.

[704] Nothing but orcs so far.

[705] Yeah, it's been all orcs so far, I guess.

[706] I think there's other stuff in there.

[707] Green skins?

[708] All not orcs, though, right?

[709] Those elves?

[710] Are those still also orcs?

[711] I think green skins are just like...

[712] I don't really know.

[713] I think it's...

[714] Because I think there are like orcs and there are like little goblin -y things.

[715] Yeah, so maybe it's like orcs and little goblin -y things that do as they're running away.

[716] I can't really say for sure.

[717] All monsters of some kind.

[718] How about that?

[719] But the multiplayer is very much like, you are either playing an ultramarine or a chaos ultramarine.

[720] So that's the thing.

[721] I mean, there's so many factions in that universe.

[722] All through development, they're like...

[723] weirdly cagey about what other kinds of enemies would show up.

[724] Like, what else is there?

[725] There's Chaos, there's like Tyranids, there's Eldar, like there's all these other enemies you could be fighting.

[726] And those are basically just, you know, they have bombs on them and they run at you and you have to shoot them.

[727] So that enemy type, it covered.

[728] I mean, I know there have been other Warhammer action games in the past.

[729] It's not all strategy and stuff.

[730] But I almost feel like there's like a Starcraft Ghost kind of vibe going on with this where it's like most of the popular Warhammer games are overhead with tiny little guys and you're clicking on them.

[731] So, like, here's your chance to, like, get down and mix it up and, like, actually fight all those.

[732] And they're telling a story and, you know, it's like, you know, you're kind of getting to this planet where things are going bad and, you know, they're producing titans there, which are of extreme tactical importance according to the intro to the game.

[733] In these books, titans are pretty big.

[734] Yeah, so you're basically, like, there to try and stop them from looting the titans.

[735] Foundry world or something?

[736] Yeah, you're on a forge world.

[737] Forge world, okay.

[738] Trying to stop them from...

[739] Taking the Titans or looting the Titans or doing whatever, which I assume that'll be the thing that happens later on.

[740] You'll probably have to fight one, right?

[741] That'd be bad.

[742] That's how this works, isn't it?

[743] I'm not even sure what a Titan is.

[744] Titan's supposed to be real bad news.

[745] Yeah, so against all odds, you will face a Titan and beat it, right?

[746] I'm just going to come out and call it right there.

[747] No one was playing the multiplayer, so I wasn't able to give that a shot, but played through the first three chapters, and yeah, it looked great.

[748] like moved well, like good feeling combat stuff.

[749] It was pretty neat.

[750] Do you put that PC out to your TV when you're playing a game like this or just go on the monitor?

[751] No, it's not.

[752] I would have to look in a different direction and all that sort of.

[753] That would be an extreme hassle.

[754] Hey, he's sitting at a desk with a 360 controller.

[755] It's like, where do you put your hands?

[756] Like in your lap?

[757] Maybe it's the height of my chair and my desk getting in the way or something, but it seems awkward.

[758] Yeah, I guess so.

[759] My problem is that my monitor sort of sucks.

[760] and i want to get a new one it's it's not the right it's not a tft or if ips yeah it's not an ips so like that you see a lot of color banding and stuff like that on it so so yeah i want to replace that and then then i wouldn't have any problem at all that's that's kind of the lone the lone issue i have playing pc games right now but yeah that's cool driver san francisco though yeah what about a driver yeah what about it what about it is it it's pretty cool really yeah I'm very curious about this game.

[761] Surprise of the week.

[762] Well, because they had such a crazy premise for that game.

[763] So that's what makes it cool is the premise.

[764] I mean, think about the last two Driver games, like Driver 3 and Driver Parallel Lines.

[765] Yeah.

[766] Not good games.

[767] No. Driver 3 especially.

[768] Parallel Lines is actually bad.

[769] Like, 3 is almost good.

[770] Parallel Lines was like, you know, it was the 3 engine, I think, set in the 70s.

[771] with different characters and different stuff, but it was still...

[772] And then they had that whole jump forward into the future.

[773] Yeah, and then once you jump forward into the future, the game was like...

[774] It already wasn't great, but then I got to that point and I was like, ah, God, I don't want to play...

[775] 3 is notoriously bad.

[776] Yeah.

[777] Well, 3 also had a huge PR ramp up and marketing campaign.

[778] I went to a press event with Michael Madsen and Michelle Rodriguez was there.

[779] Madsen.

[780] That was big.

[781] Oh, Michael Madsen during Driver 3.

[782] He was drunk.

[783] Oh, Michael Madsen during Driver 3.

[784] What fun.

[785] But so a kind of redemptive turn here for Driver.

[786] So what is the setup?

[787] So the setup is the very beginning of the game.

[788] So there's Tanner and there's Jericho.

[789] Jericho's the bad guy, has been for the past couple of games.

[790] What does he do?

[791] What is the bad guy in the driver universe doing?

[792] Driving bad.

[793] Is he just like bad guy?

[794] Running red lights.

[795] He's like rolling through stop signs.

[796] You can't stop me. He can't be stopped.

[797] Crosswalk, fuck that.

[798] He's dumping his ashtray out on the street.

[799] Parking in a yellow zone between 6 a .m. and 6 p .m. on a weekday.

[800] I heard he doesn't even curb his wheels.

[801] We've got to stop this guy.

[802] What monster?

[803] I think he first appeared in Driver 2.

[804] And I think back then he was more of like an assassin or something like this.

[805] Now he's just like criminal mastermind.

[806] out for the money, gun for hire sort of dude.

[807] He's a bad guy.

[808] He's an overall bad guy.

[809] And basically he has been caught and he is being transferred in an armored police transport or something like that.

[810] He gets broken out.

[811] Tanner gets knocked into a coma as a part of this.

[812] So then what follows from there is Tanner in his coma thinking that nothing has happened.

[813] driving around San Francisco, you know, fighting crime.

[814] It's all, you know, yeah.

[815] Wow.

[816] And, you know, if you think long and hard about it, you know, you'll have a pretty good idea about how this game actually really ends.

[817] But, yeah, so the bulk of the game is played in this coma.

[818] And the first thing that happens is he, like, comes out of his body and is above San Francisco.

[819] He realizes that that is not something that you're supposed to be able to do but can't explain it.

[820] He's just like, I don't – this is – I'm here.

[821] Yeah, I'm up here.

[822] He can warp into – so basically it's called shifting.

[823] You can shift out of Tanner and into any other car in the city.

[824] And then you – like then from there it's kind of Quantum Leap style.

[825] Like you possess this body.

[826] The first time he does it, he looks in the rearview mirror and sees someone else.

[827] So it is like very Quantum Leap in that sense.

[828] And from there, you use it to kind of take on missions and do kind of basic driving game mission design.

[829] Like that stuff's, you know, if you've played a lot of games of this sort and it's like, okay, this one's going to be a race.

[830] This one's going to be I have to do specific stunts at this point.

[831] Get to this goal in less than three minutes.

[832] Yeah, races, checkpoint races, smash stuff races.

[833] Run the sky off the road.

[834] Yeah, run the sky off the road.

[835] But so the cool thing about any time where you have to smash up another car is that you can shift mid -mission.

[836] So you're in your mission car or whatever and you're racing against someone.

[837] Let's say you're in a cop car and you are chasing someone to try and take them down.

[838] Instead of just like boosting and getting behind them and tapping them and tapping them and tapping them, you can just say, F it, jump out of your car, jump into oncoming traffic, sweep over and crash right into the dude.

[839] You can't jump into the target car.

[840] They prevent you from just straight up busting missions that way.

[841] Just drive that guy into a wall.

[842] Right.

[843] Doing what you just described is the next best thing, it sounds like.

[844] Yeah, yeah.

[845] So that's kind of its one trick in a lot of ways, but it's pretty effective.

[846] And they also use it in some interesting ways.

[847] Like you can tap the right bumper in some missions to swap between two preset cars.

[848] So you'll have two cop cars chasing the same guy.

[849] Or there's a race mission where you have to finish first and second.

[850] So you're kind of like getting to a certain point, then tapping over to the other car, making sure they're getting up there.

[851] Or bashing your target car with one, then swapping over to the other one because he's still racing in position and stuff.

[852] Is the AI when you jump out pretty good to keep up?

[853] It's pretty good.

[854] I suspect they might fudge it a little bit.

[855] So as soon as it's out of view, if you're facing the wrong way, it's just like, whatever, man. Let's just get this car back up.

[856] in the race because that's not fun.

[857] That stuff's pretty interesting.

[858] He eventually convinces his partner that he can do this stuff.

[859] And there's all sorts of weird things because he's going through this coma.

[860] He's practically dying on the table, that sort of stuff.

[861] There are weird nightmare moments where all of a sudden everything in the world, at one point everything in the world just freezes and he has no idea why.

[862] Does it go back and forth between him and the coma?

[863] Yeah, they play it out.

[864] They tell you straight out of the gate that he is in a coma.

[865] It's not like you have to figure that out.

[866] So the game's broken up to, like, eight chapters, and, you know, every chapter does a previously on Driver San Francisco.

