Giant Bombcast 06-21-2011

[0] Hey, everyone.

[1] It's Tuesday, June the 21st, 2011.

[2] First day of summer, folks.

[3] Summer solstice has happened.

[4] This is a giant bomb cast where we talk about weather.

[5] Hippie bullshit.

[6] What?

[7] First day of summer.

[8] Now it just means it's time to start busting out with your summer jams for the farmers.

[9] Vinny Caravello, what's your summer jam for 2011?

[10] Have you chosen it yet?

[11] Wow, for 2011?

[12] I mean, it's summer started.

[13] You've got to have your summer jam.

[14] Oh, I haven't been in a car enough in 2011 yet to pick a summer jam.

[15] You haven't put the top down yet?

[16] I haven't driven too many places yet.

[17] Summer jams are kind of only car things, right?

[18] Yeah, kind of.

[19] Yeah.

[20] It helps.

[21] They're life things, man. Jeff Gershman, do you have a summer jam yet for 2011?

[22] Brandy looking glass.

[23] That's a pretty good one.

[24] Brad Shoemaker.

[25] I'm going to cop the car excuse.

[26] Yeah.

[27] What if I need the radio?

[28] You need the radio to pick one of those.

[29] I don't know what's hot right now.

[30] What are the kids listening to?

[31] What are my choices?

[32] Or like a house party would also be helpful.

[33] I'm not making it to a lot of those either.

[34] I have not yet said, damn, this is my jam.

[35] Just whatever Gary Wood is playing on Turntable FM.

[36] You're right, though.

[37] You have to be somewhere.

[38] No, he only plays that on Fridays.

[39] Come on.

[40] That's the most frequency I've listened to the same song, I think.

[41] I still haven't heard it.

[42] I have not yet done it.

[43] Oh, yeah!

[44] To a song yet.

[45] No, you're right, though.

[46] You've got to be at somewhere and actually literally say, oh, this is my jam!

[47] No, not yet.

[48] I was listening to Cypress Hill when I walked up to the office today.

[49] That's pretty good.

[50] Cypress Hill, definitely.

[51] Jeff and I, I think a few weeks ago, pre -E3, were in the car and trying to decide on a song -by -song basis.

[52] Is this Summer Jam?

[53] Like, not even if it's the Summer Jam, but if it's, like...

[54] Is it eligible?

[55] Yeah, is it even Summer Jam material?

[56] And I think what we decided was, like, almost all G -Funk era rap songs are total Summer Jam.

[57] Yeah, those songs all sound like a barbecue.

[58] Yeah.

[59] They certainly do, so a lot of potential there.

[60] C -U -E, barbecue.

[61] What was the second song on the album with Regulate?

[62] No, it was B -E -Q.

[63] What was the song after Regulate?

[64] Was it Regulate Part 2?

[65] No. Like on the album?

[66] On the album, like track.

[67] Yes, yes.

[68] Ask me anything about the Warren G album.

[69] That whole album is actually really good.

[70] Really?

[71] Yeah, that whole Regulate G Funk era is actually a really good album.

[72] Whatever that second song is, I'm going to go with that.

[73] I can't remember the name of it.

[74] Still Regulate.

[75] I mean, this DJ was the second single, but I don't know.

[76] I totally wrote that off.

[77] No, no. I assumed that.

[78] That whole album.

[79] Huh.

[80] That whole album.

[81] All right.

[82] I'll have to check that out.

[83] That whole album.

[84] Is that a lot of Dre work on there?

[85] No, not really.

[86] Warren G. is a producer of his own.

[87] He broke out.

[88] He didn't even sign to Death Row because there was such a backlog of artists that he just went out on his own and put that album out.

[89] That made good.

[90] Yeah.

[91] So who is the DJ in this DJ?

[92] It's Warren G. Warren G. Isn't it this DJ and Warren?

[93] This DJ is Warren G. Oh, it is?

[94] I thought it was and Warren G. No. I thought it was like the Fresh Prince.

[95] No. Okay.

[96] He's the DJ.

[97] He's the Warren.

[98] That man wears a lot of hats.

[99] He's a regulator, a DJ.

[100] Renaissance man. Shit.

[101] One time I saw Warren G in concert and Nate Dogg wasn't there, but he still wanted to do Regulate, so he did it with the crowd.

[102] Wow.

[103] Yeah.

[104] Now that's how he has to do it.

[105] Man. Oh, that's true.

[106] I know.

[107] That assumes that Warren G is still playing shows.

[108] That's one of my bummer jams.

[109] Cut copy.

[110] Hanging on to every heartbeat is my current summer jam.

[111] I have not decided if it is the summer jam for 2011.

[112] Google it.

[113] It sounds almost exactly.

[114] It's pretty much a cover of the Rebecca Black song.

[115] Could you grace us with some jams of summer's past?

[116] I want to know what made the cut.

[117] Last year was Drunk Girls by LCD Sound System.

[118] That was totally my summer jam.

[119] A year before that, gosh, I don't know.

[120] I can't recall back that far.

[121] Summer jams are somewhat disposable because you listen to the shit out of them.

[122] Has Coolio ever been in your summer jams?

[123] I think Coolio trades heavily in summer jams.

[124] Yeah.

[125] For sure.

[126] Yeah, Coolio singles qualify.

[127] As summer jams.

[128] That one, two, three, four song.

[129] Yep.

[130] There's Lucas with the lid off.

[131] Not good, but total summer jam.

[132] We listened to Lucas with the lid off just yesterday.

[133] Oh, really?

[134] Yeah.

[135] That's my new summer jam then.

[136] Yeah, that's my jam.

[137] And you know what?

[138] I probably listened to that like three times in the past week.

[139] It's a great song.

[140] I love that song.

[141] I've got the single.

[142] It's got a crazy like electro ska remix of that song.

[143] Whoa.

[144] Yeah.

[145] When you start listening to weird B -side remixes, like Europe -only releases of Lucas with the lid off, you need to step back.

[146] Put the lid back on.

[147] Indeed.

[148] Be careful how you doing.

[149] All right.

[150] Oh, we started?

[151] Yeah.

[152] We've been recording.

[153] Are we recording?

[154] I remember you doing mic checks and then...

[155] All right.

[156] No, we...

[157] We're like five minutes into this podcast.

[158] No, cool, man. Go.

[159] Go on.

[160] Have a podcast.

[161] See if I care.

[162] From now on, we just have to trick Jeff into all podcasts.

[163] See what you can get me to say.

[164] That motherfucker out there.

[165] All podcasts from now on will just be casual conversations that we're all wearing wires to.

[166] Okay, well, we just have to stand real close to Jeff or someone has to put one up their sleeve and kind of hold their hand up near him.

[167] Are we just speaking to my collarbone?

[168] Tell me more about your favorite mustard.

[169] It's French's.

[170] I mean, it just smears the best when you're rubbing it on your body.

[171] Vinny, how you doing?

[172] Oh, you got me again.

[173] What kind of mustard do you go for?

[174] Are we really going to talk about favorite mustards?

[175] I mean, I think it depends on application, right?

[176] Coleman's?

[177] Yeah.

[178] I'm not familiar with the brand.

[179] It's like one of those little jars of hot mustard.

[180] Oh, yeah.

[181] Okay, sure.

[182] Coleman's, I think it is?

[183] Yeah.

[184] They sell mustard powder, too.

[185] Okay, yeah.

[186] I know exactly what you're talking about.

[187] You know, just like if you're going to have like some sort of crazy high -end sausage, you get like some of that beaver spicy mustard maybe.

[188] Or if you're going to do like a good – like a turkey sandwich, you want like a big grain like – Yeah.

[189] Get the whole mustard seeds.

[190] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[191] Exactly.

[192] And if I'm going to rock like a ballpark hot dog, just put some deli.

[193] Some Frenchies on there.

[194] Or an egg roll.

[195] You get that hot Chinese mustard.

[196] Yeah.

[197] Oh, that's good.

[198] Nothing wrong with that.

[199] The hot Chinese mustard.

[200] Vinnie Caravella.

[201] Yes.

[202] What you been playing?

[203] So I played a beat, that Duke Nukem game that came out.

[204] That's forever.

[205] Duke Nukem 3D?

[206] That's forever.

[207] No. It'll never go away.

[208] You're right.

[209] Duke Nukem forever.

[210] It'll always be around.

[211] Finished it.

[212] Yeah.

[213] Okay.

[214] Did you play anything else?

[215] Yeah.

[216] I played Infamous 2.

[217] Close.

[218] Still didn't close the book on that one yet?

[219] No, I think I must be near in the end, though.

[220] You were already near the end last time we talked about it, so you must be even nearer.

[221] Nearer to getting my second -to -last blast core, not a shard core.

[222] So I'm enjoying that a lot.

[223] You told me that you were also kind of ready for it to be over, though.

[224] Sure.

[225] It definitely got to the point.

[226] Because I've been doing every side mission as it pops up.

[227] I'm on, like, you know.

[228] I wasn't even that thorough, but I also had that feeling about two -thirds of the way through.

[229] I have about seven side missions left, so I'm on, like, 53 now.

[230] I similarly had that with Alice Madness Returns.

[231] This game's just the only one to quit.

[232] It's like, I appreciate you're trying to give me some value, but let's move on.

[233] The powers are great, so I've kind of got a ton of power.

[234] and I feel real badass.

[235] But now they're just throwing everything at me. The entire world is coming after me. And that seems to be every mission now is just throw everything at you.

[236] Fight everyone.

[237] Fight everybody.

[238] And it's like, okay, well, I can fight everybody, but now I kind of have to hide and get my health back because this is a lot of guys.

[239] Have you messed with the user -created stuff yet?

[240] I actually turned it off.

[241] So there's a thread on the boards.

[242] Pretty messed up thing to do, but also kind of hilarious and inventive.

[243] People just went and created user -created missions with, like, spoilers for the game's story in it.

[244] So it's just like, dude, the title of the mission is what happens at the end of the game or something, yeah.

[245] Well, I guess you'd have to go past the filter and turn off because no way they're going to promote that stuff.

[246] Yeah, it defaults to featured missions, which I think have to be handpicked.

[247] Yeah, sucker punch like.

[248] Selects them.

[249] You're never going to see any of that stuff.

[250] So I guess you'd have to kind of go through.

[251] Totally reasonable to see them, though.

[252] Also, I don't know that there's that much of value to spoil about the ending of the story.

[253] I haven't.

[254] Like, you haven't seen it yet.

[255] Yeah, I mean, it was people talking that hadn't finished the game.

[256] They just, like, saw something that they were just like, oh, no. But I'll laugh at it.

[257] Yeah.

[258] It's kind of clever.

[259] I turned them off.

[260] As griefing goes.

[261] Yeah.

[262] That's a good way to find your way into it.

[263] A for effort.

[264] The reason I turned them off mostly was I couldn't tell the color difference between the UGC and the actual side mission.

[265] So it was just cluttering up the map.

[266] That's a shame.

[267] So I turned them all off and now it's just the side missions and I just do those.

[268] So what color are the two things?

[269] They're yellow and green.

[270] Yeah, that's right.

[271] Yeah, but they're very similar because the middle is also transparent on it.

[272] So if it's over something white.

[273] I love it, Brad.

[274] Trust me on this.

[275] I've been there on yellow and green specifically.

[276] I thought you were a blue -red guy.

[277] No, red -green.

[278] The name of the type of colorblindness doesn't imply which colors blend together all the time.

[279] For me, it's red and green.

[280] And so when you have green and yellow next to each other.

[281] And they're just similar.

[282] It's not like it's a tree green.

[283] It's kind of like a brighter, kind of like a lighter green.

[284] So anyway, it made things a lot easier.

[285] And now just the regular side missions, which are things that I didn't realize the UGC doesn't count towards any of the side mission goals.

[286] No, no. You complete those, you just get your experience or whatever.

[287] I've got tons of experience points at this point.

[288] But I am enjoying it.

[289] Way to brag about your experience points.

[290] I'm not going to say much.

[291] I've got tons of experience points.

[292] Girl.

[293] Girl.

[294] That's my jam.

[295] But I'm not just throwing it around to get these experience points either.

[296] These aren't user -generated experience points.

[297] No, this is important to me. You're important to me. These experience points mean a lot to me. I don't say this to everybody.

[298] I want this experience point to last.

[299] What was I talking about?

[300] Oh!

[301] The powers are fun.

[302] You get the...

[303] What do they call it?

[304] Ionic powers?

[305] Is that the big thing?

[306] So those are great.

[307] It's basically these kind of like devastating...

[308] It's like a tornado.

[309] Yeah.

[310] And then you get a fire or an ice thing, depending on what you put.

[311] I haven't gotten a third one.

[312] Then there's like the lightning storm, which I think is straight out of the first game.

[313] Yeah, it is out of the first game.

[314] If I remember.

[315] You actually launched that in the very, very, very beginning against the guy.

[316] They painted the ionic stuff before the game came out as like...

[317] this whole other subset or, like, category of powers that you would get, but in reality, it's just a smart bomb.

[318] It's just, like, they kill everything in front of you power.

[319] Oh, you can use them kind of tactically.

[320] Yeah, but it's not something you spam rapidly, like, the basic powers, you know?

[321] Right, and you have to collect them to recharge them.

[322] They're limited use.

[323] I mean, it sounds just kind of like, you know, screen clearers, like, there's too many dudes, and I can only use it every once in a while.

[324] Right, right.

[325] It's kind of like that, but I really enjoy them because you do get these just...

[326] dudes coming after you and after you and just you being able to use those powers you're like well at least they give me something i'll take out 10 dudes at a time because there are 40 on the screen yeah the combat just it just got unpleasant at some point it was just too many guys they were too capable and they're all around you and they're very mobile yeah like situational awareness is kind of an issue in that game because you can't be looking at at every side at all times, you know, but there are guys who will snipe you or shoot rockets at you that you don't necessarily see.

[327] And while you're in kind of combat animations too, so like while you're in a melee kill, you can get hit with a rocket and it'll kill you.

[328] I don't know if this is a common...

[329] These all sound like issues that I had with the first Infamous.

[330] Yeah, that's the thing.

[331] I mean, this game is definitely more of the same and they added some neat stuff to it, but they didn't fix the stuff that was fundamentally an issue.

[332] Yeah.

[333] I don't think I'm going to play Infamous 2.

[334] You're probably...

[335] I mean, if you don't have an itch to play more Infamous, then you should totally avoid it.

[336] I didn't finish the first game, so you should go play that.

[337] Brad, watching you play it, it looks really cool.

[338] It looks cool.

[339] All the animation stuff, Cole's movement and his abilities, it looks neat and fun.

[340] I feel like, like you said, the world is more interesting, more varied, more colorful.

[341] Yeah, like if those kind of fundamentals are still a problem with – like you were saying about the situational awareness.

[342] Right.

[343] Because, yeah, traversal is great.

[344] Combat is great.

[345] But there's just something about balance or mission design or – Yeah.

[346] I got this – I have to give credit for this word, scooter, one -up.

[347] But are you familiar with the term stun locking?

[348] Like, that's how he referred to the problem of, like, you get knocked down by something and you're stuck in this animation.

[349] Only from, like, guard stun.

[350] What's that?

[351] Like, fighting game kind of guard stun.

[352] But stun locking is, like, pretty much from, like, wow or stuff.

[353] Not from blocking, or block stun, rather.

[354] Something like that.

[355] Like, rogues would stun lock.

[356] Point being, like, you are involved in this one activity but still taking damage from these other directions that you can't necessarily dodge and stuff like that.

[357] It's like, you can't do anything about it.

[358] Because you want animation.

[359] Right, right.

[360] It got to be a real problem.

[361] I don't know if that's appropriate use of stun locking.

[362] Maybe not.

[363] I don't know.

[364] We'll bring him on.

[365] He'll clarify for us.

[366] Boulder dash.

[367] The shotgun guys toward the end, the ice guys, they basically have this ice slide.

[368] that from any direction, even if you're not looking at them, it will slide them right up to within a few feet of you, and then they have this shotgun that they immediately will knock you down with.

[369] Which you can't block with your frost shield for some reason.

[370] Really?

[371] Yeah.

[372] I didn't even try, because half the time they would come up behind you.

[373] Well, you know, if you were holding a shield and someone shot a shotgun at point -blank range into it, even if the bullets didn't go through, it might knock you over.

[374] Sure, but the shield blocks bullets.

[375] It's just weird.

[376] I don't know.

[377] You take damage.

[378] Yeah, no, I mean, I'm saying in real life, if I had a shield that blocked bullets and you ran up, with a shotgun and shot it, I still might fall over.

[379] What if I slid up on my ice?

[380] If you slid up, it's game over, man. I'm falling over.

[381] Girl.

[382] Because he's drunk.

[383] Girl, I'm falling over.

[384] Like, you know, any one of those guys.

[385] I'm stunlocked, girl.

[386] You walk into the room and I just couldn't do anything.

[387] My powers.

[388] I'm frozen.

[389] I mean, any one of those guys, if you face them head -on, it's fine.

[390] You're perfectly well -equipped to deal with.

[391] Like one -on -one?

[392] Yeah.

[393] Oh, yeah.

[394] Like, look at him.

[395] If you see him coming, but when there's three or four of those guys, I mean, it's all about how, like, they distribute the enemies in the mission design and stuff.

[396] Yeah.

[397] If you have a guy come up behind you and knock you down, then there's a guy to your left, and, like, it just compounds from there.

[398] You get caught in the wrong situation, and you're in trouble.

[399] And if you start the mission over and go at it a different way, then often it's fine.

[400] But, like, you didn't know that going in the first time, and it's just, it becomes tedious.

[401] But all that being said.

[402] I actually really enjoy it.

[403] It's a lot of fun.

[404] I mean, the game is on the verge of being like the...

[405] probably the best open -world game in this generation in terms of, like, raw playability.

[406] Because you do become very powerful.

[407] Yeah, like, the range of powers and the ways that you can chain them together and stuff is super satisfying.

[408] It's just there's, like, four or five things they really need to refine if they make another one of those games.

[409] And I feel like they do have that quick select thing for your powers, but some powers I just wish I could map on my own.

[410] Like, there are some things like the Ice Launch and the Frost Shield I want to be able to use at the same time, but you can't.

[411] And Sucker Punch isn't working on Sly 4, are they?

[412] No, that's a different device.

[413] I still don't know who's making it.

[414] Kingsfly 4, but it's not the...

[415] Oh, God.

[416] It's the guys who did the collection and also did the PSP game.

[417] Yes.

[418] Oh, okay.

[419] I can't remember the name of that studio, but...

[420] Wait.

[421] It's coming to me. Find it.

[422] No, it's not.

[423] Find it.

[424] Damn it.

[425] Everyone be quiet.

[426] Girl.

[427] I got nothing.

[428] Nothing.

[429] Also the guys who made the Secret Agent Clank.

[430] Yes, they did Secret Agent Clank.

[431] They're actually like a pretty solid PSP developer.

[432] I guess have graduated up.

[433] It's not ready at dawn.

[434] It's not ready at dawn.

[435] There's like the God of War guys.

[436] It's a slightly different team.

[437] Or completely different team.

[438] It's like two guys.

[439] Totally different.

[440] It's like the Yardbird.

[441] It's like half the guys from this other band.

[442] Vinnie Caravella, anything else other than Infamous?

[443] Although I feel bad asking because the fact that you've already finished Duke Nukem and almost done with Infamous 2, like those are not small.

[444] Duke Nukem is pretty long, right?

[445] It feels really long.

[446] It sure feels that way.

[447] I'll set you guys right up for that.

[448] Enough has been said about Duke Nukem.

[449] I don't really want to talk about it.

[450] I was just wondering.

[451] So next – Next up is Alice.

[452] Got that ready to go.

[453] You got the PC version.

[454] I did get the PC version.

[455] Because it finally came to Steam.

[456] Well, I bought it before it came to Steam from Amazon, their direct download thing, which I wanted to try.

[457] I'm going to try Origin.

[458] I'm going to have to buy something for me. People are saying that it's not as bad as that EA download stuff.

[459] And when I bought it – Yeah, it's like they kind of fixed – the main idea is that they're kind of finally fixing all the hassles that you had with the past EA downloader experiences.

[460] I guess kind of – I don't know.

[461] Like it just seems unnecessary.

[462] It is.

[463] A de facto marketplace has already been established on the platform.

[464] It's not unified, so anyone is free to give it a shot if they want.

[465] I think there's room for stuff like good old games where they're focusing on very specific stuff.

[466] Publisher -specific, yeah.

[467] That's really frustrating because it's like, how many different accounts do I need to have at this point?

[468] Do I already have an account on this server?

[469] Totally willing to invite competition into the marketplace, but it is that publisher -specific thing.

[470] where if it's a universal umbrella platform, that's cool.

[471] It shouldn't be too much of a surprise to people.

[472] EA's been so about wanting to have direct relationships with customers.

[473] All the EA Nation collecting your email address even though Microsoft already has all that information to log in.

[474] Having to log into EA separately is specifically built so they can...

[475] Farm your email addresses and get all that stuff.

[476] That's what Social Club and Uplay.

[477] Right.

[478] Yeah, Uplay.

[479] Name a customer relations service.

[480] It's a shame when they make it integral to playing the game, though.

[481] You can't do this activity without logging in.

[482] And it's like, well, that's kind of shitty.

[483] So when I bought this from Amazon, the first thing it made me do was log in to my EA account to verify it and activate it through EA, which made me think that this is probably the same executable you would have downloaded from Oregon.

[484] Maybe.

[485] So you didn't get this through Steam?

[486] No, I bought this from the Amazon Direct download service.

[487] Oh, okay.

[488] I didn't realize they were doing this.

[489] Yeah, they've been doing it for a while.

[490] Yeah, so it made me think that, oh, maybe there isn't a client -side thing you have to run to kind of authenticate every time.

[491] So it authenticates through the executable, kind of seemed to tie it to whatever my account is.

[492] That's their DRM, I think.

[493] Right.

[494] I don't know, as far as I can tell.

[495] And that's about as far as I got into Alice.

[496] The one feel -good aspect about Origin that I haven't seen.

