Giant Bombcast 02-08-2011

[0] But it's Tuesday, February the 8th, 2011, and you are listening to The Giant Bobcast.

[1] I'm your host, Ryan Davis, Vitti Caravella.

[2] Check at his watch.

[3] What day did you say it was?

[4] I said it was February the 8th.

[5] That's right.

[6] Yeah.

[7] The 8th.

[8] The 8th.

[9] 8th of February.

[10] It's the 8th of February.

[11] Jeff Gerstmann.

[12] What up, dude?

[13] Nothing.

[14] I don't know.

[15] Hey.

[16] How's it going?

[17] It's going okay.

[18] That's cool.

[19] Today is the 8th.

[20] It's the 8th.

[21] Brad Schumacher, do you agree?

[22] Let me get back to you on that.

[23] We're not talking about what day it is just yet.

[24] I'm going to be looking out of the side of my face the entire time because we have a new computer that we're trying to record this podcast on.

[25] Special fifth chair this week.

[26] Why do you have your laptop here still?

[27] Because I still need this for emails.

[28] Did you even check these microphones?

[29] Yeah, we're good.

[30] Will you quit talking out of the side of your face?

[31] No, the problem is that every time that I would go check email or look at a web browser on the machine that I'm recording on, it would lock up.

[32] I remember that.

[33] Yeah.

[34] Isn't this the iMac that died?

[35] Yeah.

[36] And yet we feel safe recording a podcast on it?

[37] Well, it's been resurrected by one Will Smith.

[38] Revitalized.

[39] Yeah, Tetz .com's Will Smith brought this computer back from the grave.

[40] Like I said, you feel safe recording a podcast on it.

[41] Oh, Tetz is Will Smith.

[42] No, then, no. I thought it was the 8th.

[43] I thought it was February the 8th.

[44] Welcome to the 8th.

[45] Exactly.

[46] Oh, already off to a rip -roaring start.

[47] I get to watch modern waveforms go by.

[48] Yeah, you don't be distracted by that.

[49] You sit there and just look at the...

[50] How does my laugh look?

[51] Did I look pretty cool?

[52] A few people know I can laugh in a perfect sine wave.

[53] Now you just need to post the waveform with this podcast.

[54] Follow along on your waveform.

[55] You can see the funny bits coming.

[56] Right.

[57] Oh, they laugh a lot right here.

[58] You can tell.

[59] I mean, that's how I edit it.

[60] I scrub through and I'm like, oh, a lot of stuff's happening.

[61] What's up?

[62] What's this?

[63] Great.

[64] What have you been playing?

[65] How you doing?

[66] Doing all right.

[67] Next segment.

[68] All right.

[69] Scene.

[70] Go on to the next thing.

[71] What have I been playing?

[72] You turn the tables on me?

[73] What else is new?

[74] Super Bowl.

[75] Did you ever go to the Super Bowl?

[76] I've never been to the Super Bowl.

[77] Super Bowl.

[78] You guys go to the Super Bowl?

[79] The big game.

[80] Football?

[81] I've never been to a professional football game.

[82] Same here.

[83] Amateur football?

[84] Yeah.

[85] Did you go to, like, Little League football?

[86] No, you go to, like, local college games or whatever.

[87] Like, I've been to those.

[88] Went to a Panthers game once.

[89] Yeah.

[90] How was that?

[91] Oh, wait.

[92] Not memorable.

[93] I went to an Arena League game once.

[94] Oh, man. What was it?

[95] San Jose Sabercats?

[96] Sure.

[97] That sounds right.

[98] I think that was the team.

[99] That was entertaining as shit, I have to say.

[100] Is that the XFL or is that something different?

[101] That's something different.

[102] Okay.

[103] It's the AFL.

[104] Yeah.

[105] It's the Arena League.

[106] Okay.

[107] The Arena League had, like, basically, like, no sidelines.

[108] It's just, like, constant action, and it's a smaller field, so there's more plays.

[109] And the football's an actual bomb, right?

[110] Football is actually, it is an actual hand egg.

[111] It can crack open these robots.

[112] Like a dude would, like, came out before the game on a motorcycle, and there were fireworks inside the stadium, and smoke, and Bill Ambier punched a bear in the dick.

[113] It was awesome.

[114] That's some combat basketball.

[115] The combat -iest basketball.

[116] It was.

[117] We had great seats.

[118] We were like 50 -yard line front row because it's the fucking arena league.

[119] It was on tank treads.

[120] I showed up with an extra 15 cents, so I got the good seats.

[121] Yeah, exactly.

[122] Did you see that like 2 ,000 people did not get seats?

[123] No. Yeah, I heard about that.

[124] That's fucked up.

[125] That's a lot of people.

[126] Holy shit, the rage out of the people that they were interviewing on the news this morning was unbelievable.

[127] Well, I mean, so the thing, I guess the thing was that, like, the seats just straight up weren't done.

[128] Oh, they could be.

[129] That's what I had heard.

[130] I mean, that's a brand new stadium.

[131] Okay.

[132] And I imagine they have never had a need to fill every single seat in the place.

[133] Well, it's not like it was like Sunday morning and they're like, fuck, what are we doing today?

[134] Oh, shit.

[135] Super Bowl today.

[136] Oh, I don't think it's excusable at all for sure.

[137] Like, how do you let it get to that point where you're selling tickets?

[138] And then they were saying like, you know, they'll have the option of getting another seat or getting their money back.

[139] And I'm like, well, if you get other seats, what?

[140] What are you talking about?

[141] I saw that a little less than half of those people did get seats eventually.

[142] But the people who didn't were provided $2 ,400 a piece.