[867] Like, it's set up like a basic cable, like, buddy cop show, but with this weird supernatural kind of thing.

[868] So they have little bumpers between chapters or whatever that say, like, here's what's going on.

[869] Did they ever tell you what Jericho's up to?

[870] So what's happening— I guess without too many spoilers.

[871] No, so what's going on is that you are laying in a hospital bed with the news on.

[872] That's talking about all this stuff that's going on.

[873] And in your head, you are solving all of those crimes.

[874] But out in the real world, they are not getting solved.

[875] Do the people watching you know what's happening in your head?

[876] No. They're just watching the news?

[877] Yeah, they're just watching the news while you're in your coma.

[878] So is this supposed to have continuity with Driver 3?

[879] I mean, it has Jericho in it.

[880] I mean, it's the same basic characters and stuff, but not...

[881] Not really.

[882] I mean, none of that stuff matters.

[883] The base Zelda thing of, like, here's the characters you know in a different setting.

[884] Kind of sort of, yeah.

[885] Different stuff going on.

[886] You know, it's like for Tanner to be a San Francisco cop and know, like, all this, like, this is an Egyptian terrorist known for this, this, and this.

[887] Like, no. And also, why are you driving around in a Challenger all the time?

[888] Because it makes good cop show television type stuff is the answer.

[889] So, yeah.

[890] How is their rendering of San Francisco?

[891] Kind of crappy.

[892] I don't know.

[893] It's fine.

[894] It is evocative of the real thing, but it is not at all street accurate.

[895] So you'll find the Embarcadero where it's supposed to be.

[896] You'll find Fisherman's Wharf where it's supposed to be.

[897] Those basic areas are all where they're supposed to be, but the streets themselves don't match up.

[898] That's not a period piece or anything, is it?

[899] No, no. It's just modern day.

[900] It's modern day.

[901] Yeah.

[902] So it's just the execution on the storytelling that grabbed you the most.

[903] Yeah, yeah.

[904] The mission design itself is pretty straightforward, and they force you to do a lot of side stuff, which is kind of interesting because it lets them revisit characters multiple times because you're inhabiting these other people.

[905] So there's like a couple of – I think they're brothers or cousins or whatever that have gotten way in over their heads street racing.

[906] dude doesn't know how to drive but you do so you're infesting his body just as he's getting ready to do this race and it's like it goes from them like just trying to pay college tuition so they don't have to you know move back to the their mother motherland to All of a sudden, like, wait, we don't have much money doing this and getting in way over their heads in the street racing scene from there.

[907] But they play around with the premise a lot and there's some interesting stuff they do.

[908] Like, especially at the end of the game, there's some really great stuff they do with the powers and with, like...

[909] basically, like, coming to the realization of what's really happening.

[910] And once that starts to all kind of crumble, like, some really cool stuff happens.

[911] And, yeah, I liked it.

[912] Good, you know, like, seven -hour game, something like that.

[913] Not super long.

[914] There's a ton of side stuff you could do if you really wanted to.

[915] And, you know, you can buy cars.

[916] You can free drive around in them whenever you want.

[917] But, yeah, I just usually just...

[918] whipped out of the car, went to the mission icon, hit the button, did the mission, did the next one.

[919] And you kind of have to do all of the required side missions before you can take on the next story mission.

[920] So just in case we haven't been explicitly clear enough here, the shifting mechanic is in place of any outside of the car action, correct?

[921] Yeah, you do not get out of the car.

[922] So there's no gunplay.

[923] Right.

[924] There's just you driving.

[925] Yeah.

[926] Yeah.

[927] Driver.

[928] For a game called Driver.

[929] Sure.

[930] Pretty appropriate.

[931] I mean, the shift for Driver 3 was one of those like, oh, okay, GTA 3 did it, so now we have to do it.

[932] Like, that was the whole motivation there.

[933] But Driver was, you know, the first two games were all about just being in your car and taking on crazy missions.

[934] And I didn't like those games at all.

[935] Even when Driver was good, I thought it was pretty bad.

[936] When Driver was bad, it was real bad.

[937] But yeah, this game's pretty interesting.

[938] It's the...

[939] The mission design, like I said, the shift mechanic kind of makes up for a lot of the kind of standard mission design that you get.

[940] And the story kind of makes up for...

[941] The other issues it has.

[942] I feel like the car's all totally understeer.

[943] They're trying to make it 70s cop show looking handling.

[944] So you're just like...

[945] Fishtailing all over the place.

[946] Squealing around corners, fishtailing all over the place.

[947] Jump bombing off these big hills and doing all that stupid stuff.

[948] Can you die?

[949] Or is it just mission fail?

[950] No, it's just mission fail.

[951] There's never a situation where...

[952] You just killed that dude in the car and you were in him and that sucks for that guy.

[953] There's still people die.

[954] There's still pedestrians and stuff.

[955] They jump out of the way.

[956] Rated T for teen.

[957] Right.

[958] Ziggy pulls them out.

[959] Yeah, exactly.

[960] Evil Lieber.

[961] Oh, no. But you did not play any multiplayer.

[962] I did.

[963] I played some multiplayer this morning.

[964] Oh, okay.

[965] You got in a little bit.

[966] Yeah.

[967] But there's been some issues.

[968] With the multiplayer rollout for that game.

[969] That game is supposed to have a code for activating your online pass thing.

[970] And it didn't come with a code.

[971] Or it came with a code that's not the right code.

[972] Yeah, it's even on the passport slip of paper that comes with it.

[973] So it's like, enter this in on this menu in the game to unlock the online content.

[974] To redeem your passport.

[975] I think this might be an Xbox only issue.

[976] I'm not sure if it's across.

[977] all platforms or not.

[978] But, yeah, when you pop up the activate my code thing, it wants one of those 25 -character Microsoft codes, and that's not the code they give you in the box.

[979] Yeah, not at all.

[980] So that code, if you punch that code in elsewhere in one of the other menus, then you can unlock a few things, but it is still not.

[981] The multiplayer.

[982] The multiplayer.

[983] So what they've done is they've made the online pass free.

[984] So if you activate the trial, it's scrolling on the screen, and they're trying to get the message out.

[985] So public service announcement, I guess.

[986] Yeah, they're saying if you activate the trial, it'll never expire.

[987] Or just to be doubly safe, here's what I would do.

[988] If you go to purchase online pass in the driver menu, it's free.

[989] It doesn't come up and charge you the $10 that it was a couple days before release.

[990] They wanted $10 for that thing.

[991] And then they realized, like, oh, fuck, this thing totally boomed this up.

[992] Somebody totally screwed up.

[993] So Ubisoft's mistake is your windfall in this case.

[994] So go get a used copy of Driver San Francisco.

[995] Oh, no, don't do that.

[996] You show them.

[997] You show those guys.

[998] Take advantage of them.

[999] This is what you get.

[1000] Always got to be connected to the internet.

[1001] Stupid.

[1002] Frump dust.

[1003] What?

[1004] Frump dusted.

[1005] What else?

[1006] Yeah.

[1007] I don't know.

[1008] What else?

[1009] I tried to play Dead Island, and that was awesome.

[1010] The PC version.

[1011] PC version of Dead Island.

[1012] Tell us about your experience with that, Jeff.

[1013] So I preloaded Dead Island.

[1014] And then at 9 p .m. last night it unlocked.

[1015] And then I double clicked on Dead Island.

[1016] And then it ran.

[1017] And then it was a black screen.

[1018] Oh.

[1019] Done.

[1020] End of story.

[1021] Then I quit out and tried to relaunch it again and had the exact same thing happen.

[1022] Any sound or anything?

[1023] No. That was the end of your experience?

[1024] That is Dead Island.

[1025] That's too bad because I watched Bradley here play it for a good 45 minutes this morning and it looked pretty awesome.

[1026] That game is great.

[1027] Black screen?

[1028] Yeah.

[1029] Real minimalistic.

[1030] The deepest black you have ever, man. The contrast ratio on this, you have no idea.

[1031] I have to disagree with you about the surprise of the week.

[1032] It's Dead Island.

[1033] You think that's the surprise of the week?

[1034] Dude, that's the same developer that put out Call of Juarez, the cartel, a month ago.

[1035] I guess the surprise, I mean...

[1036] I'm surprised, A, at what it is, and B, how good it is.

[1037] I'm surprised by what it is, absolutely.

[1038] What it is, brother, is...

[1039] Fallout with zombies, right?

[1040] Going to bats?

[1041] I think I would liken it more to Borderlands than Fallout.

[1042] It's got some of both, but the MMO parallels are pretty strong.

[1043] When you say Fallout, you think dialogue trees, some character choice, that kind of stuff, right?

[1044] Yeah, I think that's stuff in unsatisfying melee attacks.

[1045] Yes.

[1046] Okay, so A, the melee, if you play it...

[1047] I don't know how this sounds really bad.

[1048] I was going to say if you play it right.

[1049] Okay.

[1050] There are two different combat modes.

[1051] And if you play the less common one, that's the way to play the game.

[1052] And you do it that way and you learn how to play it, the melee is awesome.

[1053] So we have this in the quick look.

[1054] By default, there's digital combat where it's just like hold a button and do just cyber wars.