[497] He's the name.

[498] Right, guys?

[499] We give back the classics, huh?

[500] That's the feel -worst aspect of that, man. That's shameful.

[501] I was sitting next to you during that press conference every time someone would say, go to Origin .com, and Jeff just slowly shaking his head like, God damn.

[502] Where's Chris Roberts?

[503] You fucking assholes.

[504] What have you done?

[505] I haven't seen any direct evidence of this, but I was reading yesterday that you can actually tie old EA retail and, like, what was their previous store called?

[506] Just the EA.

[507] Yeah, whatever it was.

[508] Download store.

[509] I think it pulls in your previous purchases.

[510] Well, it didn't initially.

[511] Oh, okay.

[512] But I guess there are ways to validate that stuff.

[513] Or even if I have, like, a serial key for, like, an old, old EA game.

[514] Well, I don't know how far back it goes.

[515] Yeah.

[516] Like Blizzard did.

[517] Dragon Age, the first one, is the one example I saw where somebody had, like, a retail copy of Dragon Age and was able to, like, add it to.

[518] Origin.

[519] If I can add my copy that I bought on Steam.

[520] Of Dragon Age.

[521] I don't know about that.

[522] It's all the same CD keys.

[523] And it comes up with CD keys.

[524] Maybe, yeah.

[525] So I should be able to get my...

[526] But do you really want to?

[527] I don't know.

[528] Create weird redundancy.

[529] I've got this stuff spread out.

[530] And, you know, I think this also is them kind of getting past.

[531] Like, they had those weird terms like, give us an extra dollar to guarantee that you can download your game.

[532] Well, that's what really turned me off when people were like, well, why are you giving Origins such a hard time?

[533] That's why.

[534] Because it was like their initial thing was pretty messed up.

[535] That was like the Spore stuff where, okay, you'll download it once, and if you want the chance to ever download this file again.

[536] Give us an extra five or ten bucks.

[537] That was only for one extra download.

[538] And then you also needed to run their client.

[539] to run the game, which is just like, I don't want to add more stuff in my tray.

[540] Oh, that's good.

[541] Yeah, because I've got like a copy.

[542] I think I've got like Mirror's Edge for PC on my old EA download thing.

[543] So yeah, get rid of all that.

[544] I'll never play that.

[545] The only thing that remains is, yeah, publisher specific.

[546] Yeah, I mean, if they got it to a point where it was, you know, as convenient as Steam can be, but just for EA games, it's not the end of the world.

[547] You know, it's like you can understand why they would want to cut out the middleman wherever they can.

[548] It's just that with all the weird stuff with Crisis being pulled, that it started to all seem a lot worse all of a sudden.

[549] It looked really sinister for about three days.

[550] Right.

[551] If they were going to just yank everything off steam, like the Battlefield store page disappeared, Alice disappeared, and now Alice is up.

[552] They know better than withholding Battlefield.

[553] Do they?

[554] That page hasn't gone back up.

[555] Well, they already said they're selling it on Steam.

[556] Well, yeah, I mean, that's the plan, but it's up to Valve, right?

[557] The whole thing is that EA made some deal with Crisis DLC that violated the Valve agreement, so Valve yanked it.

[558] This all sounds crazy, and it's just, yeah, I don't know.

[559] It's only sinister when set against this backdrop of EA launching Origin, like, the questions become a lot more pointed.

[560] They're like, wait, what are you guys doing?

[561] And they're like, no, we're happy that Valve chose to, like, their language seems super crazy.

[562] It was like, yeah, I know.

[563] There were moments where, like, Patrick trying to decipher this story, he was like, I don't know what the fuck is going on.

[564] I know his attempts to talk to EA and, like, yeah, even their, like, The person language was like...

[565] And they're like, why do you care about this?

[566] It's like, no, here's why it's a big deal.

[567] It's like, oh.

[568] I don't know.

[569] It almost sounded like from the way that EA was responding that they were confused as to...

[570] There's some part of this story that isn't being told, not out of malice, but just because they're like, why is everyone flipping out?

[571] This is no big deal.

[572] It's like a bad confluence of events that...

[573] Maybe.

[574] And the upshot is if you already bought Crisis on Steam, it's still there.

[575] It's not...

[576] It's not like it got pulled for people that actually purchased it, so it's not...

[577] I did not get my copy of Alice 1.

[578] Yeah, that was an original thing.

[579] But it also comes with the 360 and PS3 version, right?

[580] Yeah, I think so.

[581] So that's kind of shit.

[582] That's kind of a shame.

[583] You knew that going in, though.

[584] You also paid less than $60.

[585] It's true.

[586] I paid $40 -something.

[587] $45 or something.

[588] Well, it's just kind of lame that, like...

[589] A certain PC distributor is going to get it, but on the consoles, it's not like it was a Best Buy.

[590] For consoles, it was still like that first purchaser thing.

[591] Is it just in the box?

[592] It's a code that you punch in.

[593] But it's not an extra purchase once you get it.

[594] No, no, no. It's just there.

[595] I might have to get that.

[596] I guess.

[597] I don't know.

[598] The original Alice.

[599] Yeah.

[600] They have achievements in New Alice for Old Alice.

[601] Yeah.

[602] There's 100 points of the achievements in Madness Returns.

[603] It would be indeed historical curiosity.

[604] I wonder if there are Steam achievements in the Steam version of Madness Returns.

[605] I'd be really surprised if there are.

[606] If there are Steam achievements.

[607] I'm trying to think if EA has done Steam achievements.

[608] I don't think they ever have.

[609] That was pretty much it.

[610] That's kind of all I played.

[611] It took up enough time.

[612] And Final Cut.

[613] Yeah, Final Cut Pro X. Getting ready for Final Cut Pro X. I don't play with baby toys.

[614] Oh, nice.

[615] Oh, that's my jam.

[616] Snap.

[617] You use Final Cut Pro X?

[618] Yeah.

[619] Whatever.

[620] We'll move to it at some point.

[621] Final Cut Pro cross Tekken?

[622] Cross, yeah.

[623] Cross Pro.

[624] Cross iMovie.

[625] I think I'm going to buy it at some point.

[626] I'm going to check it out.

[627] It's 64 bits, man. This day has just been nothing but Vinny fuming about Final Cut.

[628] Why is it worse?

[629] I can't go into it.

[630] They cut out everything that a video professional would want to use Final Cut for.

[631] Just about.

[632] Yeah, the why of that is unless you want to rebuild your entire workflow, right?

[633] No, there are just some things.

[634] It's just like they really just made it pretty much iMovie.

[635] That's unfortunate.

[636] Yeah.

[637] Because iMovie's fucking terrible.

[638] But there seems to be things in it that are actually really smart.

[639] That's the problem.

[640] So it's a mix of like, we fixed all these problems from Final Cut Pro 7.

[641] And then we added all this other stuff that you probably didn't want.

[642] And then we also took out a bunch of shit.

[643] Why would you do that?

[644] I just wanted these things.

[645] And it's like, well, we gave you all these other things.

[646] So in like a year or two, I think when they put out more versions, they add more.

[647] It's kind of like an MMO.

[648] It'll be fine.

[649] In a couple of years, they'll fix all the quests.

[650] You're saying they dumbed down Final Cut for those fucking console kids?

[651] Yeah, totally.

[652] Totally did.

[653] That's exactly what I'm saying.

[654] Yeah, it's kind of really weird.

[655] Weird things that people need to use on a day -to -day basis are not included.

[656] You buy it from the App Store, first of all, which is kind of weird.

[657] They're making a major push.

[658] Even the next version of OS X. I removed the App Store from my computer.

[659] I went in there when they first launched it and looked around, or even like a month after they launched it.

[660] I'm like, there's nothing, nothing, nothing that I want here at all.

[661] Some frustrating stuff for me. Like, there are apps that I purchased on the Mac that are now only being updated through the App Store since I didn't buy them through the App Store.

[662] Oh, really?

[663] Yeah.

[664] Oh, that fucking sucks.

[665] Oh, man. That's pretty frustrating.

[666] And they don't do, I guess they don't do promo codes for apps on that store.

[667] So it's not like developers could set up something where like, okay, if you purchased it here, then we can give you a code to get like this.

[668] There's no iTunes store kind of thing?

[669] No. That's really weird.

[670] They'll get there eventually, I'm sure, but it's just not there right now.

[671] It's not going anywhere, unfortunately.

[672] Also, in the new Final Cut 10, you can't open any previous versions of Final Cut projects.

[673] It's not 10.

[674] Or X. I think it is 10.

[675] It is 10?

[676] I don't know.

[677] I think people are calling it 10.

[678] Yeah, you cannot import projects from there because it's different.

[679] No old projects.

[680] I can't believe.

[681] I, like, literally cannot believe.

[682] I'm not just saying that in, like, a I am so blown away.

[683] Like, I literally can't believe that this would be the next version.

[684] Like, this has to be, like, their spinoff, and they're, like, taking that name over, and they're going to create a new name for what was X. Like, X will be the prosumer version.

[685] I don't know.

[686] No, I think that's it.

[687] Here's what I think.

[688] I think that's how it'll end up.

[689] That might not be how they intend for it right now.

[690] They've done it before.

[691] They've done the same thing before with, like, Shake.

[692] and other things.

[693] Here's what I think.

[694] They cut the price.

[695] The price is $299.

[696] It used to come in a studio bundle that was like $1 ,000, right?

[697] So now it's $299.

[698] I think they cut a lot of the features and are counting on third parties to...

[699] put those out along with their product.

[700] Like our Aja IOHD already has a capture utility to capture stuff to bring into Final Cut Pro X or X, whatever you want to call it.

[701] So I think they lowered the price by cutting some of these features out and counting on you to third party it back in like EDLs and edit decision lists and XML files and stuff like that are now gone.

[702] But there's a program called Automatic Duck, which you could buy to do that stuff.

[703] That's what it seems like right now, and they'll probably sneak some of that stuff back in, like I said, in a version or two.

[704] It may be back.

[705] I'm really curious to try it, though.

[706] I think for some applications, it'll be really good.

[707] For some applications, you'll still need your other one.

[708] You can run them simultaneously.

[709] Right.

[710] I don't know.

[711] We'll see.

[712] Anyway, I haven't played it yet.

[713] Did you preorder it?

[714] No. I canceled my preorder.

[715] Jeff Gerstmann.

[716] Hello.

[717] What's going on?

[718] I don't know.

[719] Nothing.

[720] It's been hanging out.

[721] I haven't really been playing a whole lot, which was kind of nice.

[722] Kind of need a break after E3.

[723] Messed around with Dungeon Siege 3.

[724] Didn't play a ton of it.

[725] Played probably about an hour, which it sounds like is a lot more of the game than anyone maybe anticipated.

[726] That game sounds like it's kind of short.

[727] Referred anywhere from 12 hours to like 8.

[728] Yeah.

[729] I bought that on Steam.

[730] It came with 1 and 2, and I heard 1 and 2 are okay.

[731] Maybe it's okay on the PC.

[732] I heard the opposite.

[733] Really?

[734] Yeah.

[735] Maybe worse?

[736] Well, supposedly this is based on the demo they put out for the PC that they didn't fully adapt the controls to mouse and keyboard.

[737] No. Like that there are still...

[738] significant remnants of controller -based control scheme in there.

[739] Yeah, that would be a better full -on PC game, action RPG -style controls and stuff.

[740] If it doesn't have that, then that's too bad.

[741] The thing I read specifically was that you can't click loot to pick it up.

[742] You have to walk over into it and hit E. Well, that sucks.

[743] Yeah, I don't know.

[744] It visually looks really kind of muddy, and the environments and stuff really look...

[745] kind of gross it's uh you know like i said this is only from the first hour or so but you know like first impressions pretty negative the combat doesn't seem very exciting i was playing a warrior um and just like it's very much just like hit the button to bring up the breadcrumb trail run to this thing do this thing it wants you to do like it didn't feel very open or role -playing at all it just felt like kind of a bad third -person action game, but that action is pulled above your head.

[746] Right.

[747] And you're getting some loot here and there.

[748] I kind of feel like gas -powered is never really quite found there.

[749] This is Obsidian.

[750] Oh, this is Obsidian.

[751] Right, right, right.

[752] Well, I guess that makes more sense.

[753] Yeah, I don't think it looks very good.

[754] There's some spots where you get some closer images of character faces and stuff like that, and you're just like, oh man, you shouldn't show me that like this.

[755] God, I completely forgot that that was Obsidian.

[756] Like the whole ad, I don't know if it was their ad or if it was like a retailer ad for that game or something, some kind of co...

[757] co -marketing co -branded thing but it was like welcome back couch co -op like the whole thing is you can play a local co -op dude i think you'd have to based on i apologize that everything i'm saying about this game comes from other people's experience but i read a lot of the chatter on our forums about this game supposedly the multiplayer is so half -baked that you can't bring your own custom character into somebody else's game I think that's right.

[758] This is like Fable 2 style.

[759] When you were the joining player, you take a stock character based on their spec.

[760] You don't create a custom character in that game.

[761] Not even your version.

[762] You know what?

[763] We actually totally saw that in the Quick Look EX of that game when they came through.

[764] Which just seems crazy.

[765] How do you make a game like that in 2011 and not allow people to bring their own character?

[766] Wow.

[767] Yeah, I already kind of didn't want to play more of that game, but hearing stuff like that, definitely not.

[768] That seems really terrible.

[769] Sorry, Vinny.

[770] You look forlorn over there.

[771] You only bought it because you wanted Dungeons & Siege 1 and 2.

[772] And they didn't offer them on Steam.

[773] Yeah, I bet.

[774] Independently.

[775] I bet subsequent to today they will.

[776] You think after this release?

[777] I don't know.

[778] It's weird.

[779] It's a game that you download from Steam to Days real quick because I booted it up today.

[780] Dungeons & Siege 1.

[781] Download from Steam and you click to go play it.

[782] And it's like, hey, this game doesn't work on your machine.

[783] In this version of Windows, do you want to look for a solution or what?

[784] Oh, wow.

[785] Wait, they can...

[786] put games on Steam like that?

[787] I thought Valve had standards that prevented that sort of thing from happening.

[788] So I just said, never mind, just try it anyway.

[789] And it worked up to a point.

[790] So it just gave me that prompt.

[791] But I totally thought that as well for stuff on Steam.

[792] That the games had to be updated or DOS box.

[793] Maybe that's why they're only putting it in that package.

[794] That it's not like...

[795] They didn't do the work.

[796] They're not going to sell it online.

[797] They're just going to pack it in.

[798] Yeah, it's a bonus if it doesn't work.

[799] Because it's also only the single -player version.

[800] It was just the compatibility wizard, because it might just be that Microsoft will eventually update whatever database they check against and be like, it's fine, or whatever.

[801] But it is a stripped -down version.

[802] It's just a single -player version.

[803] It doesn't have multiplayer support in the 1 and 2 I have.

[804] But I wasn't interested.

[805] I don't know how many people...

[806] You guys are going to join me for Dungeon Siege 1?

[807] Yeah!

[808] Well, I was.

[809] Not anymore.

[810] Welcome back, Couch Coat.

[811] Oh, still locked.

[812] Couch in front of my computer.

[813] Why would you say Welcome Back Couch Co -op for a series that has only been on the PC up to this moment?

[814] Welcome to Couch Co -op?

[815] Yeah.

[816] Look who's co -op now.

[817] Electric Boogaloo?

[818] I don't know.

[819] Trenched.

[820] Jeff, you've been playing Trenched.

[821] Jeff, you've been playing Trenched.

[822] I have been playing Trenched.

[823] You can't talk review language until tomorrow.

[824] That's right.

[825] It already ended.

[826] I forgot.

[827] I can say whatever the hell I want about Trenched.

[828] How much do you hate Trenched?

[829] Fuck Trenched.

[830] Yeah!

[831] That game's alright.

[832] Awesome.

[833] I like Trenched.

[834] Actually, I wasn't really loving it at the start because I was, you know, so I haven't played with other people really yet.

[835] I've played like two missions with another dude.

[836] but have not played a full four -player game, which is why I haven't written a review yet, but I just finished it.

[837] There are 15 missions in it.

[838] It's really clever.

[839] The writing is really smart and funny in the way that you want a Double Fine game to be.

[840] Maybe even in And Then Some, in some cases.

[841] There's some really great Insane Clown Posse jokes in there.

[842] Do you think that they're stepping up their...

[843] their game a little bit on this one?

[844] Maybe.

[845] I don't know.

[846] Maybe it's just that the subject matter just is a little more interesting for me. Well, I feel like the last, like, Costume Quest and Stacking, like, great visions, like, unique gameplay styles.

[847] But both of them, maybe, you know, a little twee.

[848] Like, this is, like, going in the exact opposite.

[849] Like, it seems like it's kind of a parody in a certain sense, but it's still, you know, super He -Man.

[850] World War I chewing bullets kind of sensibility.

[851] It's weird from the little bit I've played, it seems like there's maybe less biting wit or humor.

[852] There's not as many laugh out loud moments as some Double Fine games, but the milieu is a little more fleshed out.

[853] It can be a little dry.

[854] I'm not saying that in a bad way.

[855] The visual style and the way that they flesh out that world are really coherent, really broad.

[856] Totally.

[857] By contrast, it's like the most video game -y video game they ever have probably made.

[858] Yeah.

[859] Like mechanically super dense.

[860] Like tower defense and all that loot.

[861] All that stuff up front, I went in going like, man, I don't know that I'm going to like Trenched for anything other than the...

[862] dialogue and whatever kind of funny stuff they've written.

[863] Yeah.

[864] Because, you know, you say things like, hey, we've made like a wave -based survival game that is also like kind of tower defense -y.

[865] You're like, I might as well be running away screaming at that point.

[866] I say, hell yeah.

[867] But it is surprisingly satisfying.

[868] Yeah.

[869] You know, it doesn't, you know, yeah, it has elements of tower defense, but it's not like...

[870] It's not just that.

[871] It's not just that.

[872] So we had the Double Fine guys on during E3, and one of the things Brad Muir was saying was like, yeah, you know, I like tower defense, but I want...

[873] I don't like how passive it is.

[874] I want to be able to get in there.

[875] The thing that he hates is, all right, you go and set your towers, and then the majority of a tower defense game is spent sitting there and watching enemies come through.

[876] And hoping that it works out.

[877] Picking up money and kind of running behind the action.

[878] Right, right.

[879] So he's like, I want to go out and be active during that phase as well.

[880] So that was kind of the brainstorm on this.

[881] You kind of do both in this game.

[882] There are definitely...

[883] to being good at setting up turrets and stuff like that.

[884] But, I mean, you also, you know, it's handy to be a good shot and to make sure.

[885] Also, you know, like, customizing the mech is probably the most important thing.

[886] That's kind of what got me, like, the intricacies and, like, the depth in the range of customization.

[887] Yeah, there's a lot of great gear in that game.

[888] And that's really what finally wrote me in for reels after about three or four missions.

[889] I started getting, like, named loot and, like, just way cooler stuff.

[890] And it's just like, okay, this is.

[891] And there's, like, different mech chassis or, excuse me, trench chassis.

[892] that accommodate different numbers of weapon slots.

[893] But also different number of turret, like emplacement slots.

[894] So you have to determine.

[895] So the downside of that is that going into any mission, it tells you what to build, more or less.

[896] It says what types of weapons you're going to need.

[897] And sure enough, if you go in with all those boxes checked before you start the mission, like the mission, you see exactly how it's supposed to unfold.

[898] And it's like, okay, I need to do this with these.

[899] By contrast, though, if they sent you in blind every time.

[900] That would be the worst.

[901] That would actually be like trial and error in those types of things.

[902] That would be worse, for sure.

[903] Wouldn't be much better, or would be way worse, actually.

[904] But at the same time, now that I've finished the 15 levels, I kind of wish that there was something more freeform.

[905] That there was something more that was just like...

[906] It's like a random mission generator or something.

[907] Yeah, just like, I want to build the most badass mech I can and have a reason to use it.

[908] So it's like, you know, I get all this cool stuff, but you never really equip all of it at once.

[909] because you do have to kind of spec in specific directions for each mission.

[910] That changes a lot when you're playing multiplayer, though.

[911] The times that I have, I mean, like I said, I've only played two players so far, but even in that case, you know, missions where it's like, you really need a mine layer for this because these burst transmitters are going to blow up your turrets and they can't see the mine layer turret because it's camouflaged.

[912] So in that case, like the guy I was playing with, he went that route, specced in that direction, whereas I was just like, okay, I'm going to be specced in the direction of...

[913] fucking shit up, and we played accordingly.

[914] A discrete class.

[915] Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[916] So, you know, it's that matter of, like, do you want to pick the engineering chassis and have way more turrets at your disposal and kind of manage the back line, you know, making sure that all the turrets are upgraded and make sure all that's happening, or do you want to be that out -in -the -field guy that's doing that stuff?

[917] And the multiplayer will kind of create that, I think.

[918] Is there a difference in the missions, or is it just there's 15 missions in that game and you can play them?

[919] There's 15 missions in that game and you can play it with one to four players.

[920] I think that...

[921] There could be some variety based on number of players in there that I can't really speak to yet.

[922] I hope there is.

[923] Do you think this could have been a full retail game if they had gone further with...

[924] No. No. Oh, well.

[925] I mean, if by go further, you mean create a whole single -player campaign that's, like, a story -based thing.

[926] I guess just, yeah, like, if there was just more content.

[927] I mean, just based on, like, what's there as far as...

[928] Like, I really like the story and the characters and that sort of stuff.

[929] If they had just gone and made, like, a mech warrior game using these trenches, like, that might be cool.

[930] Yeah.

[931] Like, get away from the tower defense stuff completely.

[932] But, like, that's the strength of it is that it is this balance of the kind of tower stuff and the shooting style.

[933] So I think you would end up with some kind of weird brutal Legends type situation, I think.

[934] Too much.

[935] Just two different games or something.

[936] Yeah, they've tried that.

[937] Right, right.

[938] And this was, again, from Brad talking about this, this was born out of...

