Giant Bombcast 06-14-2011

[0] Hey everyone, it's Tuesday, June the 14th, 2011, and you are listening to the Giant Bombcast, day 8 of E3 2011 here.

[1] You're a dick.

[2] The show that never ends.

[3] Guys, let's talk about what we saw today.

[4] Vinny Caravella, what was your hot thing from the show floor today?

[5] Fantastic.

[6] Jeff Gerstman, what can you tell us about the appointments that you took today?

[7] And Brad Shoemaker.

[8] I know you had some exciting interviews.

[9] You want to talk about some of those?

[10] I stuck my dick in an alien's asshole.

[11] Thanks, Duke.

[12] Yeah, thanks.

[13] I took a crap and went to the hardware store.

[14] I'm going to rip off your head and order a pizza.

[15] So how is that game?

[16] It's fucking boring.

[17] That ruined my day.

[18] It's boring.

[19] Not even sitting in on that quick look, like recording it kind of ruined my day.

[20] I still play it, but man. That game is really boring.

[21] That's probably the biggest problem I have.

[22] And that's like the most damning thing you could say about that.

[23] Like I would at least hope even if it's not good.

[24] It is variety filled, but no aspect of it.

[25] And anything that you see once and you go like, oh.

[26] okay, they make sure to throw in two or three more times so by the end of the game you're like, man, fuck this part.

[27] I just have never seen a game, and even from the...

[28] I knew this could happen, a possibility this could happen leading up to it, but watching some of that stuff, a protagonist that I just couldn't relate to more.

[29] You couldn't relate to him any more than you already do?

[30] Yeah, I just hate him.

[31] Because it's 100%.

[32] You're like, that's me, baby.

[33] I think he's at his max at zero.

[34] Yeah, I can't relate to him at all.

[35] Just that whole persona.

[36] That persona just doesn't exist anymore.

[37] Only in parody.

[38] Right, and they don't play this up necessarily for parody.

[39] It's not like, hey, isn't it funny that Duke is this weird, kind of sad...

[40] misogynist that like is kind of creepy and touchy and gross like there's nothing right there's nothing postmodern about anything it kind of tries to celebrate it in a weird way but they don't go far enough and there are moments that I see the I'll say brilliance in a kind of for lack there are other words you know I'll just say brilliance where it's just like there's like dudes that go over the top as well like there's that one guy you met when you were walking out and it's like fucking Duke Duke man, let's go fucking shit up and tie my shoelaces on an alien snake.

[41] Yeah, fucking me. We're pussies out there.

[42] And you're just kind of like, all right, that's kind of funny.

[43] This is a weird world.

[44] I'm like, this guy has gone too far.

[45] And it's funny to see it reflected back at you and be like, oh, man, okay.

[46] What's up with this guy?

[47] That's the peer group that Duke Nukem has fostered for himself.

[48] Right, and that's kind of funny when you see that, but I don't think that plays – I don't think they keep that up the entire time.

[49] They do not.

[50] So it's like once that comes back down, you're like, oh, man. Yeah, this is kind of a sad man. Duke Nukem should have stayed behind.

[51] Yeah, like I would have loved to have seen like an intense character study where at the end of the game, Duke Nukem just hangs himself.

[52] Like realizing like, there's nowhere left for me to go but down, baby.

[53] Yeah.

[54] Kick out the chair.

[55] Or just like everybody deadpanning Duke.

[56] Yeah, or people just like, okay, whatever you say, man. What the fuck is with this guy?

[57] What's up with that guy?

[58] If every supporting character that you met was just super patronizing to Duke.

[59] Okay, Duke.

[60] Yeah, that sounds...

[61] Yeah, blow it out your ass.

[62] He fights these aliens really well, you guys.

[63] We have to put up with his fucking dumb shit.

[64] Do I have to go with Duke Nukem?

[65] This guy?

[66] He's just such a jerk.

[67] He's an asshole.

[68] Hey, Duke!

[69] I've got balls of balls.

[70] No, he's our greatest hero.

[71] It's Duke Nukem.

[72] It's this sub -family guy level of referential humor.

[73] They're not even trying to make their own jokes out of anything.

[74] It is literally just like Duke Nukem is going to say some stuff from something else.

[75] Which is what Duke 3D was, but it happened before the internet had accelerated all of this shit to total absurdity.

[76] I mean, when that game came out, Army of Darkness was...

[77] Like, of the day.

[78] That was topical.

[79] And I hadn't seen A Ray of Darkness when that game came out.

[80] So it was just like, whatever.

[81] At this point, everything has been referenced.

[82] I mean, you know, that game, fucking when you kill the pig cop, sometimes it says pork chop sandwiches.

[83] Come on.

[84] Like, how old is that?

[85] Like, what was the worst non sequitur or anachronism?

[86] He says, America, fuck yeah.

[87] Like, how old is that?

[88] Like, that's like the payoff that goes into another.

[89] interminable load screen.

[90] You're like, what?

[91] How?

[92] It's like, listen to Duke Nukem read off your WAV file folder.

[93] Yeah.

[94] But from like, you know, 2002.

[95] Well, from when you had a WAV file folder.

[96] I'm going to use these in worms.

[97] I'm not going to fall for no banana and no tail.

[98] It just begs the question of how much do we have to pay John St. John to just recite our favorite movie quotes?

[99] I mean, he's doing lines for trailers and indie games and stuff like that.

[100] We could probably swing that.

[101] Do you think we could afford him?

[102] Yeah, the game is really depressing.

[103] I don't know.

[104] But at the same time, I'm really glad that I played it.

[105] I'm happy that I was able to see this whole fucking saga through.

[106] Yeah.

[107] You're getting ready to close the book on it and put it in your drawer and say, Duke Nukem Forever is done.

[108] That's it.

[109] That's it.

[110] It's a part of my life that is gone forever.

[111] But maybe not, based on the way the game ends.

[112] You know, whatever.

[113] That game ends poorly.

[114] and it certainly sets up more Duke Nukem, and Gearbox wouldn't have bought the IP if they weren't planning on doing more Duke Nukem.

[115] I'm not even talking about new games.

[116] You think it sets up DLC?

[117] There are indications that there's stuff out there.

[118] I don't know.

[119] It's all conjecture.

[120] More power to them.

[121] I'm not buying any of that shit.

[122] So what happens now?

[123] I guess we're just talking about Duke, but what happens?

[124] Let's just say this one sells pretty well just because it's Duke Nukem, right?

[125] Everybody has curiosity.

[126] I mean, I have to assume, right?

[127] That's the gamble they're taking.

[128] Put it out there.

[129] It'll sell okay.

[130] Everybody has to play this.

[131] Even if they don't want to play it, they are going to play it.

[132] So does the market bear with these guys for the next Duke Nukem release and say, hey, hey, hey, all right, we're putting out a real one now.

[133] That's the question.

[134] Check it out.

[135] If everybody goes out and buys this game, which they probably will, and they all hate it, is Joe Walmart's shopper going to give the next Duke Nukem game the benefit of the doubt?

[136] They don't know anything about it.

[137] 3D Realms.

[138] They're not even thinking about 3D Realms or Gearbox or who made it or what happened.

[139] I don't know that that guy knows about Duke Nukem at this point at all.

[140] They've been advertising on TV a little bit as bus ads.

[141] It's a surprising amount of television.

[142] Also, there's probably...

[143] But I mean, I guess beyond current marketing, I have to wonder how many people in the much larger audience that we are dealing with today for video games was playing...

[144] 14 years ago and knows Duke Nukem 3D.

[145] I mean, regardless of nostalgia, there's probably a big segment of the audience for whom this style of humor is still applicable.

[146] Yeah, sure, sure, sure.

[147] I suspect that even for that crowd, this just doesn't do it well enough.

[148] It's really ham -fisted delivery.

[149] It's done poorly.

[150] When you were saying sub -Matt Hazard, I think that...

[151] Yeah, Matt Hazard's whole thing was that it was trying to be a Duke Nukem knockoff, and it is in some ways...

[152] more successful than this game is.

[153] You know?

[154] Yeah.

[155] In story, I mean, you know, the gameplay, Matt Hazard is a burning pile of trash.

[156] Right.

[157] But as far as just like the idea of the parody, the idea of trying to do this mock video game hero.

[158] Yeah, yeah.

[159] And there are even a couple of spots in the game where, you know, where Dew kind of acknowledges...

[160] There's a little bit of fourth wall breaking here and there that seems super out of place because they don't really devote themselves to it.

[161] It's like they just, what can we have them say here?

[162] Guess he won't be in the sequel.

[163] Like, all right, good, fine, fine, move on.

[164] Great.

[165] I mean, that game was in development for so long, I can't imagine a reality in which that final product didn't feel like it was coming from 18 different directions.

[166] And it really does.

[167] You can...

[168] I wonder if you didn't know that going in, if you would see it, but it definitely feels like a game that was developed a long time ago, and then someone came in at the last minute and said, well, what can we do fast?

[169] More shaders.

[170] All right, great.

[171] Let's just do that then.

[172] Can we get the frame rate up?

[173] No. All right, moving on.

[174] How about the load times?

[175] No. All right.

[176] How about a couple more cool John C. John quotes?

[177] Can we get those in there?

[178] No. Get the ones that are already in there.

[179] We've already blown our John St. John budgets.

[180] He's tired.

[181] He's not even returning our calls.

[182] He doesn't even want the money anymore.

[183] Other people are giving him work now.

[184] He says, call me when you have a new game.

[185] Can you take my name off the project?

[186] Voiced by Alan Smith.

[187] I'm Alan Smithy and I'm here to kick your ass and chew on bubblegum.

[188] And I'm all out of bubblegum.

[189] I love that line.

[190] I lied when I said I was going to kill you dead last.

[191] That's not even how it is in the game.

[192] Close enough.

[193] There are a lot of movie reference lines in the game, as you would expect, but they're not right.

[194] He doesn't say, I'd buy that for a dollar.

[195] He says, I'd buy this for a dollar.

[196] Do you think there's any way they're copyrighted?

[197] No, I think it's just that in the context of one man saying this to no one, they made the appropriate adjustments to the lines.

[198] But then at that point, it just sounds like that...

[199] I've said it before, Duke is your crazy uncle, but now you're old enough to realize, oh, this guy's out of his fucking mind.

[200] He's just misquoting movies all the time.

[201] Now you know why all the other adults in the family always tried to stay away from Uncle Duke.

[202] He loves cigars and monster trucks, but no, it's because he's fucking crazy.

[203] He's sneaky a beer every once in a while.

[204] He shows up to every family gathering with a different...

[205] Way too young for his age woman who's really enamored by his Humvee.

[206] He gets really uncomfortable and it's time to leave because he can't really drive because he's got too much to drink.

[207] But then kind of the guy, I'm fine.

[208] I'm fine.

[209] Arm around his shoulder.

[210] Uncle Ben, you want me to give you a ride?

[211] I'm fine.

[212] Linda, get in the car.

[213] I'm fine.

[214] I'll be right back.

[215] That's a quote.

[216] Yeah, the game is pretty depressing in spots.

[217] I'm still excited to play it.

[218] I don't know why.

[219] Yeah, like I said, I'm glad I played through it.

[220] I think that for some people that have been following the development of this game for this long, they kind of owe it to themselves to play it.

[221] But that is literally the only person I would recommend this game to.

[222] If you were looking for a funny shooter, if you're looking for a good shooter, if you're looking for a shooter, do not get this game.

[223] But if I'm looking for some platforming and first -person platforming?

[224] Yeah, if you want bad first -person platforming, this game has...

[225] It's like things that just don't exist in modern shooters for a reason.

[226] You know, things where they realize, like, oh, man, this perspective is just not good at doing this stuff.

[227] And they're like, fuck it, man, let's shrink him down and have him jump around on this sink.

[228] Awesome.

[229] We did that in the last game.

[230] Great.

[231] And literally no other games have existed since that last game.

[232] Yeah, it's like everyone working on the game has not played a game since Duke 3D.

[233] Hey, man, Level Lord needs to make maps that are way oversized for your character.

[234] And this has that.

[235] This has a multiplayer map that is that.

[236] And there are, like, three separate sections in the game where you get shrunk, one of which you drop.

[237] drive an RC car while shrunk.

[238] Also, I saw Jeff played a little multiplayer for the quick look and they've straight up remade the Hollywood level in that game for the multiplayer.

[239] It looks terrible.

[240] That's a shame.

[241] And the scale, everything, the scale on that whole level feels super crazy.

[242] It looks weird.

[243] It looks extremely small.

[244] There's kind of that main street path in front of where the movie marquee is and everything.

[245] It's supposed to be like a A full -size street.

[246] And in this map, in this incarnation of it, it looks crazy narrow.

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

[248] When Duke Nukem 3D came out, it was evolutionary.

[249] It was a better Doom.

[250] It was a better Doom.

[251] It was Doom with way more clever weapons than you could look up and down.

[252] Yeah, exactly.

[253] There was design stuff in that game that was pretty incredible.

[254] And for the time, the interaction with the environment, it's like flushing toilets and hitting buttons and stuff like that.

[255] It's kind of goofy.

[256] Like, games just didn't do that then.

[257] And now, you know, it's just this also ran, like, messed up, just crappy thing that doesn't push anything forward.

[258] Duke stayed the same.

[259] We've all changed, man. Kind of.

[260] Yeah, kind of.

[261] He's still in high school, and we're looking back and we're like, Duke should.

[262] kind of graduate and kind of move on.

[263] Duke needs to move out of his mom's basement.

[264] Come on to my place.

[265] We'll get my Camaro.

[266] Go spin some Brodies.

[267] Duke, I got to get up early for work.

[268] Come on, bro.

[269] Hey, you guys want to go play some Sega?

[270] No, my wife, we got a thing with her mom.

[271] Let's go out and chase some snatch.

[272] Nah.

[273] I got to go.

[274] Brad's cool, though.

[275] Red, you're going to hang out with Duke and maybe get some beers.

[276] I was thinking about going to the gym.

[277] The gym is for pussies.

[278] With the best press in my garage and listen to Bachman Turner overdrive.

[279] Oh, Duke, you're a crazy nut job, Duke.

[280] I actually really got to go, though.

[281] I got to go.

[282] I've got a spare Big Johnson shirt for you.

[283] It's cool, but I really, Jessie's back.

[284] Probably wondering where I am right now.

[285] See, Duke.

[286] I got a girl that can suck the chrome off a trailer.

[287] Bye, Duke.

[288] Say hi, Mom.

[289] I need someone to go to Daytona with me. Duke, where are your friends at?

[290] I'm going out with that, Mom.

[291] Don't worry about it.

[292] Duke!

[293] Come back and feed fluff.

[294] I fed it.

[295] Blow it out your ass.

[296] Sorry, Mom.

[297] Balls of sadness.

[298] That game says I've got balls of fail when you lose at the pinball machine.

[299] Next.

[300] Who else playing games?

[301] What else we got going on?

[302] Dude, get grounded.

[303] Brad, you want to talk about Infamous 2 some?

[304] Yeah.

[305] Let's watch this.

[306] Watch the Duke stink off.

[307] Greasy taste.

[308] Are you going to play Duke?

[309] I guess, yeah.

[310] I respect your decision to put your foot down.

[311] I feel like there's.

[312] It is important, and it is a game that I feel should be played just to know how this chapter ends.

[313] But just everything that I've seen of that game, it's not even like it looks like a bad game, but it has some crazy, ridiculous, over -the -top shit that I'd be willing to put up with the bad game part to see.

[314] But even the stuff that should be the payoff just looks kind of grimy and boring.

[315] It looks boring.

[316] Yeah.

[317] The visual style is boring.

[318] It's an ugly -looking game.

[319] There's nothing about it.

[320] It's sad, but at the same time, it's kind of hard to imagine it coming out any other way, considering the road it's taken to store shelves.

[321] It's such a crazy thing.

[322] I mean, yeah, it's spectacular, just that it...

[323] Made it to store shelves, that they press discs and are selling this to people.

[324] Yeah, one extra star for making it to store shelves on that one.

[325] I mean, I don't know that anybody expected it to push any boundaries by the time it came out.

[326] Arguably, the crime here is selling it for $60 alongside games that deserve that price tag and launching this massive kind of pan -media promotional thing.

[327] There are commercials, there are bus ads.

[328] They're pushing it like they would any game that is made in a modern context and actually should be bought at full price.

[329] Yeah, I imagine at some point that Take -Two is happy to get any money back on this project at all.

[330] Because at some point it looked like they weren't going to get any.

[331] But I can't imagine that it's going to be a good return on anyone's investment at this point.

[332] I'm really looking forward to the NPDs.

[333] Well, it can't possibly make the money spent on it back, right?

[334] That's just impossible at this point.

[335] Who knows?

[336] I think at this point the hope is that it doesn't totally destroy the name so that they can do another Duke game at some point, which I don't see it, man. I really don't.

[337] I think they have to go post -modern Duke or something.

[338] I think to make that character work in this day and age, so many things have to change about the world around him.

[339] And you can't just have that.

[340] It's tasteless and proud of it.

[341] Like it just doesn't – it doesn't work.

[342] It's not funny.

[343] That's the failing though is like the world inside of – inside of the Duke game doesn't acknowledge that things have changed.

[344] I think if all the same shit happened, but it acknowledged that it was this weird artifact, this relic.

[345] Yeah, you almost need like Demolition Man style.

[346] Like the world has changed, and the only one who could take down these monsters is Duke Nukem, and you kind of have to thaw him out, and he's just like caveman style thing.

[347] Inside the world of Duke Nukem forever, he's like the king.

[348] Exactly.

[349] He's like the apex of everything.

[350] That's what weirds me out about this, because they didn't amp that crap.

[351] quality up in Duke 3D at all.

[352] He spouted some one -liners, he kicked pig cops in the face, and that was it.