[1055] Digital combat.

[1056] You pull the right trigger once to attack.

[1057] To swing.

[1058] So if you spam on it, you literally just swing left and right back and forth over and over.

[1059] So the other option is analog combat, which I only tried because there's an achievement in there for killing 150 guys with it.

[1060] Okay.

[1061] I was like, all right, fine.

[1062] I don't know what this is.

[1063] It barely explains in the manual.

[1064] There's no in -game tool tips about how to use this.

[1065] Okay.

[1066] I'll just try it.

[1067] I fucking hated it when I turned it on because it makes no sense.

[1068] So you hold a left trigger to go into a combat stance, basically.

[1069] This is all with melee.

[1070] When you're holding it, the right stick, when you push it in a direction, makes you sort of draw your weapon back in that direction.

[1071] And then it took me, like, five minutes to get a feel for this and understand it.

[1072] But you drop back, and then you move the stick in the other direction, basically, to swing.

[1073] It's a dagger fall.

[1074] Yeah, so hearing you say that, I was like, dude, wow, that's exactly like...

[1075] Die by the sword all over again.

[1076] But what that does is give you just a remarkable amount of control over how and where you hit guys.

[1077] Because there's, like, this really detailed damage model where you can break guys' bones.

[1078] So, like, there are a lot of MMO parallels in this game.

[1079] So, like, the elite kind of zombie is the one that take, like, tons of damage.

[1080] beat the shit out of you, you can break their arms to the point that they just sort of flop limply on the sides and they can't actually hit you with them anymore.

[1081] Does it let you know that you've broken them, or is it just a visual?

[1082] You're getting fat XP bonuses.

[1083] Also, there's a hell of XP in this game.

[1084] There's a hell of XP.

[1085] There's a hell of numbers.

[1086] Just numbers are flying out of everything.

[1087] Damage numbers, experience numbers, money, cash numbers, just values everywhere.

[1088] So if you break a guy's bone, you get a big fat break.

[1089] It's a little break label pops up.

[1090] and you get an XP bonus for it.

[1091] But then he's walking around, his arm is just like a limp and hanging there, and he can't hit you with it anymore.

[1092] You can use a bladed weapon to slice the arms right off.

[1093] Would you just go for their head all the time then?

[1094] No, because it's not like a one -hit kill thing.

[1095] Like I said, there are RPG -style damage numbers popping up every time you hit something.

[1096] All the weapons have ratings for damage, for force, which I think is how likely they are to break bones.

[1097] Durability, all this stuff.

[1098] Oh, there's a durability?

[1099] Yeah, the weapons do break.

[1100] but it takes a while, and they're super easy to repair.

[1101] And, I mean, the way that Brad is describing playing this game is, like, really maximizing your XP out of every combat encounter.

[1102] It's great, so you're going to break every limb.

[1103] Yeah, it's like you break both the arms before you go in for the kill because you get these huge XP, but I'm like, yeah, you could just take the guy's head off in a couple of swings probably.

[1104] No, it actually takes more than that.

[1105] So those elite guys take so much damage that even with, like, a really sharp...

[1106] weapon with a high force or whatever, you still have to slice at them.

[1107] You still have to wear their HP down to kill them.

[1108] You can't just get a circumstantial decapitation just because you swung a bladed weapon at their head.

[1109] Well, you do crit.

[1110] It's like Borderlands and the headshots or blows to the head are crits.

[1111] But most guys have so much health it still takes several hits.

[1112] Can you take their legs out?

[1113] I haven't...

[1114] I've never taken a leg off while they're still alive and walking around.

[1115] Once you knock them down and kill them, the legs will come off, but they don't drag themselves around with their hands or anything like that.

[1116] But you can shoot.

[1117] Yeah, there are guns.

[1118] So there's four playable characters.

[1119] There's...

[1120] There's characters, the one I'm playing is blunt weapons, there's an edged weapon character, there's a throwable weapon guy, and a firearm.

[1121] Does that mean that they have bonuses?

[1122] Yeah, you can use everything with every character.

[1123] And different skill trees.

[1124] But yeah, there's a big three -sided skill tree, and each character, one leg of their skill tree pertains to that kind of weapon.

[1125] A lot of bonuses for that stuff.

[1126] And you've only been playing with the blunt weapons guys, so we're unclear as to whether the kind of drops that...

[1127] are around the world, are affected by what character you're playing with.

[1128] Yeah, that's a question I need to answer.

[1129] I should make another character and try that.

[1130] But I picked the blunt guy because it's all found weapons in the game.

[1131] And naturally, like you're on this resort, so like the first weapons I got were like a broom handle and like a paddle and stuff like that.

[1132] But the deeper into the game I've gotten, the more blades I've found, and then I finally started getting some guns.

[1133] But it's like 10 hours into the game before I found a pistol.

[1134] Do you think it would be different if you played a...

[1135] I don't know.

[1136] That's the question.

[1137] I need to make the firearms lady and see if you get a gun anytime soon.

[1138] It seems to be weighted more that those more complex weapons are later in the game.

[1139] But there's a really extensive crafting system.

[1140] It's kind of like Dead Rising, except where Dead Rising was weird.

[1141] It's like, okay, you need knives and boxing gloves.

[1142] This is more like real basic component stuff.

[1143] It's like, all right, you need two batteries, some wire.

[1144] And duct tape.

[1145] Is there an inventory?

[1146] Yeah, there's a huge inventory.

[1147] Is there an encumbrance?

[1148] No. No. Inventory limit?

[1149] Yeah, you have a slotted inventory for weapons and consumables, like medkits and stuff.

[1150] So I think I have like 16 slots for that stuff now, but the materials for just crafting stuff is unlimited.

[1151] You can just carry as much as you want.

[1152] So I just loot everything I can find.

[1153] It seems like a really good balance.

[1154] It is.

[1155] As much as we've talked about inventory management bullshit lately.

[1156] And the modded weapons are such a big part of the game that it's awesome.

[1157] You can always craft stuff.

[1158] You always have – pretty much any time you pick up a new blueprint for a new kind of weapon, you have the stuff to make it just because you've been picking up everything you've found.

[1159] So are you getting missions from quest givers?

[1160] Yeah, there's totally just quest givers all over the place.

[1161] There's like safe houses basically.

[1162] You start out in this resort and there's like a hotel and a bunch of swimming pools and like kind of beachfront bungalows and stuff like that.

[1163] And there's people hiding in those.

[1164] There's people hiding in a lighthouse there.

[1165] You move into the city later.

[1166] It's like this kind of run -down island, third -worldy kind of city.

[1167] There's people holed up in a church.

[1168] And there's a warehouse.

[1169] They're basically like safe houses.

[1170] And there's a bigger story going on, like main quest machine?

[1171] Yeah, there's fucking zombies.

[1172] And you're trying to get out or you're trying to...

[1173] The story of fucking zombies?

[1174] That's later on.

[1175] That sounds like the kind of resort I want to go to.

[1176] Yeah, it's a Swingles resort.

[1177] You'd enjoy it.

[1178] That's gross.

[1179] Don't go in the hot tub.

[1180] They never go in the hot tub.

[1181] There's so much Euro trash on this resort island.

[1182] It's amazing.

[1183] Are they zombies?

[1184] Well, some of them, yeah.

[1185] We didn't see much of it in...

[1186] in the quick look, but there are some real assholes.

[1187] I appreciate that they have both kinds of zombies.

[1188] I appreciate that they have mixed it up where occasionally they will come running at you all crazy and screaming, and sometimes it is the slow burn.

[1189] And the fucking nasty zombie noises that they make.

[1190] The sounds are awful.

[1191] Gurgling, hissing, just like labored breathing.

[1192] It's like listening to this podcast.

[1193] This is not tongue -in -cheek.

[1194] This is kind of dark.

[1195] Very grim.

[1196] Super grim.

[1197] There's nothing funny about Swingles or zombies.

[1198] Definitely not.

[1199] Not Dead Rising at all.

[1200] Some of the survivors you find are in pretty ugly situations.

[1201] Can you kill survivors?

[1202] No, you can't hit the NPCs.

[1203] Are there kid zombies?

[1204] Because that would just make it better.

[1205] I got a side quest from a guy whose family, he had seen his wife and daughter become zombies, and he was like, they don't deserve to live like this.

[1206] Please take care of them.

[1207] And you straight up go out and kill this wife and daughter zombie pair.

[1208] I mean, she's like a teenager.

[1209] She is not a tiny child.

[1210] But supposedly that family from the initial reveal trailer is in there somewhere.

[1211] Kotaku ran a story this morning.

[1212] Yeah, they found it.

[1213] Or somebody found it, anyway.

[1214] I guess it's what's left of them, basically.

[1215] I don't know that there's anything moving there, but you can at least tell that's who it is.

[1216] Are there zombie dogs?

[1217] No. No animals, actually.

[1218] Come to think of it.

[1219] I don't remember any.

[1220] I haven't seen a single animal in the entire game.

[1221] I appreciate that they did not go the full -on Resident Evil route.

[1222] There's a little left for dead.