[939] Like, all right, yeah, we have this strategy element in the Brutal Engine that we can just kind of pluck out.

[940] Like, that game is running on the same tech that powered Brutal Legend.

[941] That's interesting.

[942] As well as Custom Quest and Stacking.

[943] Yeah, I guess that makes sense.

[944] I mean, this seems to run better than Brutal Legend did.

[945] It does.

[946] It's trying to do a lot less.

[947] Yeah, it's very modest in terms of level size and stuff like that.

[948] They don't have to put nearly as much on screen as they probably would have had to do in some of the larger areas of Brutal Legend.

[949] Something to be said for self -restraint.

[950] Definitely, yeah.

[951] I'm certainly not saying that's a bad game.

[952] I think that this is a well -designed game that's pretty fun all the way through.

[953] And some of the kind of social style hooks that they've put in there, like anyone you play with online becomes part of your regiment.

[954] So as they go play the game, even if it's not with you, meters are filling up on your screen.

[955] All these little regiment challenges.

[956] Yeah, yeah, based on their performance.

[957] which is pretty cool.

[958] That's neat.

[959] I guess I'm only asking about length and more missions because I'm bummed that you've already played through all of that game.

[960] So I want to go play some with you.

[961] Save yourself.

[962] I mean, I definitely want to play with a bunch of people and kind of see how it goes because the other thing, you progress in that game quite a bit.

[963] You start out level one and the gear you have is not great and you're getting Mark IV chassis and you're getting...

[964] much better versions of the starting emplacements.

[965] You're getting just flak turrets and shotgun turrets that just rip everything apart compared to the stuff you get at the beginning of the game.

[966] Now you've gone and created a Borderlands scenario for yourself where you're so powerful now that none of us are going to want to play with you because you should obliterate everything.

[967] Well, I don't think it'll be quite that bad because you're still shooting dudes.

[968] It will create a situation where on day one I probably won't be able to go play missions from the end of the game because I'll be getting low -level players that might not be able to handle it, even with four of them there.

[969] But that depends on how well it scales.

[970] So these are the questions I have to answer before I write the review is to see how it scales because I obviously have finished all those missions playing solo.

[971] But, you know, in some of those missions, you're scraping by.

[972] Like, I'm getting out of there with, like, 20 % base health left.

[973] And, you know, to get the medals, you need 80 % base health left.

[974] So it's a question of, yeah, like, what does this work under other scenarios beyond just buy your lonesome?

[975] I'll be curious to see.

[976] I mean, I imagine they'll stick to the plan that they have had, which is put out one piece of DLC for each one of these games.

[977] I'm curious to see what they do for this, if it's just, like, another.

[978] Because basically it's broken up into three theaters, and there's five levels per.

[979] per area or whatever.

[980] I bet it's going to be one more theater.

[981] So, yeah, if it's just one more area with five more levels, like, that might not be...

[982] That's okay, but maybe at the end of that, some kind of, like, mission randomizer would be pretty awesome.

[983] Yeah, if there was some kind of, like, yeah, some sort of...

[984] Increasingly difficult waves until you die.

[985] Yeah, even that would be...

[986] Or something.

[987] You know, something.

[988] I mean, something to test your mettle, you know?

[989] Yeah.

[990] All these games, all these, like, loot and progression -driven games, you end up...

[991] Finishing the content that's there with this guy that's so powerful, you want to put it up against a greater challenge.

[992] And you don't have the opportunity to.

[993] User -generated content.

[994] Not quite like that.

[995] Do you get anything for getting 100 % on all the missions?

[996] Some crazy super mech?

[997] The double fine?

[998] It's gold.

[999] No, the gold paint job is actually exclusive to double fine employees.

[1000] Oh, really?

[1001] It's not even viral or anything, so you know when you're playing with a double fine employee.

[1002] I'm going to get that.

[1003] And the press hat is exclusive to people that they have added to their list of people.

[1004] What does the press hat look like?

[1005] Is it made of money?

[1006] It's like a fedora.

[1007] No, it's a press card.

[1008] That's for publishers.

[1009] That would be the money hat?

[1010] Yeah, publishers get the money hat.

[1011] Well, I should mention that we are going to have a...

[1012] gross number.

[1013] A gaggle.

[1014] A flock.

[1015] A murder of Double Fine.

[1016] Of Double Fine employees coming through this Thursday for Thursday Night Throwdown where we will be playing Trenched.

[1017] Well, if that game falls apart once it actually goes live and I play it online, then we can fist fight them.

[1018] Yeah.

[1019] So I can say, your game's terrible.

[1020] And they'll be like, oh, we know.

[1021] Yeah, so we're going to have a bunch of Double Fine people in the office.

[1022] We're going to play Trenched with them and we'll be playing Trenched with you guys too.

[1023] Or whoever's already on the list because that list, we announced this on I Love Mondays yesterday, and that list filled up with the quickness.

[1024] Too sweet.

[1025] I don't know if Tim Schafer will be here, but definitely Brad Muir, who's the project lead on Trench, will be here and a bunch of other friggin' lunatics.

[1026] 75 ,000 other people.

[1027] Yes.

[1028] No, not that many.

[1029] I don't think there are that many.

[1030] I'm pretty sure there aren't that many.

[1031] 74 ,000.

[1032] Well, you said it was a gross.

[1033] At least 125.

[1034] What's it gross?

[1035] 144.

[1036] 144 is a gross because it doesn't.

[1037] Baker's gross.

[1038] Baker's does.

[1039] Baker's are gross.

[1040] Baker's are pretty gross.

[1041] Sticky hands.

[1042] Yeah, yeah.

[1043] No, it's yeast in weird places.

[1044] What?

[1045] You would know.

[1046] Jeff Gershman, what else?

[1047] Yeah, I would know.

[1048] Yeah, girl.

[1049] They released Scarlet for Mortal Kombat.

[1050] What's up with that?

[1051] Scarlet.

[1052] What's up with that?

[1053] Because it seems like something is.

[1054] What do you mean?

[1055] Well, it seems to not be functional.

[1056] It's not working right.

[1057] Like on all sides.

[1058] Yeah.

[1059] What's wrong?

[1060] Come on, NetherRealm.

[1061] I know I was talking to Hector at E3, and he was like, yeah, we've got this patch coming.

[1062] It's going to fix everything.

[1063] We know all this stuff's fucked up, and this is going to do it.

[1064] We're going to be good.

[1065] Well, I was able to get in ranked games this morning, so they have made some significant progress there.

[1066] No, no, it's just not with her.

[1067] So the problem I'm experiencing is that when you get into an online game, she's not there.

[1068] Like, I can't pick her in online matches.

[1069] Weren't you saying, like, all DLC stuff was also falling out?

[1070] Well, there's the two costumes they put out alongside Scarlet that also don't appear.

[1071] But then I was also having some issue where I was using classic skins and the game was desyncing.

[1072] So what happened was this morning I downloaded all that stuff, got online, and I was in a King of the Hill room and I had gotten my chance to fight.

[1073] And as we were picking our characters and picking classic ninja outfits, There was a guy going, hey, have you guys had any problem with the game desyncing using Classic Ninjas?

[1074] And I was like, oh, that sounds like a really dumb thing.

[1075] And then it immediately popped up and said, your game is desynchronized.

[1076] I was like, shit.

[1077] So something going on with that game.

[1078] There's still more work to do.

[1079] Do you think the issue with Scarlet not showing up is just the other player not having the pack?

[1080] I don't know.

[1081] I would have thought that they would have forced that you shouldn't even be able to get online at all without it, right?

[1082] But you do have to manually download a free.

[1083] update uh with scarlet in it to uh to get her showing up so yeah i hope it's not that because if so if it's a case where you have to rely on someone to manually download something they didn't buy that they don't really care about then it's that's a they then they've done a bad job Mistakes have been made.

[1084] But I did buy the season pass or whatever.

[1085] So they're doing that kind of like how Rockstar did with L .A. Noire, right?

[1086] Yeah, yeah.

[1087] Where it's like, buy all of our stuff up front and you get a discount on it.

[1088] Yes.

[1089] So it's $5 a character, but they're doing four characters and you get all four for $15 if you buy their pass thing.

[1090] So you have been playing some Scarlet though, right?

[1091] A little bit, yeah.

[1092] How is she?

[1093] Single player, yeah.

[1094] She seems interesting.

[1095] I don't know.

[1096] I hear she's made out of blood.

[1097] She's made out of the blood of...

[1098] Other warriors or something?

[1099] I don't know.

[1100] She's like a Lady Ermac?

[1101] No. Ermac's made out of souls.

[1102] She's a blood lady.

[1103] I know, but it's kind of like it.

[1104] Sort of.

[1105] She's made out of other warrior souls.

[1106] She's made out of warrior blood.

[1107] Does she fall out of some weird glitch or something?

[1108] So apparently not.

[1109] Apparently people think that, yes, she fell out of some glitch, but no. She's invented.

[1110] Like that was the thing in the interview we shot with Ed Boone at E3.

[1111] I asked him about that stuff and he was like, no, no, it's not.

[1112] So she's a new character?

[1113] More or less.

[1114] Yeah, there were definitely rumors of a red -clad female prior to this.

[1115] They've gone from real bugs and weird, like, machine background stuff becoming characters to, like, completely fabricated, nonexistent rumors becoming characters.

[1116] Well, that's what animalities were also.

[1117] It's certainly not without precedent.

[1118] Sure.

[1119] But I wonder if this is, like, where the tale is coming up after the fact.

[1120] Where, like, no, we created Scarlet and then...

[1121] After that, people were like, well, we've never heard of this character before, so maybe there is some old bug that this came from.

[1122] And so people are just making shit up for Origins.

[1123] They're making meta DLC.

[1124] I don't know.

[1125] I don't even know.

[1126] The fourth DLC character is going to be you.

[1127] Yeah, I'm really interested.

[1128] So they said they were going to do Kenshi and they were going to do Rain, which Kenshi, I think.

[1129] Well, Kenshi actually had some Ermac -style moves, so I don't know what they're going to do with him.

[1130] And Rain I never really thought was all that great.

[1131] I think Ed Boon just likes making Prince references.

[1132] I mean, I can understand that.

[1133] He ends up being like a really requested character, which you'd think that people would say like, all right, there are enough ninjas in this game.

[1134] Let's get someone else.

[1135] You know what?

[1136] I want an all ninjas Mortal Kombat.

[1137] Get rid of all these other stupid characters.

[1138] I want just faceless killers in gaudy colored.

[1139] That would be cool, too.

[1140] But they haven't said what the fourth character is going to be yet.

[1141] Ed Boon was teasing people, saying, like, what would you think if it was Ryu?

[1142] Right.

[1143] It's like, well, that's not going to happen, Ed.

[1144] I appreciate you getting out there.

[1145] They were so close before, though.

[1146] What if it's just Cobra?

[1147] Like Sylvester Stallone?

[1148] No, like the guy who looks a lot like Ken and was at one point Ken. That is some weird fucking push -polling shit from when presidents are going around.

[1149] What would you think if I told you John McCain was a heroin addict?

[1150] I wouldn't think that was very good at all.

[1151] Why, is he a heroin addict?

[1152] I'm not saying he's a heroin addict.

[1153] What would you think, though?

[1154] It's probably not positive things.

[1155] Great.

[1156] Well, you should buy Mortal Kombat.

[1157] He's the fourth character.

[1158] John McCain?

[1159] Yeah.

[1160] But like a heroin addict John McCain?

[1161] It's Dark Times.

[1162] Ephraim Thunder is the fourth and final DLC character.

[1163] It's The Rock from Spy Hunter.

[1164] Whatever.

[1165] We have this weird deal.

[1166] Fallen out old midway characters.

[1167] Well, you know, Warner Brothers made this bulk purchase, and we got this other weird shit in there.

[1168] We got this Unreal Engine Chow Yun Fat model hanging around.

[1169] Are there any DC characters, like any other DC movies coming out this summer that will be coming out in about six weeks?

[1170] No. No. That was Green Lantern.

[1171] Maybe it's Green Lantern.

[1172] I hope not.

[1173] Yeah, I really hope.

[1174] That's not...

[1175] You've already had a Green Lantern.

[1176] Green Lantern was kind of interesting in MK vs. DC.

[1177] Right, but if you're going to put a Green Lantern in this new game, I need to be able to fucking murder him.

[1178] Yes.

[1179] So they won't.

[1180] Although maybe now that it's all under the same roof, Warner Brothers say, no, we're going to let him do this.

[1181] But I don't know.

[1182] I have no sense of what the internal politics are like at that company.

[1183] Anything else, Jeff?

[1184] Nah.

[1185] Brad Schumacher.

[1186] Eh.

[1187] Oh, I mean.

[1188] Video games.

[1189] Video games.

[1190] Played a bunch of that Zelda on the 3DS.

[1191] Yes, that seems like it's pretty good.

[1192] That's still a pretty good game, it turns out.

[1193] That game held up.

[1194] So here's my question to you.

[1195] I've never had huge affinity to Zelda.

[1196] I played the original back in the day.

[1197] I can't say I ever really got it.

[1198] When I was playing Nintendo games, I was coming from the arcade experience.

[1199] So I was groomed to the idea of my PlayStation starts and ends when I turn on and off this machine.

[1200] The idea of this persistent game experience was actually a fundamental idea that I didn't pick up for a fucking while.

[1201] So like Metroid, similarly, I never really clicked with that either because of that.

[1202] I want a game I'm going to sit down and play and then be done with and then I can come back and replay it and find secrets or whatever if I want to.

[1203] So my point here, though, is I've played the original some, but I've never played Ocarina.

[1204] The only other game that I've played with any significance was Wind Waker.

[1205] I didn't even finish that.

[1206] Is this...

[1207] Do you think that this is recommendable as a definitive?

[1208] Yeah, absolutely.

[1209] I guess the question is, if I want to have more Zelda, should I just wait for Skyward Sword?

[1210] It's hard to say without knowing more about what that game is going to be like.

[1211] Sure, sure.

[1212] I mean, I assume it will be Zelda, but probably.

[1213] Vinny and I had a long conversation on the bus yesterday about this.

[1214] First we thought...

[1215] I thought he was talking about Infamous 2.

[1216] About a half hour.

[1217] He was talking about Zelda.

[1218] We spent about 15 minutes arguing about it.

[1219] I thought he was talking about Infamous 2.

[1220] There's no crates you can break in Infamous 2.

[1221] I figured it would be funny.

[1222] I was like, oh, it's starting to drag at the end.

[1223] He's like, what game are you talking about?

[1224] Infamous 2?

[1225] No, no. For about a half hour, we're going back and forth.

[1226] It's really weird.

[1227] I came to the realization yesterday that there's been three basically core 3D Zelda games.

[1228] You know, this one, Wind Waker, Twilight Princess.

[1229] Yeah.

[1230] And the crowd erupted.

[1231] If you put them all in front of me and I had to pick only one to play, it would be Ocarina.

[1232] Okay.

[1233] Okay.

[1234] Like, when I thought back on it like that, I was like, all right, yeah, this game's still great.

[1235] Yeah, I mean, there's some systems -related stuff that they cleaned up.

[1236] in the subsequent games, but in terms of just the material, the level design, the stuff like that.

[1237] I still just love that look of Wind Waker.

[1238] I agree with you.

[1239] I would love a good widescreen.

[1240] I'd pick that back up.

[1241] That game does 40p.

[1242] And you're just lumping in Majora with...

[1243] That doesn't necessarily mean widescreen, though.

[1244] We're not talking about Majora.

[1245] It's not like a full -on...

[1246] Right.

[1247] Sequel.

[1248] Majora's like a weird expansion.

[1249] It's like Four Swords Adventures.

[1250] It's another weird Zelda game.

[1251] But also, like, it reuses so many assets from Rockerino and stuff, it doesn't feel like a fully new game.

[1252] Stop talking about Majora's Mask.

[1253] It's such a lightning rod issue.

[1254] I actually really hope, because I bought Majora when it came out and hated it.

[1255] I really hope it gets this treatment on the 3DS so I can give it another shot because I would like to try again.

[1256] I'd like to see Majora.

[1257] I mentioned this on the bus.

[1258] It's completely redone.

[1259] Just retell that story with an entirely different art style.

[1260] Make it insane and crazy because that's what that game felt like was just this complete...

[1261] That's a scary -looking moon.

[1262] What more do you want?

[1263] I want a nightmarish departure from my...

[1264] I know.

[1265] You were saying that yesterday.

[1266] I was like, dude, did you play it the first time?

[1267] I see your point, though.

[1268] If the systems and the style of it are so different from Ocarina, if it's reusing the way...

[1269] Link looks, just basic fundamental asset stuff.

[1270] I can see that being a real dissonance issue.

[1271] If you just go completely balls out with it.

[1272] Here's my follow -up question on Ocarina.

[1273] I know they cleaned up the visuals some.

[1274] I have that Ocarina disc that they put out for the pre -order.

[1275] For Wind Waker.

[1276] For the GameCube.

[1277] I don't think they really did much to that version of it.

[1278] Do you think that the improvements in the visuals in this are enough to choose this over that if I have that already?

[1279] They're dramatic.

[1280] I wrote this in the review.

[1281] If you played the guild game when it came out and then you just looked at this one.

[1282] Did you just look at screenshots?

[1283] No, I saw them running.

[1284] I actually saw this app when I went to see the game for a preview a little while back.

[1285] There's lots of video and screenshot comparison features up there now on the internet that you can find.

[1286] Dramatic difference when you see them side by side.

[1287] That touch bar, too.

[1288] The inventory slot, too, is a pretty good thing.

[1289] The quick select.

[1290] Oh, yeah.

[1291] They're all minor mechanical improvements, but incrementally, they help the gameplay a little bit here and there.

[1292] So you weren't missing the beastly N64 controller?

[1293] Not so much.

[1294] How do you play the Ocarina in that?

[1295] Is it touchscreen or is it buttons?

[1296] Touchscreen or buttons, however you want.

[1297] They give you, to their credit, Nintendo's always kind of been about, here's the way you should do it.

[1298] Right.

[1299] That's the only way you can do it.

[1300] But here they let you play the ocarina both ways.

[1301] You can set the Z targeting.

[1302] It's L targeting now.

[1303] But you can set that to either hold or toggle, which is really nice.

[1304] Still Z targeting to me. There's something else.

[1305] Oh, the gyroscope aiming.

[1306] You can turn that off completely.

[1307] Like Twilight Princess is the classic example of like, all right, we think you should waggle this thing to attack, so that's the only option we're going to give you.

[1308] Right.

[1309] But they seem to have backpedaled from that.

[1310] There's a lot of customization in this.

[1311] Well, I mean, the answer to that was play it on the GameCube.

[1312] Yeah, except that they only printed, like, you know, small few thousand number copies.

[1313] Is that pretty rare?

[1314] I don't know how small the run was, but it was definitely nice.

[1315] It's a smaller run.

[1316] I don't think it was super easy to find.

[1317] Not the full run you would expect for a Zelda game.

[1318] Okay.

[1319] I think they did, like, the one print run, and that was it.

[1320] People are saying that about Child of Eden.

[1321] Really?

[1322] Not a lot of copies of that running around right now.

[1323] That makes sense that they would do a small first run, see how it does, and go from there.

[1324] It's not the sort of game that you're going to get retailers to say, like, yes, we need to stock thousands of these things.

[1325] Maybe that'll come as a digital download thing to Xbox Live or PlayStation Store.

[1326] Child of Eden?

[1327] Yeah.

[1328] I mean, when it hits games on demand, sure.

[1329] Yeah.

[1330] But, yeah, that's a game that would have been better served, I think, as a...

[1331] It's $50, right?

[1332] Yeah.

[1333] I played some of that.

[1334] Let's talk about that.

[1335] Okay.

[1336] Buy Zelda.

[1337] If you have a 3DS, you fucking need to buy Zelda because what else is there?

[1338] I'm not going to buy Zelda.

[1339] Okay, fine.

[1340] Don't.

[1341] Whatever.

[1342] So are you pretty much saying buy Zelda or don't play your 3DS for a month or three months?

[1343] I'm going to continue not playing your 3DS.

[1344] So let's qualify this.

[1345] If you have a 3DS and you want to play something on your 3DS.

[1346] By Zelda.

[1347] Unless you have played Ocarina of Time repeatedly in recent years, in which case you might not want to play it again.

[1348] I played a lot of Ocarina.

[1349] Yeah, you said you played it like what?

[1350] Three times.

[1351] Kind of annoying that the Master Quest is locked.

[1352] It's kind of a shame.

[1353] I guess I could see them not wanting new players.

[1354] To be fair, I think this is squarely targeted at people who haven't played Ocarina before.

[1355] They wouldn't want people stumbling into the Master Quest first.

[1356] Them and Robin Williams.

[1357] Yeah, dude.

[1358] That guy loves some Zelda.

[1359] No doubt.

[1360] All right, Child of Eden, what do you want to say about it?

[1361] I don't know if I want to keep playing it.

[1362] I love that game.

[1363] I love that they made that game.

[1364] Do you love that it exists, or do you love playing it?

[1365] I enjoy playing it.

[1366] Okay.

[1367] I love that it exists, and I was happy to pay $50 for it.

[1368] Okay.

[1369] Yes.

[1370] In that way that when people throw around dumb ideas like, man, I would pay $200 for a new Police Quest game.

[1371] This is the realization of that.

[1372] This is you putting your money where your mouth is where you've been saying, gosh, I wish that they would do another res. And then they said, here's another res. You know what?

[1373] I said I wanted it, so I need to give you the money.

[1374] Thank you for making this.

[1375] It is not a good value proposition, but I'm happy to have purchased it.

[1376] Have you been playing it with Kinect?

[1377] No. It's a controller?

[1378] Yeah.

[1379] There's stuff in that game that is...

[1380] I think the Kinect controls are fine.

[1381] I actually think that it's probably one of the best showcases for Kinect they've had in a while.

[1382] I just haven't.

[1383] It's not that I'm staunchly against it.

[1384] I just haven't had the desire to...

[1385] The last time I was playing the game, I was still sick.

[1386] So I was just like, I don't want to stand up.