[143] How much does a Super Bowl ticket?

[144] $3 ,000?

[145] It was like $800, I think.

[146] Unless you bought it from a scalper for $15 ,000.

[147] Crazy.

[148] That's, yeah.

[149] Your fault there.

[150] Right, I guess.

[151] Sucks for you.

[152] They also sold tickets to watch it outside, right?

[153] In front of the stadium on a big screen TV.

[154] They definitely had screens and people were under heat lamps.

[155] They had that concourse area.

[156] I don't know.

[157] That'd be a fun way to watch it, huh?

[158] I watched it at a home on a television, and it was all right.

[159] Yeah?

[160] Yeah, it worked out.

[161] How much were your tickets?

[162] I didn't have to go to Dallas.

[163] They black it out?

[164] Which is really, that was the big selling point on watching the Super Bowl like I was going to go.

[165] But then I would have had to have gone to Dallas.

[166] I thought, I'll just watch this from home.

[167] I only watched a little, little itty bit of it.

[168] Can I watch QuakeCon from home?

[169] No. Will the NFL be broadcasting QuakeCon?

[170] Yeah, maybe.

[171] I mean, the NFL network is pretty barren from here until...

[172] I was going to say, what's that channel going to do?

[173] What do they show?

[174] Apparently, they reshow every single football game in a one -hour digest format.

[175] Wow, really?

[176] From another angle.

[177] From the previous season?

[178] Yeah.

[179] Or just random old games?

[180] No, like from the previous season.

[181] Like, here you go.

[182] That'd be great.

[183] Here's a 94.

[184] Titans.

[185] They do that too, I think.

[186] Just to name drop my familial Super Bowl connection again, somebody just finally found a recording of that game.

[187] Actually, I don't know if it was Super Bowl I or II.

[188] Super Bowl I?

[189] There was no existing recording until...

[190] Like somebody found one in an attic.

[191] Is it reenactment?

[192] Did it say reenactment on the bottom?

[193] Someone's out of VHS tape.

[194] Something.

[195] I recorded this when it was on.

[196] My dad was telling me about the first Super Bowl because he lived in L .A. And that's where they had it.

[197] Oh, yeah.

[198] And since they did not fill the stadium, so they had a local blackout on the Super Bowl.

[199] Even back then?

[200] Yeah.

[201] Wow.

[202] Yeah.

[203] So I guess there was all these things at the time, and this is something that we've heard of at least up until, you know.

[204] earlier parts but people selling like here's a we've got this special antenna we'll sell you that will let you receive the game like all this crazy snake oil bullshit like there's no there's there's no signal I mean they black it out there's just no it's not they just don't broadcast it unless you have a crazy antenna that can pick up signals from like three states over maybe that was the notion I don't know I don't know hey football right guys Yeah.

[205] That was the part where it kind of fell apart for me, was the part where there was football.

[206] You liked the pizza rolls part.

[207] Yeah, the pizza rolls part.

[208] You know me, big Black Eyed Peas fan.

[209] And, yeah.

[210] Big fan of Jamie Foxx.

[211] So seeing him interviewed for his hit movie Rio, that was good.

[212] That was a thing?

[213] Oh, man, the pregame.

[214] blows away anything that happens in the football if you if you want to if you are a fan of branding and bad comedy and the declaration of independence no this is yeah yeah leading up to that but yeah look no further than the pizza hut pre -game show brought to you by pizza holy smokes It was some of the, you know, it's like, really?

[215] You guys just are so busy you can't do a second take of this bit?

[216] Oh, no. Fox sports analyst announcer guys.

[217] Roll with it.

[218] Just Terry Bradshaw.

[219] Oh, this pizza's delicious.

[220] All these guys looking like they rolled out of bed and put on suits and showed up all puffy -eyed to do these mind -blowingly bad reads of poorly written comedy related to pizza.

[221] Man. Or the E -Trade babies.

[222] Nobody wears a suit like a sports commentator.

[223] It's true.

[224] Let me tell you.

[225] It was a goddamn comedy tragedy.

[226] Oh, man. Sounds pretty funny, though.

[227] Dude, I almost stopped watching.

[228] I was like, I can't deal with that.

[229] I've already had my fill.

[230] I'm already over the limit on America or whatever it was that they were showing you.

[231] Yeah.

[232] Yeah, I almost could not watch any football.

[233] I couldn't help but kind of going, fuck yeah, when at the end of the national anthem and the Jets fly over.

[234] There's something about that.

[235] It's like, yeah, that's right.

[236] We're America.

[237] We're the ones with the fucking Jets.

[238] I'm crying tears.

[239] We were too busy looking up like, wait, those are not the words.

[240] Right.

[241] And I was like, what is fine?

[242] No, she messed up the words.

[243] I'm like, what are you talking about?

[244] She also introduced about 18 ,000 notes that were not in that song either.

[245] Whatever.

[246] She did release a statement.

[247] Yeah.

[248] She's like, ah.

[249] Whoops.

[250] Sorry.

[251] Whatever.

[252] Who's watching?

[253] I was too busy trying to out -sing the girl that was just on before me who was younger and prettier.

[254] There was some story that I...

[255] I don't know about prettier.

[256] There was some...

[257] story that I read that Michael Bolton screwed up the same line or almost screwed up the same line as some basketball game.

[258] Curse.

[259] That's the line.

[260] It's a Madden curse.

[261] I bought so much frozen stuff.

[262] What did you get?

[263] What did you do?

[264] I got taquitos.

[265] I actually didn't have any taquitos.

[266] What kind of taquitos?

[267] I don't remember.

[268] Chicken?

[269] Yeah.

[270] Steak?

[271] Maybe steak?