[353] And he threw money at strippers.

[354] This level of...

[355] Every single person you encounter is like, oh my god, it's Duke Nukem!

[356] The kind of self -centered chauvinism and the fawning that comes from these fans and stuff.

[357] That's all new for this game.

[358] Yeah.

[359] And I wonder at what point they thought that was a good idea.

[360] And it's hot off the success of Duke Nukem 3D, I'm sure.

[361] It made a lot of sense.

[362] That's fair.

[363] That game was huge in its day.

[364] But it's just like they – They stayed with that mentality even as it became more and more irrelevant.

[365] Guys, guess what floor Duke Nukem's penthouse is on.

[366] I'm going to guess.

[367] Can I guess?

[368] Do you have any guess?

[369] Three.

[370] Four.

[371] I asked if you were going to guess.

[372] Five.

[373] Go for it.

[374] I'm going to guess.

[375] Just going off the top of my head here.

[376] Just riff.

[377] First number that pops in my head.

[378] I'm going to say 69.

[379] Dude, you're right.

[380] Wow.

[381] That's a really good guess.

[382] Is that because you saw the ammo count on that gun?

[383] I'm good at math.

[384] Yeah.

[385] Subtract.

[386] You did 70 minus one.

[387] Okay.

[388] Yeah, I did 70 minus one.

[389] I checked to see if there was a 13 on that elevator, and there totally is.

[390] I know.

[391] That's it.

[392] That whole building's cursed.

[393] I know.

[394] Who lives on the 13th floor?

[395] George Broussard.

[396] Did you guys read the Wired article from two or three years ago about the development of this game?

[397] I think I did, yeah.

[398] But that was a long time ago.

[399] Granted, I, you know.

[400] Not in Duke time.

[401] You can't verify the veracity of that stuff because it was all kind of secondhand sources and stuff, but they painted this picture of these guys who went and made this truly, like you said, innovative game, like a game that in its day did stuff that had never been done before.

[402] And it almost sounded like they were so addicted to that feeling that they were like, that's why they kept pushing it back.

[403] They kept wanting to do that again, but their path to doing that again was doing the exact same thing they did the previous time.

[404] Let's make more stuff interactive.

[405] That's not doing it.

[406] You can draw on the whiteboards, which people saw in the demo, obviously.

[407] But you can't shoot the whiteboards.

[408] Can you play pool?

[409] You can play pool.

[410] Can you throw feces?

[411] Yep.

[412] Can you shoot mirrors?

[413] Nah, there aren't a lot of mirrors, but I don't know.

[414] Can you throw feces in Infamous 2?

[415] Let's try it again.

[416] Electrofeces.

[417] Really?

[418] That sounds really dangerous.

[419] Oh, okay.

[420] Electrified.

[421] Sorry, I got AT &T is sending me messages.

[422] All right, sorry.

[423] You were saying?

[424] Try it again.

[425] Dude, let's talk about Infamous 2.

[426] Okay, let's talk about Infamous 2.

[427] Let's talk about Infamous 2.

[428] Let's shift the gears away from Duke Nukem.

[429] That game is fun.

[430] That game is fun.

[431] So there are things in Duke.

[432] Duke, we're supposed to stop.

[433] What are you doing?

[434] There's a Gears puzzle, and at the end of it he says, Duke 1, Gears nothing.

[435] And there's another part where it's like, I hate Valve puzzles, because there's a puzzle involving Valves.

[436] Another part where you straight up see Halo armor.

[437] Yeah, like...

[438] There's power armors for pussies.

[439] I saw that in the preview build.

[440] You see, like, the Dead Space armor at one point.

[441] Another Dead Space Marine.

[442] The Halo mockery in particular really stood out, because this game adopts a bunch of Halo -style mechanics.

[443] Right.

[444] It's like recharging health and two weapons.

[445] Yeah, to call out all these other game developers as if you are still their contemporary.

[446] Like, still in the same ballpark as these.

[447] No, no, no. They're topping it.

[448] Oh, right.

[449] Yeah, exactly.

[450] Not to be in ballpark.

[451] But do you think the bigger insult is that those other companies don't – you're like, what?

[452] Who?

[453] No. No comment.

[454] They still exist?

[455] Yeah.

[456] Really?

[457] I guess.

[458] Well, is it funny at least?

[459] And that is all I have to say.

[460] Very good.

[461] All right.

[462] Is Infamous 2 better than Infamous 1?

[463] Yes, I think so.

[464] That is a hesitant yes.

[465] If I like the infamous one, I like the infamous two.

[466] Absolutely.

[467] All right.

[468] It sounds like it may, though, be an incremental.

[469] Yes, it is very evolutionary.

[470] They've added new powers, a bunch of new moves and stuff.

[471] It looks better.

[472] It runs better.

[473] Does it look better?

[474] You think so?

[475] I think.

[476] Artistically.

[477] Oh, okay.

[478] Definitely.

[479] Because I just loaded up the first one yesterday, monkeyed around with my Welcome Home.

[480] Right, right.

[481] Welcome Back edition.

[482] I saw you playing some there, and it seemed like it looked comparable.

[483] Yeah, frame rate chug at all.

[484] No, the frame rate is better.

[485] The first one had frame rate issues.

[486] That is definitely better here.

[487] But just visually, in terms of style, I mean, the first game was set in an analog for New York City, and it's very gray.

[488] Right.

[489] I just remember blue and gray, and that's it.

[490] This one is in what basically amounts to New Orleans.

[491] So there's a lot of neon lights, a lot of casinos, just broader color palette, and even stuff like sunsets and stuff.

[492] I think they tried to make it look richer.

[493] It's still taking place in one urban center, though.

[494] As far as I've seen so far, yeah.

[495] It seems like there might be some potential to leave that city later in the game, but I'm not...

[496] How deep into it?

[497] I'm at least halfway.

[498] There's two islands.

[499] I'm on the second island.

[500] How is the combat flowing in this?

[501] The combat feels the same.

[502] The core mechanics of moving around and aiming and switching your view and all that stuff feels the same, which is fine with me. It was nice.

[503] It was kind of fast and furious.

[504] It was close to perfect for me in the first game.

[505] It's not a word to throw around lightly, but it felt really, really well -tuned.

[506] Well, except for the parts where you get dinged off camera and to the side and stuff, kind of get overwhelmed really quickly.

[507] By tons of enemies up on rooftops and stuff.

[508] Yeah, I agree, but that issue is external to the way it feels, just the way the character moves around and stuff.

[509] I mean, you get this flow going, right?

[510] You get this flow where you're just zapping dudes all over, and then suddenly all this red comes on the side of your screen, and you're like, ah, you ruined my jam.

[511] There's definitely still a lot of that.

[512] The quick look that I think will be up by now, by the time you hear this, there's a great instance of jumping over a building, and there's a guy waiting with a rocket launcher and kills you before you even know that he's there.

[513] Yeah, that one -hit kill stuff, I don't know why.

[514] Yeah, it's not super frequent, but you definitely get ganged up on a lot.

[515] Well, I always felt like the ding with that, like the thing that frustrated me in the first Infamous, with the quickness of the kills, was it was hard to then jump right back into the action.

[516] I always felt like you were being teleported back to wherever your last...

[517] Oh, like the mission start?

[518] They have a straight -up GTA -style hospital thing.

[519] There are hospitals dotted around, and you revive at those.

[520] I was watching some of that quick look, and it seemed like it was really fast.

[521] It is.

[522] no load right oh you mean to get back into the yeah i don't know if this one checkpoints more liberally than the first one but yeah if you die in a mission in this one you start like right before wherever you were okay cool right back in the load screen kind of yeah there's never a load screen it installs like a gig and change when you first run it so it loads really fast that's cool that stuff's nice ton of new powers in the game um ice and fire obviously they've talked about but even just like different kinds of grenades and and the pea shooters got like five variations and stuff like that Lots of new stuff layered on top of what was already there.

[523] So, I mean, are they starting you with kind of your, like, what's their justification at the start of your abilities?

[524] What's going on there?

[525] I mean, do they reset you?

[526] Not really.

[527] There's no, like...

[528] No abilities.

[529] No classic abilities scenario.

[530] Because, you know, you kind of came off the end of the first Infamous pretty stacked up.

[531] It was kind of the origin story, yeah.

[532] You finish that game kind of fully coming into your own as a superhero.

[533] Right.

[534] But there was also, like, you know, because of the good -bad stuff, there was some options as to...

[535] what abilities you would have yeah well they're all variations on the core themes okay but i mean there was like like good and evil oh yeah specific abilities yeah red and blue yeah yeah but it was like it was like all right you have grenades if you're bad like your grenades will split into three oh right if you're good your grenades will stick to stuff it was it was always like like if you're bad you're gonna you're gonna do more damage to innocence if you're there's more precision for the stuff like that right right actually in this one the the fire and ice stuff is mapped to good and evil karma So you can only have fire or ice based on the way you're playing.

[536] And I haven't seen any of the fire stuff, but some of the ice powers are pretty profound.

[537] So once you choose your path of alignment, you're locked out?

[538] Yeah, it's actually like a really contrived story point where you're just in the middle of a cutscene, and it's like, hit R1 to choose this character or L1 to go with that one.

[539] And that totally...

[540] In fact...

[541] And these are like your other hero mentor type characters.

[542] Kind of, sort of.

[543] Like, I'm going to teach you how to ice.

[544] Yeah, that's accurate enough.

[545] I won't say how it goes down exactly.

[546] You also import your save if you have it.

[547] Yeah, but I think that's just for mechanics.

[548] Well, I don't know.

[549] It's weird.

[550] I never finished the first game Evil.

[551] I think you did both, right?

[552] I think I did both, yeah.

[553] Do the endings differ enough that it would really matter how...

[554] How the new game starts?

[555] I think there are...

[556] Throughout that game, there are a couple of big plot points that hinge on good or evil.

[557] And I think...

[558] Is there character deaths that are...

[559] Yeah, that stuff is always fixed, I'm pretty sure.

[560] There are choices you can make, but I think they might resolve the same way.

[561] But I kind of remember the ending being...

[562] Not a huge difference, just kind of tonally different.

[563] Right, but the events are effectively the same.

[564] I think you still wind up being like, hey, get ready for this huge battle that's coming in like 20 years, which I guess is where this game comes from.

[565] Except in 20 years, yeah, it's more like six months because here you are.

[566] When you bring your save in, it enumerates just like everything you get.

[567] It's like, all right, for being fully good in the last game, now you have a full level of good karma going into this one.

[568] Or it's like because you got X number of blast shards in the last one, so you start with this much extra ammo and stuff like that.

[569] That's kind of cool.

[570] It's nice.

[571] It's a nice little bonus, yeah.

[572] But that event I was talking about where you pick sides and that determines what powers you get.

[573] I didn't try this because I was good and I went with what it considers the good choice.

[574] But my impression is that you could be all the way bad and pick good and it would just flip your alignment and you go all the way good.

[575] Oh, at that moment?

[576] And get all those powers.

[577] I might be wrong, but it kind of seems like a way you could sort of cheese or game the morality stuff.

[578] It's a hard save right before that one.

[579] You should go back and check that.

[580] But that would be at the very beginning of the game, right?

[581] No, no, you're talking at that.

[582] This is the kind of midpoint.

[583] In fact, it seems like right at the midpoint of the game because it's when you move on to the second island.

[584] You're enjoying it so far?

[585] It's a lot of fun, yeah.

[586] I mean, the progression is handled really well.

[587] They tie a lot of stunts into the new powers you get.

[588] You have to discover a power to have access to it, but then you have to say...

[589] Kill 10 guys while hanging from buildings or power lines or whatever.

[590] It's like a little achievement -y kind of...

[591] To get the power?

[592] You know what I mean?

[593] Kind of.

[594] Yeah, yeah.

[595] It's like, all right, you have discovered this power, but now you have to do 10 of these things to actually be able to buy it.

[596] To lock it in.

[597] Yeah, stuff like that.

[598] It's kind of neat.

[599] How's the user -created mission stuff?

[600] It's fine.

[601] I haven't messed with the editor yet, but I played...

[602] Cyberpunch did a bunch of missions that they seeded the world with just in case nobody made any.

[603] Turns out everybody's making them because they're all over the place.

[604] Happy to report that Vinny's Law is still in effect.

[605] There is a Super Mario Brothers Law in there.

[606] It's pretty poor.

[607] It's not very good.

[608] I can't even imagine what that looks like.

[609] Yeah.

[610] It's a ramp, and then there's a flagpole that you have to jump to.

[611] Oh, is that it?

[612] Yeah.

[613] That's all it is.

[614] So it's an abstract, but it still represents 1 -1.

[615] It's great that they put that stuff in, but I played it.

[616] Because I'm reviewing it, you know, and I need to see that stuff, and I would have checked out a couple of them anyway, but at some point it just seems unnecessary.

[617] But they're entirely optional.

[618] They are, and you can turn them off.

[619] It's really easy to go into it.

[620] You can filter in, like, six different ways.

[621] It's, like, newest or most popular.

[622] So how do they actually, like, I guess, propagate into the world?

[623] Because this is...

[624] like, geometry.

[625] This isn't just, like...

[626] Yeah, well, some of them will spawn you off into a little instance.

[627] Like, you will see a load, and it'll take you into, like, a separate map.

[628] Do you see, like, a little, like, swirly warp thing or something that you go in?

[629] It just goes to a load screen, and then you're...

[630] I was wondering, like, how you would...

[631] Oh, you mean, how do you access it?

[632] Oh, there are mission markers, just, like, story inside missions.

[633] Oh, okay.

[634] It's a different color.

[635] That's it.

[636] And oftentimes, when you trigger those, then it...

[637] It spins you out.

[638] Yeah, sometimes it'll bring you back into the world where you were, and it'll just layer something on top of that.

[639] But even then, it'll load you back out of that and into the generic world again.

[640] Okay.

[641] So you're not going to see all of this whatever crazy geometry stuff that people are stacking boxes until you actually...

[642] No, no, absolutely not.

[643] Okay.

[644] Like one of the ones that was even made by Sucker Punch, and this seems kind of weird because most of their missions seem to be within the context of fiction, but they had one called Sly.

[645] I was like, all right, I got to see what that is.

[646] So I go over and trigger it, and it loads in, and then I'm back in the same place, except there's like a 50 -foot tall, like 8 -bit -looking running sprite of Sly Cooper in the middle of the city, just like jogging along.

[647] And, like, 20 seconds later, the mission ends, and then I got 35 XP.

[648] Nice.

[649] So you do keep the experience from those missions?

[650] Yeah, yeah.

[651] So you can grind out experience.

[652] Like, I was actually in a user mission when I hit, like, Karma rank 2, and I got the little cutscene, like, going, oh, you've leveled up your Karma.

[653] So have dudes built missions where it's just, like, a pit full of bad guys?

[654] No, I don't think it would really work that way, because, I mean, every one action in the game generates so little.

[655] and experience or whatever, that you'd still have to do that a thousand times to get any meaningful progression out of it.

[656] Somebody will figure it out.

[657] But, I mean, so I was a little worried going into this game.

[658] I was like, all right, well, they found a way to let their user base do some percentage of the work for them.

[659] That's right.

[660] Which sounds super crazy.

[661] But I was just like, man, maybe they didn't populate a whole lot of side missions of their own in here, but there are a ton of that stuff.

[662] Are they varied?

[663] Uh, pretty varied.

[664] Yeah.

[665] I mean, you know, they kind of break down into different types, but not explicitly, you know, like get the bombs off the building.

[666] Uh, so it's weird.

[667] There are real, there are multiple tiers of activities, like story missions.

[668] And under that, there are like kind of side missions with VO and like unique premises.

[669] And then under that, there are these like sort of almost red dead ish, like contextual events, like stop this mugging from happening or defuse this bomb that's on the side of the building.

[670] And those take like 30 seconds each.

[671] So those are all over the place, but.

[672] The actual side missions, like the unique ones, there are 60 of those in the game.

[673] And then there's, like, I've done, like, 25 story missions already and don't even seem to be close to the end of the game on that side.

[674] So the user stuff at some point is just like, I don't want to, like, play some guy's random generic combat challenge when I could be spending all this time.

[675] And the side missions, every 10 side missions, you get, like, a really meaningful new power and stuff.

[676] So, I mean, you could easily spend.

[677] Is it really by side mission, like number of side missions?

[678] Yeah, there's, like, a list of.

[679] kind of core abilities every 10 of the side missions you get one of those.

[680] So, I mean, if you finish the game both ways and you've done everything else and you still want to play more Infamous, it's great that stuff is in there, but I can't see taking a lot of time off from, like, the story -based content for it.

[681] I just wonder if this is, like, a Sony -directed agenda, kind of, like, post Little Big Planet.

[682] I think that's probably part of it, and part of it's probably them trying to figure out, like, what are some things we can add into this game to...

[683] like prevent people from selling it back as soon as they finish it.

[684] I mean, there's no multiplayer.

[685] Kind of extend the value.

[686] Yeah, yeah.

[687] Short of including multiplayer.

[688] Right, yeah.

[689] Which...

[690] I don't think that would really help.

[691] We had an interview.

[692] I remember it must have been GDC or some EC or something, whatever we did.

[693] And it was basically like when you finished Infamous 1, you're kind of done unless you want to go for a second playthrough.

[694] And he was saying this gives you a chance at least once you're fully powered up to go back if you want to mess around.

[695] With all those powers.

[696] With all those powers.

[697] It's neat that they did it and it's implemented really well.

[698] For what it is.

[699] As of now, at least while I'm still playing through the main game, it's kind of hard to want to divert to that stuff.

[700] Well, they seem fully aware of that and just turn it off.

[701] The stuff in Skate was like that, too, when they started implementing that stuff.

[702] It was well done.

[703] It was really cool that they did it.