[1387] But it's also...

[1388] I was going to play the game sitting down.

[1389] I was able to figure it out.

[1390] I connected in a different room.

[1391] I was laying in bed.

[1392] Oh, right, right.

[1393] I thought that's what you meant.

[1394] No. What was I going to say?

[1395] Yeah, even though it is connect optional, it's a pretty good showpiece for that stuff just because it's, you know.

[1396] Child of Eden and Rez are really simple games.

[1397] When you get down to what you're actually doing in those games, there's arguably some nuance, and if you really want to see some crazy shit, you can get more into it.

[1398] By adding that other firing mode in Child of Eden, they've effectively doubled the level of complexity compared to Rez.

[1399] That's how simple Rez is.

[1400] Right, right.

[1401] But even still, it's still like, okay, purple things are coming.

[1402] Hit another button.

[1403] It's like instead of hitting – instead of holding the A button, I'm now holding the X button.

[1404] And almost exactly the same way, just painting over these things.

[1405] It's not like they're significantly harder to hit.

[1406] It's just that you have to do it using that auto fire or whatever.

[1407] You see crazy shit in that game.

[1408] You see like that first level, which feels kind of like the last level of res. Like just the abstract stuff and then that – fucking river and then the space whale and then...

[1409] Yeah, the whale.

[1410] There's, like, this weird, like, gear planet that you fly through near the end.

[1411] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1412] Unless it's something different.

[1413] No, no, no. That motif pops up over and over.

[1414] Well, there's one where there's, like, these weird gear gates that show up that you have to, like, go and, like, paint the little orange, like, targets that show up on there to open up these other gates to keep flying through.

[1415] It's...

[1416] That game is bananas.

[1417] Flying over a river and there are plants.

[1418] Yeah.

[1419] And they make flowers all over water.

[1420] Yeah, and then there's crazy butterflies made out of steel and you have to shoot them.

[1421] And you have to save this girl who was born in the internet.

[1422] Yeah.

[1423] No, no, she died in the internet.

[1424] She is the internet, isn't she?

[1425] She was born in space.

[1426] She was born in space, died, but they put her in the internet.

[1427] I thought she was the internet.

[1428] Yeah, also.

[1429] We just talked way too much about the story of Child of Eden.

[1430] Spoilers, man. It is so...

[1431] She's also Earth, isn't she?

[1432] That whole...

[1433] All of the aesthetic and the mindset of that game is like the fucking embodiment of 1999 to me. That is that year of just like...

[1434] The game is pretty plur.

[1435] It is extremely plur.

[1436] It is blissed out.

[1437] It is all about just like hope and promise and we're going into a new millennium, man. Is it millennial?

[1438] Oh, it is extremely...

[1439] Millennium.

[1440] Does the game end with just a giant dancing baby?

[1441] Just kind of...

[1442] I will say this about that game.

[1443] And I don't think I can ever say this about any other game that's been created to this point.

[1444] Really good, really tasteful, really restrained use of FMV.

[1445] Yeah, it's not bad.

[1446] The likes of which I've never seen in another game.

[1447] And well produced.

[1448] Yeah, yeah.

[1449] And it matches.

[1450] The problem with FMV whenever you try and shove that into non -FMV stuff is it always kind of sticks out.

[1451] But I think it works pretty well there.

[1452] Yeah, man, I don't know.

[1453] I can't even offer what I would do to that game to make it better.

[1454] That game doesn't necessarily benefit from being more complex.

[1455] I just wish there was more of it.

[1456] But at the same token, I don't know that if there was more of it, I would feel that much more compelled to...

[1457] I guess I would want to see what they made because that's kind of the whole thing.

[1458] Yeah, if they made more stuff of that quality.

[1459] It's hard to say how many man hours, if you really want to break it down, go into one of those levels, which last about 10 to 12 minutes each.

[1460] I wish it were available for download.

[1461] I don't know why.

[1462] I see it.

[1463] There's something about that game that, I mean, it's a couple of hours.

[1464] yeah that's where the value proposition gets weird because yeah it's it's it's not a long game uh it's also not a big game when you install it it's right around the xbox live arcade size limit 4 gigabytes which definitely not trying to suggest there is some kind of magical like dollars to gigabytes ratio that you should hit before you go to retail disc but like it makes it's close when you look at this as like a 90 minutes two hour thing It becomes a little questionable.

[1465] Well, I think at that point you're talking about kids who you may have missed that retail sale in favor of a rental or something like that.

[1466] So you may have missed the download sale.

[1467] I'll probably rent it from Gamefly or something like that.

[1468] Whereas if it were available for download for $30 or $20, I would have bought it.

[1469] That's kind of a missed sale at that point.

[1470] Yeah, but it's...

[1471] Reverse burn.

[1472] It's weird because then you have to start asking yourself who is buying Child of Eden.

[1473] If this is four people that were fans of Rez, that's like eight fucking dudes.

[1474] Yeah, and by the time it comes on Games on Demand, they will have sold it to everyone who is not price sensitive about the idea of buying this game, like me, who is like, yes, yes, I'll pay $50 for your hour and a half blissed out glow stick.

[1475] party well let's kind of want to buy it right now just because I have a Kinect and it's almost like the 3DS thing of like do you have a Kinect do you want to play it go spend 50 bucks and buy it and buy this because it's nothing else it's better than almost every other Kinect game seems like it regardless of length even though Kinect's optional the quality of the experience is It's kind of inherently better.

[1476] I feel like they artificially obstruct your access to the content in some cases just to pad out the length of the game.

[1477] I mean, that's res. I mean, that same structure.

[1478] I agree.

[1479] And it's only really a bummer at the very beginning because you're like, all right, I finished the first level and now I've unlocked the second level.

[1480] Let's go to the second level.

[1481] All right, I finished the second level.

[1482] I have not unlocked the third level.

[1483] I can either play the first or second level, either the one that I just played or the one directly before that.

[1484] fuck, I guess I'll go do something else.

[1485] That is exactly what I've done with that game so far.

[1486] Except that I went back and played that level again, then unlocked level three, and then tried that, did not unlock level four, and went, all right, I'm going to come back to this.

[1487] I'm not going to just get through it.

[1488] Once you have more levels open up, it's like, okay, now I can kind of choose.

[1489] Again, you're still going to previous levels.

[1490] Yeah, there's very little changes, right, if anything.

[1491] To my knowledge, no. Well, there are, like, sequences that will run longer if you don't, like, complete the patterns or, you know, shoot all the right targets in time.

[1492] So it can be a little longer or a little shorter.

[1493] And there's a bunch of unlockable stuff that's all, you know, unlockable on a per -level basis.

[1494] Right, right.

[1495] But I don't know if that has...

[1496] Fill out the garden.

[1497] I don't know if that has...

[1498] Yeah, I think that's just all, like, the go hang out in your weird space, cyber space garden.

[1499] I want to hang out with my lady in my space garden, my internet girl.

[1500] She's my lady.

[1501] Fuck off.

[1502] So I really want to see all of the Q games come together because Luminous also, I believe, made reference to a Lumi.

[1503] Huh.

[1504] It would make sense.

[1505] Yeah.

[1506] You think there's just actually a core universe that Miz has been secretly building here?

[1507] Secretly living in for the past 25 years.

[1508] Turns out to see Mizuguchi isn't real.

[1509] That's the twist.

[1510] Wasn't there some photographic imagery in Luminous?

[1511] Like there was a girl that would show up in the background occasionally.

[1512] Maybe.

[1513] Shake that body.

[1514] Could it have been?

[1515] She'd come yell at you.

[1516] Maybe.

[1517] Could have been the same actress.

[1518] No, this actress.

[1519] They have a Lumi on retainer somewhere.

[1520] Well, this girl saw it.

[1521] I started going in a real year.

[1522] You went down the Genki Rockets hole.

[1523] I've been down the Genki Rockets hole before, so I did not have to go far to get back onto this.

[1524] Is it comfortable down there?

[1525] But yeah, so this girl that is in the game is like some 18 -year -old model that lives in Japan.

[1526] Not part of the Genki Rockets.

[1527] No, but she is playing the character of Lumi, who is the lead singer for Genki Rockets.

[1528] There's been some confusion as to whether the lead singer of Genki Rockets is a human or a computer.

[1529] Right.

[1530] Or like a Vocaloid plug -in, basically.

[1531] Is it just that they just manipulate the voice a bunch?

[1532] Yeah.

[1533] Okay.

[1534] So, you know, there's so many effects and stuff layered over it that my understanding is, you know, so when they played When Ganky Rockets played the Japan portion of Live Earth, it was all Gorillaz -style, check out this video of this girl singing, and was not a human person.

[1535] And my understanding was that there was no human person, but now it sounds like maybe there was?

[1536] Well, I mean, if you think about it, what's a Ganky Rockets show going to be if you don't do some big, crazy light show in front of it?

[1537] There's a huge performance there, so I can see that.

[1538] Anyways, Child of Eden, it's $50.

[1539] That's a bit much.

[1540] It's an enjoyable experience.

[1541] If you're asking yourself if that's the right price, you probably shouldn't buy it.

[1542] If it's not the immediate thing of, oh, dude, they put out another one of those, so I'm going to go get it.

[1543] If you're not that person, you're going to pick the game apart too much to enjoy it.

[1544] I guess that kind of makes a review a null point.

[1545] Well, I mean, you know, whatever.

[1546] Like, no, it's, you know, it's for people, reviews are for people that are on the fence.

[1547] Sure.

[1548] You know, not people who already know they need to get a thing.

[1549] Right.

[1550] So, yeah.

[1551] For those people, yeah, they don't need reviews and they shouldn't be complaining about reviews because the reviews aren't for them.

[1552] But it's also, I guess there's, I mean, there's value, I mean.

[1553] I don't know that this game is not necessarily going to change someone's fucking life the way Rez did for other people a decade ago.

[1554] There was nothing quite like Rez, and there hasn't been anything quite like Rez since.

[1555] It really was that long ago, wasn't it?

[1556] Holy shit.

[1557] We're headed for a Child of Eden versus Gunstringer showdown.

[1558] Choose your side.

[1559] I choose Gunstringer.

[1560] I think I'd have to join you.

[1561] I do like the crystals.

[1562] I do like Wavy Tube Man. Who knows how long that game will be.

[1563] It's true.

[1564] Wavy Tube Man. You're so crazy.

[1565] They need some purple boxes on the shelf pronto.

[1566] Yeah, seriously.

[1567] Also, your move, Unreal.

[1568] Yeah.

[1569] Brad Schumacher, anything else?

[1570] I think that's it.

[1571] I think that's it.

[1572] That's it.

[1573] All right.

[1574] Since we last spoke, I finished Alice Madness Returns.

[1575] It's a little too long, but...

[1576] You seem to like it more than I thought you would or expected or something.

[1577] You know, I think a lot of people were kind of giving that game shit for the style of the gameplay, like the 3D platforming and the combat.

[1578] Being like, oh, it's like, that's so old.

[1579] Why would you want to play that?

[1580] It's like, well, yeah, it's not a popular, like a currently popular kind of gameplay format, but it still works.

[1581] Like, it's still playable.

[1582] No ledge grab.

[1583] That's crazy.

[1584] Well, you have like three.

[1585] You've like triple jumps and glides.

[1586] Like if you can't make it to that platform with that stuff, then you deserve to fall.

[1587] Yeah.

[1588] And also when it comes to the platforming stuff, that game is so heavily checkpointed.

[1589] You never have to redo more than one or two jumps if you screw up.

[1590] That's great.

[1591] That's beautiful.

[1592] That's a modern fix for this problem of this older genre.

[1593] It's not like they just said, all right, we're going to make this exactly like we made the last Alice game, and we're just going to up -res the art, and that's going to be all the difference that there is.

[1594] It is smart.

[1595] It's still kind of hard in some of the combat stuff.

[1596] It's still pretty demanding.

[1597] When you start getting into group combat and every enemy has a very specific weakness and pattern, and when you start mixing that up in certain ways, it can be a bit of a challenge.

[1598] But for me, that game is all about the art. Much like with Child of Eden, it's looking at that game and just the fucking insane moodiness and just that dark fairy tale stuff that I think American McGee is...

[1599] Although I...

[1600] I don't have a great sense of necessarily how much he has done this.

[1601] It is an American McGee game on the front of the box.

[1602] He definitely runs that studio.

[1603] It's not a huge studio.

[1604] Someone else is listed as creative director.

[1605] There are other forces at play there at Spicy Horse.

[1606] Really like the way it looks.

[1607] I think it plays well enough.

[1608] I just wish that they would cut about an hour out of each chapter.

[1609] Because they each go on for about three hours.

[1610] And you're like, all right.

[1611] After two hours, I've seen all of the crazy detail that you've put into this one world that's very specifically themed.

[1612] And I've seen all of the weird enemies and just whatever kind of perspective hooks that you've thrown into this sequence.

[1613] But let's move on to the next thing.

[1614] So if they had just trimmed just a touch out of that game, I think it would have been a lot better.

[1615] But I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with the style of gameplay that they've, you know.

[1616] kept uh from the last alice so i'll be curious to see you know after it's out for a bit what the kind of what the response is from the like the alice old guard which i am very staunchly not a part of i don't know if that actually exists except in the minds of people who think they belong to it right like i kinda i kinda would have self -identified that way until i really thought about it and it's just like man that game is awesome when it came out But not everybody felt that way.

[1617] You didn't go get tattoos afterwards.

[1618] No, not at all.

[1619] And then when I really thought about it, I was like, well, actually, there were certain aspects of that game that made me really like it a lot at the time.

[1620] Primarily that every other shooter or kind of shooter -derived game back then was just like a bunch of right -angled surfaces.

[1621] It was real basic stuff, and they came and made this.

[1622] It was like Beetlejuice, the game.

[1623] It was just like a bunch of weird cockeyed angles, and stuff was put together all crazy.

[1624] That was kind of the thing.

[1625] Again, it was the art. I don't know if that game...

[1626] Still the case.

[1627] That game as a whole, I don't know that it stands up now or even fully stood up back then.

[1628] Yeah, them including American McGee's Alice as part of that package.

[1629] I maybe played 15 minutes of it there, but that was enough for me to go, wow, they made a much better game with this new one.

[1630] Also, Alice's hair is some of the best -looking hair I have seen in a video game.

[1631] Best -looking hair tech.

[1632] Yeah.

[1633] Spicy horse.

[1634] Triple H could use some of that.

[1635] Triple H needs to go to Shanghai, get some better hair.

[1636] I had horse one time.

[1637] It was not spicy.

[1638] That's what I would say.

[1639] I bet it would be better if it was.

[1640] Maybe.

[1641] Do you think that's just like a menu item and that's where they got their name from?

[1642] I don't know.

[1643] It was raw.

[1644] It was raw horse.

[1645] I've eaten raw horse.

[1646] It's good.

[1647] I saw a thing in the news today.

[1648] I would have to eat, I think, regular horse.

[1649] It was in Japan.

[1650] It was in Japan.

[1651] You can trust raw meat in Japan.

[1652] Put lady jeans into a cow, and now the cow gives female breast milk.

[1653] Who did this?

[1654] Chinese.

[1655] Oh.

[1656] Scientists.

[1657] What?

[1658] Wait, I missed the first one.

[1659] They put human lady jeans, and now the cow emits human breast milk?

[1660] And then they're pumping it, and they're going to sell it.

[1661] I thought you meant like guest jeans or something from Blaine Bryant.

[1662] I don't think it's as bad as the Japanese scientist that made a steak out of human feces.

[1663] I think this is worse.

[1664] That's true.

[1665] No, the shit steak is definitely worse.

[1666] Would you drink?

[1667] You would drink?

[1668] I would drink human milk out of a cow before I would eat a steak made out of shit.

[1669] I don't know that I would drink human milk, period, at this point.

[1670] That's the thing that's weird.

[1671] Oh, really?

[1672] I totally give it a shot.

[1673] At least the shit steak is not in a food context.

[1674] I'm stomached.

[1675] I can't.

[1676] At least a shit steak is like, hey, you know, we make a veggie steak, we make this, this one's made out of shit.

[1677] I would be willing to get near and potentially think about trying a shit steak.

[1678] But that's true of any steak for you.

[1679] It's processed.

[1680] Anything called steak you would at least consider.

[1681] Not a horse steak.

[1682] Really?

[1683] I might not eat horse.

[1684] Dude, what?

[1685] What are you talking about?

[1686] You would eat a steak made out of shit and you would at least consider a shit steak, but you would just flat out say, nope, nope.

[1687] Horse?

[1688] No. Gross.

[1689] Those are for writing, not for eating.

[1690] Because I want to eat a shit steak for science.

[1691] I don't need anything with a face.

[1692] Give me the shit steak.

[1693] I don't know what the market is for other people's breast milk.

[1694] I don't have kids.

[1695] I would think that like...

[1696] That's one of my favorite Naughty by Nature songs.

[1697] You have a national population of a billion.

[1698] You don't buy like synthetic like...

[1699] Simulac?

[1700] Yeah.

[1701] I don't know.

[1702] I don't know.

[1703] I don't like the idea of lady milk coming out of cows.

[1704] I mean, they're already constrained in the number of children they can have.

[1705] Yeah, I don't know.

[1706] I...

[1707] Feces steak, though.

[1708] I mean, it just seems odd because, like, well, it's...

[1709] I mean, the cow's already making milk.

[1710] Like, what's the...

[1711] Like, what are the specific properties of...

[1712] I'm sure there are...

[1713] And manifold that are important to, but to, you know, weirdos like me that are like, yeah, I just want to try some human breast milk.

[1714] I mean, the whole thing is weird already because you're unnaturally making this cow lactate all the time by pretending that it's like pregnant.

[1715] Oh, you don't even want to get into that.

[1716] There's already bad things going on.

[1717] You don't even want to know about the trace amounts of pus and blood that end up in commercially produced dairy.

[1718] Anyway, you played some Fear 3, right?

[1719] Dude over milking.

[1720] Or should we keep talking about this?

[1721] Let's talk about the shit steak some more.

[1722] Hey, tell me about that.

[1723] I actually didn't read the shit steak story.

[1724] Milk is fucking awesome.

[1725] I just feel I should just get that out there.

[1726] I stopped drinking milk out of a carton after I started looking into that stuff.

[1727] You get a little puss and blood, you know, just biting the inside of your mouth while you're eating the shit steak.

[1728] I actually didn't read that article.

[1729] I got to the headline and I got...

[1730] Yeah, they're processing feces and trying to make food out of it.

[1731] I could not go further when I saw that.

[1732] Yeah, I couldn't keep going.

[1733] At least that was once.

[1734] And that's great science.

[1735] I love that.

[1736] Yeah, let's do it, man. If they can make a tofu equivalent out of shit, it just seems like a lot of trouble to go through.

[1737] It seems like there are products out there.

[1738] There are things out there that you could turn into food a lot more easily.

[1739] Think about it, man. Everybody shits.

[1740] It seems like what NASA would develop for a mission to Mars or something.

[1741] Self -sustaining.

[1742] Yes.

[1743] Okay, fine.

[1744] In extreme circumstance stuff.

[1745] We're going to be on this ship for the next two years.

[1746] We need some way to eat out once or twice a month.

[1747] But what if in your bathroom, after a week or whatever, you open up the tank and there's a steak in there?

[1748] Like, you just kind of side benefit.

[1749] Like, oh, I got one of those shit steak toilets.

[1750] Like, after a week, it just processes, turns into, like, steak and potatoes in the tank.

[1751] What if we build a delivery mechanism from the septic tank to the refrigerator?

[1752] So the steak just shows up in the fridge.

[1753] I think that would be pretty cool.

[1754] That would be pretty cool.

[1755] Yeah, but you really want to make sure that you hook up the right tube from your toilet to your fridge.

[1756] Oh, I think something's broken.

[1757] No, no, no. I think the filter's off.

[1758] It's the red one, not the blue one.

[1759] God damn it.

[1760] We have to throw away all this ice now.

[1761] This is all bad.

[1762] Yeah, Fear 3.

[1763] You want to talk about a shit state?

[1764] No, that's really harsh.

[1765] That's way too harsh.

[1766] That's way too harsh for as much of that game that I played.

[1767] Yeah, this is more Lady Milk.

[1768] We did a quick look.

[1769] Lady Milk out of a cow seems like something that would totally be appropriate in a Fear game.

[1770] Sure, sure.

[1771] What can I say about Fear 3?

[1772] The title screen has a pulsating fetus on it, so you know you're in for some...

[1773] I don't know.

[1774] Does it make good on the ending of Fear 2?

[1775] No. So far, that game has all but ignored the events of Fear 2.

[1776] Are you even the same characters?

[1777] Okay, so you were playing as the point man in the first Fear.

[1778] Okay.

[1779] And he was...

[1780] Brothers with, you found out over the course of the game, he was the brother of Paxton Fettel, who was kind of the main bad guy in the first Fear.

[1781] At the end of Fear, he shoots Paxton Fettel.

[1782] Fear 2, you're playing as a completely different character, whose name I can't remember.

[1783] Johnny!

[1784] Something Mason.

[1785] He is playing Mason something.

[1786] That game starts pretty much just before the end of the first Fear when this big crazy explosion happens.

[1787] Some of the events of Fear 2 are happening in parallel and after the first Fear.

[1788] I haven't gotten to the Alma stuff in Fear 3 yet, and I think that's where that will start wrapping back in because Alma is pregnant with...

[1789] Some sort of awful, horrible, ghost, psychic, murdering baby.

[1790] Demon spawn.

[1791] Yeah, and maybe it'll get better there.

[1792] Isn't all a little girl?

[1793] No, no. She grew.

[1794] She was a teenager.

[1795] Okay.

[1796] Well, because she had these two kids.

[1797] Paxton Fettel and the Point Man are almost children.

[1798] What?

[1799] Yeah.

[1800] Yeah, she was dead.

[1801] I mean, she's like appearing as a little girl.

[1802] In the first game.

[1803] In the second game, she shows a ghost or something.

[1804] Or also the dad, Elma's dad is the father.

[1805] Is that right?