[1223] Well, just the fact that you get to the point in Resident Evil where it's not even zombies.

[1224] It's just like we have crazy fucking monsters.

[1225] Like here is this giant crazy alligator.

[1226] It's because they're not zombies, man. These are definitely zombies.

[1227] Yeah, I appreciate that they have a little left -for -dead touch of certain kind of class of zombies.

[1228] According to the manual, I've seen all but one of the enemy types, and they're all pretty standard zombie fare.

[1229] I mean, there's the guy who explodes when you get close to him.

[1230] This is the closest to Resident Evil, I guess.

[1231] They're these big hulking guys in straitjackets.

[1232] I don't know what's up with them, but they can't hit you, so they just charge at you all the time.

[1233] It's boring.

[1234] It fucks you up.

[1235] Yes, badly.

[1236] Does the combat get boring?

[1237] No. That's the thing.

[1238] So, I mean, I've seen – I try not to really look at reviews much because I'm reviewing it myself.

[1239] But just Twitter chatter and stuff that I've seen, a lot of people seem to think the combat is kind of boring and that they didn't care for the analog stuff or whatever.

[1240] I don't know.

[1241] I feel like that is the only way to play that game just because the level of control it gives you over what you're doing keeps it super interesting all the time.

[1242] How is the impact stuff?

[1243] Is it like, you know, condemned style?

[1244] I still haven't played the game.

[1245] It doesn't seem like it, like just watching Brad, it doesn't seem like it hits quite that hard.

[1246] Yeah.

[1247] It's circumstantial.

[1248] Sometimes if you hit somebody in the head with a blunt weapon, sometimes they just go down.

[1249] Sometimes the head fucking shatters and you see like pieces of skull come at you and blood gouts out.

[1250] So can you not become a zombie?

[1251] No. You're immune.

[1252] Naturally.

[1253] I'd say it looked like there might be some janky stuff.

[1254] Oh, yes.

[1255] Well, I mean, yes.

[1256] Janky stuff abounds because it's an open -world game.

[1257] And it's Techland.

[1258] Yeah.

[1259] Great name.

[1260] But it seems like there's a little bit of jank with the – or there could be with – because the targeting on these different body parts, it seems like there's torso, arm, arm, head.

[1261] That's pretty much it.

[1262] Pretty much what you've been doing.

[1263] You can target legs too, but like I said, you can't cut them off.

[1264] Yeah.

[1265] But so it's playing on the 360 as Brad was and kind of trying to – like the little reticle of what part you're selecting, it's not like it is free moving across the guy.

[1266] It's just sort of like, OK, you're basically in the zone where you'd be hitting his torso.

[1267] targeting reticle is on torso.

[1268] And it's like you shift over to the side, so it's like, okay, now you are targeting the arm.

[1269] And it's kind of like this, it seems like there's this fine touch between like, all right, am I targeting the torso, am I targeting the arm?

[1270] It sort of swims over, yeah.

[1271] And if the zombie sort of rotates as you're doing that, sometimes it'll snap back to the torso or whatever.

[1272] It takes some doing.

[1273] It's not automatic by any means.

[1274] Is there co -op in it?

[1275] Yeah, so I mean, it's weird.

[1276] I've been playing it purely as this single -player RPG.

[1277] The co -op has integrated extremely well from what I've seen.

[1278] Like, as you're moving around the world, it'll just pop up notifiers going like, hey, so -and -so is near you in the world and also close to your level and story.

[1279] Do you want to hop into their game?

[1280] And that stuff's just popping up constantly.

[1281] And it's filtering that stuff based on, like, you're not able to jump into someone's game that's, like, way ahead of you or way behind you.

[1282] Yeah, because you revisit some areas off and on over the course of the game, but you can only jump into games of people who are around where you're at in the game.

[1283] And I actually had somebody who I know in the game industry that's not on my friends list, like, pop up at one point.

[1284] I was like, man, I know that guy.

[1285] Like, I should jump into his game.

[1286] Like, it was kind of neat.

[1287] But you can also filter your, like, visibility and availability for that stuff.

[1288] Yeah, you can just set yourself completely offline.

[1289] Famous style.

[1290] So what are you trying to tell me about zombies?

[1291] Are they back?

[1292] I don't know.

[1293] Brad is our resident zombie game expert.

[1294] I don't know.

[1295] Are you calling this one?

[1296] Yeah, I might have to uncall that judgment.

[1297] I don't know.

[1298] There's still room for a good zombie game?

[1299] This game's got a lot of weird issues, especially pre -patch.

[1300] The review copy came with just a big list of patch notes.

[1301] They're like, hey, day one, this patch will be out that fixes these 40 things.

[1302] Well, today's day one.

[1303] Is it out?

[1304] As of now, it's not up.

[1305] And that PC version is completely.

[1306] So the PC version, I've been trying to like lead this back to some kind of official source and haven't really seen it.

[1307] It's all just been people on message boards saying it, but they're sounding like, oh, this is totally a developer build.

[1308] Like it's not the right build of the game.

[1309] It got pushed out on Steam, which considering the tons of issues people have had, people are starting to dig through various files and seeing that like the matching servers for co -op are commented out.

[1310] Weird stuff like that.

[1311] Don't explain why I couldn't join any games last night on the PC.

[1312] Hitting the Y key just turns on no clip.

[1313] Apparently also zeroes out your experience in some cases when you do that.

[1314] Yeah, awesome.

[1315] Yeah, that's great.

[1316] So don't get it on the PC until further notice.

[1317] Absolutely.

[1318] Even on the 360, I mean, there's a title update coming there, too.

[1319] But I had weird stuff.

[1320] Like, I had a side quest in my quest log that I hadn't even started yet.

[1321] And I looked at it, and, like, the first two steps of it suddenly were completed.

[1322] Like, I hadn't even gone to the zone where I would do that quest yet.

[1323] And, like, half of it just got done out of nowhere.

[1324] It's maybe a little buggy.

[1325] Yeah, I had another NPC, like a quest giver, just up and disappear at one point.

[1326] Welcome to Techland!

[1327] I guess, yeah.

[1328] Some weird inventory bugs.

[1329] How much is the $60 game?

[1330] Yeah, it's a full retail game.

[1331] It's long as hell.

[1332] I'm 25 hours in.

[1333] I'm at 60 -something percent story progress.

[1334] It's like Borderlands or Fallout length in terms of content.

[1335] There's a ton of stuff there.

[1336] I know there's at least one full zone, like one open -world map that I haven't even been to yet.

[1337] You like it.

[1338] It's messed up, but you like it.

[1339] It is kind of messed up.

[1340] I want to play some more of it with that patch and see if that fixes the weird little issues.

[1341] But at least on the Xbox...

[1342] Other than that weird stuff, it's working fine.

[1343] Nothing like the catastrophic problems with the PC version.

[1344] Poland bringing it.

[1345] Yeah.

[1346] Polish developers, man. Look out.

[1347] 2011, year of the poll.

[1348] Maybe this explains the cartel.

[1349] Maybe all of their...

[1350] Nine people worked on that game while everyone else was working on this.

[1351] Maybe their A -team was working on Dead Island.

[1352] Well, they also worked on Dead Island for a long goddamn time.

[1353] That's true.

[1354] Like four or five years or something.

[1355] That game's been shown in various forms of...

[1356] I'm working on that trailer.

[1357] It's a fucking huge game, so I'm really not at all surprised.

[1358] I bet the three people that work in the Deep Silver office are stoked.

[1359] People are into it, I guess, yeah.

[1360] Yeah, that first area in the resort feels like it could be the whole game, and then it just keeps going and going.

[1361] But it definitely sounds like, regardless of your platform, wait for a patch.

[1362] Yeah.

[1363] If they're to be believed, the console patches will be out today and that stuff will be fun.

[1364] Yeah.

[1365] If they're to be believed.

[1366] You believe the polls, Brad Shoemaker?

[1367] Well, Deep Silver is what?

[1368] Three people in an office?

[1369] Here.

[1370] It's a European.

[1371] Oh, are they?

[1372] I look into it.

[1373] I think they're based in, like, Austria or something.

[1374] That makes a little more sense.

[1375] That would explain the U .S. presence a little more.

[1376] How's the voice acting?

[1377] It's pretty much fun.

[1378] Yeah?

[1379] Like, there's nothing – nothing has been outright egregiously bad.

[1380] And in a few cases, there have been, like, good enough performances that you really identify with the shit these people are going through.

[1381] I want to try a co -op.

[1382] I haven't done any of that meaningfully yet.

[1383] So I'll do some of that.

[1384] A lot of people are saying, like, oh, you know, this is the only way to play the game.

[1385] This is co -op.

[1386] But I think it works really well as a single -player RPG.

[1387] Zombies are back!

[1388] Yeah.

[1389] Yeah.

[1390] And it's still fun to bust their, split their wigs wide open.

[1391] Rated M. Something like that.

[1392] For nasty.

[1393] Yeah, man. God.

[1394] It's just the way they, ugh.

[1395] Like, the flesh -stripping technology on the character models is top -notch.

[1396] It's crazy.

[1397] And really when you see those floppy, like after he breaks their arm bones and they just have these floppy arms because the bones are no longer connected.