[704] And a lot of it was not very good, but the ones that were good were really good.

[705] But there was already so much going on in Skate that it wasn't really necessary.

[706] And then the other stuff that was going on was probably more meaningful to your overall experience.

[707] But yeah, they demonstrated how they made Space Invaders and stuff like that.

[708] People will come up with some neat stuff.

[709] It's a slippery slope of how integral to the experience are you willing to make user -generated content to your game.

[710] It's like you can either say, oh, well, it's not that critical, so whatever.

[711] Or if you make it too critical, then it's like, well, where's the fucking game, you guys?

[712] So it seems like that's a tough balance to reach when dealing with this kind of content.

[713] For sure, yeah.

[714] Yeah, it's a really fun game.

[715] I mean, if you like Infamous.

[716] My copy's coming on Wednesday.

[717] It's a lot more Infamous and in a really good way.

[718] I wish that it was a little more polished.

[719] I wish that maybe they had thrown some extra artists at it or spent a few more months polishing the world or something.

[720] That's a pretty small team, right?

[721] i'm not sure how big sucker punch is at this point i don't think it's huge uh i mean the scope of it is fine it's all it's definitely on par with other open world games but like it feels like there's sort of a just another couple of rounds like there's a lack of ambient sound in a lot of cases and uh like the sound is a big part of it it's like you go in and buy a power and you hit the button to buy the power there is zero sound effect accompanying that at all like even navigating the menu there's just nothing there like you can stand in the middle of the street or up on a rooftop and like kind of hear some crickets but like Like, there's a streetcar system in the city, and I was standing, like, on the sidewalk as a streetcar went by, and zero sound effect.

[722] Well, did you buy the CD -ROM version?

[723] Because that's got all the sounds on it.

[724] No, I was loading the floppy side.

[725] Well, there's your problem.

[726] Running the DOS version.

[727] I've got a BBS number that you can download the sound packs.

[728] Download the speech add -on.

[729] Yeah, I know a guy.

[730] I've got to get that ad -lib working.

[731] I can't load that into high memory.

[732] Free up some IRQs here.

[733] Nothing doing.

[734] My soft modem's on that one, son.

[735] Yeah, it's just, I mean, it's specifically because the action is so much fun and it's all put together so well that these kind of issues of polish stand out a little bit more.

[736] Is there anything about the way that first game handled that you wish they would have addressed?

[737] I mean, I know that you're a big fan of just kind of the basic feel of Infamous, but just, I guess, like structurally, was there anything about it that...

[738] I mean, I always kind of wonder when you have games like this where it's the, you know...

[739] the choose good or bad, like how meaningful that is to the actual experience, and if there's a more elegant way to do that, or if that's even necessary.

[740] It's tough to say.

[741] I mean, the moral choices in the first game and this one were both so contrived.

[742] It's like, what was the classic example in the first one, the first moral choice you got to?

[743] The food?

[744] The food drop, and it was like, all right, give the food to the people who need it, or take it off yourself.

[745] Yeah, whatever.

[746] It's still kind of like that.

[747] It's hyperbolic.

[748] It's either be a complete saint or be the worst asshole possible.

[749] But even if you're being an asshole, your end goal is still saving humanity.

[750] So it doesn't really jive very well.

[751] But you're saving it for yourself, I guess.

[752] I don't know.

[753] You're saving it for Duke.

[754] I guess that makes having a unified ending make more sense for that game.

[755] Yeah, but they're definitely...

[756] There are two endings in this one because there are trophies for both.

[757] So I don't know how that stuff plays out.

[758] There's something a little more appealing about the role -playing the really evil superhero, though, because you're supposed to be so much more powerful than anyone else.

[759] So why not just be king of the world, right?

[760] The first game I thought did kind of a bad job of that stuff because in the first one you could see these little demo movies of all the abilities, even the ones that you didn't get or couldn't get.

[761] Like if you were all the way good, you couldn't get the evil abilities.

[762] But you could still see how awesome they looked.

[763] And across the board it seemed like the evil powers were way more fun looking in the first game.

[764] They're red.

[765] Yeah, like you get red lightning and that's awesome.

[766] Also, shit, your grenades split into five grenades and blow everything up.

[767] They were pretty good.

[768] It seems like they did a better job in this one of giving the good side some pretty compelling powers.

[769] And they don't show you the powers that you can't get, so I kind of appreciate that.

[770] Two playthroughs.

[771] Yeah, maybe.

[772] Or, I don't know, I'm hanging on to my save right before that pivotal mid -game event.

[773] Just swap it.

[774] I'm just going to go back and flip it and finish the game again.

[775] Get both endings, I guess.

[776] I don't know.

[777] We'll see if that works.

[778] Blast shards.

[779] Patrick made a good point, just to sum up in the quick look.

[780] We were talking about the Uncharted, there's Assassin's Creed, all these sort of urban traversal games.

[781] Assassin's Creed, also an open world game.

[782] Both of those games had really shaky debuts and then went on to much, much greater things.

[783] Infamous fulfilled a lot of its potential the first time around.

[784] made a much smaller leap to the sequel.

[785] So you're talking about just kind of like the...

[786] Like the impact.

[787] The jump from 1 to 2 and those two being greater, but...

[788] And then, even though this is maybe comparably as good a game as...

[789] Well, I'm going to have a hard time comparing this to Assassin's Creed 2 or Uncharted 2, but I see your point of like...

[790] Just because it's not as big a leap, it doesn't have that same impact.

[791] Right.

[792] Yeah.

[793] Even if it is still a high -quality product.

[794] It's more of the same.

[795] It's better.

[796] They've added more.

[797] It's better and more, but it's still kind of the same.

[798] The first one for me is definitely, and I guess maybe until I play the second one, is one of the best pure open -world games just in terms of not feeling like it's completely broken.

[799] Right.

[800] You're not running up against stuff constantly that's like, oh, this.

[801] Why is this car disappearing into the pavement?

[802] Flipping over and dudes just clipping into walls.

[803] There's some of that.

[804] Yeah.

[805] Well, I don't know.

[806] A little bit of that open world jank.

[807] Maybe it's because the controls feel really tight.

[808] You're pretty much zooming around on power lines the entire time.

[809] Controls don't mean shit, though, when you get stuck behind a dumpster and you can't finish the mission.

[810] Did that happen to you?

[811] Two different missions.

[812] I've gotten stuck inside stuff.

[813] Well, then fuck it, dude.

[814] Both times, luckily, enemies came along and hit me enough until I got knocked out of it.

[815] That stuff is definitely around.

[816] Advantage Duke Nukem.

[817] Playing Duke, there's some teleporting guys.

[818] One of them teleported inside level geometry.

[819] Nice.

[820] And then he got stuck in there, and I was stuck for about ten minutes until he decided to teleport out.

[821] I was hoping you were going to say he teleported inside you and tele -fragged you.

[822] No, that would be another extra star on that review.

[823] That's infamous.

[824] So I've been playing some Alice Madness Returns, the follow -up to American McGee's Alice.

[825] I know it's – Sitting by the Three Kings over here.

[826] Jeff and I were talking about this earlier today.

[827] It's weird to me that Alice and Duke are coming out in the same week just because – I mean, granted, the original Alice is still four or five years after – You just want to play Quake Engine games or something?

[828] Duke 3D came out, but still kind of this – return from from days past sure um and i i still like when i first saw uh alice madness returns i was i was really struck by uh the look of that game uh like just the art style for that stuff and you know like that was kind of like the big draw of the original was like just this severe art style and how like well realized it was for the time you go back you look at it and it's it's It's a little rough.

[829] I think that's not because of art direction.

[830] That's because of tech.

[831] That game was actually of a time when having an art style at all was still kind of an accomplishment.

[832] Yeah, absolutely.

[833] aiming to have a look like that was anything at all.

[834] Like anything but right angles in your level geometry was kind of impressive.

[835] Doom had warehouses.

[836] It had hell warehouses.

[837] That's quick one or two.

[838] I will say that that's true of polygonal games.

[839] You could have art style easily in 2D games.

[840] Oh, yeah, certainly.

[841] Yeah, specifically that sort of like late 90s shooter community that that game came out of.

[842] Yeah, yeah.

[843] Like a lot of browns and, you know.

[844] And so, you know, I think this game has a fantastic look to it.

[845] I think it brings that whole art style, which granted in the decades since the idea of the like dark and spooky Alice in Wonderland maybe does not carry the same punch as it once did.

[846] Or maybe it carries the exact same punch and everyone's grown up some.

[847] But, I mean, that's neither here nor there.

[848] It's a nicely realized look.

[849] It's dark and nasty.

[850] And it plays off of the whimsy and the kind of dark, twisted elements.

[851] Visually, it realizes that stuff really nicely.

[852] And it kind of plays into the...

[853] The various kind of thematic elements of Alice in Wonderland.

[854] But it plays an awful lot like American McGee's Alice.

[855] Wait, really?

[856] I mean as far as kind of the structure, the what you're doing in that game.

[857] Oh, like what American Beauty House wanted to be.

[858] I'm not saying like it has the exact same control profile.

[859] I feel like it handles pretty well.

[860] But as far as – like it is kind of a throwback, like not to the crazy Duke Nukem's like extreme.

[861] Yeah.

[862] But the combination of the combat, some environmental puzzle -solving stuff, and a lot of platforming.

[863] Like back when people made third -person platformers.

[864] Right.

[865] Like moving platforms and hey.

[866] Yeah, yeah.

[867] It has that stuff.

[868] And that stuff is kind of key to the experience.

[869] And I have – most of my deaths have been occasionally from combat because it can be a little – it will start throwing groups at you and you've got to be like dodge, block, dodge, attack, find weak spot.

[870] Like you kind of got to hit it hard.

[871] It's not giving it to you too easy.

[872] But a lot of my deaths have definitely been just like, oh, didn't time that jump right.

[873] I can do a little double jump and it gives you a little bit of wiggle room with that stuff.

[874] But I've definitely aided a few times there.

[875] So it's – It's a weird game.

[876] Do you have to jump or run past, like, swinging pendulums or gears or knives or anything?

[877] Yeah, I'll switch to stuff like that.

[878] Sure.

[879] But, I mean, again, I think it's...

[880] Alice won gear zero.

[881] I think that game, like, it plays well enough.

[882] Like, playing it, I don't feel like, ugh, this is a chore.

[883] Like, it's not bumming me out or anything.

[884] But for me, that game is the aesthetic.

[885] Like, that's the thing that...

[886] draws me in and makes that game interesting to play is how it looks.

[887] Right, like you want to go see some concept art. That's a game where you want to unlock that stuff and see, like, man, that is crazy.

[888] And I feel like the short path from concept art to what's in that game, like it's...

[889] I think they should have just, like, made a video game out of that Tom Petty video.

[890] I feel like that's the jumping off point for all modern Alice in Wonderland interpretations.

[891] Probably, but I just think they should have been more direct with it.

[892] At one point, you just want to see Tom Petty in the game.

[893] Yes.

[894] As the Mad Hatter.

[895] What's that guy up to?

[896] What's he doing?

[897] I haven't heard from him in a couple months.

[898] Exactly.

[899] He was supposed to come by at E3 and just failed.

[900] Vinny, have you had a chance to play a single goddamn game?

[901] No, I kind of threw in The Witcher for some more love.

[902] That's a rough...

[903] In between naps.

[904] That's a rough game to try and ease back into after E3.

[905] Yeah, it was kind of rough, and I was kind of getting...

[906] Oh, God, E3's over.

[907] Frustrated playing.

[908] Oh, yeah, it is.

[909] It just happened, man. It just, like, it went.

[910] Like, I gave myself over to it about a week and a half ago, two weeks ago or something, and then it just occurred.

[911] You know?

[912] I had a real tough time shaking it out.

[913] E3's a thing that happens to you.

[914] Yeah.

[915] I had a rough time shaking it out when I got back.

[916] It's like becoming a werewolf.

[917] It's like, you know the moon's coming, and it's like, I can't do anything about it, so just lock me up in prison.

[918] Run!

[919] Run!

[920] It was like day two on the show floor, looking around, going like, man, this is totally, like, this E3 is, like, in front of me. It's, like, happening right now.

[921] I'm like, oh, God, man, weird.

[922] Like, it took that long for it to finally sink in that, like, we were in the middle of it.

[923] Yeah.

[924] Well, whatever.

[925] By day two, you're not in the middle of it.

[926] It's pretty much done at that point.

[927] I don't know.

[928] The way we ended up covering that show every day was a pretty long day.

[929] No, no doubt.

[930] I'm just saying as far as the typical, you saw the big stuff already.

[931] You're still taking appointments and seeing a lot of games and talking to lots of dudes.

[932] Yeah, E3 this year was a...

[933] It was a weird one, I think, in terms of like I do think the press conference days are usually the biggest announcement days, but I think I had the most exciting time on the floor seeing actual games.

[934] There just wasn't anything at the press conference that was a huge, huge, huge announcement.

[935] Like maybe the Wii U stuff is the biggest thing, the unknown, biggest unknown.

[936] But then that was on the floor, and that was a big surprise.

[937] On the floor, go play it.

[938] So like the floor days for me. And with the Wii U specifically, that's something that they can make the announcement, Like the impact of that stuff, you can't really start processing and feeling until you actually hold that controller, until you actually see that stuff for yourself.

[939] And a lot of the most exciting stuff that was shown during press conferences, again, I'm not surprised there's a lot of known quantities, but again, most of that stuff was on the floor in some kind of longer form or even if it's a theater thing or sometimes even playable.

[940] So this year the show really did kick off once we hit the floor and started seeing more of that stuff.

[941] And I was like, okay.

[942] Getting really excited.

[943] I want to go play some more games once the floor stuff started kicking in.

[944] Because after the press conferences, it was kind of like, eh, okay.

[945] Again, the Nintendo one I thought was exciting because it was like – Here's a bunch of new stuff.

[946] There's a lot of questions answered.

[947] Like, great.

[948] I guess that's true.

[949] About halfway through day two, I had a weird like – fuck, I just want to go play a bunch of games right now.

[950] Like, I've seen some cool games, and it's reminding me, hey, dude, games.

[951] I'm like, fuck, it's cool that I'm getting to go and see these games right now, but I just want to go and play, I just want to leave E3 and play video games now.

[952] This has me excited about just the overall notion.

[953] Yeah, and the press conferences did not leave me kind of salivating in that kind of way of like, man, I can't wait until next year.

[954] It's going to be crazy.

[955] It was more of like go to the floor and be like, this year is going to be pretty good.

[956] It's kind of a lot of known quantities.

[957] Yeah, everything was either a sequel or something I kind of expected to come out.

[958] Yeah, it's like, yeah, you didn't guess that Halo 4 was coming, right?

[959] Well, actually, when they started that up and they're like, here's this brand new trailer.

[960] Awesome, we're going to get a new IP.

[961] And I was like.

[962] Oh, that's Halo.

[963] Were you fooled by that?

[964] I did.

[965] I'm trying to avoid the leaks and stuff.

[966] I was like, oh, man, they're making Trauma Center for 360.

[967] I was like, oh, that's Halo.

[968] And that's not a new trilogy.

[969] It'll be a new trilogy by the time they're done.

[970] I spoke about this during one of the E3 podcasts, but I was bummed to have.

[971] to have seen that leak.

[972] In retrospect, if I had seen that fresh, I imagine that would have been my...

[973] Holy shit!

[974] That would have been the one meaningful surprise of that thing.

[975] It's impossible for anybody to keep a secret in the game industry anymore.

[976] It kind of always has.

[977] But it's really, really bad.

[978] It got to the point where we were sitting there at the Sony press conference knowing what the price of the Vita was halfway through the thing before he ended the conference by saying the price.

[979] That's because they messed up and issued a release earlier.

[980] Yeah, in that case, they slipped up.

[981] So was the Microsoft stuff.

[982] The Microsoft thing with someone who published something early.

[983] But it's just the number of ways that information can disseminate.

[984] The Nintendo name didn't get out ahead of time.

[985] The name didn't.

[986] The name didn't.

[987] But all the shit about the screen and the controller and all that stuff.

[988] But no shots got out.

[989] No hardware shots, right?

[990] No information.

[991] So seeing that stuff was really interesting.

[992] It was.

[993] It was.

[994] But, I mean, we had at least an inkling about everything that was going on.

[995] Should have just called it the Nintendo Versus.

[996] Get right back to that Pac -Man versus Roots.

[997] That's all that thing is.

[998] Oh, was that that Game Boy?

[999] Yeah.

[1000] GameCube thing?

[1001] Yeah, that's the first thing I was thinking of.

[1002] That system was Pac -Man versus and Four Swords Adventures, but a console.

[1003] Chase Me is that Pac -Man thing.

[1004] Yeah, it is.

[1005] That's fine.

[1006] Chase Me was a lot of fun.

[1007] Yeah, it was fun.

[1008] That was cool.

[1009] That was the one I didn't get to check out.

[1010] I've been thinking more and more about that thing in the days since the show, and a few things have me kind of rethinking.

[1011] That stuff is one, like if their whole, if the crux of that thing really is that asynchronous style of some people with Wii remotes and then someone with the...

[1012] the Wii U controller, like how far can they really go with that?

[1013] And two, the notion that you can only connect one of those things to it.

[1014] Can you only connect one?

[1015] I mean, they said they're not going to be selling them externally, but that doesn't mean you can't sync more than one.

[1016] I think it's starting to sound like it's possible.

[1017] Yeah, I guess we won't know for sure for a while.

[1018] I mean, who knows how much wireless bandwidth that thing needs to push that image and all that stuff?

[1019] I feel like if you can't like...

[1020] I mean, if they're saying stuff like, imagine a football game where you could do this, this, and this.

[1021] That's only cool if player two has that exact same experience.

[1022] Right.