[1806] Wasn't she?

[1807] No, she was like taken from her parents.

[1808] I thought the scientist was the...

[1809] The dad of Alma and impregnated Alma.

[1810] Some real bad stuff going on.

[1811] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1812] And in Fear 2, that was kind of the great thing in that game.

[1813] They start fleshing out the universe.

[1814] All the other stuff that was going on is just...

[1815] Bad, bad news.

[1816] Yeah, walking around the elementary school with some real good, dark shit in there.

[1817] And I think that's what I have not had with Fear 3 yet.

[1818] I haven't had the, like, oh, this is actually kind of disturbing.

[1819] Or they have created some good, tense atmosphere in this environment.

[1820] I just feel like...

[1821] The first thing when you walk into that game is just like, all right, firefight.

[1822] These armored ski mask dudes are going to run into this giant room where there's a lot of cover, and you have to pop up and pop down and shoot them.

[1823] Right out the gate, I'm like, okay, so this is a modern first -person shooter.

[1824] It doesn't immediately have that same...

[1825] sense of style, that same, I don't know, the specific aesthetic of a fear game.

[1826] I started thinking about it some, like what it was that I really liked about Fear 3, and it's the way Monolith does a crazy...

[1827] detailed, kind of realistic -looking industrial environments and then fills them with horrible, crazy shit.

[1828] Like, if you look at even, like, the Condemned games, you know, they go for more grime there, and there's a fair amount of that in Fear as well, but it's, you know, it's recognizably real places that then...

[1829] horribly unreal things happen.

[1830] And then you're saying that that's missing so far.

[1831] So far I haven't had that feeling.

[1832] These environments that I've been running around in...

[1833] This is day one.

[1834] This is not Monolith.

[1835] This is not Monolith.

[1836] And that is clear.

[1837] The look of this game is much different.

[1838] It does not feel like...

[1839] You still slow down time, but they've also now introduced jump kick dudes.

[1840] I thought it was a little strange.

[1841] I forgot about that.

[1842] I thought it was kind of weird that they switched developers for this.

[1843] I don't know what the business reasons were, but you would at least hope for a smooth, if not seamless, at least a smooth transition.

[1844] The Fear series has already had so many weird things with the add -ons or the console things being made by someone else.

[1845] They actually disavow some of that stuff.

[1846] Those console games don't count.

[1847] And the add -on stuff.

[1848] Even the PC, they had the DLC.

[1849] Not DLC at the time, but it was like an expansion.

[1850] Expansion.

[1851] The stuff that I released on console, I think, was that shit.

[1852] Oh, the expansion stuff?

[1853] Yeah.

[1854] Okay.

[1855] Yeah, right.

[1856] They lumped it all in on the console port, which Day One worked on.

[1857] That was like one of...

[1858] What?

[1859] Yeah, Day One made the console port of Fear, the original Fear.

[1860] I don't understand.

[1861] So they have had their hands on Fear stuff before.

[1862] Now, what about Alma?

[1863] Wait.

[1864] Day One is Alma?

[1865] Day one is Alma.

[1866] She's pregnant.

[1867] It's like the development is as convoluted as the story at this point.

[1868] Alma is just a metaphor for the trajectory of the series.

[1869] I mean, I know it can be a divisive series.

[1870] It's not necessarily for everyone, but it's like what they've made of this game so far.

[1871] I don't feel like it's going to now bring in people who weren't already down for fear one and or two.

[1872] And thus far, it is not satisfying me as a fan of those games.

[1873] That co -op stuff was kind of interesting.

[1874] Yeah, there's some interesting stuff.

[1875] Vinny and I played some where I'm playing as Point Man, and he's playing as Paxton Fettel.

[1876] I was Ghost.

[1877] Ghost of Paxton Fettel.

[1878] Yeah, and guess what?

[1879] That ghost can die.

[1880] I could die.

[1881] What?

[1882] Yeah, like...

[1883] Ghost die.

[1884] It was...

[1885] Yeah, I...

[1886] But I could possess people.

[1887] Is that like Fox die, but with ghosts?

[1888] Oh, man. And if I don't go and revive him in time, then we both die.

[1889] Great.

[1890] He has some crazy abilities.

[1891] He can possess people and he can lift certain objects in the environment and throw them around.

[1892] I don't think you do have a jump kick.

[1893] You're just clicking in that right stick to perform melee stuff and it seems like it kind of auto combos some of it, but they haven't explained anything about a jump kick, but at the same time they also didn't explain what the psychic link was, why I can walk up to certain dead enemies that have smoke rising out of them and if I hold X they disappear and I get a bunch of points.

[1894] Like, it's one of those things that just happened in the game.

[1895] I'm like, what the fuck?

[1896] Why did that guy just disappear?

[1897] Like, that's a crazy thing.

[1898] You should give me some context, game.

[1899] Well, it says, like, activate psychic link or whatever, right?

[1900] And then it's like...

[1901] Did you get a power -up?

[1902] I'm pretty sure the first time that I saw it, that's all I got.

[1903] It must just be points for that level thing.

[1904] Maybe at some point you will break into...

[1905] Or maybe it's like if Paxton does it, that's how he inhabits people.

[1906] No, no, no. Because when you do it in co -op, it's like, hey, do you want to share the points or do you just want to take them?

[1907] It's literally just a points thing.

[1908] Oh.

[1909] What?

[1910] Yeah, I don't know what that level is.

[1911] And there's also, they've introduced basically a Killzone 2 style cover system where you can...

[1912] B on the Xbox 360, which is your crouch button when you're near an eligible piece of cover, you'll kind of snap to it, and then you can use the left stick to pop up or pop to the side.

[1913] You can do cover -to -cover movement, Gears of War style with tap and A, but I don't know.

[1914] Making that game more of a conventional shooter or making it more like other shooters I don't think is the thing that makes fear better.

[1915] Uh, I'm gonna keep playing it.

[1916] We'll, we'll see how it goes.

[1917] I feel like, uh, you know, we were, and again, like fictionally, I, I don't understand why, but we start that game in like a fucking, in a, uh, blown out like Mexican jail or something.

[1918] And then we're in a bunch of favelas.

[1919] Like we just, I just now I'm like, like maybe hour and a half and maybe more, uh, like just now got to a place that it seems like, okay, this is where all of the stuff from the other fear games happened.

[1920] Not this.

[1921] Yeah.

[1922] This weird.

[1923] This weird mountain shanty town that we were in.

[1924] Yeah, I don't know.

[1925] I have a question.

[1926] What's up?

[1927] What is Monolith doing right now that they're not making fear?

[1928] Gotham City Impostors is doing the need.

[1929] Yeah, but that's downloadable.

[1930] No, that's Shogo 2.

[1931] Who knows how big that team is these days.

[1932] Apparently still pretty big.

[1933] Apparently that is not their primary.

[1934] That is a small team at Monolith that's working on that.

[1935] I would like to see a new No One Lives Forever, please.

[1936] Would you really, though?

[1937] I'm not talking about fucking Contract Jack here.

[1938] Yeah.

[1939] But the main NOLF games were fucking awesome.

[1940] But do you think they would still be?

[1941] I don't know if it would be any good or not, but at least take a stab.

[1942] I don't know.

[1943] I'd see a new IP.

[1944] It might be a tough sell, but Kate Archer has not had her due.

[1945] I love the character and the style of NOLF.

[1946] Amazing.

[1947] You hate stealth games, though.

[1948] The more I think about it, I think the only monolith games I really like are Condemned.

[1949] And I guess Condemned too.

[1950] But all those monolith games, like Fear, all this stuff, it just felt like shit to me. Just the way they controlled.

[1951] All the melee stuff in Fear was just so weird.

[1952] I just never enjoyed playing that game.

[1953] I feel like they always try and wrap something odd into the first person shooter gameplay.

[1954] But I feel like they're...

[1955] I feel like Monolith has good fundamentals.

[1956] I feel like the basics of how games handle and how the shooting feels, I feel like they're generally pretty solid at that stuff.

[1957] I remember having a lot of fun creeping around in NOLF 2, getting headshots on guys who didn't know I was there, shooting out lights and all that kind of stuff.

[1958] When I played Fear, it was like that thing of everyone's like, oh, Fear is incredible.

[1959] you got to see this, you know, like everyone around the office and stuff and just being like, what do you, I mean, it's not, like I didn't enjoy any part of the mechanics of it.

[1960] Like the shooting was probably fine.

[1961] Yeah.

[1962] But all that other stuff just didn't, yeah, didn't grab me at all.

[1963] Like I did not finish that game.

[1964] I had no desire to even see it through.

[1965] So it's always just been weird to me that people are like, man, new fear coming out.

[1966] I'm like, all right, I guess.

[1967] Good luck.

[1968] I guess those side things aren't the defining thing for fear for me either.

[1969] It's like the melee combat stuff.

[1970] They definitely tone that down some for fear too.

[1971] I like fear.

[1972] I like the slow down stuff.

[1973] That's always fun.

[1974] I always feel like they measure that well enough so that you're not just constantly abusing it.

[1975] I heard someone saying, and Lord knows this is just some good old -fashioned internet scuttlebutt, but saying that Monolith might be the ones working on an Inception game after Chris Nolan was talking some shit about how he would like to make an Inception game.

[1976] Interesting.

[1977] And that would be Warner Brothers.

[1978] Did they put that out in the movie?

[1979] Yeah.

[1980] Weird.

[1981] Well, they are in the Christopher Nolan business.

[1982] Ah, yes, right.

[1983] Strong relationship.

[1984] Yes, exactly.

[1985] How about a new Shogo?

[1986] Yeah.

[1987] I would love to see someone make a new Shogo, but I have zero confidence that that game would be any good.

[1988] Because remember Shogo?

[1989] Yeah.

[1990] Dude just spin around when he shot him in the shoulder like seven times.

[1991] That game was broken.

[1992] It was not a good shooter.

[1993] I remember running from base to base.

[1994] Let me rephrase it.

[1995] That game was a lift tech shooter.

[1996] That's kind of why you liked it, right?

[1997] Yeah, that is kind of right.

[1998] I mean, I liked it because, like, conceptually, though, that could have been good.

[1999] Like, the whole notion of just, like, you're going to have these big, you know, like, mech levels.

[2000] Mobile armored division.

[2001] Sugar mad.

[2002] And this other stuff, like, execution was...

[2003] Non -existent.

[2004] That game was so messed up.

[2005] Come on.

[2006] They brought the game to market.

[2007] I kind of want to try it out, but I don't think I could get it to run.

[2008] I hardly got it to run at the time.

[2009] Don't do that.

[2010] Let it exist in your memory.

[2011] It reminds me of Oni.

[2012] I don't think I can get Oni to run either.

[2013] I feel like that game was kind of busted, too.

[2014] Yeah, Oni was kind of busted.

[2015] Did my DSi to 3DS transfer yesterday.

[2016] on multiple occasions, had it, like, crap out in the middle of it.

[2017] And after hearing people talking about losing stuff or having stuff locked up, I was a little concerned.

[2018] But I was able to restart it every time and get all of my...

[2019] All those hot DSiWare games that I've got.

[2020] I didn't have any trouble transferring.

[2021] I just said, like, yeah, transfer all.

[2022] And then it did it.

[2023] And then I was done.

[2024] I didn't do transfer all.

[2025] I only did the games kind of manually one by one.

[2026] Because there was some weird language in there about how it was going to overwrite some settings on my 3DS.

[2027] And I would say, like, this stuff will remain on the DSi, but anything that overrides will be lost on the 3DS.

[2028] And I was like, I don't know exactly what data you're talking about.

[2029] It's just the DS -specific connection settings that are separate from the 3DS -specific connection settings, like the IDs and stuff.

[2030] So if you had a connection ID, like a friend code or whatever, I think it would transfer all that stuff over.

[2031] I think that if that is going to be the only application of the awesome Pikmin animation that they cooked up for that process, it's a goddamn waste.

[2032] Yeah, I know.

[2033] Because it is so involved and cute as shit.

[2034] And the only time anyone's going to see that is if they happen to transfer stuff off of a DSi.

[2035] Too bad.

[2036] Well, you'll also transfer stuff from one 3DS to another at some point.

[2037] What?

[2038] Because you'll buy another 3DS.

[2039] It'll be bigger screens and better battery life.

[2040] They said they're in for the long haul with this one.

[2041] Yeah.

[2042] Well, that's what they said.

[2043] That long haul, it's got another 18 months on it, let's say.

[2044] Nah, not even that much.

[2045] Yeah.

[2046] I don't want to buy another 3DS.

[2047] I barely want the 3DS I've got.

[2048] All right, let's talk about some news.

[2049] Let's take a quick break.

[2050] All right, we can do that.

[2051] We'll take a quick break, and then we'll be back in a minute with some news, so stay tuned.

[2052] And we're back!

[2053] We aired out the room a little bit, took a quick break, shook the legs.

[2054] Unduded the room a bit.

[2055] A little bit.

[2056] A little bit of unduding.

[2057] I burgered it, though.

[2058] That takes a while to go into effect, though.

[2059] You didn't say when he burgered it.

[2060] Oh, man. But just that.

[2061] It's been burgered.

[2062] All right.

[2063] Let's talk a little bit about video game news.

[2064] So I guess this story came out last week.

[2065] about Wii U stuff at E3, that there was a bunch of stuff that was supposed to be on the floor that got pulled at the last minute.

[2066] Have you heard about this?

[2067] Yeah.

[2068] Yeah, that some third parties were prepared to show games and that Nintendo decided not to allow them to show that stuff.

[2069] And this comes via Hit Detection, which is a company that NGuyKroll now is doing.

[2070] now that he's no longer doing Newsweek as a consulting firm or whatever, that the dev kits were underclocked.

[2071] Right.

[2072] So that the...

[2073] the Wii U hardware isn't necessarily representative of what the final stuff's going to be, or at least the stuff that developers have been developing on right now.

[2074] Sure.

[2075] So that maybe those games didn't look so hot compared to modern stuff, and they wanted to wait until...

[2076] And then today, Miyamoto has said that, like, yeah, this thing is not going to outstrip the PS3 and 360.

[2077] Like, he's getting out there and actively tempering expectations.

[2078] Yeah, it's good for him to do that.

[2079] Yeah, because the initial talk...

[2080] Well, whatever.

[2081] Nintendo itself has never said, we're going to blow the fucking doors off these other systems.

[2082] Which, although, however it would be to hear Reggie say that, or Iwata say that.

[2083] We are going to blow.

[2084] Yeah, I think that's...

[2085] We believe.

[2086] That's really good.

[2087] That's good.

[2088] That's good.

[2089] Yeah, I don't know.

[2090] Whatever.

[2091] wii u is not going to be all that yeah i mean that's that's not shocking to hear uh that that it's not going to be some huge powerhouse i mean they've basically said as much it's good of them to come out and say specifically yeah uh that stuff because the specs aren't necessarily out there or out there as final specs or whatever but uh you know kind of answer these questions that now get them out of the way i mean it makes sense it's like it's it's guess what they're still being nintendo it's like they're still going to want they're going to try to to turn a profit on each of those units sold as best they can.

[2092] It sounds like they're still going to try and go cheap as far as what the price point is.

[2093] They're talking about like, yeah, we're selling this to a market where it's going to be for kids.

[2094] We need to have a price point that a parent can justify paying.

[2095] I bet it's $250 again.

[2096] You think it will be?

[2097] $250 with that controller?

[2098] Yeah.

[2099] How much is this for the controller?

[2100] They don't sell them separately.

[2101] Ever?

[2102] No. Really?

[2103] They said that?

[2104] Unless something changes, yeah.

[2105] They said that you are to have one of those controllers per system.

[2106] What if I break it?

[2107] Then you order one from them.

[2108] I'm sure you can go through their support system and get another one, but it's not going to be packaged for retail sale.

[2109] That's crazy.

[2110] So that actually totally deflates a lot of what is interesting about that console for me. It really does turn out that you can only have one of those things synced up at a time.

[2111] Because even the stuff that they were coming out there talking about, the football scenario of, imagine you could pick your plays on this screen.

[2112] I feel like that has been the boilerplate example for every fucking weird feature since the beginning of video games.

[2113] Yeah, I mean, it was the Dreamcast thing.

[2114] Always the thing.

[2115] But, you know, okay, how about Uno then?

[2116] Uno was another game that would benefit from Scrabble, not being able to see the other person's tiles.

[2117] Like those sorts of games.

[2118] But you're talking about these situations where I am in a living room where I could fucking play Scrabble or Uno.

[2119] Play Bananagrams.

[2120] It's like a way better, faster version of Scrabble.

[2121] I'm really good at bringing out the Uno cards and then losing some of them and stuff like that.

[2122] But whatever.

[2123] Then fine.

[2124] We'll talk about football plays then.

[2125] That's not really the point.

[2126] The point is that they've already kind of gotten out there and talked about the notion of hiding your selections from someone else.

[2127] But if the other player can't do that, that whole scenario is null and void.

[2128] So that's what's really confusing to me about this system.

[2129] It's like the tech demos we saw, I thought they all looked really cool.

[2130] And that controller, I thought, opened up some interesting potential scenarios.

[2131] But some of those can only be realized if you can have two to four of those things connected.

[2132] If it really is just the Wii remote for the majority of the games again.

[2133] And then it's the third parties that get a more standard controller and that sort of stuff to port their games to satisfy them.

[2134] Then this just seems like a stopgap, like, oh, God, the Wii is flagging.

[2135] Let's just bump up these stats and re -release it.

[2136] Did you ever think it was anything but that?

[2137] I mean, the controller, like I said, I think the controller opens up a lot of potential.

[2138] But the impetus for the existence of the system is clearly that the Wii is done.

[2139] That's clearly what it is.

[2140] It could be a new style of game.

[2141] It doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to be using Wii remotes all the time.

[2142] We talked about this some last week.

[2143] We don't know what the technical hurdles are to getting more than one of these synced and transmitting image data back and forth in the same area.

[2144] Who knows what the factors are behind it.

[2145] If that's the case, then I feel like they have failed to design.

[2146] They should have designed a console and a device that was capable of doing that because that's what makes that touchscreen interesting.

[2147] The asynchronous gameplay stuff The Pac -Man versus the Four Swords Adventures examples are exciting twice.

[2148] That's exciting in their one Wii U Play compilation where they take all of those tech demos and bundle them together into one thing.

[2149] Maybe that's what they end up doing again.

[2150] That is what they end up doing again.

[2151] But that's the only time that that's cool then.

[2152] And then it becomes the same as Nintendo has made for every iteration of every piece of hardware ever, which is you play the Nintendo games on the Nintendo system.

[2153] And all the other games you play on your Xbox or PS3.

[2154] But if they're hoping to get back to the front of the line and spark interest the same way that the Wii had it...

[2155] This doesn't do that.

[2156] This just kind of pushes everything off.

[2157] This doesn't revitalize sales in a huge generational way.

[2158] No, I'm talking about the mass market.

[2159] That is in no way a foregone conclusion that they're going to recapture that audience.

[2160] Yeah, that's the thing.

[2161] This is like them reusing and reappropriating weird shit that other people have since been doing.

[2162] When the Wii came out, it's like...

[2163] I have literally never seen anything like this.

[2164] You see the Wii U, it's like, oh yeah, that's kind of like an iPad and it kind of hooks up to this.

[2165] There's at least a point that you understand so it's not just like this is magic, what's this crazy thing?

[2166] And you take that out of the equation and it's just a Wii with somewhat better graphics.

[2167] That's the sticking point.

[2168] I don't think there are people out there not buying Wii games because they don't look good enough.

[2169] That's not why the Wii sales have tapered off.

[2170] It's because that fad's kind of done and no one in that mainstream – like fewer people in that mainstream audience give a fuck about those style of games.

[2171] So – This thing, to me, when they rolled it out and announced it, it seems like it was based on, all right, well, they are going to care about this and we're going to come up with a bunch of new ways using these controllers to set up a lot of different scenarios and that sort of stuff.

[2172] But if the scenario is the rest of you are still holding Wii remotes, they've already fucked this up.

[2173] Yeah.

[2174] I tend to agree.

[2175] For someone, it doesn't matter what the games are because the majority of people are going to look at that and go, I have one of those already.

[2176] That's plausible.

[2177] But we're not them.

[2178] We can't speak definitively for them because we are not them.

[2179] We're not coming from the same place they are.

[2180] Yeah, exactly.

[2181] I think the controller looks interesting.

[2182] And then speaking for me, if I can only have one of those things, they have fucked up.

[2183] All right.

[2184] I thought they said that there are no plans.

[2185] Like they're not talking about individual sales for the controller.

[2186] No, it's not happening.

[2187] Ever?

[2188] Really?

[2189] Who knows?

[2190] They were pretty plain about like, yeah, this isn't, you don't buy the controller.

[2191] They won, there will not be extra box controllers on shelves.

[2192] I don't imagine that, but I would imagine at some point they would release down a line.

[2193] It's a question of whether that thing can handle it, whether it can stream that data out without any latency.

[2194] Is there any use for you having two of those?

[2195] There might not be.

[2196] But the button configuration is different than a Wiimote and a Nunchuck, so if you're even talking about side -by -side co -op on something like that, if you're going to play two games...

[2197] You get a classic controller hooked up to a Wii robot.

[2198] That covers the bases.

[2199] Does that have all the same buttons on it?

[2200] The traditional controllers are built to approximate like an Xbox or PS3 controller.

[2201] Yeah, but the classic controller has no accelerometers or stuff in it either, so you're talking about missing parity on somebody who's using that other controller.

[2202] But I think that's going to be specific for the types of games that are built around that kind of asynchronous stuff.

[2203] Like where people are seeing different things and getting different levels of data.

[2204] I mean, let's be honest.

[2205] Nintendo has never focused on...

[2206] that kind of parody between players and games.

[2207] Like Mario, Zelda, those are all single -player games.

[2208] I mean, it's weird because it's like...

[2209] Even all the Wii Party stuff.

[2210] It's weird because after the Wii specifically...

[2211] But all the Wii Party stuff is still going to come out and you probably won't use that controller at all.