[1398] And so then these zombies are coming at you trying to headbutt you and bite you because it's all they've got left and they know it.

[1399] And then you take that away from them.

[1400] It's so awesome because...

[1401] We're taking all the way these zombie American rights.

[1402] These elite guys, the thugs, are like seven feet tall.

[1403] They're huge fucking hulking bodybuilder looking zombies.

[1404] But once you reduce their arms to just this floppy jelly, it's so absurd.

[1405] These guys that were just ripping you to shreds before, like a couple of good whacks with your baseball bat, and all of a sudden they're just like, bleh.

[1406] It seems like they get pretty good mileage out of the high contrast, tropical, beautiful island, and then, oh God, the horror.

[1407] It's just like that postcard crystal blue water and little huts on the beach.

[1408] It looks like paradise, but covered in blood with these awful monsters everywhere and stuff.

[1409] Who's the monster?

[1410] Man. It's man. Who's truly the monster?

[1411] I will say where I'm at now, they have set aside the open world a little bit for a lot of corridor crawling, which is way less interesting.

[1412] I've had to go through the same sewer tunnels like five times to get back and forth recently.

[1413] Are they filled with zombies?

[1414] Yes.

[1415] They crawl on the walls?

[1416] No. But every time you go through there, same zombies in the same places.

[1417] Oh, man, I just had a fucking terrifying flashback when you said that.

[1418] Holy shit.

[1419] Oh, God.

[1420] Use the machine gun and you'll be fine.

[1421] Oh, we don't have enough fucking ammo for the goddamn machine gun.

[1422] We didn't go on that side mission to get...

[1423] Use the flamethrower.

[1424] I've still never even played Deadly Premonition.

[1425] I have a sealed copy at home.

[1426] But now you can play Dead Island.

[1427] Yeah, yeah.

[1428] If anybody wants to play co -op or something, let's do it.

[1429] I'll play more of it.

[1430] The game's awesome.

[1431] It seems neat.

[1432] You saw Resistance 3.

[1433] I watched, yeah, Brad and I watched Patrick play a little Resistance 3.

[1434] Sounds like it's a really well -made Resistance game.

[1435] Good.

[1436] In the spirit of the first Resistance.

[1437] Okay.

[1438] Yeah.

[1439] They're back to form in a lot of real specific stuff like health packs are back.

[1440] Health packs are back.

[1441] Zombies and health packs.

[1442] Co -op campaign as opposed to that weird separate co -op mode and stuff like that.

[1443] It sounds like they made a spiritual successor to Resistance 1.

[1444] And do you want to talk about a fucking...

[1445] grim, dark -ass universe that they have built there.

[1446] Gears of War is kind of like, it's man's last stand here, but we're going to give it all we've got.

[1447] We're going to take on these things.

[1448] In Resistance 3, it's like, no. At the beginning of that game, you guys are fucked.

[1449] There's no way that you're getting out of this.

[1450] People are barely scraping by.

[1451] The Resistance is just trying to survive.

[1452] You're not going to topple the fucking Chimerans.

[1453] No, they've got this planet by the nuts.

[1454] You guys are all screwed.

[1455] And I love that.

[1456] I love starting off with just absolutely no goddamn hope.

[1457] So at the start of the game, you can continue playing if you want to.

[1458] You might as well just end here.

[1459] We'll give you a couple of achievements if you want.

[1460] You can actually finish the game just by shooting yourself in the head at the beginning.

[1461] That was a smart choice.

[1462] That's not true.

[1463] Let other people use those bullets.

[1464] I made that up.

[1465] It seems like there's, for as grim as everything is, though, it seems like there's a lot of bullets and they are tossing around that crazy Chimera and Future Tech pretty fast.

[1466] Although I guess at this point, this is like 10 years past the beginning of the invasion.

[1467] 57 is when this was set.

[1468] Yeah, and the first one took place like World War II era.

[1469] So we're at least a solid decade into Earth covered by Chimera nonsense.

[1470] Now it's more like Korean War.

[1471] Against the aliens.

[1472] That's right.

[1473] It's like MASH.

[1474] Yeah.

[1475] Honeycutt, get over here.

[1476] They use the...

[1477] Have a martini with me. Was the auger in the game?

[1478] You gotta send me home.

[1479] Yes.

[1480] Auger is in there.

[1481] Did Patrick use the auger a lot?

[1482] He used it a little bit.

[1483] I like the auger.

[1484] Is that the one that makes the shield?

[1485] It's the one that shoots through walls.

[1486] It also might make a shield.

[1487] Yeah.

[1488] Yeah, that's the auger.

[1489] That's a fun gun.

[1490] Yeah.

[1491] And, you know, it was the...

[1492] I can't remember any of the names, but, yeah, it's...

[1493] Super gun.

[1494] It's, I mean, at the same time, like, that game is resistance.

[1495] Yeah.

[1496] Of, like, you are, you know, fighting kind of these ambushes of Chimeran enemies, and then there's big bossy set pieces, and the weapons are super fucking crazy, and everything in the world is brown and or gray.

[1497] But it's got still, like, really good atmosphere, some solid lighting.

[1498] Killer lighting.

[1499] From the stuff that we saw.

[1500] Yeah.

[1501] Looks great.

[1502] Patrick could speak more.

[1503] more deeply to all that stuff.

[1504] He said he thought it was pretty good.

[1505] Yeah, it looks like a good solid Resistance package.

[1506] What a week!

[1507] It's not really doing anything super mind -blowingly new, but it's doing what it does well.

[1508] What a terrible week to be knee -deep in The Witcher 2.

[1509] Anybody play any Crimson Alliance?

[1510] A little, a little bit.

[1511] No. That got released all weird.

[1512] Yeah, so it's supposed to be coming out this week, but it's already out.

[1513] It was supposed to be out tomorrow.

[1514] It sent out codes last week to people that bought all the games.

[1515] Anybody that had all five of the Summer of Arcade games got a code like last Friday.

[1516] But then when it's coming out, I was looking at kind of the official Microsoft word on this.

[1517] It's like it's coming out free, but you have to buy.

[1518] It's coming out as a trial.

[1519] Yeah, that is some trial characters.

[1520] That is some clever misdirection there.

[1521] What you're downloading for free is the demo.

[1522] Okay.

[1523] Yeah.

[1524] Because it's very limited in scope until you pay for at least one of the characters.

[1525] Right.

[1526] So you can buy, there's three classes in it.

[1527] You can buy any one of the classes for 10.

[1528] What kind of game is it?

[1529] Or buy all three for 15.

[1530] So that's why I brought it up.

[1531] Because I thought seeing it real briefly at E3 and stuff that it was going to be like Torchlight.

[1532] Yeah.

[1533] It's that type of camera perspective.

[1534] It is.

[1535] Yes, it is.

[1536] It is in the sense that it's an overhead game and it's hack and slashy.

[1537] But it's very much level based.

[1538] and not, like, super loot -driven.

[1539] Like, you don't equip all kinds of different armor pieces and stuff.

[1540] It's just, like, you get a new weapon every once in a while.

[1541] And it's split up into, like, 20 levels, like, 10 to 20 -minute, like, sections of gameplay that are separate.

[1542] It's like dungeons.

[1543] Well, it's not one giant contiguous dungeon or anything like that.

[1544] It's just, like, you have a map screen, and you pick your level, and you play it, and you go back to the map screen and pick the next level, that kind of thing.

[1545] Got it.

[1546] So definitely less broad.

[1547] It's more narrow in scope.

[1548] That's what I'm trying to say.

[1549] Than what I expected.

[1550] And this is the freebie if you bought all of the Summer of Arcade games.

[1551] It seems like a good free game.

[1552] But maybe not a game you would want to pay for.

[1553] I guess the question is, what are they?

[1554] I don't understand the pricing structure on this thing.

[1555] It's weird.

[1556] It's a $15 game unless you know you only want to use one class and then you can buy one class for $10.

[1557] That's weird.

[1558] That's super weird.

[1559] And there are three classes?

[1560] So you could spend $30 on it.

[1561] No, you should not.

[1562] Yeah.

[1563] Not even 100 % sure you should spend $10.

[1564] Yeah.

[1565] Well, be that as it may, if you do want to play the game, you should probably just buy the whole thing because that's crazy.

[1566] Yeah.

[1567] Like to increase the, like double the cost to do a piecemeal, that's just weird.

[1568] No, I agree.

[1569] I'm just saying that it seems like some kind of kooky experiment.

[1570] The situation is primed for someone to be able to do that, though, at least theoretically.

[1571] Is that an offer ongoing, or is that you had to have by now?

[1572] I think that's just how you buy that game.

[1573] No, I'm saying as far as the freebie.

[1574] No, it was by a certain date.

[1575] I think it was toward the end of August.

[1576] Got it.

[1577] And that date has passed.

[1578] Yep.

[1579] Indeed.

[1580] Too bad for them.

[1581] Let's talk a little bit about Blood Rain Betrayal.

[1582] That's coming out this week on PSN and Xbox Live Arcade.

[1583] I watched you play.

[1584] I watched that quick look.

[1585] Yeah.