[1023] I agree entirely, but I feel like everything that I heard, because people were asking that question pretty point blank, and it seemed like everyone was not willing to commit one way or the other.

[1024] It was like people were asking people to be soft about that stuff, and they're saying, well, all we're saying is one.

[1025] That's all we've been told.

[1026] I mean, maybe that thing is like $160.

[1027] Who knows?

[1028] Maybe it's just like...

[1029] like cost prohibitive for them to be like you know yes you could but like you might as well buy a new system yeah but then that's an even larger problem right so like maybe that's why they like won't announce like hey goodbye get your friend one because maybe that whole package is like you know $2 .99 and that controller costs like bring the controller over to your from your friend's house yeah like I could totally see it being like the console is actually like $25.

[1030] It's like the controller is like $180.

[1031] We just strapped two Wii's together.

[1032] It's four GameCubes.

[1033] Because that's kind of like the whole press conference, that's how they pitched it.

[1034] They're like, here's the Wii U, and it's basically the controller.

[1035] They never talked about the hardware, the thing that plugs into your TV.

[1036] Yeah, and there were people asking, do I hook this up to my regular Wii?

[1037] What's going on?

[1038] And it was kind of like, no, would you buy the Wii U?

[1039] This is what you're going to get, this awesome controller.

[1040] And I was like, all right.

[1041] I was kind of confused until the end of it, and then they're like, there's a little box in the background with the blue light on it.

[1042] Don't worry about it.

[1043] That comes with a Wii U controller.

[1044] So they seem to be pitching it.

[1045] Well, I mean, they kept referring to it, like, during that press conference, they kept referring to it as the new controller.

[1046] The new controller, and that's all they're calling it.

[1047] So they were talking about Wii U. The back of that thing says, like, WS controller or something like that.

[1048] Like, the sticker on the back is WS something something.

[1049] Wavebird S. Right.

[1050] Wonderswan.

[1051] Yes.

[1052] They started with Neo Geo Pocket for the Sony thing.

[1053] This is like them saying, this is actually you.

[1054] We got an even crappier handheld.

[1055] It was illuminating to see that, just like the Wii, this thing is all about that controller.

[1056] They said a couple months ago, we were going to have our new console at E3, and you're like, fuck, finally.

[1057] Me, as a huge graphics whore, I was like, finally, somebody's going to push this stuff forward.

[1058] And then you get there and realize that thing is basically a 360.

[1059] Yeah.

[1060] Like graphically, that thing is not doing anything that current hardware isn't already doing.

[1061] And so I guess, you know, specs are out there as far as like what sort of processor it's using.

[1062] Some kind of custom AMD, Joby.

[1063] As well as like kind of at least generational what sort of like graphics hardware it's using.

[1064] But it still doesn't sound like they've, you know, they've.

[1065] They've locked in on what clock speeds or how much video memory it's going to have, which it seems like those sorts of choices could – not saying that it's potentially going to be well beyond.

[1066] If you're using a certain processor and architecture, you can only go so far.

[1067] But it still seems like there's room for them to kind of – figure out exactly how hard that's going to be.

[1068] Did they ever say where they got that footage from, from the actual clinical gameplay stuff?

[1069] Yeah, I think it was Jeff Keighley that made Reggie admit that the Darksiders footage and stuff was from current consoles.

[1070] So that is like actual 360 footage or something?

[1071] Or spit out a PC or something like that.

[1072] It was not running on the Wii U. Point being, there is no production hardware for them to generate these images.

[1073] That Ghost Recon online footage that was in the press conference had the Fraps URL on the top of it.

[1074] Because that stuff didn't look great.

[1075] It didn't look like something I would expect to come out on a 360 tomorrow.

[1076] I think when we did the wrap -up, it kind of looked like launch 360 stuff where they're kind of still figuring out how to maximize the system.

[1077] Granted, it was real quick stuff, but it didn't sell me on being like, this is a graphics powerhouse.

[1078] You look at the footage that they ran for Dirt, whatever that was, you compare that to Dirt 3.

[1079] On the 360?

[1080] Yeah, yeah.

[1081] Like, Dirt 3 looks significantly better.

[1082] So it's a question of, like, was that literally footage from the first Dirt game?

[1083] And somebody made a comment.

[1084] Somebody, I think, in the comments was like, don't you feel like an idiot saying that it looked like Xbox 360 launch footage when it's really just Xbox footage?

[1085] I'm like, no, that's...

[1086] Because that's what Xbox 360 launch footage.

[1087] That's Xbox footage.

[1088] It doesn't have to be a great Xbox -looking game.

[1089] It could be Xbox footage and be a dumb -looking game.

[1090] There are plenty of bad -looking 360 games.

[1091] I don't know.

[1092] I thought that stuff looked pretty much fine because some of it was just – like the Darksiders stuff specifically was carved out of the Darksiders 2 trailer that they put out.

[1093] It wasn't – like that stuff exists on the site right now.

[1094] We have it up.

[1095] I don't know.

[1096] It didn't blow me away when I saw it.

[1097] More to the point, like seeing the actual demos that they had running on the Wii U at the show, it's – A lot of simple stuff, you're looking at Miis for a lot of it, not real complicated geometry, or it's just 2D stuff like with the Shield Pose minigame.

[1098] But just a little higher resolution and a little anti -aliasing, it's amazing what a difference even that shit can make.

[1099] Yeah, it looked nice.

[1100] Even if it's like, this is still the graphical quality of what you could pull out of a Wii now, but...

[1101] Here's another render pass on it.

[1102] Yeah, just another render pass on it.

[1103] And even just knowing, like, yeah, I can tell just by looking at this image that this is running it.

[1104] at 720 and not 480, at least 720, just because it's...

[1105] Right.

[1106] That Zelda stuff looked nice.

[1107] I think, Brad, you were the one who said that, like, you know, would you just take a up -res, kind of high -resolution Galaxy and, like, yeah, totally.

[1108] With their art style, it really does look a lot better.

[1109] I mean, Nintendo, more than anybody, gets so much mileage out of their art style.

[1110] I mean, like, look at that Dolphin emulator and the Mario Galaxy games running at 720p look...

[1111] Amazing.

[1112] I was so hoping.

[1113] I was really hoping going into this thing that suddenly Nintendo becomes the lead platform for releasing these games.

[1114] I think they just achieved parity with the other platforms for two years.

[1115] I hope so.

[1116] I hope at least.

[1117] Or however long it takes.

[1118] Who knows?

[1119] What did Judd Carmack say?

[1120] You have to watch the interview and find out.

[1121] It would have been so amazing.

[1122] It's like, oh, did you get it on the Wii U?

[1123] Nah, I don't want to play it.

[1124] Is it coming out on the Wii?

[1125] I don't know.

[1126] I'll wait for the Wii U version because that's the powerhouse system.

[1127] But, like, yeah, it seems like it'll be comparable.

[1128] It'll launch at a significant install -based disadvantage to the 360.

[1129] That's still going to be the driving factor.

[1130] It's the same way that even though the Xbox was more powerful than the PS2, the PS2 was the lead platform for almost everyone back then.

[1131] Just get your guaranteed sales in.

[1132] Yeah.

[1133] Put it all into the lowest common denominator, which is 360.

[1134] You know how many PS2s are out there right now?

[1135] Yeah.

[1136] A lot.

[1137] A lot.

[1138] No graphs, though, this year.

[1139] Yeah, no graphs.

[1140] But it's a different – I mean it's kind of a different situation because Nintendo is coming off of being market leader in this last run.

[1141] So it's hard for me to kind of suss out like what impact being off cycle or having a jump on the others.

[1142] Like what will that mean?

[1143] Like, ultimately, like, is this going to eventually become a big enough issue that, like...

[1144] I think this is a stopgap for them to, you know, kind of put something out new that lets them, you know, launch another Wii Sports, you know, and do that sort of stuff again.

[1145] And it also lets them answer the question about ports and lets third parties have an easier time of it, at least temporarily.

[1146] But, you know, then eventually that...

[1147] That leap does happen on the Microsoft and Sony side.

[1148] And these guys are left to kind of fend for themselves again with motion controllers and screen controllers and stuff like that.

[1149] Worked out very well for them on the Wii, having this approach.

[1150] It's just kind of a weird...

[1151] The timing is just a little different.

[1152] Well, it worked out well for them because they have mastered the art of making money on hardware sales.

[1153] If they hadn't, that probably would not have gone so well.

[1154] I'm just depressed that we're still going to have to have sensor bars.

[1155] I figured I was hoping we'd come beyond that.

[1156] So is the Wii U or the new controller that uses a sensor bar?

[1157] I don't know for sure, but you're using all these Wii remotes with it, so yeah.

[1158] That's only if I have friends.

[1159] I don't have any friends.

[1160] Good.

[1161] Nice.

[1162] Yeah.

[1163] I'm just going to play myself.

[1164] You're saying it's for you, not for we.

[1165] It's for me?

[1166] My me?

[1167] No, for you.

[1168] For me?

[1169] No, no. Not for your me. For we.

[1170] For we you.

[1171] For woo.

[1172] For we you, we you, we you.

[1173] You know what?

[1174] Good on them.

[1175] Doing something stupid again and being like, you know what?

[1176] I think this is going to work.

[1177] You know what?

[1178] That stuff's fun.

[1179] I think it'll work out for them at least short term.

[1180] They'll come up with some...

[1181] The tech demos were pretty exciting, so whatever.

[1182] We will at least see a handful of novel -ass games.

[1183] Yeah, trying something new.

[1184] Stockholders trying to hate, whatever.

[1185] They ain't knowing.

[1186] Stockholders just wanted what we all wanted, which is just more information.

[1187] Yeah.

[1188] They're just like, tell us more about this.

[1189] Because the last time you did this, it made us a whole lot of money.

[1190] We want to do that again.

[1191] How is Chase Me not going to be a game?

[1192] It'll be part of a minigame collection with the rest of those things.

[1193] I bet that'll be there.

[1194] With the bird demo?

[1195] Yeah.

[1196] Check out this bird.

[1197] So there's the one demo that I don't think we talked about at all last week that you didn't see at the post -press conference thing, which was Measure Up, which is a stylus -based – it almost seemed like this was a DS game at some point.

[1198] And they said, all right, well, let's just put it on here because all it was was – You use the lower screen in conjunction with the stylus, which I had never seen anyone pull the stylus out of that controller before then.

[1199] So there's – again, like the DS, there is fully a stylus slot in that thing.

[1200] You're not going to have to come up with it on your own.

[1201] This is a series of weird draftsman challenges of like draw a 55 -degree angle.

[1202] Draw a circle that is two and a half inches in diameter.

[1203] Draw a line that is a single contiguous line that is 16 inches long.

[1204] Against somebody else.

[1205] Well, you could do it.

[1206] You could do it a single player or you could do it against someone else.

[1207] But that lady gave him no quarter.

[1208] The woman who had been running the demo all day for the past two days.

[1209] She was awesome.

[1210] She said, you can play by yourself or you can play against you.

[1211] I'm like, I want to play against you.

[1212] I want to have a live opponent.

[1213] She said, okay, well, you know.

[1214] I've been playing this a lot.

[1215] I'm like, yeah, I realized that.

[1216] Let's go.

[1217] And then, yeah, she completely crushed me. Didn't even let you get away with anything.

[1218] She's like, my circle's perfect.

[1219] You go first.

[1220] Yeah, I guess it would have been better if I had gone second.

[1221] I would have felt a little more confident or stood a better chance.

[1222] That seemed fun, though.

[1223] It was goofy.

[1224] Yeah, as far as the actual gameplay and what it was presenting, completely low -tech, but kind of spoke to, again, the...

[1225] goofy possibilities of that thing, I guess.

[1226] Seems like there's a lot.

[1227] That's what it is.

[1228] There's a lot of possibility.

[1229] Hopefully they realize it and make good games from it.

[1230] So I don't want to cannibalize our listener emails here too much, but I received several inquiries from the Bombcast address asking if it would be possible for Sony to basically remake the Wii U. using the PS3 and the Vita.

[1231] If the hardware, if they could tether that shit together and basically make the Vita work like the Wii U controller.

[1232] The way they crammed motion controls into the PS3 controller at the 11th hour last time.

[1233] Yeah, I mean, kind of like saying there's a history of this, of them kind of being reactive, and it's like, well, they've got the pieces in place.

[1234] It depends on how low they can get the latency on the screen stuff.

[1235] Yeah.

[1236] That's the key, the responsiveness and the latency on the screen.

[1237] Because that's what makes the Wii U work, is that super low latency.

[1238] Yeah.

[1239] Yeah, I guess, you know, it's nothing to stop them.

[1240] If the Wii U completely takes off and becomes another phenomenon, I guess they could do it.

[1241] I mean, having a small video screen on your controller, I think, is something we could see on – it doesn't seem that crazy to see.

[1242] on future generations of consoles.

[1243] Aside from the motion control stuff, which took fidelity away from you of control, which is like, this is inaccurate, I'm fighting against this.

[1244] That seems like screens are getting cheaper, we could do this, and it does seem to add something of value to the experience.

[1245] It's just bringing back the Intellivision, kind of ColecoVision 5200 model of, now we got this keypad, but instead of you inserting the overlays, the overlays are already there for you.

[1246] Now their true vision can be bring game room back to the Wii U is what you're saying.

[1247] Yes.

[1248] Watching other people play with the Wii U, I enjoyed all of the, like, the look at the TV messages of, like, all right, now you have to raise the thing up.

[1249] Now you have to pull it down.

[1250] But if you look down, there's this message down there saying, don't look at me. Look up.

[1251] Yeah.

[1252] Like, oh, wait.

[1253] Sorry, controller.

[1254] Thanks.

[1255] I should be up here, huh?

[1256] Eyes up here, buddy.

[1257] Well, it's an interesting kind of usability problem that I was a little surprised that they had already identified of when you introduce this second screen that's completely detached from the primary screen, you kind of have to give more direction as to where I need to be looking at any given moment.

[1258] And that was E3.

[1259] That was E3.

[1260] Let's take a break.

[1261] Yeah, sure.

[1262] Let's take a break and then we'll be back with more BombCast.

[1263] Whatever this?

[1264] All right, guys, we're back.

[1265] Giant Bombcast brought to you by Coconut Water and Cliff Bars.

[1266] What?

[1267] Guys, you want to eat some more Cliff Bars?

[1268] I'm eating one right now.

[1269] I ate one today.

[1270] Did you actually eat one today?

[1271] Yeah, I ate one today.

[1272] I don't think I could eat any more Cliff Bars.

[1273] Living off of Cliff Bars.

[1274] How many were you guys averaging a day?

[1275] Two to four.

[1276] Whenever we were in that car.

[1277] Two or three.

[1278] Yeah, whenever I was in there, I'd grab a Clif Bar.

[1279] Well, sometimes that was all that was being eaten.

[1280] Oh, I know.

[1281] I just shoved in in the morning, shoved in one of those Costco muffins, and that thing was just like a little ball of uranium.

[1282] That thing was so dense, it would keep my engine fired up.

[1283] You were sustaining nuclear reaction.

[1284] Yeah, that thing takes a while to break down.

[1285] Definitely.

[1286] They're big and dense.

[1287] They're just like a rock.

[1288] It was good.

[1289] It's what you needed.

[1290] Yeah.

[1291] It was fantastic.

[1292] I never got one of those breakfast burritos.

[1293] Second you're running, I missed that.

[1294] I'm kind of sad.

[1295] I didn't drink any energy drinks at all that entire week.

[1296] And, like, not a lot of caffeine.

[1297] I guess I drank a lot of Diet Cokes.

[1298] I had that one energy drink that Alex and I got on the street.

[1299] Oh, yeah, your street energy.

[1300] Oh, yeah.

[1301] The little shop thing.

[1302] It was the only kind of energy, like, other than occasional coffee and, you know, a bunch of Cokes.

[1303] You know what this was a terrible E3 for?

[1304] were beverages and coffee at appointments.

[1305] When they had it, they ran out.

[1306] Yeah, it was not a lot of spreads of muffins or anything like that.

[1307] Were you the one that was with me that day that we went from appointment to appointment and every place had coffee and they were all empty?

[1308] No. Like you had just missed it?

[1309] I went corndog in a couple of days.

[1310] There was a little cafeteria area and they were selling corndogs and strawberry lemonade.

[1311] Me and Rich.

[1312] I was just happy.

[1313] I was just quest for water the entire show.

[1314] Any opportunities, whenever I was somewhere, I was like, can I get you something?

[1315] Yes, some water.

[1316] Just filling up a flask or a skin on your side.

[1317] I don't know when my next drink's going to come.

[1318] Filling up myself.

[1319] Like a camel?

[1320] It was disconcerting because I was trying to drink a lot of water over the course of the day, but then I was sweating out so much of it that I didn't end up peeing very often.

[1321] It was kind of disturbing.

[1322] Oh, you were peeing.

[1323] Just everywhere.

[1324] Oh, no. It's like a shark just peeing through my skin.

[1325] Isn't sweat, like, pretty close compositionally to uric acid?

[1326] I wouldn't be surprised, because it was coming out of me about as quickly, so.

[1327] Huh.

[1328] It's kind of spray.

[1329] I'm going to make piss come out of your pores.

[1330] Thanks, Duke.

[1331] No problem, bitch.

[1332] I love it, Duke.

[1333] What's going on?

[1334] What else is going on?

[1335] What else is going on?

[1336] I got a notebook over here with every game.

[1337] Ask me anything about a video game.

[1338] Send this notebook.

[1339] Jeff, what's up with video games?

[1340] What's up with Star Trek?

[1341] When are we going to see a new Sin episode?

[1342] We're never going to see a new Sin episode.

[1343] Star Trek.

[1344] Star Trek looked kind of cool.

[1345] Yeah.

[1346] We can talk about that now.