[272] Steak.

[273] Is there any cheese in them?

[274] Jalapeno poppers.

[275] What kind of poppers?

[276] From TGI Fridays.

[277] Was it the cheddar or was it the cream cheese?

[278] Cheddar.

[279] Okay.

[280] I didn't see cream cheese in the supermarket.

[281] I hate this cream cheese.

[282] It's so gross.

[283] Pizza bagels.

[284] Nice.

[285] And maybe something else.

[286] Made the jalapeno poppers.

[287] And that was it.

[288] So now your fridge is just jam -packed with frozen sins.

[289] So have another Super Bowl, please, because I have way too much frozen food in my fridge right now.

[290] It just has to be another event that they call the Super Bowl of whatever that is.

[291] Yeah.

[292] This is the Super Bowl of...

[293] South Park reruns.

[294] Great.

[295] This is the Super Bowl of chili cook -offs.

[296] All right.

[297] Cook it up.

[298] Jess, I have all this food.

[299] Let's eat it.

[300] So I felt so sick after eating about 20 because I bought 60 jalapeno poppers.

[301] Jesus Christ, man. They come in big boxes.

[302] I thought they came in pretty soon.

[303] Where were you?

[304] Are you going to go into the Costco?

[305] What's up?

[306] It was a Safeway.

[307] Maybe it was more like 30.

[308] Is that an entire pepper per piece?

[309] Yeah.

[310] Damn.

[311] So I was pretty stuffed.

[312] That's a lot of food.

[313] That's a lot of peppers.

[314] It was just a bad idea.

[315] It's just poor.

[316] And so before that, I had also gone through a bag of Doritos and a...

[317] thing like bake lays, baked ridges.

[318] So I just had, I failed.

[319] I lost the Super Bowl.

[320] I couldn't, I didn't win.

[321] Way to go.

[322] Good job, Favre.

[323] Dead space.

[324] So it was like, yeah.

[325] Which is gross with jalapeno popper hands.

[326] You feel like a necromorph for eating a bunch of jalapeno poppers.

[327] Let's tell you something.

[328] They're changing me from the inside.

[329] So video games?

[330] I don't know.

[331] Video games?

[332] Video games?

[333] Video games?

[334] Football?

[335] Black Eyed Peas?

[336] Football video games.

[337] Football's a game.

[338] Black Eyed Peas.

[339] They're like a video game.

[340] Black Eyed Peas.

[341] They're broken at launch.

[342] Did you guys watch the Black Eyed Peas?

[343] And you would like to beat them and move on.

[344] I caught that stellar performance.

[345] How was it?

[346] It was a fucking shit show, man. Holy...

[347] God damn.

[348] Complete train wreck.

[349] What was so bad about it?

[350] It was like some people behind the scenes, if they had, if this was not a contract gig, then they got fired.

[351] Yeah.

[352] If this was someplace where they were gainfully employed, then they are probably not.

[353] Wow.

[354] Like technically?

[355] Yeah.

[356] Whoever was mixing the audio for that show.

[357] Yeah.

[358] It was like, oh God, this person's mic isn't on and she's singing and we need to turn it up.

[359] The first moment that Fergie's mic was not on, which was five seconds in, I got up and walked out of the room.

[360] Really?

[361] There was that.

[362] Like the backing track was...

[363] Yeah, because you're not going to sit there and watch a subpar Black Eyed Beast.

[364] Obviously not.

[365] I have only the highest standards.

[366] The backing track was way too quiet.

[367] There was like...

[368] They had this big giant light -up love on the field where like half of the V didn't light up correctly.

[369] Just...

[370] And whoever...

[371] I mean, it had its moments.

[372] There's a bunch of people on the field with their light -up suits.

[373] And they formed into a giant arrow.

[374] It was like the Kinect event.

[375] But yeah, somehow less cultish.

[376] More Tron.

[377] And that stuff worked.

[378] But then the whole choreography of the actual show is, here's four people standing there, leaning forward as it's time to shout their lines, shouting their lines.

[379] And then leaning back so the other guy can lean forward and shout his lines.

[380] And then there are two guys that are in the group, but they just kind of are there to hang out.

[381] And that's a pretty cool deal for them because they got to go to the Super Bowl for free.

[382] They had to airdrop in Usher to save the performance.

[383] At some point, he comes in in the middle.

[384] They had to have Slash come up from the ground.

[385] That was the worst.

[386] Slash came up in everyone.

[387] They didn't even play the song that the girl from Buckeye Peas and Slash did together.

[388] They said, oh, boy, we just do Sweet Child of Mine.

[389] Like, for a little bit.

[390] A little bit.

[391] Just enough.

[392] She did the most half -assed snake dance I have ever seen in my life.

[393] Wait, how did you see that?

[394] Mr. I walked away?

[395] I heard the sweet strains.

[396] Walked back in there long enough to quickly vomit.

[397] I don't think she's very good.

[398] It wasn't a good performance.

[399] It was not the best.

[400] And then also, the thing for me was, I'm watching the game with my dad.

[401] You know, mid -50s, late -50s dad.

[402] And he's like, what?

[403] He just didn't understand.

[404] Like, why?

[405] He's just like, what is this?

[406] Who is this for?

[407] And then I kind of realized, like, I don't know.

[408] I can't really explain it.

[409] Like, the existence and mass popularity of black -eyed peas, if you actually sit and try and think about it, is just baffling.

[410] It is a difficult thing to really come to terms with.

[411] What are they?

[412] What do they do?

[413] It's like Amazon stock.

[414] It's just kind of just like...

[415] Is there value there?

[416] What kind of music do they make?

[417] Don't they have a new album out?