[1586] We did that quick look.

[1587] It's way forward.

[1588] Call it what you want.

[1589] No, it's the boy and his blob team.

[1590] Up the hug.

[1591] Yeah, it does not.

[1592] Instead, this has up to suck blood from your enemies to regain your health.

[1593] I feel like they have taken all of the conventions of some gunplay plus melee combat plus vampire shit and acrobatic stuff that was kind of the core of those first two 3D Blood Rain games and then kind of flattened them into a 2D experience pretty nicely.

[1594] It looks goddamn phenomenal.

[1595] Just good, sharp 2D sprites.

[1596] Big sprites.

[1597] This feels like something that should be coming out to pave the way promotionally for a big new AAA BloodRayne game, except there isn't one.

[1598] Yeah, this is just it.

[1599] It's weird.

[1600] It's $15.

[1601] It's a download -only title.

[1602] It seems like it can get pretty tough.

[1603] I like the way it handles, and it looks really, really nice.

[1604] WayForward guys know their way around some 2D animation, for sure.

[1605] For sure.

[1606] A lot of good downloadable stuff coming out.

[1607] Yeah, less visually impressive but still butt -fuckingly insane is Serious Sam Double D, which is one of those weird download games that they put out as the ramp -up to Serious Sam 3 BFE.

[1608] This is Mommy's Best Games?

[1609] Yeah, this is Mommy's Best, and what Mommy's Best is is stacking guns.

[1610] You get a...

[1611] You find various guns as you would want to do in a Serious Sam game.

[1612] It's 2D.

[1613] It is 2D.

[1614] That is one of the, right off the bat, big differentiator.

[1615] But the basic action is totally Serious Sam.

[1616] Even though you're running, basically run to the right, but as you do so, enemies spawn all around you.

[1617] Some of them don't have heads and are yelling at you.

[1618] Yeah.

[1619] Those guys.

[1620] And have bombs strapped to their arms.

[1621] How do they yell if they don't have heads?

[1622] That's what makes it crazy.

[1623] That's what makes it serious.

[1624] Man, that is serious.

[1625] So a lot of recognizable enemies in that regard.

[1626] Some that I don't recognize, but they might have been in Serious Sam games that I didn't play.

[1627] I don't remember.

[1628] I don't know if the Pancake Vuvuzela monster is.

[1629] The Pancake Vuvuzela monster is probably not in one of the other Serious Sam.

[1630] Maybe it's in Serious Sam 3.

[1631] Same for the Rocket Pack Monkey Commandos.

[1632] I don't know if those guys were.

[1633] Don't remember them.

[1634] Don't remember them.

[1635] Does any gun stack on any other gun?

[1636] Yes, but you need the stacker to stack guns.

[1637] So you need to pick up this basically.

[1638] It's basically just like a link between the two guns.

[1639] You find connectors.

[1640] Yeah.

[1641] So you need to get these connectors to enable you to stack.

[1642] And it seemed like you could stack up to six guns.

[1643] And you can have pretty much any type.

[1644] So you can have like shotgun, two machine pistols, and I don't know, a chainsaw.

[1645] And they just stack on top of each other.

[1646] And as each one stacks, it stacks, like, up and forward a little bit.

[1647] So just looking at Serious Sam, you just see this kind of arching forward stack of...

[1648] It just seems like it's not viable at all from, like, a way...

[1649] Like, yeah, it looks very precarious.

[1650] It looks like it should just fall out of Serious Sam's hands at any point.

[1651] It goes, like, what the fuck?

[1652] I can't...

[1653] Oh, too much fulcrum point.

[1654] My wrists.

[1655] Yeah, exactly.

[1656] They all fire at the same time.

[1657] Yeah, you just hit the button and it's just like guns blazing.

[1658] That sounds great.

[1659] Do you like aim with the mouse or anything?

[1660] Yeah, yeah.

[1661] PC only game.

[1662] Yeah, yeah, PC only.

[1663] So yeah, total abuse controls, WASD for movement and then mouse to kind of aim around the world.

[1664] That sounds pretty cool.

[1665] It is.

[1666] It takes some getting used to with the up and down for your kind of jump and like dropping down a level.

[1667] just because you are just pressing left or right to run left or right.

[1668] It's not like tap, tap, tap, tap or anything, but you need to do those taps on the up and down.

[1669] So when you're in a multi -tiered level area and there's enemies coming at you from all sides and you need to either jump up a bit or drop down some, it takes some getting used to.

[1670] I don't think it's bad necessarily, but it takes a little getting used to.

[1671] But it's like $8.

[1672] That game is...

[1673] Next to nothing.

[1674] And just for stacking guns.

[1675] Sounds like a nice price.

[1676] I'm all for it.

[1677] Speaking of nice price, $10 for Rock of Ages is pretty good.

[1678] Because, man. Yeah, and it's even cheaper.

[1679] It's fucking crazy.

[1680] It is.

[1681] It's like $8 or $9 on the PC.

[1682] It's launching at $10, but Steam is doing a sale, so it's like $8 or $9.

[1683] It's out this week on Steam.

[1684] It just rolled out on Steam.

[1685] Oh, nice.

[1686] It just came out.

[1687] Good going.

[1688] Excellent work.

[1689] Check.

[1690] Way to go.

[1691] What did I do?

[1692] Awesome.

[1693] You did it.

[1694] Oh.

[1695] What did I do?

[1696] It's professionally done.

[1697] Thank you.

[1698] Rolled out.

[1699] Yeah.

[1700] Oh, that.

[1701] Yeah.

[1702] I didn't even mean to.

[1703] I know.

[1704] That's rock of ages.

[1705] That's great.

[1706] I didn't even see it.

[1707] And I didn't even see it.

[1708] That's why you're the master.

[1709] Still rolling.

[1710] Still rolling.

[1711] I got stuck in a really awful way in that game at a point where.

[1712] So there's.

[1713] We did a quick look of the XBLA version last week, and it's – I kind of want to check out the PC version because there are some control issues with that game.

[1714] So it's part Super Monkey Ball, part tower defense.

[1715] But it's also – All Rocks.

[1716] and part Monty Python.

[1717] Yes.

[1718] With kind of weird...

[1719] It seemed like a lot of Monty Python.

[1720] Kind of like in the in -between sequences more than anything else.

[1721] Yeah, the cut scenes and then when you make the goal.

[1722] Yeah, the little mouth fart that you get when you finally crush the dude that you're going...

[1723] So you're playing, at least in the single player, there's also multiplayer, which makes sense for the way this game is structured.

[1724] You start out playing as Sisyphus.

[1725] Yeah, you're playing as Sisyphus.

[1726] Which is weird.

[1727] Yeah, you play through the whole campaign as Sisyphus.

[1728] Well, I noticed there's a place at the title screen you can change your character.

[1729] That's for multiplayer.

[1730] Oh, that doesn't affect the...

[1731] No. Huh.

[1732] And there may also be, like, internet meme rage faces that you can put onto your rocks if you so desire.

[1733] Yes, I saw those.

[1734] I guess the Sisyphean aspect would make sense with the rock rolling motif.

[1735] Yeah, so, like, opening cutscene is...

[1736] Sisyphus trying to roll the rock, trying to roll the rock, and then saying, man, fuck this.

[1737] Those cutscenes are so well done.

[1738] And then going and, like, taking out Agamemnon.

[1739] And then, like, going through history and basically fighting all of these.

[1740] Yeah, I'm trying to, who else do you fight?

[1741] All kinds of.

[1742] Charlemagne.

[1743] Charlemagne.

[1744] The plague.

[1745] The plague.

[1746] Zombie Plato and Socrates.

[1747] As one unit?

[1748] Yeah.

[1749] Yeah, that's a symbol.

[1750] Okay.

[1751] That makes sense.

[1752] Leonidas just, yeah, one historical figure after another.

[1753] It stops it.

[1754] It seems to stop at Napoleon.

[1755] Looking at the – I haven't finished the story yet.

[1756] It's around there.

[1757] Because there's also boss fights.

[1758] Wait, outside of regular stuff?

[1759] Let's talk about the regular gameplay in this, which is like you basically have these two big hills and at the bottom of them are these fortresses.

[1760] One of these hills you're trying to roll down and the other one is your enemy is trying to roll down.

[1761] You're trying to defend.

[1762] And so you're trying to defend one and taking turns of like rolling your rock and then while you're waiting for your rock to rebuild, you're going to the other side and trying to set up defensive measures.

[1763] Rock blockers.

[1764] Exactly.

[1765] You're trying to do some rock blocking.

[1766] As you are rolling down the hill, your enemy has placed defensive measures, but there's also just straight up civilian buildings.

[1767] You go and smash those.

[1768] Well, you have direct control over your rock when it rolls.

[1769] Yeah.

[1770] This is the part where it's like Super Monkey Ball.

[1771] Very almost tactile.

[1772] You really feel the momentum of the rock.

[1773] You have to plan ahead to move off course and stuff like that.

[1774] Right.

[1775] No, you start moving in one direction and you need to make a hard turn.

[1776] You can also jump, right?

[1777] You can also jump.

[1778] This is also true.