[1347] So can I just ask, so there was an embargo on something you saw at E3?

[1348] Yeah.

[1349] There were two things we saw.

[1350] Star Trek and War of the Worlds.

[1351] They were both like, look, guys.

[1352] Friday for Star Trek, Monday for War of the Worlds.

[1353] I'm like, oh, great.

[1354] So pay as little attention to this as possible, right?

[1355] But no, both those games actually did look pretty interesting.

[1356] Okay, so we had heard that this Star Trek game was a -coming.

[1357] Yeah.

[1358] And it's going to be set in the...

[1359] JJ.

[1360] The JJ universe.

[1361] Yeah.

[1362] And I was immediately like...

[1363] Yes.

[1364] Fucking awesome.

[1365] Let's go see this.

[1366] I am super excited about this.

[1367] But then, I don't know.

[1368] You need to see it either way.

[1369] So they showed a little bit of that in the Sony press conference.

[1370] Yeah.

[1371] And I guess, I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I saw that and, you know, kind of third person cover based shooter, kind of what it looked like.

[1372] Yeah, one player plays as Kirk, the other player plays as Spock.

[1373] And I guess it's like when I actually saw it in motion in that, just, you know, I didn't take the appointment.

[1374] I was like, that's just not.

[1375] For some reason, that wasn't as exciting, even though that's, you know, really all it could be.

[1376] And that's all, I mean, we knew that going in.

[1377] Yeah.

[1378] That it was third -person co -op cover shooter.

[1379] Sure.

[1380] As much was said in us organizing that appointment that I was like, okay, all right.

[1381] I feel like if you could accept the J .J. Abrams film for what it was, then you could probably also accept this game.

[1382] It's an action movie.

[1383] They have already made something that is so un -Star Trek -like.

[1384] Yeah.

[1385] I thought it looked all right.

[1386] This fits.

[1387] Yeah, it actually looked pretty good.

[1388] I thought it looked all right, too.

[1389] You know, you've got phaser settings.

[1390] Kill, stun.

[1391] Spock can get up behind somebody and mind meld.

[1392] Nerf pinch.

[1393] And also mind meld.

[1394] I guess what I saw from the footage, the thing about the J .J. Abrams Star Trek movie, the look is it's super bright.

[1395] Yeah.

[1396] Like, everything is crazy lit.

[1397] Lens flares.

[1398] And lens flares everywhere.

[1399] So the level they were showing was, like, you coming back from a shuttle mission with, you know, Kirk and Spock.

[1400] Yeah.

[1401] And then you can't hail the Enterprise, so you're basically, like...

[1402] saying, all right, we can't even get close to it, so we've got to get out of the shuttle and fly over there in our space suits and then land on it and get on.

[1403] So when you get to the Enterprise, it gets fucked up.

[1404] There's toxins and all kinds of bad stuff.

[1405] It's been invaded.

[1406] Yeah, it's been invaded.

[1407] It's occupied.

[1408] So you're seeing the Enterprise at its not brightest in the stuff that they were showing.

[1409] Okay.

[1410] I guess I would like to see more of that look.

[1411] Hell of lens flare.

[1412] Oh, yeah?

[1413] Optical flare.

[1414] Don't worry about it.

[1415] Okay.

[1416] Just banding across everything.

[1417] Yeah, exactly.

[1418] Don't turn around.

[1419] Oh, my eyes.

[1420] All right.

[1421] Ooh, don't turn that way.

[1422] That's crazy.

[1423] I imagine as hard as that was for them to master that look for the movies, trying to then do that in a video game.

[1424] How is it that we're actually going to create this optical effect in our game?

[1425] They did it.

[1426] Here's the thing from the demo that maybe they explained that I missed.

[1427] So like you said, they can't get close to the Enterprise in the shuttle.

[1428] There's like debris and all kind of craziness going on.

[1429] But then they hail the shuttle in and you have to pilot it in.

[1430] That's because they've already dealt with that.

[1431] Okay.

[1432] No. Maybe.

[1433] That part of the level is over.

[1434] Trying to remember it afterwards.

[1435] Like did they switch a switch in the Enterprise and like now it's cool, bring the shuttle in?

[1436] Because it looked real dangerous when they were flying out there on their own.

[1437] I don't know if you remember that movie.

[1438] I watched it over the weekend again.

[1439] They're not too concerned about logical consistency there either.

[1440] I like the movie.

[1441] Everything in service of the plot and whatever.

[1442] Here's the thing about that game, though.

[1443] I actually was kind of engaged by it and was like, all right, this looks kind of cool.

[1444] Maybe if there's enough difference between Kirk and Spock, that could be kind of awesome.

[1445] But then it's a retail game.

[1446] Right.

[1447] And I think picking up a Star Trek retail game off the shelf, there's a hurdle I've got to get over.

[1448] It feels wrong somehow.

[1449] Yeah, like walking into a store and being like, I'm going to pick up this Star Trek movie game.

[1450] One for Star Trek, please.

[1451] Like if it were a downloadable game or something that were short, whatever it was, I'd be like, oh, okay, fine.

[1452] I'm going to spend my $20 on that.

[1453] Yeah, because they've done so well with Star Trek downloadable games so far.

[1454] Yeah.

[1455] Well, it's just like the $60 jump in for that.

[1456] Yeah.

[1457] I need to see more.

[1458] Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure.

[1459] I mean, it's a super saturated genre.

[1460] And, you know, the stuff they were showing looked kind of cool.

[1461] Like, it was stuff like Kirk will go down.

[1462] And this looked like a scripted moment, kind of.

[1463] So basically, like, you know, Spock picks him up.

[1464] And then Spock is walking while Kirk shoots.

[1465] And you're kind of getting to med bay.

[1466] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1467] So you'll have a situation where, like, Kirk is laying on the table while Spock is executing a minigame to fix Kirk's broken leg.

[1468] He is still shooting dudes to keep them off.

[1469] Which seemed kind of interesting, but also really tightly scripted.

[1470] And I don't know.

[1471] But, I mean, they basically crashed a shuttlecraft into the bridge of the fucking Enterprise.

[1472] That's all right.

[1473] So that was pretty cool.

[1474] And then War of the Worlds.

[1475] And I feel like more than even the elite forces, even more than that stuff, this version of the Star Trek universe is gunfight friendly.

[1476] Oh, yeah.

[1477] Right.

[1478] It's a comic book.

[1479] Yeah.

[1480] It's so much more action -oriented than Star Trek ever was before then.

[1481] It was bad fist fights with Kirk and then just a lot of talking with John Luke.

[1482] They had a whole lot of placeholder VO in that thing that was not Chris Pine or Zachary Quinto.

[1483] But I have a feeling they will get there by the time that game comes out.

[1484] With those guys or at least serviceable sound -alikes?

[1485] Bare minimum serviceable sound -alikes because what they had in there were not serviceable sound -alikes.

[1486] Got it.

[1487] Are they talking a window for that yet?

[1488] Going out with the new movie.

[1489] Oh, so this is set between the first and second films.

[1490] Yeah.

[1491] But he said, the way he phrased it was almost sort of weird and resigned.

[1492] He was like, so this will be out along with the movie, whatever that is.

[1493] I don't know if you remember that in the demo.

[1494] Well, so, yeah, all the word on the street is that that movie is a ways off.

[1495] Yeah.

[1496] IMDb is listing it as next year right now.

[1497] Yeah.

[1498] I don't know.

[1499] I mean, they haven't started making that movie yet.

[1500] Right.

[1501] So.

[1502] Like, that'll probably be a 13 release.

[1503] I don't know.

[1504] Maybe they'll end up holding the game for it.

[1505] Maybe they'll just put the game out by itself.

[1506] I don't know.

[1507] Yeah, I don't know.

[1508] I could see them putting it out next holiday even if there's no movie.

[1509] Maybe.

[1510] I mean, as long as you're, like, within, I don't know, spitting distance of that movie.

[1511] You figure the game comes out Christmas, movie comes out the following summer.

[1512] Is that spitting distance for you?

[1513] I think so.

[1514] Oh, I think so.

[1515] I think it's, I mean.

[1516] Yeah.

[1517] It'll still say Star Trek on it.

[1518] That'll carry something for it and kind of as a warming you back up and, hey, remember that awesome Star Trek movie that came out that you liked?

[1519] Well, they're doing another one of those.

[1520] Maybe that's a holiday movie next year.

[1521] If they have a script and they're ready to start shooting soon.

[1522] From everything that I've heard about that production is that they are...

[1523] Like, they're not even at that point.

[1524] Like, it's not written.

[1525] I wonder why it's taking so long.

[1526] Well, J .J. Abrams has been making Super 8 and stuff.

[1527] Yeah, but...

[1528] Other commitments.

[1529] Maybe he's waiting on stuff.

[1530] Oh, yeah.

[1531] You know, I think I may have also heard, like, he's not...

[1532] He was not necessarily, like, hard, like, contractually confirmed for the next movie.

[1533] Oh, interesting.

[1534] necessarily.

[1535] I don't know.

[1536] That's outside of our purview here.

[1537] Well, they say that they're working with Bad Robot and some writer that wrote on God of War.

[1538] Bob Orsi, wasn't it?

[1539] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1540] I don't know who you're talking about.

[1541] I can't remember.

[1542] So War of the Worlds, did you guys know that was a game before we went in there?

[1543] Yeah, that was the other point.

[1544] But before you booked it?

[1545] Because I had no idea that that was coming out.

[1546] Didn't seem tied to anything.

[1547] When I booked that, it had not been announced.

[1548] Oh, okay.

[1549] And then it ended up getting announced just before the show.

[1550] So, yeah.

[1551] There isn't like a new movie coming out.

[1552] Right.

[1553] There's nothing to tie it to.

[1554] Yeah, this is not tied.

[1555] Definitely not tied to that Tom Cruise movie.

[1556] Seems like a weird property to pick up.

[1557] Especially for what they're doing with it.

[1558] So it's like a...

[1559] I don't think you really have to pick it up.

[1560] It's concurrent with the book that takes place in London.

[1561] Right.

[1562] It's not the tale of the American invasion.

[1563] Yeah.

[1564] It's what's happening at the same time in London.

[1565] So Patrick Stewart.

[1566] Yeah, speaking of Star Trek.

[1567] Yeah.

[1568] Narrate it.

[1569] Oh, yeah?

[1570] No joke.

[1571] Jean -Luc Picard.

[1572] Yeah.

[1573] It's not actually Patrick Stewart.

[1574] Tied it all back in.

[1575] And it's like a locked 2D.

[1576] It's flashback.

[1577] They're taking cues from stuff like Flashback and Prince of Persia.

[1578] It is rotoscoped.

[1579] Out of this world they were referencing.

[1580] It is rotoscoped, just like Out of This World and Flashback were.

[1581] Isn't it the guy?

[1582] Is that the one that...

[1583] It's the guy who made Out of This World is doing this?

[1584] No, it's Other Ocean.

[1585] Oh, right, right, right.

[1586] Okay, yes.

[1587] From Dust is the...

[1588] Yeah, yeah.

[1589] Okay.

[1590] That was the thing.

[1591] I was getting the guy who made Out of This World is making a game.

[1592] Also, there's this game that's like Out of This World.

[1593] Yeah, two separate things.

[1594] Two separate things.

[1595] So it had an interesting look to it because of that.

[1596] So is it like that kind of pixelated, that style of rotoscoping?

[1597] It is higher tech than that.

[1598] It is better looking rotoscoping than you could do on a Genesis.

[1599] Right.

[1600] Sounds like they started out with like a 16 -bit art style though.

[1601] Yeah, yeah.

[1602] And then at some point decided they should go full high res. Yeah.

[1603] So that's an evasion -based game is how they described it, similar to stuff like Flashback where it's like, okay, there are a bunch of drones here and I need to make sure that they don't see me because otherwise I get zapped.

[1604] And there's a ton of AI guys running around getting zapped to remind you why you shouldn't get zapped, which is kind of cool.

[1605] Getting zapped's bad.

[1606] Yeah, and then Patrick Stewart's talking over the whole thing.

[1607] It's not reactive, but it started to kind of remind me of Bastion in a couple of spots where it's like he's just getting his talk on.

[1608] Yeah.

[1609] But you hit a trigger and he says more lines of dialogue.

[1610] But that seems like it's just a completely detached narrator voice.

[1611] Yeah, because he's basically like he is, it is all flashback for him.

[1612] He is retelling the story of when he was trying to, yeah, right?

[1613] Yeah.

[1614] Find the cube and then the hologram comes out of it and you get the gun.

[1615] Well, awesome.

[1616] I guess.

[1617] It looked neat.

[1618] Did you actually get hands on time with that?

[1619] No. Tell me about another game.

[1620] Tell me about Dark Void 2.

[1621] Dark Void 2 is a...

[1622] No, God.

[1623] These are all my notes from Judges Week.

[1624] Some stuff that we didn't really cover.

[1625] You hear those pages turning?

[1626] Those are real pages.

[1627] Saints Row 3, I wrote about that.

[1628] UFC 3, they're putting pride fighting in there.

[1629] You got full rings.

[1630] It's kind of cool.

[1631] Bioshock.

[1632] It's awesome.

[1633] Rocksmith looks confusing.

[1634] It's not what Dave Navarro said.

[1635] Well.

[1636] Well.

[1637] My Mass Effect 3 notes start with the main event in quotes.

[1638] Does that help?

[1639] Sure.

[1640] Spoilers.

[1641] Not really.

[1642] Not really.

[1643] Driver San Francisco.

[1644] Can you still jump between dudes in it?

[1645] It's still got that weird, like, hot swapping.

[1646] Yeah, so the multiplayer in that actually seemed a lot more interesting than the single player.

[1647] The single player is still kind of like the mission -based driving stuff that you might expect, and it seemed kind of dumb.

[1648] But the multiplayer mode they were showing was just tag.

[1649] So it was like, you know, you would tag, you would be it, and your counter would start going up, and then someone would have to tag you.

[1650] Very standard mode.

[1651] And, yeah, like, you shouldn't be excited by that.

[1652] But when you add the shift mechanic into it, and all of a sudden you are...

[1653] like basically leaping into cars that are going head -on against the car that's it.

[1654] it makes it a lot more exciting.

[1655] So when you're trying to get away, you have to remember that all these cars coming at you in oncoming traffic are going to eventually, like they might become people at any moment and start trying to swerve into you.

[1656] So it's this weird kind of Matrix -y, like anyone can be an agent sort of thing.

[1657] Sounds like that car, the highway, like the freeway scene from the Matrix.

[1658] Yeah, that mode is that pretty much.

[1659] That sounds kind of cool.

[1660] And it was kind of interesting.

[1661] The interesting thing about that game is that it has a great...

[1662] Frame rate.

[1663] It is pretty much locked at 60 from what I saw.

[1664] It's really smooth.

[1665] They played some burnout.

[1666] Yeah.

[1667] Sharp car models.

[1668] That game, I don't think the single player looks like anything to write home about, but that multiplayer mode at least made me think more highly of Driver San Francisco than I did previously.

[1669] He's saying positive things about a Driver game.

[1670] I know.

[1671] I don't know what to think.

[1672] I said he's just sick.

[1673] Yeah.

[1674] My future soldier notes include the words STACK THAT DATA in all caps.

[1675] So, hard -hitting reporting here, folks.

[1676] That game did not look particularly good any time that I saw it.

[1677] Okay, I think Jeff's okay.

[1678] During the show, and prior to the show, I played a multiplayer, like, competitive multiplayer in, like, a four -player co -op.

[1679] It just didn't...

[1680] It just looked grungy.

[1681] Like, the texture work just looked really...

[1682] Like, muddy?

[1683] Yeah, like, just kind of muddy textures, and it's not...

[1684] I don't know about that game.

[1685] A lot of people saying a lot of negative things about that game out of the show, but not really saying why.

[1686] I think it's because we all played it before the show and just went like, ugh.

[1687] So...

[1688] Well, yeah, and I mean, I think Vinny and I still have baggage from the last time that we saw it.

[1689] It was a totally different game.

[1690] Completely different game.

[1691] They've blown out stuff like twice or something now.

[1692] And still looked...

[1693] really bad yeah and they seemed really so like last time so so yeah like every time we've seen this they're kind of like well what do you guys think it's like well but not so good right now give you the benefit of the doubt you're still working on it like could it could be cool and then it's coming out in three months whoa that's right there's always that weird question too where you're like so how far along are you guys i bring like 95 Oh.

[1694] Cool.

[1695] Cool.

[1696] It was like when we were in that Star Trek meeting, I was trying to find the right way to ask, so this isn't the real voice work, right?

[1697] Without just coming out and saying, yo, man, this voice work sucks.

[1698] It's temp, right?

[1699] This is you guys doing this?

[1700] It's like the video game equivalent of saying, when are you due?

[1701] I raised my hand and I said, so who's the voice talent?

[1702] And you found the exact right way to do it.

[1703] So although from talking to developers during our...

[1704] podcast during E3 it sounds like they just want you to say that shit point blank so yeah but I'm not sure they ever want you to say it in a room full of other people like right you know they want you to say maybe to them like afterwards like oh so you know nod and raise your hand and be like this kind of looks like dog shit how far along are you guys yeah yeah every appointment at E3 next year this game goes like dog shit we're insert oh you're fucked then Just elbow the guy next to you.

[1705] They're fucked.

[1706] Sonic Generations.

[1707] I took notes for Sonic Generations.

[1708] I thought it said Senior Goodfellas.

[1709] Senior Goodfellas is a game coming out.

[1710] It's very exciting.

[1711] I'm very excited.

[1712] It's also the new restaurant chain I'm looking at.

[1713] It's a Mexican -Italian fusion.

[1714] And Senior Goodfellas is going to be...

[1715] We're opening one in Daytona Beach.

[1716] Hey, you go get your fucking brother.