[418] Yeah.

[419] But yet they came out with the same songs they've been playing for the last three or four years.

[420] That's what you do at the Super Bowl.

[421] Actually, I like that.

[422] You're not trying to sell new records.

[423] Yeah, sure.

[424] I like the Black Eyed Peas at some point.

[425] We'd be getting up.

[426] They'd be getting down.

[427] I mean, there was a time when they were a rap group.

[428] There was a time that they made hip -hop, but that time is long, long ago.

[429] No, they just altered the perceptions of what hip -hop could be.

[430] That's the joint, that's the jam.

[431] Into an energy drink.

[432] Right.

[433] Yeah, kind of.

[434] Yeah, I don't know.

[435] I can appreciate them on some sort of like...

[436] This is just the craziest thing they could have come up with level of music making.

[437] Where it's just like, yeah, I don't know.

[438] We're going to auto -tune it.

[439] We're going to overproduce the shit out of everything as much as we possibly can.

[440] Yeah.

[441] And we're going to rip all of our hooks from the most popular songs of the last 20 years.

[442] And that'll be it.

[443] That'll be the album.

[444] Yeah.

[445] There's a song that the whole hook is them singing, I had the time of my life.

[446] That's the song.

[447] That's the song.

[448] And then a bunch of like disco robot bullshit on top of it.

[449] Which is, you know, it has its place.

[450] I like disco robot bullshit.

[451] And the way that they do it is sometimes appealing as long as there's no vocals.

[452] That's where it falls apart where you're just like, man, you guys are terrible.

[453] And so the problem with the mixing is that with all the audio low, they were actually, you know, singing, which to their credit, you know, live auto -tune, like all that stuff, like, you know, technical wizardry and some actual performance.

[454] But, yeah, when you put their voices that much louder than the background mix, you're like, man, this is the worst thing ever.

[455] And them selling it as we're standing here four wide just giving it to you for most of it.

[456] It got a little more choreographed at the end.

[457] When Usher came out, his whole thing was totally choreographed.

[458] He had dancers on stage with him.

[459] He was jumping around.

[460] But when it's just four people standing there, just belting it out and not doing it well, you're like, man, this is pretty much...

[461] I would have to imagine that this is...

[462] coming off as a negative thing for them in the long run.

[463] But I mean, you're right.

[464] It's like their songs live and die by being crazily overproduced in the studio.

[465] You take that out of that context.

[466] You're like, wow.

[467] What are you people even doing?

[468] So really, the mic wasn't turned on at first?

[469] Yeah.

[470] That's kind of a shame.

[471] I mean, I'm not one to talk.

[472] Sure, but you're also not producing the Super Bowl.

[473] At the same time, I think it's a goddamn miracle that every single year the Super Bowl halftime show doesn't explode.

[474] The circumstances that you're trying to produce that shit.

[475] show under, of we need to build this makeshift stage in four minutes and then they're going to perform on it for seven and then we need to take it apart.

[476] Yeah.

[477] Yeah, it's pretty crazy.

[478] Where it's like, okay.

[479] This giant football game is happening, and that's what everyone's here for.

[480] But we also need to do this crazy thing in the middle, so you are not the draw.

[481] Kind of for some reason.

[482] Because we did it last year?

[483] Because we have.

[484] So the other thing is, prior to the show, they had a tailgate party, and they had a bunch of bands playing on that.

[485] And you think people waiting to see a football game, there's probably particular music that you might think would get a crowd hyped up.

[486] Justin Bieber.

[487] To get a crowd hyped up.

[488] Some credence.

[489] Some, you know, like some Hank the Third.

[490] You know, like, I don't know, some metal.

[491] Or, you know, something with some edge to it.

[492] And then they come out and it's like, here's Keith Urban.

[493] And then they closed with Maroon 5.

[494] Like, here's two songs from Maroon 5.

[495] They're not going to play the whole song.

[496] And this guy's just kind of going to, like, shuffle back and forth on the stage.

[497] Like, he doesn't really want to be there.

[498] And then they kept cutting to crowd shots of people just, like, doing that thing where they're like, we're here because they said it was a television show.

[499] But I don't.

[500] Where are the cameras?

[501] When does the game start?

[502] Right.

[503] And they're not even really looking at the camera.

[504] They're just kind of, like, staring at the stage.

[505] Like, no one.

[506] bobbing their head, just stoic silence of, this is a great performance.

[507] Those are popular music acts in America, so I'm told.

[508] Yeah, sure, absolutely.

[509] And I have to give them credit for the halftime show having an act on it that is relevant.

[510] Say what you will about the quality of the Black Eyed Peas.

[511] They are happening now.

[512] I think that's a flaw.

[513] I think going for relevant is poor decision -making.

[514] I think you need to go for...

[515] If someone's dad needs to be able to recognize that band, put U2 up on that stage.

[516] Just put someone up there.

[517] Put someone up there that can perform live.

[518] How about that?

[519] Well, then, yeah, I agree with that.

[520] But, you know, it's like when you look at the past few years of just like, Hey, The Boss, that was a great one.

[521] I guess.

[522] Aerosmith wasn't bad, right?

[523] Paul McCartney was good.

[524] I need to remind you about Prince.

[525] Prince was great.

[526] But, you know, it was like ever since the whole Justin Timberlake, Janet Jackson thing, everyone got real scared and was like, how about the Who?

[527] How about the Who, guys?

[528] They're not gonna...

[529] You can count on the Who.

[530] They're not going to flash their bing bongs.

[531] So, I mean, that's the problem.

[532] They're going to go back to safe because it was Titty and then Clusterfuck.

[533] So guess who's going to do it next year?