[1779] You can also, if you have enough money before you start a run or a roll, you can upgrade to a crazy spiked version of the boulder or a fiery boulder.

[1780] But if you take too much damage, you lose those advantages before you get to the end, which is where you are trying to...

[1781] basically smash down this gate behind which your enemy's leader is standing.

[1782] So on the offensive, you're trying to avoid or destroy as many defenses that the opponent has set up and smash down his tower door to get the Chewie inside, which is the leader.

[1783] This little 2D sprite of the leader staying there going, help me, help me. And while you're doing that, real time, he is setting up defenses or doing whatever, and then when...

[1784] You're on the defensive while your rock is being hewn, right?

[1785] Hewn?

[1786] Is that right?

[1787] Yep.

[1788] Okay.

[1789] Hewn?

[1790] Hewn.

[1791] No, hewn.

[1792] You are setting up your own defenses, which include catapults and elephants.

[1793] Trebuchets.

[1794] Trebuchets.

[1795] Towers.

[1796] And it's one of those things where it's like, at least again on the 360, I haven't seen the PC version yet, where it's like pull the right trigger and you're pulling up this little wheel and then it's like, okay, here's the basic.

[1797] catapult well if you spend more money you can get the trebuchet or you can get this fiery fucking crazy thing.

[1798] And that's kind of the towery defense.

[1799] Almost just because you're setting up from a wheel.

[1800] Don't think it's turn based though.

[1801] That's the key distinction.

[1802] Everything is happening constantly fucking fast.

[1803] First one to release their rock might have an advantage.

[1804] They absolutely do.

[1805] So this is where I got frustrated.

[1806] A lot of these court...

[1807] And then their courses also, to make clear, is like the path from where you start to where this tower gate is that you're trying to smash down is this – Very windy.

[1808] Very windy, serpentine.

[1809] Or they can be.

[1810] Sometimes they are crisscrossy.

[1811] Just to make it on the stage.

[1812] Yeah, and it's all stage dependent.

[1813] And what was getting frustrating for me was I had hit this one stage where there was a lot of shortcuts.

[1814] It was a very long path.

[1815] And it seemed like the – And I think this maybe is just balancing issues, but it seemed like the enemy AI knew exactly where to put all of its shit and before its first roll had everything put up.

[1816] Now, I was having, like, even knowing, even having this course clocked, just navigating around and, like, scrolling up as fast as I can to certain areas.

[1817] Like, okay, I know I need to place stuff right here, right now.

[1818] Just couldn't get it done.

[1819] And the fine movement that you need from the view that you have to, like, okay, I've moved over one space and now I can lay down another tower.

[1820] Oh, wait, no, I moved two.

[1821] I need to back it up because I need to have a solid line.

[1822] I can't have any spaces in this fucking defense because he will weave right through there, and then it is pointless.

[1823] I did a checkered pattern one time.

[1824] I did the tall tower every other square, and then the row behind that on the off squares, I put bombs.

[1825] Yeah.

[1826] And, yeah, I watched him literally just, like, do, like, an S -curve.

[1827] Wow.

[1828] Right through that, I was like, man, there's no way he's getting past this.

[1829] And just, like, full fucking speed coming right down the hill, just, like, whoop, right through it, and just slammed into my thing.

[1830] So, and in addition to, like, okay, I need to place this stuff very specifically, very quickly.

[1831] And also the enemy seems to have this course completely clocked.

[1832] So if I don't both place everything in exactly the right spot on my first turn – because before you roll out for your first run with the boulder, you only have like – you have a set amount of money.

[1833] Like you only have this much to start this game with before you go and collect more money on your first boulder run.

[1834] By destroying some of his – By destroying some of his civilian buildings and such.

[1835] And there's also other crazy set pieces within certain – like in this level I'm talking about specifically, there is just a giant fucking cannon that's there that's constantly trying to – oh, yeah.

[1836] And so a lot of this stuff is just trying to blow you off the path.

[1837] So if your boulder takes damage, it gets smaller.

[1838] Does that mean you'll do less damage when you hit his wall?

[1839] Yeah.

[1840] You'll actually – you can actually lose – like you'll see like kind of chips coming out of the side of it.

[1841] But you can actually lose size and like go down a full size where the like outer shell crumbles.

[1842] So the more mass your boulder has, the more damage you'll do.

[1843] Right.

[1844] Because on that – because like there's – There's kind of two parts even to the boulder rolling part of the game where it's like, okay, I'm trying to dodge, get through the course quickly, but also dodge these defenses, but then also take out enough civilian buildings to rack up some cash.

[1845] Actually, I think you're getting it for regular buildings as well.

[1846] Yeah, you do.

[1847] But it's kind of the risk -reward of am I going to take this thing out or am I going to just try and blow past it?

[1848] So while you're doing that, then once you get kind of towards the final runway towards the gate, you are just trying to book as fast as you can.

[1849] You want as much momentum as you can get when you smash into that gate because that dictates how much of a dent you put into his health.

[1850] And I found like – Generally speaking, it takes three runs to do this.

[1851] And these are like five to eight minute runs.

[1852] Oh, wow.

[1853] The whole Super Nuts level.

[1854] That was the disappointing thing about it for me was the first couple levels going, oh, man, I love everything this game's doing.

[1855] It's really fun to roll the ball.

[1856] It's fun to set up your defenses and stuff.

[1857] And then the deeper in you get, the less time you have to do any of that stuff because the computer's...

[1858] Like you said, it books.

[1859] So what I saw during that quick look and the question I have, if you guys have played more of it, is have you ever found that being not the first person to release your boulder or being the first person to release your boulder pretty much guarantees you a win no matter how much mass is taken off?

[1860] No, because it's advantageous, but if the other guy sets up better defenses and he can knock you off the course, that is such a huge time suck.

[1861] Okay.

[1862] Uh, cause it takes the, you watch the boulder fall off the course and it has to be reset and you lose any momentum that you might've had.

[1863] So you can't catch up with a good defense if he were to go first.

[1864] Yeah, but there's definitely like the advantage of being the first one out with your, with your first, uh, like basically as soon as it comes up and says, Hey, you can roll.

[1865] It's like fucking drop everything.

[1866] You better go and roll.

[1867] Okay.

[1868] You have to do that.

[1869] Um, so it was weird though.

[1870] So I got, I find like, like.

[1871] dozen fucking times trying to get through this one level and just getting more and more infuriated with it finally i don't know what i i even the odds just enough i was able to and it was a real scrape by like he was barreling down the final runway towards my gate and i was like one hit away from from having the gate smashed and i was just a little bit ahead of him so uh like he was smashing my gate as i was going and squishing his dude Yeah, just like that.

[1872] But then it totally changes up.

[1873] After that, it got way easier again, and then there's a crazy boss fight against a fucking dragon, which is just like an arena boss fight, like a Zelda -style.

[1874] There's this giant dragon that's going into these attack patterns of swipe and then shooting flames across the field.

[1875] You have to jump?

[1876] You have to time and jump at this vulnerable...

[1877] Soft underbelly.

[1878] So, yeah, like the chest area and it straight up has the big like double X Band -Aids over that spot.

[1879] Oh, wow.

[1880] The – The contrast of antiquity and absurdity in that game is just like, I want to take that game out to dinner or something.

[1881] It makes you love it so much.

[1882] It's so fucking awesome.

[1883] The art style is cool, and it evolves because it's just borrowing the art style for whatever era that you're trying to...

[1884] That's what it is.

[1885] You look up Vlad Tepes on Wikipedia or whatever, and this painting that they use in the game is the one you see on the Wikipedia page.

[1886] That stuff is straight out of that time period.

[1887] They animate it.

[1888] They make them into paper dolls, so they move all funny and kind of...

[1889] you know, jangly, and a lot of voices like...

[1890] Right, right.

[1891] Like, when he opens his mouth, there are, like, fangs there, and he goes...

[1892] And, like, at one point they, like, turn Charlemagne's beard upside down to make a smile.

[1893] Like, it's just so stupid and awesome.

[1894] It's extremely silly.

[1895] And this is the Xenoclash dude.

[1896] Yeah, so that was the thing.

[1897] It was like, all right, after Xenoclash, you don't think you could be surprised by anything those guys would put out.

[1898] They have taken even more drugs.

[1899] Sure enough, this game is completely ludicrous, but the way in which it is ludicrous is still very surprising.

[1900] It's not creepy weird.

[1901] Yeah, it's just like silly weird.

[1902] Yeah, you would think after Xenoclash, like, okay, you guys are just creepy weirdos.

[1903] Like, no, you're just weirdos in this.

[1904] You can be weirdos in whatever way you want to be, sick freaks.

[1905] It's just like, who else is putting out a game like this?

[1906] Nobody.

[1907] Like, these guys are...

[1908] Yeah, and it's one of those things where I love the, like...

[1909] I love the way that they have chosen to put together these kind of existing parts of the boulder rolling stuff and the power defense elements.

[1910] But I do wish there was some better execution on some of that stuff.

[1911] They were clearly like, we have this crazy idea.

[1912] Let's see if we can make it work.

[1913] Yeah, this works pretty cool.