[2212] The Wii Party is going to be Chase Me. But what's weird here is this controller really makes this system feel like a much more solitary experience than Nintendo has really traded in for a while.

[2213] Granted, even in all of those demos, they showed a lot of, like you're saying, asynchronous multiplayer.

[2214] But if I can literally only have one of these big -ass full -size controllers on that system at once, then I feel like that almost kind of pushes you towards the, yeah, you're going to play this by yourself.

[2215] Or in these specific games that use it.

[2216] But it's very limiting.

[2217] I mean, I look at that controller, I see that there are some really interesting creative possibilities for it.

[2218] But most of the possibilities for me involve you having...

[2219] every single player having one of those and the stuff where everyone's got a Wii remote and one player has the thing like I said that seems like one game two games it's kind of like hot potato mentality of like who gets the tablet now yeah I think they maybe they're just marketing this wrong like maybe they should have gone down the road that they kind of set up in the press conferences was like this controller kind of is the system like don't expect there to be another one of these I feel like it's it's been like it's been confusing since the word go I think their messaging on this on this system has been really poor like this is not just a controller like this is it This is part and parcel.

[2220] There's a box that hooks up to your TV.

[2221] You put the discs in that, that's cool.

[2222] But this thing you're holding in your hands, that's it.

[2223] Would you buy two of these systems to play a game with somebody in your house?

[2224] I kind of know this is the only one.

[2225] If they're not going to put out controllers.

[2226] They keep saying this is the Wii U controller.

[2227] Well, they have to because the power of the system is significantly greater than the original Wii.

[2228] Sure, but I think if it's really going to be the only one you'll ever use with it, they need to marry it to the system a bit more.

[2229] The thing's not coming out for such a long time that they have plenty of time to figure out that level of messaging.

[2230] confusion right now sort of doesn't matter.

[2231] It's really just, for me, it is strictly that issue of if you can't hook up multiple controllers to this thing, then they are throwing away a lot of the potential for games that you could make on that thing.

[2232] Sure.

[2233] And they are making a...

[2234] It's the difference between whether this controller is a peripheral for the Wii, but just the Wii happens to look better, or if it is this whole new system, this whole new experience.

[2235] Because, you know, it's like the other kind of pillar that they trotted out there of like, and we'll be able to get all these third -party games because it's powerful enough.

[2236] That's like a false premise because that expires in two years, three years.

[2237] As soon as the next.

[2238] Yeah.

[2239] Right.

[2240] You know, that's something that right now they can say like, yeah, you're going to get Batman on this thing.

[2241] But all the people that are buying those games have already made platform decisions.

[2242] It's not.

[2243] And, you know, when the next generation does happen for Microsoft and Sony.

[2244] and it leaves this system in the dust again, they're right back where they are with the Wii.

[2245] They gain nothing.

[2246] I suspect that at least they probably should just kind of mine the back catalog for a little bit too.

[2247] The three years of games that have come out.

[2248] Oh, that's what they're doing.

[2249] Like Arkham City, when it comes out on the Wii U, will be a year old on the other consoles.

[2250] But there's not going to be a huge...

[2251] market for like hey we took this 3 year old PS3 game and ported it over like you're not going to see a ton of that Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2X yeah like you're not going to see that much past launch yeah I don't know it's I'm not understanding this doom and gloom multiplayer scenario that you're painting here because how often are you in a room with people playing games like that anyway?

[2252] I mean, you enter the online into it, yeah, and the whole thing breaks down because you can almost guarantee they're not going to get that stuff right.

[2253] Well, more to the point.

[2254] But if you were selling the system as a four -player couch system, Like regardless of our personal habits.

[2255] Which is kind of what the Wii has always been marketed as.

[2256] If it can't be like I'm going to play fucking Mario Kart with my friends and we're each going to have a full screen in our hands with our play on it.

[2257] Or some scenario like that where it's like there's always going to be.

[2258] If I'm going to have a multiplayer session in one room and one player is always going to be the master player.

[2259] Like that's a dynamic that.

[2260] doesn't lend itself to a lot of different scenarios.

[2261] And it's also, you know, in the social aspects of arguing kids and stuff like that, like who gets to use the good controller or something like that, you know, it just, that stuff just sounds bad.

[2262] It just sounds like poor design decisions.

[2263] It seems like a mistake.

[2264] It's one of those things when I first heard, oh yeah, it sounds like you can only hook up one of these things to the box.

[2265] It's like, what?

[2266] The whole thing broke for me at that point.

[2267] So that's what I don't get.

[2268] I agree with you on the multiplayer side, but it's...

[2269] It's kind of dismissive to discount all the possible applications of this thing to, like, the single -player kinds of games that Nintendo makes.

[2270] Yeah, exactly.

[2271] Marios and Zeldos will probably be pretty awesome.

[2272] You want to pick the boomerang off the subscreen?

[2273] Sure.

[2274] I mean, who knows what they'll do?

[2275] That's fine.

[2276] But even, like...

[2277] But, like, that wasn't the thing that was holding me back from playing those games on the Wii.

[2278] You know?

[2279] Like, that wasn't the part where it was like, oh, I can't.

[2280] It takes so long to select the boomerang.

[2281] I've got to get these bombs out.

[2282] I mean, Nintendo games were good on the Wii.

[2283] Sure.

[2284] But who's to say they can't be better here?

[2285] I mean, it's premature to say that you know what they're going to do with that thing.

[2286] They will be better there.

[2287] But will they be better enough to matter to make the Wii matter again?

[2288] Nobody can say it right now.

[2289] I doubt it very seriously.

[2290] It's possible.

[2291] And a lot of that stuff, for as much fun as it was to hold that thing and play those games, it's hard not to not be disappointed about where the Wii U is with that in mind.

[2292] that they are not going all the way with it.

[2293] It's pretty early days for that thing.

[2294] I'm willing to hang out and see what happens.

[2295] It's pretty early days in that hopefully they will realize, oh, this thing needs to be able to work with four of these things.

[2296] But who's going to design a game around the idea of having four of those things if they're $100 off the shelf if you were to buy more of them?

[2297] I sure as hell would.

[2298] If that thing is a huge seller, then everyone's got their controller and they bring it over with them.

[2299] Or if you care that much, you buy two of them.

[2300] That thing is big enough that I don't think I would roam around my social circle carrying it with me all the time.

[2301] I don't know.

[2302] It's just weird.

[2303] You get a neoprene sleeve for it.

[2304] This thing is straddling the fence.

[2305] I would totally buy one for me and for my wife if you could hook up two of them and have a cool experience with it.

[2306] Like Jeff was saying with kids and stuff, The fight over who's doing the thing.

[2307] We had that problem when it was just two players on the NES, right?

[2308] Who gets the controller?

[2309] Who gets the advantage.

[2310] And Wii has always been marketed as a family -style thing, not as an online thing.

[2311] And I suspect they'll do the same thing here.

[2312] Get everybody together in the room and play this thing.

[2313] And the kind of hot potato -style thing of having a thing.

[2314] I agree with you, Brad.

[2315] Who knows?

[2316] This could be awesome.

[2317] They'll design around it.

[2318] But initially...

[2319] It seems like squandered potential because holding that thing is like, okay, this could actually be really awesome.

[2320] There's some amazing stuff they could do with multiplayer stuff.

[2321] Especially if you had two of them.

[2322] Oh, but you can't.

[2323] But they had two of them with cameras that face you, and if you were to hold yours up and I would hold mine up, see right through it.

[2324] That'd be awesome.

[2325] That'd be pretty awesome.

[2326] Yeah, it'd be pretty awesome.

[2327] See?

[2328] All right, give me on the phone.

[2329] But there's no front -facing camera.

[2330] There's only the back -facing camera.

[2331] No, I think it's only a front -facing camera.

[2332] It's only a front -facing camera.

[2333] Oh, that's right.

[2334] It's only a front -facing camera.

[2335] Oh, okay, yeah.

[2336] Whoa!

[2337] And then shoot you in the face.

[2338] Well, I mean, we can keep tacking shit onto this controller and into this box until it costs $400.

[2339] I mean...

[2340] Maybe that's what it needs to cut off.

[2341] Well, I like it, you know, whatever.

[2342] Like six or seven, apparently.

[2343] For a video game console?

[2344] No, I mean, you know, the cutoff that the market will bear.

[2345] No, I think...

[2346] I mean, it's a hard balance as far as, like, how much is this thing going to cost them to make?

[2347] How much are they going to have to charge for it?

[2348] And what are the features going to be?

[2349] If this is strictly a, like, we would have to put this, you know, we'd have to put more fucking silicone into this thing to make it powerful enough to be able to, you know...

[2350] do two controllers or four controllers without any latency.

[2351] If that's like this huge spike, then I could see that being an issue.

[2352] But at the same time, if you run into that huge spike, then you have to start wondering, okay, well...

[2353] Is it a good idea for us to stay committed to this idea?

[2354] That's totally fair for you.

[2355] For me, and both as I see it, if it's going to catch on mainstream, and both me personally, if the majority of the games coming out for this thing are games where you're using a Wii remote and nunchuck, I'm already done.

[2356] Sure, so am I. I totally agree with you, but no interest.

[2357] I think the difference between me and you is that I have already resigned myself to playing five to six Wii U games ever.

[2358] They will all be made by Nintendo, and they will all have Mario and Zelda in the most own capacity.

[2359] Look at, like, you know, like, is this going to catch on again?

[2360] Can they do it again?

[2361] Like, that sort of stuff.

[2362] Like, not even can they do the Wii again.

[2363] Like, is there a future in which Nintendo has the strong third -party relationships that they had in the NES and SNES days?

[2364] Because they have not had that for a good 15 years.

[2365] No, that ship has sailed.

[2366] No, absolutely not.

[2367] You don't think so?

[2368] No. And hearing them come out and talk, and the third parties are on board, and they're going to be able to port their stuff, that just seemed like yet another attempt of them trying to tell you that third parties care, which will last about 18 months.

[2369] They do that every three or four years at that press conference.

[2370] Yeah, at that press conference, they come out and try to tell you about how third parties are so excited about this thing.

[2371] Here's all the games they're putting out, but they don't tell you that they took all the footage from the other consoles.

[2372] Then on top of that, when you start to factor in the eventual obsolescence of this technology and its ability to be a port box, when all those developers move on to PlayStation 4 and whatever the next Xbox is, that benefit's gone.

[2373] Then the third parties are back right where they were again, and you've got people going like, well, we made a really cool minigame collection.

[2374] For the Wii U, it's called Carnival Games U. I mean, again, it's Carnival Games University.

[2375] I don't consider that a benefit out of the gate.

[2376] Like, I don't ever expect to play any of those games on this system.

[2377] Yeah, that's not even necessarily what I'm looking for either.

[2378] But I guess for me, it's that there are cool multiplayer things they could do if they got away from the Wii remote and had everyone using a proper Wii U controller that they will not be able to do.

[2379] That basically moves it from...

[2380] I'm kind of excited about this as a potential future exciting new thing to, oh, Nintendo is just being Nintendo again.

[2381] But, I mean, there are clear economic hurdles to making that happen, and maybe technical ones as well, for all we know.

[2382] Indeed.

[2383] While we're talking about the Wii U, there's that business about the cables on the systems at E3.

[2384] Oh, to the controller.

[2385] Yes, yes, where the Wii U controllers were tethered.

[2386] They don't want people stealing them.

[2387] Right, but also the notion that it wasn't just a security tether, but that there was data being pushed through that thing.

[2388] Is that known?

[2389] Or it could have just as easily been power.

[2390] On those boxes, it says wired on the back, right?

[2391] Those shots that came out of the back.

[2392] We have a wired DS.

[2393] It's true.

[2394] Yeah, and there's also the chance they had the little white box up on the...

[2395] up on the counter or whatever, but, you know, that cable went inside.

[2396] I could see there just being a big old PC down there that's actually the hardware for now, whatever their dev kits look like.

[2397] Yeah, yeah.

[2398] I mean, obviously those things are going to be wireless.

[2399] Like, what's the question?

[2400] I mean, the video they showed.

[2401] The question is, like, people are wondering, like, you know, was this staged in such a way for latency?

[2402] Like, you know, is this performance going to be that good once the thing actually comes out as far as responsiveness?

[2403] It has to be.

[2404] It has to be.

[2405] I'm just surprised they were able to have more than one of those things in the same room.

[2406] Well, again, like if they're...

[2407] Maybe that could be another reason why they were wired.

[2408] Yeah.

[2409] Well, also, like, if you're at E3, like, don't use things that require radio signals to work because...

[2410] That place is bombarded with them.

[2411] We just have to figure the amount of bandwidth.

[2412] Granted, that screen is small, but pushing that amount of image data back and forth has probably taken up a lot of wireless bandwidth.

[2413] I wonder what tech they're using.

[2414] I don't know.

[2415] It was all Bluetooth on the Wii, right?

[2416] Yep.

[2417] So it still has to have Bluetooth at least.

[2418] On live.

[2419] I don't know.

[2420] They're using wireless on live technology?

[2421] On wireless, on live.

[2422] One.

[2423] Redbox is renting games.

[2424] You guys know Redbox?

[2425] You know Redbox?

[2426] Yeah, there's like Kmart.

[2427] Drop a DVD and things.

[2428] None of them near my house.

[2429] Yeah, it's maybe more of a suburbs thing, but like out in front of 7 -Elevens and shit.

[2430] Oh, really?

[2431] They have inside a Lucky's.

[2432] There are some that are inside the shopping centers, but like, you know, the same places you might find a Coinstar.

[2433] Yes, yes.

[2434] Or like a UFO.

[2435] UFO catcher.

[2436] Yeah, UFO catcher.

[2437] Safeway kind of thing.

[2438] Yes.

[2439] Grocery store.

[2440] Yeah, and end of the checkout aisle right down there.

[2441] Yeah, get you on the way out.

[2442] Yep, yep, yep.

[2443] Inside of CVS, you may find one.

[2444] They've been testing this stuff forever.

[2445] This was just the nationwide rollout that they finally...

[2446] How do you sign up for an account?

[2447] You don't.

[2448] You put a credit card in to get the disc out, and then they've got your credit card.

[2449] So you don't run off with the disc.

[2450] It was only $2 a day or something.

[2451] Selection's incredibly limited.

[2452] Right, because it's just whatever's in that box.

[2453] If you go to their website and type in...

[2454] They have a games page, and it's only a handful of games from specific publishers.

[2455] in kind of a weird way.

[2456] Oh, yeah.

[2457] You want to hear what's out there?

[2458] You want a copy of Tron Evolution.

[2459] Well, come on.

[2460] They got it.

[2461] Oh, yeah, I do.

[2462] Duke Nukem.

[2463] Like L .A. Noire, but only the PS3 version.

[2464] So they've got Brink, Black Ops, Duke Nukem, Infamous 2, Just Dance 2, L .A. Noire, Lego Pirates, Michael Jackson, Red Faction Armageddon, Rio, Transformers, and You Don't Know Jack.

[2465] Like a little random, but also like, all right, what are the broadest and most popular kind of games that are out right now?

[2466] How is that online stuff working for rentals, like the online codes?

[2467] Do they have rental discs, or is everybody using a free trailer?

[2468] for that stuff?

[2469] Because once you free trial, if you get that disc back again, you can't...

[2470] It's like on your system?

[2471] Oh, oh, oh.

[2472] Yeah, exactly.

[2473] If there's a game with a 48 -hour trial like Mortal Kombat or something, if you rent it and activate the trial, then...

[2474] You can't rent it again, right?

[2475] You can't rent it again.

[2476] So are they pressing rental discs for that stuff?

[2477] None of these games have those kinds of features.

[2478] No, Mortal Kombat is in there.

[2479] It's on that list.

[2480] I don't understand what you're asking.

[2481] Then if you rent it again, you can't play the online.

[2482] Unless you buy the code.

[2483] Unless you buy the code.

[2484] The 48 -hour trial is tied to your gamertag.

[2485] Right.

[2486] So I'm asking, are they pressing?

[2487] You know, Blu -rays have those rental copies out of all the trailers in front of them.

[2488] I was wondering if they were pressing Gamefly rental discs for Mortal Kombat that don't have the trial locked on it.

[2489] Still not understood.

[2490] No, it has nothing to do with the disc.

[2491] You don't get to play the online if you rent it.

[2492] Okay, that seems like a really bad idea.

[2493] That's why they have those codes in the first place.

[2494] But for a rental company to rent this and say, hey, you can play this for 40 hours.

[2495] Yeah, the publishers don't want that to happen.

[2496] That's not to their advantage.

[2497] Why not?

[2498] because they want to sell those games for $60 and not have them rented.

[2499] Rental companies are still going to be a viable market to make money from.

[2500] They have to purchase.

[2501] I still don't understand the question.

[2502] And it's not like the game is completely locked out.

[2503] So my question is, if you rent Mortal Kombat from Gameplay...

[2504] You go to Netflix and you rent the disc and it doesn't have all the features on it because they press specific versions of those discs.

[2505] He's talking about a...

[2506] A rental Gamefly version of Mortal Kombat that you don't have to put in an online code for so that you can play the online during the...

[2507] session of your rental.

[2508] No, that's why it's a 48 hour trial.

[2509] It's because you start that when you get the rental disc and play it.

[2510] Because the free trial is there.

[2511] I'm not really asking.

[2512] I guess I was asking if there's a version of that.

[2513] It's 48 hours.

[2514] That's two days.

[2515] Are you suggesting that they would want to prevent you from playing the multiplayer in any way?

[2516] No, I'm suggesting that they would press a disc that wouldn't lock you out after 48 hours on a rental.

[2517] Oh, no. Yeah, no, they don't.

[2518] And I don't see why they would do that.

[2519] There's no impetus to the publishers to go out of their way for the rental companies.

[2520] If the rental companies want to buy the games from them for $60 or at retailer cost or whatever it is that Redbox or Gamefly is buying them from, all those publishers are going to be happy to continue with that relationship, but they're not going to go out of their way.

[2521] There's obviously incentive for Blu -ray people to make rental versions of movies at some point.

[2522] Right.

[2523] But that same thing is being covered by these online passes.

[2524] The reason that they create rental versions of Blu -rays is so that you don't get all the sweet extra features, the commentary tracks, the behind -the -scenes, making -of shit.

[2525] They are basically treating the multiplayer as that stuff, but they're throttling it with these online codes that you're only getting with your new copies.

[2526] Also, Netflix operates at what is probably orders of magnitude, more capacity than these guys.

[2527] Than Gamefly?

[2528] Yeah.

[2529] Well, then Gamefly.

[2530] Redbox does some fucking business on their film stuff.

[2531] For movies, yeah.

[2532] I'm talking about for games, though.

[2533] I think Netflix probably still outruns Redbox, but Redbox is a...

[2534] Are they catching up?

[2535] Is that a significant force?

[2536] It's a significant force because it's tech -free.

[2537] It is a fucking kiosk that you walk up to, a disc pops out, you go home, and that's that.

[2538] And then there's an impetus to bring it back the next day, right?

[2539] Exactly.

[2540] Every day you get charged, right?

[2541] Is that how that works?

[2542] You've got to punch a credit card number or a debit card into there, so they're just going to keep charging you.

[2543] Jeff, you and I were talking about this some before.

[2544] This seems a lot higher stakes, like a lot riskier because you were talking about $60 games, not maybe $20 Blu -rays for being inside this box.

[2545] I wonder how often red boxes get knocked over.

[2546] Except some of them are outside places?

[2547] Yeah, some of them are driving over with your pickup.

[2548] Put it inside.

[2549] Wrap a chain around it, drag it off.

[2550] Get the sweet copies of Brink.

[2551] It seems like the only ones at least near me that are outside are at 7 -Elevens, which are open all night.

[2552] So at least there'd be someone there, I guess.

[2553] Nobody would ever knock over a 7 -Eleven.

[2554] Yeah, but that one out on Lakeville, the red box is kind of off to the side.

[2555] Let's go steal that red box.

[2556] You're saying there's eyeballs usually.

[2557] Yeah.

[2558] Right.

[2559] Someone would hear it.

[2560] Right.

[2561] If you drug away a...

[2562] What would you do, really?

[2563] I don't know.

[2564] You knock over a red box?

[2565] I would set it up in my house and rent movies from it.

[2566] Like, yay!

[2567] Shallow Hal is in.

[2568] That is like the perfect number one red box movie.

[2569] Oh, good.

[2570] Crash.

[2571] I love that you knock over a red box and then plug it in.

[2572] And be like, right.

[2573] When do you set up this red box?

[2574] We must have had one there.

[2575] They're all over the place.

[2576] I don't know.

[2577] This guy has one out in front of his house.

[2578] I don't know.

[2579] Makes sense.

[2580] All right, fine.

[2581] Now I get the red box money.

[2582] Oh, so Patrick Klepek is so excited about this.

[2583] The Respawn guys, Weston Zampella, they're...

[2584] Their complaint?

[2585] Yes, against Activision.

[2586] We'll be going to trial.

[2587] They're not settling this out of court.

[2588] At least not yet.

[2589] Not yet.

[2590] Still could.

[2591] Yeah, but the current course of action, and again, Patrick, I think, is giddy with excitement over this.

[2592] How's he going to fit a fedora over all that hair?

[2593] He's going to have to get a really big fedora.

[2594] His head's not that big.

[2595] He's probably fine.

[2596] Good -sized hats.

[2597] Yeah.

[2598] So this is on its current course of action going to actually go into a courtroom.

[2599] Yeah, this ended up just in open court.

[2600] It would be really interesting to see all that stuff unfold.

[2601] It's not the sort of stuff that we get to look at very often.

[2602] Yeah, the potential for them pulling back the curtain and revealing a lot of stuff about how these companies operate could be very, very interesting.

[2603] I have to imagine this will settle.

[2604] Yeah, that's where I'm putting my money.

[2605] Bobby Kotick is just out for fucking blood.

[2606] Right.

[2607] And, like, won't even play ball.

[2608] Yeah.

[2609] And he's just like, I'm not even taking these guys too much.

[2610] I'm not going to get pushed around by these fuckers.