[534] Who is Clusterfuck?

[535] Rolling Stones.

[536] We'll have the Rolling Stones on next year.

[537] They'll be a hundred, a thousand years old.

[538] No, whatever.

[539] I mean, the level of branding is such that next year it'll just be a half episode of Glee stuck into the middle of it.

[540] And Jane Lynch is going to come out.

[541] And they're going to do that Kings of Leon song, whether the Kings of Leon want them to or not.

[542] Because art for the kids.

[543] All right, Vinny.

[544] Yeah.

[545] Dead Space 2.

[546] Talking sports here.

[547] Dead Space 2.

[548] I didn't get to Dead Space 2, so I made it through Dead Space Ignition.

[549] The whole thing?

[550] Wait.

[551] That's the downloadable game?

[552] That is the downloadable motion comic game.

[553] Motion comic puzzle something something.

[554] That was mighty bold of you.

[555] It is the downloadable waste of money?

[556] That is not good.

[557] Yeah.

[558] But you unlock stuff from it.

[559] You are the king.

[560] The unchallenged king.

[561] They call that throwing bad money after good?

[562] Good money after bad?

[563] Good money after bad.

[564] No, this is bad money after good because you bought Dead Space 2.

[565] That's good money.

[566] That's good.

[567] So where's my bad money?

[568] It's the money.

[569] It's gone.

[570] You spent it.

[571] You spent it on Dead Rising 2 costumes and Dead Space 2.

[572] But I mean like the Mass Effect 2 iPhone game.

[573] Yeah.

[574] Playing that to completion.

[575] Yeah.

[576] For the dumb nothing that you get in the game.

[577] I got a dialogue line or something that was worth it.

[578] So that one justified it?

[579] Maybe.

[580] This one was just kind of a little infuriating.

[581] I just did not really enjoy my time through that.

[582] One of those games where you just want it to end so badly.

[583] I just want this to be over.

[584] And then I played a good one, which was Dead Space Extraction.

[585] HD.

[586] HD.

[587] And I played that alongside my little brother who's in town.

[588] So we got to play that with two people, which is fun.

[589] So you're playing the PS3 version.

[590] Yes.

[591] On the Move.

[592] I bought a Move.

[593] Nice.

[594] I now have a Move.

[595] And I stand behind the Move technology.

[596] As a Move owner now.

[597] As the designer of the Move.

[598] As someone who now owns the Move.

[599] And I've spent some time with it because it comes with the sports games.

[600] Is that Sports Champions?

[601] Sports Champions.

[602] I'm going to say out of the motion race, I'm backing that horse on the Move.

[603] Okay.

[604] That is the one I've had the most fun with so far, more than the Wii and the Kinect.

[605] I feel like both of those, it's still obviously way too early, but I feel like for as many units as both have said they've sold, I feel like there's no toehold in the software.

[606] Yeah, there's nothing to play on it.

[607] Yeah, there's not even anything to...

[608] I don't know, it's always like, this game we bolted support for the move on too, so...

[609] You probably don't want to play it that way.

[610] It's why it's good that Sony has supported that with some downloadable stuff.

[611] Absolutely.

[612] Some little crazy stuff.

[613] That's been the best stuff I've seen for the move.

[614] And it's definitely a huge blind spot for Microsoft.

[615] But it was fun.

[616] I don't know.

[617] The sports champion stuff, like the sword and shield thing, like the gladiator thing.

[618] It was kind of cool.

[619] And then some of the other stuff was kind of goofy.

[620] But Dead Space Extraction.

[621] Basically the real shooter.

[622] Yeah, so it was really cool, and the move works well because the, you know, I don't know how it was on the Wii, but I assume very much the same.

[623] It felt basically the same.

[624] But you have good fidelity on your crosshair and everything like that, and, you know, you twist to get the alt shot on the guns.

[625] The only problem I had was about two spots during it, the...

[626] So you're on rails and you move on after you've kind of killed guys or you die in that spot.

[627] So it's very linear and the pacing is out of your hands.

[628] Two spots of the camera.

[629] We moved somewhere, and there were no enemies on screen, and we couldn't advance.

[630] It just was hanging out, just kind of sitting there.

[631] Like, hey, look at this.

[632] Yeah, and we're like, there must be a bad guy stuck in a crate or behind a wall or something.

[633] So we're just spamming every weapon we have, trying to blow up the entire room.

[634] And we couldn't move.

[635] We had to stop it and reset it.

[636] And then the terrible part about that is, like I said, the pacing's out of your hands.

[637] 15 minutes into a level, they don't checkpoint you.

[638] You start each chapter from the start.

[639] And so you literally have to go back and replay all that stuff.

[640] And you can't skip the cut scenes and you can't do any of that.

[641] You can't move through it any faster.

[642] It's like this sequence will always take you this long.

[643] And you can't look around and look for other stuff.

[644] It's always the camera's fixed.

[645] It's just not something you want to repeat.

[646] Maybe a year later you can go back.

[647] Immediately like that.

[648] That sucks.

[649] So that really sucked, and so we kind of cut it short after that part.

[650] Yeah, I think I've seen enough of it right now.

[651] Well, that's unfortunate because you were like 30 minutes from the end.

[652] It sounds like, yeah.

[653] Based on what you told me. We had made it pretty far, and it wasn't very hard with two people.

[654] I don't know if it's harder with one.

[655] So I didn't get the Dead Space 2 because I kind of wanted to get all my stuff together.

[656] Now you've got Dead Space Salvage.

[657] What's that?

[658] What's that?

[659] Dead Space Martyr and Dead Space...

[660] I think I already have Dead Space Martyr, so...