[1717] Bring him over here.

[1718] What?

[1719] Here's the last line of my notes for Sonic Generations.

[1720] Frame rate's dicey.

[1721] So yeah, we don't need to talk about Sonic.

[1722] I wish I had seen more Prey 2.

[1723] That Prey 2 trailer really got me jazzed.

[1724] There's like five gameplay demos out there now.

[1725] Of like actual game stuff.

[1726] GameSpot's got one, G4, game trailers.

[1727] I think IGN might have one.

[1728] It's brought around all the live stations.

[1729] They went out and did a bunch of live demos.

[1730] So you can see that game running if you want.

[1731] I do.

[1732] I want to see it running.

[1733] That game looks awesome.

[1734] Binary Domain.

[1735] They should have brought it by the house.

[1736] I heard some people talking excitedly about Binary Domain.

[1737] This is from the Yakuza team, but it is a third -person cover -based shooter.

[1738] Hot!

[1739] Yeah.

[1740] So, yeah, it's got kind of like that clean, Japan -developed, futuristic look.

[1741] Yeah, kind of like Mind Jack.

[1742] Yeah, kind of like Mind Jack.

[1743] Looks like Mind Jack.

[1744] Looks kind of like Mind Jack.

[1745] Yeah, it does.

[1746] Well, I'll say the people that were excited about it were artists.

[1747] Yeah.

[1748] Specifically, that it was something about the art style.

[1749] Something about the art style.

[1750] You're fighting robots that are kind of Terminator -like, but this weird kind of like plasticky Terminator type stuff.

[1751] People in reference kind of Ghost in the Shell as maybe artistic.

[1752] Yeah.

[1753] Sort of.

[1754] You'll be able to issue voice commands to your squad.

[1755] You'll have two guys that you're rolling with, one of whom is named Big Bo.

[1756] Okay.

[1757] What a Big Bo.

[1758] Big Bo.

[1759] Did he have to say Big Bo, go get that guy?

[1760] Maybe.

[1761] I don't know.

[1762] Can I just go, Bo, Bo?

[1763] Probably.

[1764] Okay.

[1765] So the characters kind of play off of one another.

[1766] There are two ladies in your squad and Big Bo and some other dudes.

[1767] So you're kind of picking people.

[1768] There'll be like respect levels on a per character basis.

[1769] So in the mission that they were showing, it's you, Big Bo, and one of the females.

[1770] And he kind of turns to you and goes like, girl's ass, right?

[1771] You know, something like that.

[1772] And you can either say...

[1773] Hell yeah, that girl's ass.

[1774] Or, I don't know.

[1775] And the respect of each character goes up or down accordingly.

[1776] And then they're more likely to revive you if they respect you.

[1777] Or not.

[1778] Or not, yeah.

[1779] If you're just being a liability out there, they're not going to be so inclined to save your ass if you're just, like, running ahead and gunning everybody, like, just getting gunned down over and over again.

[1780] So they kind of just, like, cribbed some of the relationship stuff from Dragon Age?

[1781] Yeah, kind of.

[1782] Yeah, I guess.

[1783] Because that was kind of, like, the...

[1784] give gifts or depending on choices you made if like you were...

[1785] Yeah, but they would just perform better.

[1786] They would just get perks at that point.

[1787] They wouldn't...

[1788] It kind of sounds like if they're reviving you, that's definitely a fucking perk.

[1789] That's a perk for sure.

[1790] But the Dragon Age stuff is more just like they get a better talent.

[1791] They get plus 10, you know, whatever.

[1792] Right.

[1793] I'm going to read to you now the entirety of my notes about Rise of Nightmares and then that's going to be all from the notebook this time.

[1794] Yes.

[1795] Shock Knuckles.

[1796] German dude gets hand cut off.

[1797] That's it.

[1798] That's all I wrote.

[1799] Is there an order to that?

[1800] Yeah, but that's the opposite order.

[1801] The German dude gets his hand cut off at the very beginning of the demo and you find the shock numbers way later.

[1802] I thought it was another episode of Video Game Haiku Corner.

[1803] You didn't think to add that note for a while?

[1804] Yeah.

[1805] Oh, wait.

[1806] Oh, wait, wait, wait.

[1807] German guy.

[1808] Yeah, German guy.

[1809] So that's a Kinect game.

[1810] First person.

[1811] survival horror, I guess I would say.

[1812] That was one of the ones that got announced when Microsoft did that slew of...

[1813] What's the name of that again?

[1814] Rise of Nightmares.

[1815] Remember it.

[1816] Is that the one that...

[1817] That name is constantly actively trying to fall out of my brain.

[1818] Rise of Nightmares.

[1819] Night Rise?

[1820] Throw a storm in there while you're at it.

[1821] Storm Rise of Nightmares.

[1822] Unleash.

[1823] Storm of Nightmares Rising.

[1824] Reckoning.

[1825] They had a camera shooting people that were playing the game in a room or something.

[1826] And it was all just shoulder turns.

[1827] Yeah.

[1828] So you just sway your shoulders back and forth to turn.

[1829] And you kind of get up in karate hands or whatever if you want to fight.

[1830] And then if you're holding a weapon, you just chop out to...

[1831] to attack with a weapon.

[1832] You can kick to kick guys.

[1833] It's just like zombies kind of like shambling in your direction really slowly and pitifully.

[1834] But it opens up with, you know, like dudes talking German strapped to a chair and this other guy just straight up cuts his hand off.

[1835] Gross.

[1836] There's blood just shooting out of that and then as he's shouting, the guy takes his hatchet and buries it in the back of the guy's skull and he kind of looks at you and goes, you're next.

[1837] But then he gets a phone call or something and you escape.

[1838] Convenient.

[1839] Hold on, I've got to take this.

[1840] This could be my mom.

[1841] Hello?

[1842] I've got to go.

[1843] Make sure this guy's dead, okay?

[1844] All right, later.

[1845] It's Duke Nukem on the phone.

[1846] Hey, you want to get some beers?

[1847] No, sweetie, it's your dad.

[1848] No, no, no, I'm still at work.

[1849] I'm going to be here for a couple hours.

[1850] Ask mommy.

[1851] Ask mommy.

[1852] Yeah, just ask your mom.

[1853] Put your mom on the phone.

[1854] No, put your mom on the phone.

[1855] Guys, I'm sorry.

[1856] I'll be right back.

[1857] I've got to take care of it.

[1858] Please, if you could just call her mom instead of Kendra.

[1859] I mean, she is your...

[1860] No, just no gluten.

[1861] You know what?

[1862] I'll see you when I get back to the house.

[1863] Okay.

[1864] Love you, too.

[1865] Oh, where'd you go?

[1866] Oh, the guy I was gonna murder's gone.

[1867] And then you're finding all these goofy weapons along the way, like shock knuckles, which are brass knuckles, but they shock.

[1868] This doesn't sound like this needs to be a Kinect game.

[1869] Or a blade.

[1870] Well, I mean, if it didn't have Kinect, it would have absolutely nothing going for it.

[1871] But I guess your description of, like, these are the things you do to interact with it?

[1872] Yeah.

[1873] Sound fucking lame.

[1874] It's game of the year.

[1875] Let's talk about a little bit of news here.

[1876] Yo, E3 happened.

[1877] There is.

[1878] Boom.

[1879] Well, a couple of points I think worth talking about coming out of E3, specifically about the...

[1880] The Nintendo hardware, obviously still a lot of questions about the Wii U and a lot of stuff that Nintendo's just not answering.

[1881] We've talked about multiple of these controllers going to handle.

[1882] What will games actually look like that are rendered on this thing?

[1883] We're not talking about that right now.

[1884] But they're not talking about what the online's going to be like.

[1885] We're not talking about that right now.

[1886] What kind of HDMI port?

[1887] It'll be an HDMI port.

[1888] We're not talking about that right now.

[1889] It has to be HDMI.

[1890] Wait.

[1891] Do you want to put money on this?

[1892] Do you want to make a John Vignocchi style bet here?

[1893] Please make this bet that there is no way you can win.

[1894] Please just do it.

[1895] See, I'm thinking like a dongle that plugs in and that's got the HDMI port on it and it's got other breakout stuff on it.

[1896] You're thinking straight HDMI.

[1897] They don't have a choice.

[1898] Well, they have a choice that they can put a proprietary thing on the back of it that plugs and an HDMI cord plugs into that.

[1899] I don't think they can get away with that.

[1900] Sure you can.

[1901] Why not?

[1902] I don't think so.

[1903] Go read the bylaws, man. I mean, if you have your confidence, then I would love to make a wager with you because I'm feeling pretty good on my end.

[1904] Microsoft was all about that weird dongle on the 360, and even they had to put an HDMI port in there.

[1905] They're all about that weird dongle.

[1906] You think mini HDMI does that count?

[1907] Or is that HDMI?

[1908] Yeah, it's still HDMI.

[1909] It's still HDMI.

[1910] Okay.

[1911] HDMI is not a connector.

[1912] It's a standard.

[1913] Don't talk to me about HDMI standards.

[1914] I'm not saying that it won't also have a weird port because they're going to use component composite and S -Video, which they've stated it's going to support these things.

[1915] It will support S -Video.

[1916] Really?

[1917] That's what they said.

[1918] Finally.

[1919] Wow.

[1920] Wow.

[1921] So they'll have to have some sort of dumb port for whatever their multi -outs are.

[1922] They really said S -Video.

[1923] Yeah.

[1924] Japan, y 'all.

[1925] I guess so.

[1926] That's weird.

[1927] Okay, then I take it.

[1928] If it's going to support S -Video, then I take it back.

[1929] All bets are off.

[1930] Because there's enough room on there to put any kind of weird dongle port on there.

[1931] Also, I'm saying it's not going to have a direct S -Video port on the back.

[1932] That'll be the multi -out.

[1933] The breakout thing.

[1934] That'll be the breakout thing that has.

[1935] What if it had an S -Video port on the back, though?

[1936] That would be fucking amazing.

[1937] Remember when consoles used to just have a bunch of bare ports on there?

[1938] That was awesome.

[1939] Like the first -run PlayStation.

[1940] Yeah, it just had straight -up RCA.

[1941] Sorry, I didn't mean to break into your news.

[1942] You were going to...

[1943] Oh, so questions about, like, backwards compatibility and stuff.

[1944] You know, people were wondering, like, yo, you say it'll play Wii games.

[1945] Can it play GameCube games?

[1946] And no. Nope.

[1947] It cannot play GameCube games.

[1948] Unless you buy them out there eShop.

[1949] Well, can it make my Wii games look better?

[1950] No, you cannot.

[1951] No up -resing of your Wii games.

[1952] That's a bummer.

[1953] Wow.

[1954] Whatever.

[1955] That might have been a bigger technical challenge than we realized.

[1956] This is the sort of thing that they could go on a game -by -game basis and say, hey, we've created up -res profiles for these 10 games you care about.

[1957] They're not going to do that.

[1958] They're going to resell them.

[1959] Hopefully as a bundle or something.

[1960] It would be Super Mario Galaxy Universe.

[1961] Everything's going to have a U?

[1962] Great.

[1963] I'm in.

[1964] That's pushing it.

[1965] I used to sell that, but you know, it's like they did the GameCube games with Wii Motion slapped on them.

[1966] Like they did a handful of those for the Wii.

[1967] Yeah.

[1968] Like Pikmin.

[1969] If it's like both Galaxy games for 20 bucks or something, it's positioned like that.

[1970] It's a collection.

[1971] Yeah, sure.

[1972] I'll give you that.

[1973] That's why you call it Universe.

[1974] Yeah.

[1975] It's got a U in it.

[1976] You don't want to waste that.

[1977] You don't want a Wonderful Universe?

[1978] Something like that.

[1979] Galactic Universe.

[1980] I think they just get rid of Galaxy and do Super Mario Universe.

[1981] No, I'm saying that's what the name of this collection of the last two Galaxy games is.

[1982] Obviously, yes, the next...

[1983] I can't, Dad.

[1984] The next full...

[1985] They gotta be done with space, though.

[1986] They got two games out of that.

[1987] Yeah, I guess.

[1988] Those are fucking such good goddamn games, though.

[1989] Super Mario Sunshine 2.

[1990] Tooniverse.

[1991] You know what?

[1992] It's never too late to put out Super Mario Bros. 4.

[1993] Yeah.

[1994] I think they could do such awesome things with that screen, like hidden items and stuff, holding it up and seeing, like, you know.

[1995] Yeah.

[1996] That's why you do Super Mario Bros. 2.

[1997] They did some of that stuff with Wii remotes, though.

[1998] Yeah, I don't want that.

[1999] Spyborgs.

[2000] I don't want that.

[2001] You point the Wii remote at the screen and it creates a little circle, like a flashlight, and you can go around to find hidden items that way.

[2002] You're making me less excited.

[2003] Yeah.

[2004] But what if it was like Neg Zone where you hold it up and you see the shadowy outline and like, oh, I got to run over there to get to the one -up mushroom.

[2005] See hidden pile blocks.

[2006] Yeah, that'd be cool.

[2007] The thing is the P -blocks.

[2008] They do the stuff where you hold the thing up in front of the screen for shield pose, but it's not like a one -to -one.

[2009] Yeah.

[2010] You can't look through it like it's a window.

[2011] It's always a little bit off.

[2012] Right.

[2013] So they can't necessarily do it like, I'm holding up for an x -ray view and have it be perfect every time.

[2014] Well, you can move it around, right?

[2015] Until you find when they...

[2016] When they introduce New Controller Plus, then they will gain that amount of precision.

[2017] But, you know, I think for that kind of thing, you don't need...

[2018] It doesn't need to be one -to -one for the effect of pull up the screen and to see an altered version of what's on the big screen.

[2019] I was still, like, still...

[2020] reiterate stuff here, but I was still so impressed by the shield pose thing that you could just fully spin around and there is this whole fake world, like 360 degree fake world around you like that.

[2021] I could see there being some crazy applications for something like that.

[2022] As long as I could do it without going too much, don't need too much space in my apartment to do it.

[2023] And the thing's got a camera on it so they can do all the AR that they want.

[2024] It's front facing or...

[2025] Back facing.

[2026] Is that both?

[2027] No. I think it's just front facing.

[2028] I guess that limits that.

[2029] Did you see the Nyko range limiter for Kinect?

[2030] What?

[2031] Yeah.

[2032] It's like a set of zoom lenses that clips over the front of the Kinect that makes you able to use it closer up.

[2033] Oh, it's like a wide angle kind of thing?

[2034] Yeah.

[2035] I need to buy one.

[2036] Yeah, you do.

[2037] Sadly.

[2038] I'm going to make a fisheye lens for Kinect so everything looks like a Beastie Boys video.

[2039] Yeah, infrared fisheye.

[2040] That'll work.

[2041] Why not?

[2042] Why not?

[2043] There's non -infrared cameras on there, too.

[2044] Yeah, he's right.

[2045] Chaos has been closed.

[2046] Chaos Studios.

[2047] Chaos Studios has been closed.

[2048] They of Homefront.

[2049] Yes.

[2050] And Frontline.

[2051] Frontline and Homefront.

[2052] And Desert Combat, Battlefield 1942.

[2053] THQ bet big on Homefront, and I guess this.

[2054] In case you need confirmation, it is not panning out for them.

[2055] I don't know.

[2056] It sold over a million, but the story says they shipped 2 .6 to retail, and maybe it slowed down after that.

[2057] I don't know.

[2058] Yeah, it's not good for anybody.

[2059] Retailers need to learn.

[2060] Even if the game itself did well, the story says they have shuttled development of Homefront 2, which apparently exists, to a different THQ studio.

[2061] Montreal, I thought.

[2062] So I guess the name still has some legs.

[2063] So these guys, they closed down the studio and cut the cord, or do you know if they got soaked up by, like, we moved these guys into another studio.

[2064] Did they cut loose?

[2065] Probably.

[2066] That's sad.

[2067] Boo.

[2068] Yeah, I mean, it was kind of a, I guess, you know, that whole thing, the whole home front thing was kind of...

[2069] THQ making a run at it.

[2070] A big run.

[2071] And trying to put some serious money behind it.

[2072] I hope that doesn't happen again to other games.

[2073] Like, what do you mean?

[2074] Like, make a huge, big run.

[2075] That whole studio could depend on the outcome of that game.

[2076] Especially if you're making...

[2077] I can't imagine anyone would be foolish enough to do that.

[2078] Like, that's...

[2079] It's crazy.

[2080] That's crazy.

[2081] That's crazy.

[2082] Especially for a publicly held company.

[2083] Like, you can't be making gigantic, grossly irresponsible moves like that.

[2084] You know, it's THQ looking to elevate as a publisher.

[2085] So, I think those are the kinds of...

[2086] You know, they're making some interesting moves, those guys.

[2087] Yeah.

[2088] Certainly.

[2089] Yeah.

[2090] I'd like to see them make good.

[2091] Yeah.

[2092] Like, it's a noble proposition.

[2093] Yeah.

[2094] Like, we are going to put in the time and effort to make better games.

[2095] Sounds pretty good on paper.

[2096] Yeah, it sounds great on paper, but, you know, you look at Red Faction Armageddon, you look at Homefront.

[2097] Yeah, not great games.

[2098] Just don't.

[2099] Our games are good.

[2100] Yeah.

[2101] Those are really good.

[2102] I mean, you know, this direction is being attributed to, it sounds like Danny Bilson's kind of spearheading that charge, but some people have said he's not been there long enough for this initiative to bear fruit.

[2103] Right.

[2104] Some of these projects kind of predate him.

[2105] I don't know how I hear what that is, but, like.

[2106] That makes sense.

[2107] I'm willing to give them another, like, year, year and a half of figuring it out.

[2108] Yeah.

[2109] They got Devil's Third.