[2611] Let's go.

[2612] Yeah.

[2613] He's emboldened by his big screen appearance.

[2614] I'm sure he is.

[2615] Brad Pitt told him to do it.

[2616] He got an agent.

[2617] He got a publicist.

[2618] Don't fuck you like that, Bobby.

[2619] All right, Brad.

[2620] Good talk.

[2621] Now, fuck off.

[2622] I wish I had a better source for this, but I have gotten the impression somewhere that whatever Respawn is doing is in some way being obstructed by this business.

[2623] You have lawsuits hanging over your head and all this other stuff and all the stuff that's gone back and forth.

[2624] Remember what Activision did with Brutal Legend.

[2625] Yeah, totally.

[2626] They almost held it hostage.

[2627] You can envision as soon as a game gets announced.

[2628] Activision coming out and saying, we own that.

[2629] Those are our profits.

[2630] That specific scenario is exactly why I wonder if there's some kind of personal vendetta involved here.

[2631] At the very least, it's something that needs to be out of the way before a game can probably even get announced.

[2632] It's keeping them from announcing and talking about it.

[2633] I really hope this goes to trial.

[2634] You're probably right.

[2635] There are too many lawyers involved in this that understand the risks of this going into open court.

[2636] they would do everything in their power to keep that from happening.

[2637] Yeah.

[2638] Send Patrick down to the courtroom.

[2639] He is ready to go.

[2640] He is raring to go.

[2641] He is chomping at the fucking bit.

[2642] We'll need like a satellite truck.

[2643] And he was so fucking excited when he read that he was like jumping out.

[2644] We'll also need a court illustrator.

[2645] Court illustrator.

[2646] Court illustrated is a. You get that free with the football phone.

[2647] Wheels of Justice turns so slowly, though.

[2648] Like he was saying, it could be next year before the trial actually starts.

[2649] That's enough time for him to get a nice suit, head down.

[2650] Two suits.

[2651] We'll get our remote.

[2652] We're outside the courtroom drama.

[2653] Here they come.

[2654] Here comes Buddy.

[2655] Buddy, Buddy, you have anything to say about this?

[2656] While we're talking about executives, Strauss Zelnick from 2K is saying, yeah, guess what?

[2657] There's more Duke Nukem on the way.

[2658] Don't you worry.

[2659] I was not worried about that.

[2660] You should be.

[2661] You fucking should be.

[2662] I was worried about...

[2663] That's what I had already made peace with.

[2664] You already know you're only going to play Nintendo games on the Wii U. I already know they're going to keep fucking making Duke Nukem games.

[2665] They didn't get you for like 30 seconds of that ending being like, oh, no, that's it.

[2666] Duke's dead.

[2667] Just kidding.

[2668] Duke's not dead.

[2669] Spoiler.

[2670] The ending makes no sense at all.

[2671] It was terrible.

[2672] It was terrible.

[2673] It was really bad.

[2674] Yeah, but of course there's going to be more Duke Nukem.

[2675] And also what's great in this interview is Zelnick basically says, like, yeah, you don't like Duke Nukem.

[2676] Don't fucking play it.

[2677] Get out of my face with that.

[2678] My advice also.

[2679] Strauss Zelnick should start writing reviews.

[2680] The only thing that was weird and surprising about the story to me is that it was Zelnick and not Randy Pitchford out there saying this.

[2681] It's like Gearbox owns the Duke IP.

[2682] Like Take -Two would certainly be in a position to publish that stuff, but they're not the ones necessarily that – it seems like to me they shouldn't be the ones out there promising this stuff.

[2683] This was part of a larger – this wasn't like – This was a Forbes interview or something?

[2684] Yeah, this was a Forbes interview.

[2685] So this is primarily about financials.

[2686] But right now the thing to talk about financially with 2K – Like, you're going to talk about L .A. Noire some, but you're also going to talk about Duke Nukem because it is current.

[2687] I have no doubt that Take -Two would be the one to publish subsequent Duke Nukem games.

[2688] It just seems weird that they're not, you know, they don't control that brand.

[2689] So it kind of is weird for them to be out there being the ones talking about this stuff.

[2690] I guess I just don't know the nature of the publishing deal that they had with 3D Realms as it relates to Duke Nukem.

[2691] So, yeah, I don't know.

[2692] I mean, Randy was out there right after that PAX announcement last year saying we are the owners of the Duke Nukem IP.

[2693] Right.

[2694] Then how did 2K cancel Duke Nukem Forever?

[2695] Well, they didn't cancel it.

[2696] They stopped funding.

[2697] They just stopped funding.

[2698] 3D Realms, from George Broussard's own post -history, they funded most of the development themselves, but Take -Two put some money in.

[2699] Okay.

[2700] And they stopped doing that at some point.

[2701] And they just stopped development.

[2702] I guess Take -Two inherited...

[2703] It was like a GT Interactive deal.

[2704] Didn't they buy a GT or they merge with GT Interactive?

[2705] renamed themselves to GTA I can't remember how that was whatever it was corporate lineage is not like the publishing deal for Duke Nukem Forever goes way back beyond yeah take two any currently existing corporations or humans pretty much all the people involved in that deal are now dead by their own hand most of them before the earth's core cooled Duke Nukem Forever was in development Duke Nukem was born on a molten planet indeed Duke Nukem accreted Duke Nukem created life, okay?

[2706] Before the development of Duke Nukem, there were not even single cells.

[2707] He's saying we have to go back in time and kill Duke Nukem.

[2708] We have to go back before time existed if we want to kill Duke Nukem.

[2709] In order to make apple pie from scratch first.

[2710] You have to create Duke Nukem forever.

[2711] Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary is going to support Kinect, so get really angry about that.

[2712] It's going to have a feature in it.

[2713] How dare they?

[2714] How dare they?

[2715] I thought the whole idea was to faithfully recreate Halo.

[2716] Why would they saddle it with this horrible technology?

[2717] I'm so angry.

[2718] Did somebody actually get angry?

[2719] Yeah.

[2720] Really?

[2721] Yeah.

[2722] Oh, man. I'm sorry I missed that.

[2723] Yeah, people were all having a tizz.

[2724] It was such a great week and a half for people being angry on the internet.

[2725] Just tizzies all over the place.

[2726] I'm really sorry I missed any of it.

[2727] Just stomping their feet and...

[2728] Asking for their bottle.

[2729] It's awesome.

[2730] Did they say what that feature would be?

[2731] No, I don't think they have.

[2732] You know what?

[2733] But what they're saying is like, they're like, dude, it's going to be optional.

[2734] Like, just calm.

[2735] Oh, they actually said that.

[2736] Yeah, right.

[2737] Great.

[2738] Yeah, just come on.

[2739] It's Halo.

[2740] Like, use your fucking head.

[2741] Of course it's optional.

[2742] Like, they should have come out and said, are you fucking people, stupid?

[2743] This is Halo.

[2744] We know it's Halo.

[2745] The whole point of this project is a faithful recreation of the original Halo.

[2746] Do you think we're going to force you?

[2747] What the fuck is wrong with you?

[2748] Shields on.

[2749] Christ.

[2750] Yeah, so you're just going to say lightsaber on.

[2751] Cortana shields up.

[2752] Cortana shields on.

[2753] Cortana.

[2754] I can't play this.

[2755] If I could talk to Cortana, that's a bonus.

[2756] That would be great.

[2757] What would you say to her?

[2758] You're a pretty blue lady.

[2759] Thanks.

[2760] John, follow the lights.

[2761] You know what?

[2762] That's the only voice sample they need to include is a patronizing thanks.

[2763] Thanks.

[2764] Man, I walked down a dark path and finished Halo The Fall of Reach a couple weeks ago.

[2765] And?

[2766] Is it bad?

[2767] Is it poorly written?

[2768] It's not terrible.

[2769] Oh, that's good.

[2770] I haven't read a lot of video game books, but as they go, in my experience...

[2771] Did it flesh out your Halo universe?

[2772] The weirdest thing about it is that the ending of that book and the ending of Halo Reach, the game, happened at the exact same time.

[2773] They are completely fucking different.

[2774] Like, no care or attention was paid whatsoever to recreating the events.

[2775] of the end of that book in that game.

[2776] It's bizarre.

[2777] The game was supposed to be the real story that the book didn't even tell you.

[2778] The events are not even compatible.

[2779] Reach falls into the sun.

[2780] It's not that dire or drastic.

[2781] How many video game books would you say you've read in your life?

[2782] If I can remember correctly, two.

[2783] I read that first Mass Effect one and then this.

[2784] Vinny, you've read some video games.

[2785] I've probably read more than I share.

[2786] It was the best one.

[2787] Those Mass Effect books are pretty good.

[2788] The first Dragon Age book is actually...

[2789] You know what was great about that first Mass Effect book was that it came out before the first game.

[2790] You had no visual reference or experience with this IP at all, but you got to know these characters and all these alien races and stuff, and you're just like, man, I want to see what that stuff looks like.

[2791] I want to shoot those guys now.

[2792] Kind of the same thing with the Dragon Age book.

[2793] Once the games come out and they start cramming stuff in there from the games, trying to cram in powers or moves in weird ways.

[2794] Then it turns into, like, the Star Wars prequels where you've got this, like, list of characters that you have to find a way to work in there in some awful, contrived way.

[2795] But even when you're, like, focusing on, like, okay, people know that this guy can do this specific thing, so now we feel compelled to incorporate that into the storytelling, even if it's not beneficial or necessary.

[2796] It always gets so bad.

[2797] I just wonder, like, if there is actually, like, good, like, actually good fiction to be had out there that's based on video games or if it's all just like, if it's all qualified in that same way.

[2798] A little bit.

[2799] Yeah.

[2800] It's all a little pulpy.

[2801] I think if you get good writers, good writers.

[2802] I mean, I don't mind pulpy.

[2803] The thing is, like, I'm always afraid of, like, it's just going to drag.

[2804] It's just going to be, like, these tedious ass, like, I've read no amount of video game fiction like that, so.

[2805] My fear is that it's going to be like it will ride entirely on the notion of, yeah, it's going to be characters and places from these games that you like.

[2806] The series that I've read have been slightly guilty page turners, but, I mean, they're entertaining in their own right.

[2807] The Fable book is not good.

[2808] The Fable book's no good?

[2809] I hear the book's on rails.

[2810] It's not on rails.

[2811] It's a choose -your -own -adventure book, all right?

[2812] It's not on rails.

[2813] But didn't it come with a sword?

[2814] Did it?

[2815] I thought it came with a free sword.

[2816] Like an in -game sword?

[2817] Yeah.

[2818] I think I grabbed it off your desk at some point, so I have no idea.

[2819] Sega got hacked.

[2820] And joined Club Sega.

[2821] Club Sega.

[2822] Club Sega, girl.

[2823] Shame on anyone if they gave credit card or personal information to Sega.

[2824] For what?

[2825] What does Sega even have?

[2826] They have something called the Sega Pass.

[2827] I think it might only exist in the UK, but I think it might be accessed to a bunch of retro games.

[2828] Weird.

[2829] I didn't know Sega collected information.

[2830] Yeah, everyone collects information.

[2831] Do you like Sonic?

[2832] Give me your email address.

[2833] Do you want to get on the Sonic newsletter?

[2834] Yeah.

[2835] I hear what Sonic's up to these days.

[2836] I would love to hear what Sonic is up to.

[2837] Hey, thanks for joining the Sonic Sonic Club.

[2838] Here's your free burger coupon.

[2839] All right.

[2840] On my birthday, I get a free scoop of ice cream.

[2841] I mean, it was just, it was like using a baseball.

[2842] It was like email addresses and passwords.

[2843] So I wasn't even a financial.

[2844] No, it wasn't even like credit card stuff.

[2845] Weird thing is.

[2846] God damn it.

[2847] Sega, when you get hacked, you can't even do it right.

[2848] The weird thing is that little sec, that group that's been out there fucking up everyone.

[2849] I think they took down a bunch of websites a couple of weeks ago or something.

[2850] You need like the CIA.

[2851] Yeah, those guys.

[2852] Apparently they've reached out and they're going to help Sega.

[2853] They've stated publicly that we're going to go destroy the hackers that did this to you because we love the Dreamcast.

[2854] Wow.

[2855] That's really weird.

[2856] That's really weird.

[2857] Oh, the internet.

[2858] So they're British then.

[2859] Actually, there was some kid that some British kid got arrested.

[2860] Today or yesterday or something that they were saying that potentially it was not the original Sony, like the Sony Pictures, like the stuff that these guys have been claiming credit for.

[2861] It was a little sad guy.

[2862] Yeah.

[2863] At least that was the story.

[2864] And then they immediately took Twitter and said like, no. But fucking who knows anymore.

[2865] That'd be great if they just start fighting each other.

[2866] It's one of those great things where you're seeing like.

[2867] news websites and just, like, news outlets taking quotes that are just not meant to be taken seriously.

[2868] They're just people fucking around on the internet.

[2869] They're like, well, they said they're going to do this.

[2870] It's like, fuck, come on.

[2871] I mean, I guess they have to take it at face value because, you know, maybe they mean it, right?

[2872] And they're obviously out there doing something, but it's just this...

[2873] It's always just so painful to watch.

[2874] It's that Oprah saying over 9 ,000 thing constantly now, and it's gone from like, it's really hilarious to just like, oh, God, people who don't know about the internet saying internet things on television just make me feel sick.

[2875] It's never a good feeling.

[2876] Yeah.

[2877] That's it for news.

[2878] Let's talk about some new releases for this week.

[2879] What's coming out this week?

[2880] Shadows.

[2881] Trenched.

[2882] Trench is coming out this week for Xbox Live Arcade.

[2883] Shadows of the Damned.

[2884] Right?

[2885] I keep on this.

[2886] Every time I say that, I'm like, no, that can't be right.

[2887] That's way too.

[2888] Rise of the...

[2889] Empires.

[2890] That's way too generic.

[2891] PS3, Xbox 360.

[2892] Alex really liked that game.

[2893] I want to play it.

[2894] Yeah, it sounds neat.

[2895] I guess we'll do a quick look.

[2896] The notion of a more playable Suda51 game is fairly exciting.

[2897] I love Studio 51's games, don't get me wrong, but it's rarely because of the, like, you kind of got to chew through the gameplay.

[2898] You rarely come away from them feeling like, I'm going to recommend this to everyone I know.

[2899] You're like, all right, there's one dude that I want to show a specific thing from this game because it's so fucking crazy.

[2900] But, yeah, so if...

[2901] Cocons are worth more than human life.

[2902] All right, check.

[2903] Got it.

[2904] But, you know, if you can get Shinji Mikami in there to say, like, dude, flip...

[2905] Just let me handle the gameplay part.

[2906] Handle the shooting part.

[2907] You go figure out what to name your main character.

[2908] You go tell the world about the boner.

[2909] Garcia from Hotspur?

[2910] What else do you want this game?

[2911] Tell the world about the boner gun.

[2912] Bonerfest 9000?

[2913] Or no, Skullfest 9000.

[2914] Skullfest 9000.

[2915] Sorry.

[2916] Bonerfest 9000 was a...

[2917] I went to that last year.

[2918] It was messy.

[2919] From the people that brought you Gutfest 89.

[2920] Oh, we need to go back to Gutfest.

[2921] Restart Gutfest.

[2922] I don't know what else is coming out this week.

[2923] I think that's it.

[2924] Did I say Fear 3?

[2925] I think that Lucha Fury game or whatever, the side -scrolling beat -em -up with Luchador cartoon guys, that might be out on Xbox Live Arcade this week as well.

[2926] Okay, I couldn't find any other Xbox Live Arcade releases for this week.

[2927] Is there some We Play something?

[2928] Is that out this week?

[2929] We Play Motion is, I think, out this week.

[2930] Is Dungeon Siege out?

[2931] Dungeon Siege is out this week, yes.

[2932] Dungeon Siege, yes.

[2933] That's true.

[2934] Yes, yes, yes, yes.

[2935] We suck.

[2936] Let's move on.

[2937] And then Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time just shipped this past Sunday.

[2938] It counts as this week.

[2939] Yeah, it totally does.

[2940] Okay, yeah, found it.

[2941] Great.

[2942] Found it.

[2943] Emails.

[2944] Emails.

[2945] What?

[2946] Emails.

[2947] Bombcast at giantbomb .com.

[2948] It's a combative podcast.

[2949] This first all comes in from Pedro.

[2950] I actually feel great.

[2951] I slept last night, so that was awesome.

[2952] I'm just feeling warm.

[2953] It's always good.

[2954] I'm damp in here.

[2955] This is what it feels like in Petaluma outside right now.

[2956] Do you guys have air conditioning up there?

[2957] I do.

[2958] Most people do not.

[2959] I thought it got hot enough up there to warrant it.

[2960] Like a couple of days.

[2961] Not that much.

[2962] But it's a hellish week.

[2963] Sleep under the deck.

[2964] My heater, I can just turn on fans without heat.

[2965] That's usually enough to deal with it indoors.

[2966] Between that and careful management of windows open, windows closed, you can get by.

[2967] Pedro J. Rodriguez Figueroa.

[2968] writes in to say, hey, say, hi, Momcast, I recently played Jet Force Gemini and began wondering, with all of these remakes being released on Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network, could this be released on said platforms?

[2969] Keep up the great jorb.

[2970] I don't know where the Rare IP splits and who has what.

[2971] Wait, does anybody besides Microsoft have anything?

[2972] Well, I mean, they couldn't do GoldenEye because Nintendo was involved with that stuff, right?

[2973] Right.

[2974] Man, I don't know.

[2975] And they couldn't obviously do Donkey Kong Country because that's freaking Donkey Kong.

[2976] Straight up not theirs.

[2977] Man, I'm really confused.

[2978] Did any IP go with Rare?

[2979] Well, I mean, Perfect Dark.

[2980] Yeah.

[2981] Yeah, you're right.

[2982] Grabbed by the ghoulies.

[2983] Saber Wolf.

[2984] I think they've used Saber Wolf art on...

[2985] greeting cards and stuff like that.

[2986] But they made a DS Saber Wolf game, or a GBA.

[2987] I guess they were still Nintendo at that time, weren't they?

[2988] Or what about Mr. Pants?

[2989] What about Mr. Pants?

[2990] What about Mr. Pants?

[2991] What about Mr. Pants?

[2992] What about Mr. Pants?

[2993] What about Mr. Pants?

[2994] You see, he's alright.

[2995] Pants means underwear, you guys.

[2996] Fuck that.

[2997] God damn it.

[2998] Stop subverting the language.

[2999] Making it all weird, UK.

[3000] I speak American.

[3001] I know what pants are, okay?

[3002] I don't think spastic is that bad of a word either while we're on the topic.

[3003] Really?

[3004] Is that a...

[3005] Yeah.

[3006] I did not know that.

[3007] Fanny.

[3008] Yeah.

[3009] Fanny?

[3010] Yeah, that's the most fun one, really.

[3011] I agree.

[3012] Over here, that word could not be more innocuous.

[3013] Yeah.

[3014] Like, it's as whatever.

[3015] Yeah, no, it is a almost nursery -like word.

[3016] It means derriere.

[3017] Yes.

[3018] But in, like, the cutest, like, little kid sort of way.

[3019] Totally.

[3020] Not the case with the UK family.

[3021] No. Next email comes in from Nico in Belgium.

[3022] Hey, Bomb Crew.

[3023] Quick question for Brad or anyone who played Infamous 1 and or 2.

[3024] During the Infamous 2 quick look, you and Patrick talked about how much both of you loved collecting blast shards.

[3025] I repeatedly caught myself peeing and ogling the mini -map long after I was done collecting all of the blast shards.

[3026] I recall having the same problem in Infamous 1.

[3027] Have you experienced this as well, or do I just have a minor case of lingering OCD?

[3028] Yeah, I mean, I definitely was hitting that thing constantly as I was running around.

[3029] But even, like, once you had gotten all of the shards?

[3030] Well, I didn't get all of them, but even before that point, I stopped doing that.

[3031] Because at some point, you get so much ammo, because that's what you get from those things.

[3032] It goes up every 10 and then every 20 and 30.

[3033] You get, like, another little notch on your ammo thing, but at some point, you've got so much that it just doesn't really matter.

[3034] Vinny?

[3035] Yeah, just stop pinging it when you're done, man. Did you finish?

[3036] Did you get all the blast charts?

[3037] In the first one.

[3038] Yeah.

[3039] But I didn't run around and continue to ping it.

[3040] I think he's just saying, like, just kind of as it is.

[3041] I'm running around and bored.

[3042] It definitely turns into, like, a nervous tick a little bit.

[3043] Yeah, sure.

[3044] But I always feel like I'm going to wear out the clicking on the stick.

[3045] Even though now you can do it on the shoulder button.

[3046] Kind of.

[3047] But it's used for something else.

[3048] Well, you drain electricity with that button, but if you're not in range of anything you can drain from, it'll ping.

[3049] But, yeah, I always feel like I'm going to wear it out because I keep clicking it in.

[3050] I don't know.

[3051] Buttons were made to be pressed, Vinny.

[3052] Don't worry about it.

[3053] Next email comes in from Scott in Guilford, England.

[3054] Hey, Bomb Squad, you often mention that you can't fully judge a game before it's finished slash released, and I was wondering if you have ever seen a game at an event before it's finished that you think does not look very good, but when it's released, it turns out to be a good game.

[3055] The classic example I think we'd probably always go back to is Grand Theft Auto 3.

[3056] Yeah, definitely.

[3057] Definitely saw that at E3, but the summer before its release came out that November?

[3058] November, yeah.

[3059] Looked real rough.

[3060] Crashy, bad frame rate.

[3061] Literally, dude ran around the city for a while at like 10 frames a second.

[3062] Yikes.

[3063] Got out of the car, shut down a helicopter, and then the game locked up.

[3064] So you didn't even really get a sense.

[3065] So it was like, this doesn't look so awesome.

[3066] You didn't even get a sense of what open world meant at that point, did you?

[3067] Right, no. Okay.

[3068] I mean, whatever.

[3069] I played Grand Theft Auto, so I knew what sort of structure I would expect.