[661] I can't keep track.

[662] Martyr's the book.

[663] Okay.

[664] Salvage is the graphic novel.

[665] Oh, I thought you were starting to make stuff up.

[666] No, no. Those would be pretty good fake Dead Space...

[667] And what's the DLC called?

[668] Those properties all exist.

[669] The DLC is Dead Space Severed.

[670] I thought that they would have got to Severed already.

[671] Dead Space Torso.

[672] Somebody come up with a Dead Space...

[673] property name generator.

[674] Wait, are they going to spell something out when we're all done?

[675] Like, Nicole isn't dead?

[676] That's a good question, but what order would you put them in?

[677] Release.

[678] Release order?

[679] Dead space order.

[680] Then I moved on.

[681] My little brother is in town.

[682] How is your little brother?

[683] He's good.

[684] What's he doing out on the coast?

[685] He's taking some vacation.

[686] Having some laughs.

[687] Yeah, having a few laughs.

[688] Yeah, he's just crawling through vents with his shoes off.

[689] That's what I like to do on my vacations.

[690] I watched Die Hard 2 over the weekend.

[691] So relaxing.

[692] I feel this is maybe the right point to point that out.

[693] I watched Zardoz.

[694] That movie was really good.

[695] It's not bad.

[696] Die Hard 2?

[697] Yeah.

[698] It's great.

[699] That's a good movie.

[700] Zardoz.

[701] Zardoz.

[702] I watched that this weekend.

[703] Oh, did you?

[704] Heck of a movie.

[705] Hell and fuck yeah.

[706] It kind of disintegrates.

[707] And there's a point where you're like...

[708] Either it disintegrates or I disintegrate.

[709] I don't really know which.

[710] But you're like, did I turn away for too long?

[711] Because at this point I have just...

[712] Literally no fucking idea what's going on.

[713] Well, so the weird thing was I had only seen bits and pieces of it and watched the whole thing all the way through.

[714] And I was trying to explain it to my wife and my brother and be like, it's really weird.

[715] And you're like, well, what kind of weird?

[716] And I was like, it's really weird.

[717] And I was like, you know, it's like, well, she's like, is it intentionally weird?

[718] I was like, yeah.

[719] But it's not intentionally funny.

[720] It's like Kubrickian weird.

[721] I was like, it's kind of like.

[722] It's kind of like a Buckaroo Banzai -ish weird, but not really funny, but kind of makes no sense.

[723] And then so, you know, whatever, 10 minutes in, everybody understands exactly where that movie is.

[724] Oh, okay.

[725] Oh, yeah, the floating head and the guns are good, penis is bad.

[726] Floating head that vomits guns on people.

[727] Right.

[728] See, that was the first time that someone described to me that's all they had to say.

[729] Yeah.

[730] That sounds pretty.

[731] All right.

[732] Put that on.

[733] Put that on right now.

[734] It's the part where the rest of it doesn't live up to the promise of the intro, I feel.

[735] There's a couple of good scenes that get you back in.

[736] I think it's pretty strong for a while, but...

[737] Yeah, there's a turning point.

[738] My little brother lost it in tears just kind of oddly at the very, very end with the weird time lapse of Sean Connery and the woman sitting there getting older.

[739] Yeah.

[740] And turning into skeletons.

[741] Just like literally just like couldn't hold it together.

[742] I can see why that would be really funny.

[743] What is going on?

[744] Like at the end of that journey, that's what they have to show you is really bad.

[745] Spoilers, guys.

[746] When there's the crazy riots and the immortals are going nuts, I'm like, what is going on?

[747] Dudes pop out of the trees.

[748] That movie's weird.

[749] So we looked it up on Wikipedia.

[750] Here's the end of the story.

[751] We looked it up on Wikipedia because we were both like, I think we must have missed something.

[752] And no, all the plot points that everybody agrees on, they spell out exactly in that movie.

[753] That's it.

[754] That is it.

[755] There's no mystery there.

[756] There's no deeper meaning to it.

[757] The movie is the movie.

[758] So Zardoz.

[759] So go watch Zardoz.

[760] I actually think it's fantastic.

[761] Have your brain removed directly from your fucking dome.

[762] Could be the weirdest movie I've ever seen.

[763] It's no Die Hard 2.

[764] It's like if Stanley Kubrick directed Buckaroo Banzai.

[765] Yes.

[766] Because it has that British...

[767] Sci -fi kind of feel to the production.

[768] Right.

[769] It's like if Terry Gilliam and Stanley Cooper got together.

[770] It's a little Gilliam.

[771] And like dropped acid and then.

[772] But it also just has this bug fuck crazy production design.

[773] Like the look of that movie is just so weird.

[774] Yes.

[775] What's with this red leather diaper that you're wearing?

[776] I saw Zardoz.

[777] stayed in San Francisco and stayed at Dave's.

[778] It was the first time I'd stayed when Dave was still in the city.

[779] And we were going to Matt Rory's going away party when he was leaving to go to Obsidian.

[780] It was like him and his karaoke friends got together and we went to that.

[781] And that's where you saw Zardoz.

[782] And then, yeah, I crashed on Dave's couch and he said, here, I'll put Zardoz.

[783] So I actually ordered a copy of Zardoz from my phone as I was watching Zardoz.

[784] Yeah.

[785] At the end of a drunk night.

[786] Oh, yeah.

[787] There's nothing quite like it.

[788] By the way.

[789] I had been drinking.

[790] And a few cocktails.

[791] So what else is new?

[792] So Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 is something that we played.

[793] I like this.

[794] It's like I got another pitch in there.

[795] I'll harmonize with you.

[796] So play that with my little brother in co -op, and that's fun.