[2110] They got all kinds of weird stuff coming that's very unlike, you know, the THQ of old.

[2111] Sounds like Saints Row is shaping up pretty nice.

[2112] Yeah, that game will be weird.

[2113] All right.

[2114] It's a real shame Armageddon didn't seem to shape up the way it could have.

[2115] Yeah, it's not a bad game.

[2116] It's just not a great game.

[2117] Yeah, that could have been such a runaway property, though.

[2118] Well, after Gorilla, yeah.

[2119] Everybody was ready for the sequel to Gorilla to just blow up, and instead they made something completely different.

[2120] Yeah.

[2121] Like, they needed to build on that and not just discard it.

[2122] Yeah, yeah.

[2123] And even, like, in concept, you say, like, all right, you know, we're kind of ditching the open world part and focusing more on the destruction.

[2124] Like, okay, like, the open world stuff was not always the...

[2125] The greatest feature in Gorilla.

[2126] It was just, you know, it allowed you to run from one crazy installation to another and wreck everything.

[2127] So if you just make wrecking stuff closer to me, that doesn't sound inherently bad.

[2128] Instead, they made wrecking stuff inconsequential.

[2129] Right.

[2130] And kind of a hindrance.

[2131] Yes.

[2132] Sometimes counterproductive, and also they made gears with bugs.

[2133] No, and when I saw all of the, like, you know, you're basically on these catwalks.

[2134] disintegrating them, and then, whoops, I fell through it, and now I've got to go run back around and rebuild it so that I can continue moving forward.

[2135] Again, the whole destroy and rebuild idea, not inherently bad.

[2136] Yeah, it has merit.

[2137] But it just seemed like implementation of ideas was maybe had some issues there.

[2138] I've got no more news.

[2139] That's it.

[2140] Good.

[2141] I mean, yeah, E3.

[2142] Everyone's fresh out of news.

[2143] Awesome.

[2144] And I'm all out of news.

[2145] Thank you, Duke.

[2146] Let's talk about some new releases for this week because even though there's not news, there's still a shitload of new video games.

[2147] End of the quarter, y 'all.

[2148] That's right, y 'all.

[2149] Yes, yes, y 'all.

[2150] Duke Duke forever for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and personal computer.

[2151] I don't believe it.

[2152] You literally have Duke Nukem achievements.

[2153] Refuse to believe that that's the game.

[2154] It was all an elaborate joke to get that game into your hands.

[2155] So you could play through it, and then everybody could go, oops, sorry.

[2156] Just joking.

[2157] It's going to be like a bad Twilight Zone episode, and we're all going to be like, no, Jeff, Duke Nukem Forever got canceled 10 years ago.

[2158] No, I played it!

[2159] It's real!

[2160] I played it!

[2161] And just him rocking it in the same design.

[2162] I played it.

[2163] I played it.

[2164] I played it.

[2165] Hell to the king.

[2166] You'll see this subject believes that he has actually played Duke Nukem forever.

[2167] You have written a ten times better ending to Duke Nukem forever than it actually has.

[2168] And then the hospital orderly who is waiting on his room is actually George Broussard, and he looks at the camera knowingly.

[2169] I was going to say it's actually just Duke Nukem before he cuts to credits.

[2170] Alice Madness Returns, also for Xbox 360, PC, and PlayStation 3.

[2171] Record of Agorist War Zero for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

[2172] Wii Play Motion for the Nintendo Wii.

[2173] What is that?

[2174] That's another one of those Wii Play.

[2175] It's another Buy This Wii Remote, and it'll come with a game.

[2176] Yeah.

[2177] Oh.

[2178] Oh.

[2179] Child of Eden.

[2180] Whoa.

[2181] Yeah.

[2182] Wait.

[2183] This week?

[2184] Yeah.

[2185] Like today?

[2186] Yeah.

[2187] Does that come in a box?

[2188] Yeah.

[2189] Like, yeah, yeah.

[2190] It's a box game.

[2191] Somebody should get that.

[2192] I know.

[2193] I know.

[2194] They sent us a reviewable copy, but it wasn't right.

[2195] It wasn't reviewable enough.

[2196] Yeah.

[2197] So.

[2198] You don't want that review?

[2199] Eh.

[2200] I think I'm going to.

[2201] I think I'm going to.

[2202] play that or I don't know we'll figure something out that's a I want to play either way I want to play that game I want to play that game too but I also want to play like the final retail version of that game because I feel like do you want to review that I feel like every time we've seen that yeah it's like enough has changed between every time we've seen it that it's like okay I want to make sure that this is the actual last version of this game before we before we get into it And that is motion optional on either system, right?

[2203] Well, PS3 is not out.

[2204] Oh, that's not.

[2205] This is 360 for now.

[2206] Today is out?

[2207] Yes.

[2208] But you can play it with the controller or you can play...

[2209] Do you want to take that?

[2210] I was thinking of taking that after Duke, but now that I'm still kind of sick, I don't know.

[2211] Yeah, yeah.

[2212] Let me take child of you.

[2213] Okay.

[2214] Yeah.

[2215] Transformers Dark of the Moon!

[2216] Xbox 360, PlayStation Wii.

[2217] PlayStation Wii.

[2218] Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS, and PlayStation 3.

[2219] I played a little bit of that before E3.

[2220] It had a good frame rate.

[2221] All right.

[2222] What game?

[2223] Transformers.

[2224] Transformers.

[2225] All right.

[2226] Really?

[2227] There's a lot of games.

[2228] Jesus.

[2229] I know.

[2230] Balloon Pop 2.

[2231] That's coming out?

[2232] For 3DS.

[2233] The second Balloon Pop.

[2234] Fuck.

[2235] It's a retail product.

[2236] Balloon Pop 2.

[2237] I thought you were about to say it was a retelling from the first one.

[2238] Wipeout in the Zone for the Xbox 360.

[2239] That's a good set.

[2240] I'm looking forward to all the hot remixes in that one.

[2241] That's not Wipeout like Future Cars, right?

[2242] Oh, it's not?

[2243] It's TV.

[2244] It was for the Xbox 360.

[2245] Oh.

[2246] It's a TV show.

[2247] That makes way more sense with the subtitle now.

[2248] Like the terrible Pizza Hut sounding.

[2249] Well, there's zone mode in Wipeout on top of that.

[2250] Sure.

[2251] But still, it's for the Xbox 360.

[2252] That should be your red flag.

[2253] Sony's been...

[2254] Reaching out lately.

[2255] What can we do to really get the wipeout stuff out?

[2256] I played some of that Vita wipeout at the thing.

[2257] Yeah.

[2258] To be fair, this is probably a wipeout brand that more people right now are familiar with.

[2259] I will fucking knock this table over.

[2260] That's really sad.

[2261] I'm going to crack you in your goddamn skull.

[2262] Not my fault.

[2263] Blame John Henson.

[2264] Did you do the interoperability?

[2265] Did they have a PS3?

[2266] They had it up and running, yeah, the cross -play stuff.

[2267] I played a one -on -one, me on the Vita, other guy on the PS3.

[2268] That worked.

[2269] Yeah.

[2270] It was pretty cool.

[2271] This week on Xbox Live Arcade, we have Adventures of Shuggie, as well as Magic the Gathering, Duel of the Plane.

[2272] Who's the Shuggie Knight -looking motherfucker over here?

[2273] I want to say right now that I think Sugar Knight is the funniest thing to come out of all of E3.

[2274] Oh, give me Sugar Bear.

[2275] And Magic the Gathering, Duel of the Planewalkers 2012.

[2276] That's the funniest thing to do.

[2277] That's 800 points a pop on Xbox Live Marketplace for that ass.

[2278] Yo, I gotta tap that mana, you know what I'm saying?

[2279] Does it have updated rosters?

[2280] Yo, it's the 2012 edition.

[2281] Yeah, Brett Favre is no longer in it.

[2282] Yeah, the...

[2283] Created this sub -brand of Duel of the Planewalkers.

[2284] Like, well, we've got to follow up on this.

[2285] What are we going to call the sequel?

[2286] Duel of the Planewalkers 2012.

[2287] Well, I mean, with the way that they keep issuing magic cards and changing all that stuff.

[2288] I mean, yeah.

[2289] They effectively do get to update the rosters of a magic card game.

[2290] But the fact that they are already falling into, like, sports game style.

[2291] It's still 11 and you're putting out your 12 game.

[2292] Dude, Magic Gathering is a sport.

[2293] Fuck you.

[2294] And lastly, but certainly not leastly, Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time.

[2295] Oh, yeah, that's out this weekend.

[2296] 3DS comes out this Sunday.

[2297] 3DS.

[2298] No, no, 3DS.

[2299] I'm going to pay you like 40 bucks for it.

[2300] Then he will have some video of that on the site.

[2301] Shortly.

[2302] I hope so.

[2303] Yeah.

[2304] Will we?

[2305] We'll see what he really thinks about that game.

[2306] I think that game is probably completely competent.

[2307] That's not what I heard.

[2308] Really?

[2309] Yeah.

[2310] From whom?

[2311] You.

[2312] No, I think that game is complete.

[2313] That's probably a great telling of that game.

[2314] I just wish I had other games to put in 3DS.

[2315] Those games are coming.

[2316] I told you.

[2317] I saw them.

[2318] Did I not tell you?

[2319] They are making new games for that system.

[2320] Well, you forgot to make the air quotes around new, but they are definitely making games.

[2321] Super Mario, to its credit, looks not quite like any other Mario game they have ever made.

[2322] And Luigi's Mansion doesn't quite look exactly like Luigi's Mansion.

[2323] Actually, that totally looks exactly like Luigi's Mansion.

[2324] Mario Kart doesn't quite look like Mario Kart.

[2325] Weird anybody else out that they don't put on a scuba helmet when they go underwater?

[2326] They don't need it.

[2327] You think that's water they're breathing?

[2328] You're saying Princess Peach has gills?

[2329] Yeah.

[2330] She's a fish person.

[2331] I don't know what the atmospheric makeup is like in the Mushroom Kingdom, man. Those people are all on drugs.

[2332] I think the 3DS lineup looked alright.

[2333] Yeah.

[2334] Pretty decent.

[2335] That stuff all comes out at some point.

[2336] It might get a 3DS.

[2337] The Wii lineup I thought looked a lot stronger.

[2338] What was the Wii lineup?

[2339] Rhythm Heaven.

[2340] Period.

[2341] Rhythm Heaven.

[2342] Period.

[2343] Is that the name?

[2344] Beginning and the end.

[2345] There might have been other Wii games there.

[2346] I don't know.

[2347] I wasn't paying attention because Rhythm Heaven was there.

[2348] Done.

[2349] You want to get me to plug in my Wii again and make the slot glow?

[2350] Rhythm Heaven.

[2351] There you go.

[2352] Make the slot glow.

[2353] I'm going to make the slot glow.

[2354] That would be a great Wii U title, I think, too.

[2355] Rhythm Heaven.

[2356] Make the slot glow?

[2357] Yes.

[2358] Yeah, Rhythm Heaven.

[2359] Make the slot glow, period.

[2360] That shield pose is clearly a Rhythm Heaven minigame.

[2361] But with the way it's structured, it almost has to be.

[2362] Yep.

[2363] Sounded like one.

[2364] Yeah.

[2365] Dunk, dunk, dunk.

[2366] Oh!

[2367] Yeah, yeah.

[2368] There's...

[2369] Down.

[2370] Center.

[2371] Left.

[2372] Right.

[2373] Yeah.

[2374] It's totally...

[2375] All right.

[2376] Well, let's take it to some emails.

[2377] How do you guys feel about that?

[2378] All right.

[2379] I feel like emails.

[2380] I'm going to check my email.

[2381] I've got mail.

[2382] I've got hemorrhoids.

[2383] First email comes in from Jean -Francois Murray.

[2384] Once again, from...

[2385] Reach out and touch someone.

[2386] From French Canada.

[2387] I'm a little whopper, bitch.

[2388] Hey, just played the Duke Nukem demo in French.

[2389] Duke's voice actor is the guy who dubs Arnold Schwarzenegger.

[2390] Just wanted to let you know this little piece of awesome.

[2391] So I guess in French language films, they have one dude that is always Arnold Schwarzenegger.

[2392] And he also does Duke Nukem.

[2393] I want to toggle that.

[2394] You want French Duke?

[2395] So badly.

[2396] This is like Duke Nukem eating his own tail.

[2397] Je m 'appelle whip your ass.

[2398] I want to know what do some of those gags translate into en français.

[2399] Yeah.

[2400] We're going to discover that that's the true brilliant way.

[2401] It's like, oh, no, no. This game is hilarious when you play it in French.

[2402] It's like you play Assassin's Creed in Italian, right?

[2403] It's like a postmodern masterpiece.

[2404] Play it in the original.

[2405] Yeah, play it in the native French.

[2406] But, yeah, that's definitely some snake -eating -its -own -tail shit right there.

[2407] Let's see here.

[2408] Next email comes in from Brandon Schroff.

[2409] Schroff.

[2410] Brandon Schroff.

[2411] Yo, Bombcast.

[2412] When the fuck will developers finally get rid of fucking stupid exploding barrels?

[2413] I just saw a new trailer for Rage, and somehow I didn't think that in a post -apocalyptic world where resources are scarce and valuable, they would just leave that shit lying around.

[2414] Fuck those goddamn fucking barrels.

[2415] Love the Bombcast.

[2416] Keep it up, hippies.

[2417] Dude, come on.

[2418] I mean, if any game is still going to have exploding barrels, it's the id Software game.

[2419] They get a free pass.

[2420] Come on.

[2421] I like exploding barrels because they explode.

[2422] I do like the – I hate the really obvious ones where it's like, oh, everyone in this room is standing next to one.

[2423] Like that black syndrome.

[2424] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[2425] Yeah.

[2426] Racist.

[2427] Sorry.

[2428] I guess that's a trope I don't mind because an exploding barrel always leads at least to chaos.

[2429] Yeah.

[2430] Yeah.

[2431] It's not like the monster closet where it's...

[2432] I'm with him.

[2433] It's stupid and it doesn't make contextual sense in this post -apocalyptic wasteland that people have shit that explodes laying around like that.

[2434] They'd be harnessing that for gas.

[2435] Sure.

[2436] Maybe that's where they keep their gas.

[2437] Yeah, maybe.

[2438] Until they need it.

[2439] In barrels.

[2440] And they want to hang out by the barrel to make sure nobody steals it.

[2441] Yeah, I guess.

[2442] Come on.

[2443] I'm sold.

[2444] We just want the gas.

[2445] I'll drive that tanker.

[2446] He's so timely.

[2447] He's still on it.

[2448] Next email comes in from Ashley Illman in London, UK.

[2449] Four score and seven beers ago.

[2450] Hey, Bomb Crew, on the last podcast, this is in reference to our last pre -E3 podcast.

[2451] What do you want on your tombstone?

[2452] That's going to do it for you now.

[2453] Set it and forget it.

[2454] Have you seen what this stuff does to kids?

[2455] Sorry.

[2456] No, it's okay.

[2457] It's better stuff than anything I'm going to pull off these emails.

[2458] So you're discussing the PS Vita and specifically Nintendo letting go of old branding and names.

[2459] The big push against this is the 3DS where the name is a clear twist on the DS.

[2460] I've noticed that everyone who doesn't follow the games industry that doesn't follow the games industry closely, fails to understand the difference between the DS and the 3DS outside of the 3D.

[2461] Most assume that it's a new iteration on the DS with 3D capabilities, presumably due to most of the knowledge of Nintendo handhelds being slow iterations around the same base model.

[2462] Do you think Nintendo shot themselves in the foot by not giving a name which clearly separates it from its older model?

[2463] Would a name like the DS2 or even something completely new have favored them better?

[2464] No. I don't know.

[2465] I think you could make the argument that the Wii U is actually a really smart name because you have those mainstream consumers that are familiar with the Wii name.

[2466] Right.

[2467] They see this and you're like, oh, it's OK, something else.

[2468] So I guess you're kind of dealing with multiple issues here of like you want to maintain some sort of brand identity.

[2469] Like you've managed to crack the nut with terms like DS and Wii.

[2470] And then you want to put out new hardware that.

[2471] That still works off, that builds off of that name recognition.

[2472] But you still need to change it enough that it's clear to the consumer that this is a meaningful upgrade.

[2473] Because I feel like outside of game consoles, outside of game hardware, the iterations happen so fast that you'll see stuff like...

[2474] from iPhone to iPhone 3G to iPhone 3GS, there are appreciable hardware differences there.

[2475] But they're still all basically just iPhones.

[2476] And those are kind of a year and a half apart from one another.

[2477] So I think when you're dealing with kind of a broader market, that's got to be a much tougher thing to kind of brand around.

[2478] Yeah, I think also, he's talking about people who would upgrade from a DS to a 3DS.

[2479] I think those people are probably in the know about their...

[2480] I mean, if you're talking about somebody who's just walking cold...

[2481] It's not big enough of a problem, I think, to...

[2482] I think, like you said, you want to keep that branding.

[2483] And the 3D is a huge thing.

[2484] I mean, for them, it's a huge thing.

[2485] And, you know, like, yeah, the 3DS is more powerful than the regular DS, for sure.

[2486] It's the third DS.

[2487] But...

[2488] 3DS.

[2489] But it is, like, you know, the...

[2490] The main selling points on that thing are it has two screens and it's in 3D.

[2491] And they encapsulate all of that in that name.

[2492] I guess you can't fault him for that.

[2493] Next email comes in from Alex in Estonia.

[2494] Brad, put your ears on.

[2495] On November 9, 2010, on the Bombcast of that day, timestamp, 50 minutes and 50 seconds.

[2496] When Jeff is talking about Black Ops, Brad says, I will eat my hat if Infinity Ward ships a Call of Duty game next year.

[2497] So are you going to wait until Modern Warfare 3 is actually released or is this already settled?