[3070] The basic ideas that they were going for, yeah.

[3071] But then here it is in 3D.

[3072] It's like, wow, that looks terrible.

[3073] And then they also showed a state of emergency and were like, this looks fucking awesome.

[3074] Because it's amazing.

[3075] Look at all those dudes on screen.

[3076] And it's ridiculous and bloody and colorful.

[3077] And that was our game of the show.

[3078] Fuck you, GTA 3.

[3079] History bore that choice out.

[3080] State of Emergency is fine.

[3081] It's a cool game in its day.

[3082] I bet it did not age particularly well.

[3083] State of Emergency 2 is like a shit steak that they didn't process to make it back into the steak.

[3084] So forget the steak part?

[3085] Yeah.

[3086] Without all that steak.

[3087] I want to say there was some Nintendo game that I saw that's similarly, but I feel like they never show shit until it is...

[3088] Absolutely golden.

[3089] I don't know.

[3090] With Nintendo, there was some stuff that I saw and played and then it didn't come out and it was really confusing.

[3091] Like Echo Delta for the N64.

[3092] It was like this sub game they showed at Space World and played it and it was supposed to be out relatively soon.

[3093] It seemed like it was done.

[3094] It was like, oh, cool.

[3095] This seems all right.

[3096] I'm like, no, we're canning this.

[3097] Okay.

[3098] Like Star Fox 2, they showed it at CES.

[3099] They canned it.

[3100] You never know what's going to change.

[3101] They showed Twilight Princess at the E3 before the Wii came out, and you could hit a button on that controller to swing the sword.

[3102] And I was like, all right, this seems cool.

[3103] And then they took that out.

[3104] They used so many buttons on that controller for other stuff.

[3105] That's not why they took that out.

[3106] Come on.

[3107] Come on.

[3108] Yeah, you can never tell what they're going to change, and you can never tell when it's going to come together.

[3109] Oh, there are definitely times when you could tell, like, all right, this is – like, odds are this is probably not going to become an amazing game.

[3110] Yeah.

[3111] It's easier to spot the promise than anything else.

[3112] But, yeah, like the tech stuff.

[3113] You just have to ignore it when you're seeing stuff before it's done.

[3114] This next email comes in from Brian Mulligan regards to a desire for the return of mech games.

[3115] With the release of Trench this week, do you think there will be a slow but sure resurgence of the mech game genre?

[3116] I know about the early footage of Hawken, and I'm super excited, but more importantly wondering if there will ever be a MechWarrior 5.

[3117] They've been working on a MechWarrior for a while.

[3118] Nine years.

[3119] Not that long.

[3120] I forget who it is.

[3121] At some point, whoever it is that holds those IP rights said that we are going to try to make MechWarrior 5.

[3122] I think they're just calling it MechWarrior.

[3123] Yeah, maybe they are.

[3124] I mean, is Trench Hinge on its mech stuff?

[3125] No, no. Heat is not a consideration.

[3126] You don't have to go into water to cool down.

[3127] There's no eject button.

[3128] In the game, they don't even call them trenches.

[3129] They don't even call them mechs.

[3130] They call them VTs.

[3131] No. And, yeah, Brad Muir was talking about people giving him shit because he used the term mech to describe them.

[3132] You've got to stay on a message.

[3133] Mobile platforms.

[3134] Yeah, exactly.

[3135] All that nonsense.

[3136] I don't know if that style of game can, like the simulation style mech game.

[3137] So there's another email in here that's basically asking the same question about kind of the old school space sim.

[3138] And I feel like there's – I started thinking about it and I feel like for the old – like for that style of game or really anything that you're going to try and set in deep space, I feel like that's really hard to pull off when you don't have any point of reference.

[3139] Like I just mean like as far as like try to create a sense of place.

[3140] in outer space is really hard you mean like visually i mean i mean visually i mean like as far as like like what's your like you you really don't have level design all you have is like placement of stuff yeah you're totally right all you can do is it's more encounter design you know your mission design at the late 90s solution to that problem was to set everything inside a nebula like everywhere you looked it was like red and purple and orange and blue and it looked cool but it was It's completely outside the realm of reality.

[3141] But it's also – yeah, it's also the – I hate when that happens.

[3142] Fuck that.

[3143] But just the – no sense of up or down, like having no cardinal directions to use to – to move yourself around.

[3144] That's why they had co -pilots popping up in the corners of the screen and you get off the ship and see some menus there.

[3145] It's like all the Wing Commander stuff.

[3146] Even the most that we've seen of that style of play has been short sequences in something like Halo Reach in recent years.

[3147] And even then, you're kind of like, alright, I'm kind of glad that I'm done with that sequence.

[3148] What the hell is going on?

[3149] Let's get back to being on the ground and shooting dudes.

[3150] I don't know that that's really the reason why no one makes space sims anymore, though.

[3151] Yeah, they don't really make...

[3152] I mean, there's Ace Combat, but there's not really that many just pure...

[3153] You go from Ace Combat to Space Combat, you know what I'm saying?

[3154] But Ace Combat is like kind of the lone...

[3155] hold out of...

[3156] And that's not a sim.

[3157] Don't call that a flight sim.

[3158] That's an action.

[3159] I don't think Wing Commander was a space sim either.

[3160] In terms of what we're talking about...

[3161] I'm not joking.

[3162] You laugh, but I mean...

[3163] Like TIE Fighter?

[3164] Yeah, dude.

[3165] The range of things you had to do in those games was enormous.

[3166] It was not all just...

[3167] Diverting power.

[3168] And it was not all just like blow up those X -Wings.

[3169] It was like, okay...

[3170] No, those games are awesome.

[3171] It's like, well, you're escorting these freighters, but it turns out one of them is actually housing a rebel leader, so you've got to go scan and then switch to ion cannons to disable the engines and all this stuff.

[3172] There was a lot of stuff you did.

[3173] Free Space and Free Space 2 for me are the kind of space sim.

[3174] All those kinds of games.

[3175] They're kind of done.

[3176] They're beloved for a reason.

[3177] I don't know if the market's not there anymore or what.

[3178] Was this specifically about space sim games or just games in space?

[3179] Space sims.

[3180] Space sims.

[3181] Space Sims, which I think just kind of generally the question of how much of a market is there or incredibly complicated games like that.

[3182] I think at some point over the next five years, someone will do one.

[3183] Somebody get Larry Holland on the phone.

[3184] Someone will do it.

[3185] Someone will finally get their shit together and come up with a pitch that convinces someone to throw a lot of money at a Space Sim, and then they will put it out.

[3186] And it will either end up leading to some sort of fighting game -esque resurgence where you see other people kind of knocking it off and doing some stuff.

[3187] Or it'll...

[3188] ruin someone miserably and put the final nail on that coffin.

[3189] But I feel like this question comes up enough that it's getting to a point where that's probably just loud enough to where someone could get funding to do it.

[3190] In not like a Dark Star 1 sort of way.

[3191] Derek Smart.

[3192] Derek Smart's already, I mean, he's off working on an MMO that's coming out next year or something.

[3193] What happened to that last game he was working on?

[3194] Did that actually come out?

[3195] I think it came out.

[3196] All Aspects.

[3197] What was it called?

[3198] All Aspects.

[3199] Warfare.

[3200] Yeah.

[3201] You don't see too many Sim stuff on consoles anyway.

[3202] No. Well, there's that.

[3203] Was it?

[3204] I think it's called Dark Star 1.

[3205] Is that the?

[3206] We did the quick look of the Space Sim that's for Xbox 360.

[3207] Yes.

[3208] Like that is a Space Sim.

[3209] 4X.

[3210] It is that game.

[3211] How did it do?

[3212] It is a wing command.

[3213] No, no. Not well at all.

[3214] It was like kind of an updated port.

[3215] Like a cleaned up port of an older PC game that they brought over.

[3216] It seemed interesting from what I played of it.

[3217] So maybe as we swing back towards PCs, we'll see more Sim stuff, and then it'll be awesome, and then we'll come back to the next generation of consoles.

[3218] Yeah, like, oh, we can't make that stuff.

[3219] We're going to never fuck off with that.

[3220] I can't print out a keyboard layout and put that over your controller, so we're done.

[3221] I think someone will try one.

[3222] I agree, but I think it will be more of an indie route.

[3223] I think the indie route, that's already ongoing.

[3224] There are already people doing stuff like that right now.

[3225] Whether it's with existing engines that they're updating or whatever.

[3226] Like, they're all top -down or they're, like, kind of limited in some way.

[3227] There's some...

[3228] I wish I could remember.

[3229] There are totally people out there developing space sims right now.

[3230] Would you play a reskinned TIE Fighter?

[3231] Like, same content, like, all redone?

[3232] Yeah, I was just sitting here thinking about it.

[3233] Oh, wait, you mean still...

[3234] Same missions?

[3235] Same missions, same everything, just, like, modern graphics?

[3236] Yeah, I totally would.

[3237] Hell yeah.

[3238] Yeah, fuck yeah.

[3239] Or would you just leave it alone, don't touch it?

[3240] Go for it?

[3241] Who knows if it'll stand up.

[3242] That game came out...

[3243] 15 years ago.

[3244] Today's console controllers are much more capable of playing a game like that.

[3245] It's not going to be the ideal way to play it.

[3246] I would play it on a PC.

[3247] Would you really play it with a mouse and keyboard?

[3248] Because I played TIE Fighter with a Gravis gamepad.

[3249] So did I. But other hand on the mouse.

[3250] Yeah, other hand on the mouse for fine corrections and stuff.

[3251] Really hurriedly sort of hitting keys when necessary to divert your shield.

[3252] And on a PC, if you had the kind of dual analog stick game pad with some keyboard stuff to do the kind of, I think that would almost be the most decent way to play it.

[3253] More importantly, developers have gotten way better at figuring out how to translate.

[3254] Those, you know, mouse movement kind of stuff into.

[3255] Or analog joysticks or whatever.

[3256] Yeah, sure.

[3257] Use a Kinect.

[3258] Shut up.

[3259] Hands on the controller and then use Kinect to access your subsystems.

[3260] Kinect sensor required.

[3261] This is not better with Kinect.

[3262] Kinect for voice commands.

[3263] Yeah, that's what I mean.

[3264] Move your shields around.

[3265] Iron cannons on.

[3266] Yeah.

[3267] Lightsaber on.

[3268] Oh, no. Shields rear.

[3269] I turned on the lightsaber inside of my ship.

[3270] Everybody's dead.

[3271] That was a really bad idea.

[3272] All right.

[3273] One more email here from Jonathan Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

[3274] Hi, Bombcast.

[3275] I was wondering, with the critical consensus towards Duke Nukem Forever being almost universally poor, does this temper an expectation towards Gearbox's work on Aliens Colonial Marines?

[3276] Gearbox seems to make it loud and clear on Duke Nukem Forever that they were just finishing the work started by 3D Realms, but since that arguably ended up not being a good idea, does the thought of them resurrecting another semi -long development game now seem like less of a good idea?

[3277] Thanks a lot for the show.

[3278] Gearbox has always been the only developer on Colonial Marines as far as I know.

[3279] So it's not quite the same situation.

[3280] And who knows how much stuff they did before that they are bringing forward or how far they were in pre -production or actual production or whatever.

[3281] Also, I don't see how the quality of Duke has any bearing on that whatsoever.

[3282] Yeah.

[3283] I mean, somebody else made that game.

[3284] Right.

[3285] Yeah, I don't really see that as being a thing.

[3286] But, like, I mean, you saw Aliens, right?

[3287] Yeah, what tempers my excitement about Aliens is seeing Aliens.

[3288] Right, sure, that's totally fair.

[3289] That's more of that, of, like, seeing that demo.

[3290] And, of course, Randy Pitchford is an amazing, like, Pitch Man. It's right there in the name.

[3291] I know.

[3292] It's almost like he was born for it.

[3293] His enthusiasm and excitement about fucking everything that he is involved in is – it feels very genuine and it can be quite infectious for sure.

[3294] And it's – it really sounds like he loves this stuff and he's very excited about it.

[3295] But watching that demo kind of forced me to think about aliens in a much more like – critical kind of way than, than I think that I ever have and made me realize that.

[3296] you know, because part of it was that Randy Pitchford during this, this was like at E3, they had a little theater show and they ran through this section of the game.

[3297] And like one of the things that Randy Pitchford kept talking about is like, yeah, you get to be one of these badass space marines.

[3298] And I realized that like what's great about aliens, like what makes aliens work is that it's these tough guy space marines getting fucking worked by these aliens.

[3299] Yeah, like the aliens are like unstoppable.

[3300] Yeah, it's like you see like, okay, these guys are cocky and tough and by any sort of human standards, they should be, you know, pretty badass, sure.

[3301] But then as soon as they face a handful of these aliens...

[3302] Or not even, but like one.

[3303] Yeah, they face one.

[3304] They're lucky if they get out of there alive.

[3305] It's the parable of fucking nature versus man's hubris.

[3306] That's the whole nature of that story.

[3307] So to see this demo where, yes, a lot of Marines are dying, but they're also just one -shotting aliens and smoking these things pretty quickly.

[3308] Once you start working in the necessary video game volumes for...

[3309] both like, you know, friendly characters, friendly NPCs, and, you know, the evil aliens.

[3310] Also, I was really disappointed that within that demo they had to create a new type of alien.

[3311] I fucking hate that.

[3312] I hate all of the, like, extra fictional alien stuff where it's like, well, this bigger, tougher kind of alien that you've never seen before.

[3313] Yeah, we got this predator in your aliens.

[3314] It's like just, you know what, regular -ass aliens are pretty good on their own.

[3315] Those things are already the stuff of nightmares.

[3316] Come on.

[3317] Like, yeah, just James Cameron had the right idea.

[3318] Just lots of them.

[3319] Just more of them.

[3320] That'll do.

[3321] Would you want to spend six to eight hours fighting the same fucking aliens over and over again?

[3322] I don't want to spend any hours fighting any aliens.

[3323] But again, it's more fundamental than creating new types of aliens to fight.

[3324] I think given the source material and kind of what they have to work with, I don't think you can blame them for trying to find new aliens.

[3325] Like, yeah, like, fictionally it's dumb.

[3326] But there are even, like, others that already exist.

[3327] Like, there's already variants.

[3328] Like, this is the idea of inventing new types of weirdo.

[3329] Dark troopers.

[3330] Like, alien.

[3331] Yeah, exactly.

[3332] It's not a new idea in and of itself.

[3333] So, you know, there are other people that have a stronger affinity.

[3334] Like, I love Aliens.

[3335] I think it's a fucking amazing movie, but.

[3336] Up until when?

[3337] What?

[3338] All of them.

[3339] No, I said Aliens.

[3340] That movie.

[3341] Okay.

[3342] I really like Alien.

[3343] Yeah.

[3344] It's amazing.

[3345] I really like Aliens.

[3346] All right.

[3347] Let's stop there.

[3348] And yeah.

[3349] I've seen the others also.

[3350] Never liked that stuff.

[3351] Really?

[3352] Yeah.

[3353] Not even the first one?

[3354] Not even the camera one?

[3355] No, not even.

[3356] Dude.

[3357] So there are people that have a much stronger affinity for it that maybe just seeing this stuff and getting to interact with it, maybe that's enough.

[3358] I don't know.

[3359] That franchise has been so all over the place anyway.

[3360] You can kind of do whatever you want.

[3361] Alien Doom was pretty cool.

[3362] It had that pulse rifle sound effect, which as far as I'm concerned was the one cool thing about anything related to aliens was that noise.

[3363] Motion Tracker is pretty awesome too.

[3364] But not from a gameplay perspective.

[3365] Whenever they try to do that motion tracker stuff, it's always so ham -fisted.

[3366] And the Aliens TC, it was awesome.

[3367] Wow.

[3368] But that already exists.

[3369] Let's go play Aliens TC.

[3370] Yeah, I don't know.

[3371] We'll see.

[3372] We'll see if it even gets to come out, because also Sega still has managed to not ship a...

[3373] Oh, wait, I'm sorry.

[3374] They did that...

[3375] Aliens vs. Pirate of the game.

[3376] They should just set it in a time like they just call it aliens and play as a badass space marine.

[3377] In colonial times.

[3378] Yeah, this place takes place before the aliens show up and these guys had to have guns and fighting somebody at some point.

[3379] You're just fighting other space marines.

[3380] There were space marines already.

[3381] They must be having a war.

[3382] Just have them fight each other.

[3383] And one alien shows up in the last five minutes and kills you.

[3384] And kills everybody.

[3385] I guess the other thing is, can this game have a happy ending?

[3386] Doesn't this game end with everyone dead?

[3387] Hopefully.

[3388] I don't know.

[3389] Is it set in a specific point in the fiction?

[3390] Yeah, it takes place directly after the events of Aliens.

[3391] They are going back to that planet after they blow up the thermal towers and smoke everything there.

[3392] Like the ship that everyone was on.

[3393] But something has survived.

[3394] Right.

[3395] Seems like a bad idea.

[3396] Did they not watch the movie?

[3397] I think they're there for, like, cleanup.

[3398] I think they're there to get rid of the last of the Zenos.

[3399] They're on the ground.

[3400] I think the other problem is, like, in that demo, they show a...

[3401] like a lot of different space Marines that you're like rolling with and then they're getting eaten.

[3402] Like part of what works in, in aliens is like the tight crew getting picked off one by one.

[3403] If just like random space Marine that I'm on patrol with, if something pops out of a vent, grabs by the face and rips them off, like, Oh, okay.

[3404] Well, that guy's gone.

[3405] There'll be another guy there soon.

[3406] Yeah.

[3407] Like my, my investment in side dude is not very high at that point.

[3408] So, uh, I feel like that's potentially probably – it seems like it's hard stuff to try.

[3409] It seems obvious.

[3410] It seems like fucking that's – they invented space marines.

[3411] You've got crazy enemies that everyone recognizes, moody and atmospheric.

[3412] Like this seems like a perfect fodder for a video game.

[3413] But I feel like no one has really truly ever cracked it.

[3414] Well, I think like Jeff was saying, it's very hard to take that into a video game without adding all the video game stuff to it.

[3415] I mean think about aliens.

[3416] There's like – Two guns.

[3417] There's basically one gun, right?

[3418] There's the pulse rifle and the flamethrower.

[3419] I think the flamethrower is on the pulse rifle.

[3420] Is it like an attachment on the bottom?

[3421] There's basically one gun.

[3422] They've got the handgun, too, and they've got the grenades.

[3423] And you know what?

[3424] They show the...

[3425] They show both the pulse rifle and the power lifters in that demo.

[3426] Right.

[3427] They're busting out.

[3428] They're big, hip -mounted, heavy machine guys.

[3429] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[3430] And then the whole point of that movie is don't show the bad guy.

[3431] You show the bad guy once or twice in dark shots and people get sucked into walls.

[3432] But they never really storm en masse to fight anybody.

[3433] It's always like, they're coming through the ceilings.

[3434] It's quick cuts.

[3435] So it's a hard thing, I think, to turn into it.

[3436] Like, on paper, the elements are there, Space Marines versus aliens, but capture that tension and stuff.

[3437] Well, you know, also just with the amount of aliens -related fiction that's out there now as compared to then, like, you know, there are no real secrets about these guys and what they are and how they operate, you know?

[3438] So, like, that Jaws -like aspect of don't show them, like, there's no impact there with that.

[3439] Right, and it's kind of gone.

[3440] Like, if you went and made a survival horror game set in the Aliens universe, like, that might be truer to the fiction, but you would still...

[3441] You know they're aliens.

[3442] It's the same thing that happened in Predator.

[3443] If they make you helpless enough, it doesn't make you any less afraid.

[3444] Yeah.

[3445] It's the same thing that happened in Predator where you just need, there's no more, like, there's one Predator and he'll kick your ass.

[3446] It's like, no, there are like 27.

[3447] There's a whole planet.

[3448] I don't know.

[3449] I'm the guy that fights with dual blades.

[3450] Yeah.

[3451] It's the Transformers problem.

[3452] You know, like with the movie and even the games and stuff where they're just like, we need to create a bunch of fodder Transformers.

[3453] for you to fight because you have to be blowing guys up every three minutes.

[3454] I wish they didn't show the Transformers.

[3455] Like original Transformers.

[3456] Yeah, exactly.

[3457] It's just cars and trucks and planes and tape recorders.

[3458] Once in a while you hear something in the background.

[3459] It's actually just Cannonball Run is a Transformers movie.

[3460] It's what they don't show you that really is.

[3461] Thanks to everyone who wrote in.

[3462] Once again, bombcast.

[3463] At giantbomb .com is our email address.

[3464] Gents, we are out of time.

[3465] What did I say?

[3466] Trenched for TNT this week.

[3467] Be sure to tune in.

[3468] 4 p .m. Pacific Daylight Time.

[3469] It'll be us.

[3470] It'll be a bunch of Double Fine hooligans.

[3471] I believe we may have some codes for the game to give away and maybe some other goodies.

[3472] So be sure to...

[3473] Tune in for that.

[3474] Happy hour on Friday.

[3475] Free this week.

[3476] For everyone.

[3477] Yeah.

[3478] It's the end of June.

[3479] Yes.

[3480] It is the free week.

[3481] Jesus.

[3482] That's right.

[3483] July.

[3484] Welcome to it.

[3485] And stay tuned.

[3486] In the near future, Scrub League is coming back.

[3487] Yeah.

[3488] Getting a lot of interest.

[3489] I saw you.

[3490] Yeah.

[3491] I'm interested.

[3492] I did not write back, but I will.

[3493] Yeah.

[3494] We're going to – you know what?

[3495] I'm just going to say it.

[3496] We're going to play some fucking Pac -Man scrub league style here at the Whiskey Media offices.

[3497] And I have nothing else to say about that right now.

[3498] I think that pretty much describes all of it.

[3499] But, yeah, look for more details on that in the site in the near future.

[3500] Cool.

[3501] All right.

[3502] That's it.

[3503] We're done.

[3504] Thank you guys for hanging out, and we'll be back next week with another edition of the Janet Bobcast.