[1914] Let's build a game around it.

[1915] But this is a thing that you would need to iterate on, I think, a bit longer.

[1916] You're right.

[1917] There's just some basic issues of refinement with the UI and stuff.

[1918] But there is nothing quite like it out there.

[1919] Eat that, Japan.

[1920] Get off your asses.

[1921] Yeah, Chile has out -Japaned Japan by a great measure with Rock of Ages.

[1922] But yeah, so I want to see the PC version because I imagine that some of the issues of the granularity of control on the Xbox would be addressed with the mouse and keyboard setup.

[1923] Being able to place your towers with the mouse.

[1924] I wonder if they controlled the rock would be harder with the mouse.

[1925] They might, well, we'll see how they handle it.

[1926] You need a trackball to play that game correctly.

[1927] Some other weird issues.

[1928] Big old industrial trackball with some two -hand action.

[1929] When you're in the overhead view, there's no way to see where the other guy's ball is.

[1930] They give you a catapult, like an action ability to literally hurl stones.

[1931] You can see it.

[1932] You can see it, but when it's not on the screen, there's no pointer showing where it is.

[1933] Oh, no, no. It's just sort of like...

[1934] You have to scan up and down your entire track as fast as you can until you find it.

[1935] But you shouldn't be doing that anyway because...

[1936] Burning time.

[1937] Yeah, you're burning time.

[1938] And also, it takes time once you actually place the thing.

[1939] Well, other than that air shot thing.

[1940] That catapult, yeah, that thing.

[1941] Which is separate from the actual catapults that you place on the field.

[1942] It's an ability to just be like, all right, right now, instantly shoot something right here.

[1943] There's like a three -second delay on using that thing.

[1944] It's fucking hard.

[1945] It's really hard to hit the...

[1946] I don't bother with this.

[1947] So there's no co -op.

[1948] It's just competitive, right?

[1949] There's totally...

[1950] Well, co -op.

[1951] There's no co -op.

[1952] But there is versus.

[1953] Yeah.

[1954] Play against people online.

[1955] Sounds awesome.

[1956] I want to try that.

[1957] Yeah.

[1958] Well, Patrick and I did a little split screen, and that worked great.

[1959] So you guys do skee -ball.

[1960] Yeah.

[1961] And then we did the skee -ball thing, which...

[1962] It was a little weird.

[1963] For $10, though, it seems like there's a lot in here.

[1964] So where can folks get that?

[1965] On Steam?

[1966] It's on XBLA now.

[1967] On Steam, on XBLA, on Steam as of today.

[1968] It's coming to PSN.

[1969] It's not on there yet, but it was launched on XBLA.

[1970] Yeah, now on Steam.

[1971] Look at the quick look.

[1972] I think that'll explain a lot.

[1973] It's a hard game to verbalize, I guess.

[1974] It's just kind of weird.

[1975] Do you ever have the AI bug out on you?

[1976] I had to get stuck in a loop one time where I couldn't figure out how to get up the steps on my course.

[1977] Spent the entire run going back and forth in this six square area.

[1978] I got every achievement you can get for finishing without taking any damage, getting 7 ,000 money, hitting it with the catapult.

[1979] I just never figured out how to get out of that area.

[1980] I definitely feel like I have won a couple of matches because of AI exploits.

[1981] Like, oh, the AI just didn't know what the fuck to do in this situation.

[1982] It's kind of a bummer that that happens, but at the same time, like you said, sometimes it will just thread the needle on all your defenses and totally feel like it's...

[1983] You know, I feel like it was less like the AI's acuity with using the boulder and more of just like they knew exactly where to place everything and everything they placed was there instantly.

[1984] Right, they don't have to navigate around and fiddle with the overly sensitive controls.

[1985] Boom, everything that they want is exactly where they want it.

[1986] It can get tough, yeah.

[1987] And again, difficulty swings hard.

[1988] After I did that, I blew through first shot on half a dozen.

[1989] subsequent levels.

[1990] And there's maybe 20 levels in that game.

[1991] And so, you know, it's not necessarily like a super long game.

[1992] Depending on how much time you end up having to spend in anyone.

[1993] No, not yet.

[1994] I wonder how that game ends.

[1995] FMV.

[1996] Well, there's the he -goat god is one of the unlockable characters.

[1997] And alongside the dragon, I imagine that's probably one of the boss fights, is going to fight a giant pagan fucking goat god.

[1998] Makes sense.

[1999] Because that's how that game rolls.

[2000] Yeah, it doesn't have to make sense.

[2001] It is how that game rolls.

[2002] It just is what it is, man. Rock of Ages says, fuck you.

[2003] How are you guys doing?

[2004] Yeah, pretty good.

[2005] Smells like pickles in here.

[2006] It's just over there.

[2007] It's so hot.

[2008] It is pretty hot in here.

[2009] What do you guys want to do?

[2010] Let's talk about news.

[2011] Talk about some news?

[2012] Yeah.

[2013] What's news?

[2014] All right, let's talk about some news.

[2015] Let's talk about this Call of Duty XP stuff.

[2016] Their kind of BlizzCon for Call of Duty that Activision threw for the first time this year happened over the weekend.

[2017] People played paintball.

[2018] Kanye West played.

[2019] Paintball.

[2020] Dropkick Murphys played.

[2021] Dropkick Murphys, yes.

[2022] Wow.

[2023] It's the match made in heaven.

[2024] Call of Duty, Dropkick Murphys, and Kanye West.

[2025] Yeah.

[2026] Wow.

[2027] Yeezy.

[2028] How'd it go?

[2029] Who taught you how to do those double shotgun kills?

[2030] Yeezy taught me. Thank you.

[2031] And also at this event, aside from a lot of ridiculousness, it sounds like they kind of rolled out what their premium Call of Duty service is actually going to entail.

[2032] Yeah, well, at least they got the pricing out there and some of the details.

[2033] Fifty bucks a year?

[2034] Fifty bucks a year, yeah.

[2035] Which is pretty much what it needed to be.

[2036] Yeah, that's been right around the number that's made the most sense to me, I guess, which you take into account.

[2037] their DLC plans and all that stuff, but you can get that for 40 if you, or technically you can get it for 40 if you buy the hardened edition of Modern Warfare 3.

[2038] Because that comes with a Call of Duty Elite subscription.

[2039] And it's $100 or something.

[2040] So it's $60 for the game, $40 for the bonus.

[2041] So it comes with a year of that stuff?

[2042] Yeah.

[2043] Do you know?

[2044] You buy it by the year, as I understand.

[2045] They're starting to kind of call it seasons.

[2046] Okay.

[2047] And you'll get a season of DLC.

[2048] And it sounds like the access will be different.

[2049] I believe the number was 20 pieces of DLC.

[2050] Kind of rolled out on a monthly, not 20 a month, but like 20 pieces planned and rollouts every month.

[2051] which seems weird because it might lead to a case of where the subscribers get maps months ahead of everyone else.

[2052] And the only word I would have there is that you're splitting the user base.

[2053] You're creating some haves and have -nots, but enough people buy those hardened editions that it's probably not a big deal.

[2054] You're not going to be unable to find people to play with as long as that series is as popular as it currently is.

[2055] It's five years from now.

[2056] Pretty popular.

[2057] Did they say if you would be able to play that stuff outside of your season, if you were to let it lapse, would you then be able to play the content you got?

[2058] I believe it's yours, yeah.

[2059] So once you get it.

[2060] When you get it, you get it.

[2061] I believe that's how that's set to work.

[2062] No specifics about what piece of DLC means, though, right?

[2063] No. It's not all maps.

[2064] It can't be all maps.

[2065] They can't be doing 20 maps a year or something, can they?

[2066] Well, I guess they've been close to that.

[2067] Yeah, what if they do five maps in a pack, they do four packs.

[2068] That's 20.

[2069] It's like three maps, a classic map, and a zombie map or something.

[2070] Well, whatever.

[2071] However, if you want to split it that way, then yeah.

[2072] But obviously they won't be doing zombie maps because there's no zombies in that game.

[2073] Right.

[2074] Maybe Spec Ops maps.

[2075] Who knows?

[2076] Yeah.

[2077] There was like 13 maps in the last, in Modern Warfare 2, I think is the number.

[2078] That they released this?

[2079] No, no. That were DLC.

[2080] Maybe I have those numbers backwards, but anyway.

[2081] I'm just thinking about Block Ops.

[2082] They were basically doing.

[2083] It was either four or five.

[2084] It was either three multiplayer maps and a zombies map or four multiplayer maps and a zombie map.

[2085] I forget which.

[2086] Either way, they're kind of close to those numbers anyway.

[2087] And selling those for $15 a pop, you figure they put out four of them for Black Ops.

[2088] That's $60 right there.

[2089] That fourth one was all zombies, though, and it included the maps that came with the bonus editions of the game from the get -go.

[2090] They were the redesigned zombies maps from World War.

[2091] They weren't all new maps for everyone.

[2092] But at least the one new map that was in that pack they gave for free to anyone that did get those bonus versions.

[2093] So you get all the maps, however many maps those are.

[2094] Yeah.

[2095] You get in like Bungie,