[797] Had a good time.

[798] We jumped and we swang.

[799] Ain't what I heard.

[800] I got no love for the co -op in that game.

[801] Swing.

[802] Swingers.

[803] Swing.

[804] It's probably because you both started at the same time.

[805] But once you get good at that game, you just want to go.

[806] You just want to go.

[807] Yeah.

[808] Plus, it's something where we were just kind of goofing around.

[809] We weren't taking it very seriously.

[810] The thing I hate about that game, though, is...

[811] I guess it's got places that you can't access until you get the right equipment, like the shotclaw or whatever.

[812] Yeah, there are a few things like that.

[813] It's not really that vital in the grand scheme of things.

[814] You're not necessarily seeing that in every single level and going like, oh, I've got to come back when I've got the so -and -so.

[815] But I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be looking to unlock that stuff in the level.

[816] Because at the end of the level, they'll give you that wrap -up screen of like, hey, you got this, this, and this.

[817] So at one point, we hit a level where it was like, hey, you got this, this, and this.

[818] And you missed this square thing with a lightning bolt through it.

[819] And you're like, oh, shit.

[820] We missed the lightning claw.

[821] And we've seen a billion of those in the last seven levels.

[822] let's just keep playing this level until we find it.

[823] We just never found it.

[824] And just spent an hour just searching that level.

[825] And I don't even know if that's what it was.

[826] It could be something that you need some other item to get to.

[827] They don't really explain.

[828] But the thing with that game is there are items like that that you don't acquire at a set rate.

[829] Some weapons it just gives you at the end of this level, you will get the shotgun.

[830] At the end of this level, you will get the rocket launcher because the story dictates it.

[831] But then some of that stuff, there are actually multiple versions of that power -up because you actually upgrade your weapons by finding multiple of the same thing.

[832] Right.

[833] But if you miss an early one and get another one later, that's when you'll get the hacking claw or the shock claw or something.

[834] So, yeah.

[835] So that was really confusing to somebody who's like, well, I don't want to move on because I don't want to miss anything.

[836] So let's go back and get it.

[837] And eventually we just had to be like, well, screw it.

[838] Now we're just going to go through and try and play it.

[839] That's how you have to – literally have to play that.

[840] Yeah.

[841] So it got a little frustrating there.

[842] But then we moved on and I suspect – In co -op, the bosses are just way easier because one guy just draws the attention and the other guy is just pounding him with shots and stuff like that.

[843] Well, which boss are you talking about?

[844] I don't know.

[845] I'm just saying in general.

[846] Because all the bosses in the game are separate levels.

[847] If you're talking about the guy with the mask over his face, he's not a real boss.

[848] No, no, no. This was later on.

[849] I can't even remember.

[850] There was some, like, little tank or something like that that was just, like...

[851] It was a robot with claws and a shot missile.

[852] It was a giant gorilla and stuff.

[853] So the boss fights in that game are kind of the downfall of the whole thing because...

[854] Maybe we haven't gotten that far yet.

[855] They're all super pattern -based and super slow.

[856] So it's just like, here's a giant gorilla, and you're fighting this monkey, and he...

[857] has an attack where he moves his arm back and forth across where you're running.

[858] And one time it's high, so you have to duck, and one time it's low, so you have to jump.

[859] And timing the jump is not super easy.

[860] It's easy.

[861] You're just jumping.

[862] But...

[863] Getting the timing right on it every time is kind of a hassle, and it's repetitive, and it's boring.

[864] And you can't hit him until he opens up for his attack.

[865] Yeah, so he does a whole thing for what seems like a full minute, and it's probably less, but it seems like a long time before he opens up to a point where you can do basically 33 % damage, and then you have to do that two more times.

[866] And the pattern doesn't change, and you're not particularly resilient in that game.

[867] So you just end up in this situation where you're just like, man, I...

[868] I've figured out how to kill this thing.

[869] I know how to kill this thing.

[870] I have done all the things required to kill this thing.

[871] I just have to be able to put it together for X amount of time.

[872] And it's not fun.

[873] Even when you pull it off, there's not this sense of like, yeah!

[874] There's this sense of like, fucking thank God.

[875] I just made it through this Simon thing.

[876] Exactly.

[877] And it's all like that.

[878] All the boss fights.

[879] And they just get worse.

[880] And you fight that gorilla a second time later on.

[881] is bad.

[882] It's a real shame.

[883] What is it with Capcom putting out games that screw up boss fights?

[884] I don't know.

[885] This is turning into a disturbing trend.

[886] When you die on a boss, do you have to start over?

[887] Yeah.

[888] And so you lose one life, you start over.

[889] Yep.

[890] Because on the co -op, you just respawn.

[891] You just jump back in.

[892] Oh, right, right.

[893] So as long as you don't both die at the same time.

[894] Yeah.

[895] Which makes a lot of the game just easy to kind of burn through.

[896] Yeah, that makes sense.

[897] But you have limited lives.

[898] But by finding all those extra lives, those are basically just you get earned extra retries every time you go into a level.

[899] So now I'm at a point where every time I go into a level, I have like 13 dudes or something.

[900] I don't know if you could just hit start or something on the second controller when you hit a boss and just have a dude jump in and let him stay alive in a corner or something.

[901] It's all right.

[902] I don't think I'm getting the same kind of...

[903] instant gratification I got from the first Rearmed.

[904] Yeah.

[905] It definitely feels a little more of a retread in some places.

[906] And it does seem like they added, like, all the different weapon finds and that stuff is distracting me from what I really love, which is just swinging over spikes and kind of crazy, you know, acrobatics that's like, man, I can't believe I made that one.