[2498] That doesn't sound like something I would say at all.

[2499] We're going to have to go to Tate because he provides a very specific time stamp on a very specific episode.

[2500] Did you see anybody from Infinity Ward up on stage talking about Modern Warfare 3?

[2501] We interviewed someone from Infinity Ward talking about Modern Warfare 3.

[2502] Also, I saw Robert Bowling.

[2503] Yeah, he was playing.

[2504] From Infinity Ward.

[2505] Creative strategist.

[2506] Yep.

[2507] Game hasn't shipped yet, Brad.

[2508] It's true.

[2509] Bio -digital jazz, man. I don't know.

[2510] I would have to go back and listen to the context of that statement that sounds slightly unhinged.

[2511] You don't really wear a hat.

[2512] Yeah, that's true.

[2513] Problem solved.

[2514] I was talking about my figurative hat.

[2515] What sort of hat?

[2516] No, you can only have – you can't eat a figurative hat.

[2517] Unless – Eat my figurative hat.

[2518] Unless you're willing to wear your food hat for a day that's turning the figurative hat into a literal hat.

[2519] And then eat it?

[2520] And then eat the food hat.

[2521] I would like to see you wear one of those, you know, like crowns made of bananas.

[2522] Make something common brandish.

[2523] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[2524] Oh, yeah.

[2525] Like a fruit hat.

[2526] I can eat a lot of fruit.

[2527] It's not so bad.

[2528] Don't they make hats out of cheese?

[2529] I don't think that's actually cheese.

[2530] I don't think you want to eat a hat of cheese.

[2531] That's a lot of cheese.

[2532] Would a nacho hat count and then you eat all the nacho cheese out of the nacho hat?

[2533] I think if you also ate all the hat.

[2534] All right, I want to eat my hat too.

[2535] I'll take the hit for you, Brad.

[2536] Make me a nacho.

[2537] Good on you.

[2538] Next email comes in from Nate G. Canada, Toronto.

[2539] G -Dub.

[2540] That was weak.

[2541] I'm sorry.

[2542] Jeff, please give us a quick review of the electric shaver you bought.

[2543] Does it work?

[2544] Is it worth the money?

[2545] I'd love to finally know if there's one out there that doesn't suck, no matter what the cost.

[2546] It fucking sucks.

[2547] So you haven't worn it in?

[2548] You haven't found your...

[2549] It's great for if you just need to look like you shaved, but if you or anyone else is going to touch your face, it sucks.

[2550] So you're just kind of constantly in that uncomfortable stubbly phase?

[2551] Yeah, but it's not even necessarily hard stubble.

[2552] It gets to just like there are some softer hairs that will remain.

[2553] Not a lot of them, but it's like one here, one here, one here.

[2554] It's on my neck, and it sucks.

[2555] So when I run my hands over my neck here, which I'm prone to do.

[2556] It's just like, I feel like I miss the spot.

[2557] I feel like a scumbag.

[2558] Did I mention last time this came up what the Tested Podcast had to say about this?

[2559] No. Because they talked about this like a month ago.

[2560] And Norm had somehow gotten a hold of pictures of like microscopic level detail of people's faces with straight racers versus electric.

[2561] Yeah.

[2562] And the straight razor is nice and uniform, close shave, you know, grain all in one direction.

[2563] The electric shaver, just like this awful, horrible forest of, like, ripped and twisted.

[2564] They said it looked so horrific that none of them would ever use an electric shaver again once they saw that close -up picture.

[2565] Yeah, I feel gross.

[2566] And it was one of those things where, I mean, granted, we do not wear makeup here.

[2567] But when I went and did that game trailer stuff.

[2568] I had to get out of makeup afterwards.

[2569] And the worst thing for getting out of makeup as a man is stubble.

[2570] Because you're using these wipes and there's like catching your face.

[2571] And you're just getting like cotton strings.

[2572] And it was enough to cause that.

[2573] So, fuck that thing.

[2574] That's it.

[2575] I'm still using it because I'm too lazy to shave for real.

[2576] And I figure I'm going to give it a month.

[2577] I'm actually going to give it a month of just using this.

[2578] And see if it eventually gets to a point where it's not doing this.

[2579] But right now, sucks.

[2580] Okay.

[2581] We'll check in later.

[2582] $250 of suck.

[2583] $250 of suck, baby.

[2584] The best a man can get.

[2585] People against goodness and normalcy.

[2586] P -H -E -A -N.

[2587] Pagan.

[2588] S to the P to the R to the I -T -E.

[2589] I'm only borrowing your Humvee.

[2590] Nate from Chicago.

[2591] You had me at hello.

[2592] Oh, Nate from Chicago.

[2593] I know it's still early days following the big Wii U announcement, but I feel like I am taking crazy pills reading some online reactions to it.

[2594] My understanding was the conventional wisdom regarding the Wii was that it made a big splash, sold a metric ton of units, and then lost people's interest pretty quickly, although it held their interest long enough to convince the four or five friends to buy one first.

[2595] That has been my experience, at least, every Wii that I...

[2596] Every Wii that I know of, probably 10 or so scattered, amongst my core gaming friends, parents, aunts and uncles, etc., is gathering dust in a cabinet or acting as a dedicated Netflix box somewhere.

[2597] So I'm really surprised that the reaction to Wii U is so positive and people are excitedly referring to it as a successor to the Wii.

[2598] Nintendo's done it again, etc. I know the Wii has some good games for it and it certainly made Nintendo a lot of money, but I didn't think that anybody was actually enthusiastic about getting a new one.

[2599] Am I just being an old grump or am I missing something here?

[2600] This thing has two analogs.

[2601] The other one didn't.

[2602] Two sets of shoulder buttons.

[2603] Though the analog sticks do not click in.

[2604] You don't have buttons there.

[2605] Well, fuck that.

[2606] They're not sticks.

[2607] They're discs.

[2608] They're like circle pads.

[2609] Circle pads.

[2610] So, yeah.

[2611] It's just like the 3DS.

[2612] Yeah, I mean, this one just has a lot more functionality out of the box.

[2613] It has more potential to play the games that you already play and enjoy.

[2614] Yeah, it's not sacrificing...

[2615] like traditional controls in favor of something crazy.

[2616] They're bolting something crazy onto.

[2617] That opens up potential for new types of games.

[2618] I mean, you know, like right now, it's all potential.

[2619] It's not until 2K says, hey guys, the popular Carnival Games series is now coming to the Wii U. Yeah.

[2620] They're usually like, ah, fuck, we've been fooled again.

[2621] You know what else we got coming out for Wii U?

[2622] What?

[2623] Duke Nukem Forever.

[2624] Oh, shit.

[2625] Touch the screen to shake it, baby.

[2626] I hope that has an awfully long tail for you.

[2627] I hope it ends up slipping out versions of Duke Nukem Forever.

[2628] Remember when Doom and Duke Nukem were coming out over the course of four years for all these different platforms?

[2629] Yeah, Jaguar Doom.

[2630] Doom 64?

[2631] Yeah, Doom 64.

[2632] Doom 64 wasn't bad.

[2633] Yeah, yeah.

[2634] But yeah, there was like that porting process where you saw games that were way too old.

[2635] It was like, well, it didn't exist on the N64 yet, and goddammit, we need games.

[2636] So here you go.

[2637] Duke N64.

[2638] That's it for that email.

[2639] Thank you, Nate Dogg, for writing in.

[2640] Next email comes in from Nicholas in Stockholm.

[2641] Hi, Bombcast.

[2642] In the developer Q &A following Nintendo's E3 press conference, Shigeru Miyamoto talked about Star Fox 3D and inverting versus not inverting the controls.

[2643] He stated that people who don't invert their controls grew up on Sega systems.

[2644] Is that something the Bomb crew can confirm or deny?

[2645] Personally, I grew up on Nintendo games and I do invert my controls.

[2646] That's a weird thing to say.

[2647] That sounds like something Miyamoto would say.

[2648] I grew up on both.

[2649] and not substantiate it.

[2650] Yeah, I guess I kind of had both.

[2651] So I'm not sure.

[2652] I would love to hear more context for that comment.

[2653] Yeah.

[2654] Because I can't imagine he would just say that and not at least provide some sort of crazy -ass Miyamoto logic.

[2655] Also has that come up to someone to say, like, do you invert your controls?

[2656] We've only got an hour with you.

[2657] I figured I'd ask you this really important question.

[2658] He told everyone not to ask about Pikmin, so that was...

[2659] Fair enough.

[2660] Cut them right out.

[2661] Half the questions they were going to ask, gone.

[2662] Also, Pikmin's out.

[2663] When you transfer your DSi games to 3DS, Pikmin moved them over.

[2664] Done.

[2665] Pikmin 3.

[2666] That's pretty neat.

[2667] Pikmin is on the cutting edge of transferring.

[2668] Yeah.

[2669] I was thinking about transferring, and then I scratched the screen into that 3DS.

[2670] Now I don't want to put anything on it.

[2671] Oh, really?

[2672] Like gouge on it?

[2673] It looks like there is at least a button in there for transferring from one 3DS to another.

[2674] Really?

[2675] Yeah.

[2676] I wonder if that includes like your me and your play coins and your puzzle pieces.

[2677] I don't know.

[2678] I'm almost done with my puzzle pieces.

[2679] Oh, geez.

[2680] Patrick's done with all his.

[2681] Like a real scratch or like a Brad scratch?

[2682] No, it's a real scratch.

[2683] You can see it while you're playing games.

[2684] It sucks.

[2685] Wait, did they get the DSI transfer stuff in?

[2686] Yeah.

[2687] Yeah, that launched with the eShop.

[2688] Oh, Jesus, I got to do that.

[2689] I did it.

[2690] Pikmin.

[2691] Okay, yeah.

[2692] First, I thought you were talking about when you buy stuff off the eShop, whatever that little conveyor belt -y thing was.

[2693] No, those are like little jelly beans or gumballs or something that fall into a thing.

[2694] Right, right.

[2695] I didn't know if I had missed...

[2696] Shopee, the eShop mascot, jumps around.

[2697] If I had missed some sort of Pikmin -style branding there or something.

[2698] Let's see here.

[2699] Keith from Manchester, UK.

[2700] Hi, Bobcast.

[2701] I was wondering what you guys thought about a second Kinect coming in the next year.

[2702] I've not bought into the tech yet and seeing what there is on the horizon, I wondered when the best time would be.

[2703] I could see improvements like a better standard camera HD or replacing the USB to solve bandwidth issues.

[2704] This would be very annoying to miss out on after buying the older box.

[2705] No, I mean, all the things they're doing right now to improve the Kinect are all at the software level.

[2706] And, you know, they have 10 million of these things out there that they haven't properly exploited with software, so that has to happen first.

[2707] Sure, sure.

[2708] And, you know, having just established that base, you don't split it by creating new hardware that has a higher functionality than...

[2709] I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if the current Kinect works with whatever Microsoft's next platform is.

[2710] But there won't be...

[2711] I could see them doing a Kinect follow -up at some point.

[2712] Sure.

[2713] It'll be on the next console.

[2714] Yeah.

[2715] I will eat my hat if they put out another Kinect on the Xbox 360.

[2716] We're going to start buying Brad hats, apparently.

[2717] He's got all hat -hungry.

[2718] I'm sure they're all nachos.

[2719] They're good for roughage.

[2720] Pizza hat?

[2721] Oh, these are pizza hats.

[2722] Oh, no, Pizza Hut.

[2723] It's where you get the pizza hat.

[2724] Pizza Hut had some crazy rebranding going on there.

[2725] It kind of freaks me out.

[2726] Put that pezzo on your face.

[2727] The Hut.

[2728] It's all, like, family -friendly.

[2729] Come down here and get some pasta.

[2730] You won't get stabbed.

[2731] You like your pizza dirty and questionable.

[2732] From a pizza hut, yeah.

[2733] Next email comes in from Mr. Aries.

[2734] So I was watching the stage demo for Far Cry 3 at E3, and I couldn't help but notice that every time you killed someone, there was a little plus number sign popping up.

[2735] Have we come to the point where it's impossible to make a first -person shooter, even while the main focus isn't just killing a lot of people, without having the pat -on -the -back reward as Jaffe so eloquently called it?

[2736] Referencing back to some stuff.

[2737] J .V. Jaffe said about the metagame.

[2738] I expect that that just means that that game has some sort of experience levels and some hopefully meaningful stuff.

[2739] Until we know what it does, it's a little hard to say.

[2740] But numbers popping out of dudes when you kill them goes back prior to first -person shooting.

[2741] And I don't see anything bad about...

[2742] the trend that we have seen of RPG conventions making their way into games that are not traditionally RPGs.

[2743] I think that's one of the best things that's ever happened to video games, personally.

[2744] Adding depth to standard action genres is great.

[2745] I think it's going to mean, ultimately, the death of the traditional RPG as we know it.

[2746] What is the traditional RPG?

[2747] I'm just saying...

[2748] Dragon Age 2.

[2749] The Witcher 2?

[2750] Done.

[2751] Yeah, we won't see those games for too much longer.

[2752] Final Fantasy XIII 2's got quick time events.

[2753] Game over, man. Even by...

[2754] Even there, done.

[2755] Yeah.

[2756] Next email, and we'll call it the last email, comes in from Adam Schwalli.

[2757] Greetings, Bombcast.

[2758] So Rage looks okay and all, but when is id going to bring back the only franchise that truly matters, Commander Effing Keen?

[2759] The world needs more games about eight -year -old kids who travel the stars in a spaceship that runs on Everclear and fights Vorticons armed with only a ray gun and a football helmet.

[2760] Did it really run on Everclear?

[2761] Wow.

[2762] Sounds right.

[2763] I don't know.

[2764] Wow.

[2765] I don't know.

[2766] That's crazy.

[2767] That's a crazy claim to make.

[2768] Like, Carmack is pretty much Commander Keenan at this point.

[2769] It's going to be, yeah.

[2770] It's very true.

[2771] He'll change his name legally.

[2772] It's very true.

[2773] I think we'll see it right around the time we see a new Jazz Jackrabbit.

[2774] Yeah.

[2775] A new Jill of the Jungle when all that stuff is back.

[2776] When Blake Stone comes back.

[2777] Chips Challenge for 2012.

[2778] Massively Multiplayer Chips Challenge.

[2779] I'm in.

[2780] Only if it maintains the graphics from the Lynx version, because that's the version I like.

[2781] I don't know.

[2782] It's not really much of a looking game.

[2783] Looks great on the Lynx.

[2784] But it's not the graphics that you're coming to Chip's Challenge for.

[2785] Except in 2012, you will.

[2786] That's right.

[2787] Because it'll be in 3D.

[2788] Yep.

[2789] Look for it.

[2790] All right.

[2791] That's it for emails.

[2792] Thanks, everyone, who wrote in.

[2793] Once again, bombcast at giantbomb .com is the email address.

[2794] Final thoughts for this week.

[2795] Vinny Caravella.

[2796] For E3?

[2797] For whatever.

[2798] For whatever's going on?

[2799] Yeah.

[2800] Taking naps is weird.

[2801] Yeah.

[2802] You got some good naps.

[2803] Oh, man. Saturday was full of naps.

[2804] I couldn't stay awake for more than a couple of hours.

[2805] It's like you try and get out, and you're like, I need to get it.

[2806] Nope.

[2807] Going back to sleep.

[2808] I can't believe how tired I am.

[2809] It was crazy.

[2810] I don't really nap, and I just kept on passing back out.

[2811] Jeff, you doing any napping?

[2812] No, I played Duke nonstop while being sick.

[2813] And then, I don't know, I thought I was all the way better.

[2814] At least you dodged that sickness during the show.

[2815] Right, yeah, I was sick right before the show and right after.

[2816] So that's all that matters.

[2817] Yeah, I don't know.

[2818] I don't think I would be in tomorrow.

[2819] Okay.

[2820] Unless I sound a lot better when I talk.

[2821] I'm going to say good call and Brad Schumacher.

[2822] Oh.

[2823] I don't know.

[2824] Let's get out of here.

[2825] You know what?

[2826] Too much podcasting.

[2827] Yeah, fair enough.

[2828] Let's not podcast for like a week.

[2829] Let's take a break.

[2830] We're going to podcast.

[2831] We'll reconvene back here in a week.

[2832] I did want to say because I didn't get a chance to say it during...

[2833] During the show, I just want to thank Drew and Joey for holding it down.

[2834] Those guys were finishing up some stuff.

[2835] I think Carmack went up yesterday.

[2836] Was it Day 3 videos?

[2837] Drew was working on Day 3 videos.

[2838] Those guys are still cranking.

[2839] And, man, they made my E3.

[2840] They made my E3.

[2841] So they allowed me to enjoy some of E3.

[2842] They made my E3 as well.

[2843] They're not on microphones or in front of the camera a lot.

[2844] But, yeah.

[2845] But there's someone here slamming a table.

[2846] Fantastic job for those guys.

[2847] And they did awesome.

[2848] They did really funny stuff.

[2849] No, absolutely.

[2850] I wanted to give them their propers as much as I could during the show.

[2851] Gosh, they make E3 so much better.

[2852] Thank you guys.

[2853] Thank you guys so much.

[2854] That's it for this week.

[2855] We'll come back a week later for more.

[2856] We're not done.

[2857] That's not it.

[2858] That's not the end of the season.

[2859] We don't go on hiatus.

[2860] We do.

[2861] We don't take a break.

[2862] That thing on the page, it's just a lie.

[2863] It was just a funny thing that got thrown in at the end.

[2864] What?

[2865] I thought we all go off to, like, vacation now for, like, four months.

[2866] We'll be back in a week.

[2867] Oh.

[2868] For the start of another episode of The Giant Bobcast.

[2869] I need to go look at my contract.

[2870] We'll see you then.