[907] On one hand, I really like it because they modernized the game.

[908] They didn't just make an old 8 -bit game again.

[909] And, you know, they added weapons and they added some depth to it.

[910] But some of the stuff with, like, hiding that behind a subscreen.

[911] is kind of annoying, I guess.

[912] Yeah, it's too bad because I think some of that specialized arm stuff sounds like it could...

[913] Open up some interesting gameplay possibilities for that.

[914] Yeah, but then it's like, you know, you get this hack arm, and there are terminals that you can hack to stop all the robots in that room for moving for 20 seconds.

[915] Oh, is that all it is?

[916] Just a time thing?

[917] Yeah, and, you know, you find more power -ups to the hacking arm, and I suspect it just lasts longer.

[918] It doesn't actually tell you what it's upgrading.

[919] It just says, your arm's better!

[920] And...

[921] So you're not going to leave the hack arm on at all times because it doesn't come up that often.

[922] So basically it's like you're hitting select to go into the subscreen.

[923] You're going into your active upgrades.

[924] You're picking the hack arm.

[925] You're going back out.

[926] And everything's governed by one meter.

[927] So if you've just been firing off grenades from the grenade launcher, that may have to be empty.

[928] You have to stand there, wait for it to recharge before you can use the hack arm.

[929] And even then it's hit the one button to activate it, and then you still have to hit the arm button to get the arm out while it's imbued with this power.

[930] Oh, weird.

[931] Okay.

[932] It seems so odd.

[933] Why not just use the bumpers or the D -pad?

[934] They use just about every button in there.

[935] They don't use the D -pad.

[936] I guess they don't use the click -in stick stuff.

[937] Like for the D -pad, just use that to cycle through what are your potential active things.

[938] Have an icon in the corner.

[939] Well, you can also move with the D -pad.

[940] Oh, right.

[941] Yeah.

[942] Well, then just don't let them do that.

[943] Yeah.

[944] I mean, there's more elegant solutions to be had.

[945] Right.

[946] So that's...

[947] By the time you've done all that, you could have just swung your way past all that stuff and been moving on.

[948] That's kind of the issue there, is they don't always give you a reason to want to hassle with all of the powers that they've added to the game.

[949] Same deal with a lot of the weapons.

[950] It's cool that they give you a rocket launcher.

[951] They give you some decent stuff, but it's all limited ammo, and most of the enemies you're facing...

[952] You're better off just hammering on the fire button with the default weapon to just take them out quickly.

[953] The bosses, in many cases, not every case, the bosses just kind of take a set amount of damage before they kick you off and go back into their attack pattern.

[954] Oh, so you have a window there.

[955] Yeah, so you have a window that if you're hammering on the regular fire button, you're going to do just as well as if you switched to the shotgun and got off two shots of that.

[956] Which I think you do use the shoulder buttons to switch guns.

[957] You do.

[958] I think that's...

[959] You do.

[960] The power up stuff is weird in co -op.

[961] I don't know when it happens, maybe when you die.

[962] So you can choose independent.

[963] Power -ups for each player.

[964] But when you die, for some reason, I think it's when you die or restart a level, it defaults back to whatever one of the players has.

[965] Yeah, it's really annoying.

[966] So you have to go into the screen and set it back over.

[967] That just seems like a bug or something.

[968] Yeah, it seems weird.

[969] Ah, the game's all right.

[970] Spent some time in there.

[971] The control, it gives a really good first impression as someone who liked the first game because it's a good half hour of like...

[972] thinking, well, it's a good first impression of maybe where you're putting it.

[973] At first you think, oh my god, they broke it because they added the jumping, they added a ton of swing mechanics that add a lot of stuff to swinging that make it tougher when you're trying to pick it up.

[974] But once you're over that learning curve, you're like, oh, I got to the point where I'm like, I totally understand exactly why they changed things the way they changed it.

[975] The way that the arm works is way smarter in this game than it was in the first one.

[976] You have a lot more control over what you're doing with it.

[977] And that's awesome.

[978] But then kind of the rest of it, the level design feels kind of disjointed.

[979] You're just like, what am I doing again?

[980] Swinging to the right.

[981] Okay, let's go.

[982] Get in this helicopter.

[983] All right, let's go.

[984] Well, the other thing with the kind of finding that stuff is there's a height on a lot of levels.

[985] So if you're like going the high road, you kind of want to make sure you check the bottom too because you don't want to pass over any power -ups or anything like that.

[986] And so there's like a lot of different paths you can take.

[987] And then you have those blocks you can destroy.

[988] I just feel like I'm searching around where, My favorite parts of the first one were just kind of swinging as fast as I can.

[989] Never touch the ground, just go.

[990] So the hunting and stuff is not as fun.

[991] I played Magicka.

[992] Do you get it?

[993] No. Is it magical?

[994] It is magical.

[995] Do you play it with anybody or just by yourself?

[996] So again, co -op with my brother local on the PC.

[997] I heard that subsequent players on the same machine have to use it.

[998] Gamepad, is that correct?

[999] Yeah, so he was using the 360 controller.

[1000] Okay.

[1001] And it's interesting seeing the interface he has to go through and what I'm going through, and I haven't quite decided which one I think I'd rather play with.

[1002] Where I can just hit the keys and stuff, he's got kind of a menu he has to go through a little bit.

[1003] Is it like a radial?

[1004] A little bit, yeah.

[1005] Does it pause?

[1006] No. Because it seems like a pretty fast -paced kind of action.

[1007] He was able to navigate it pretty quickly.

[1008] He wasn't having that many problems.

[1009] It's more of like...

[1010] When you find something that works, you just kind of stick with it.

[1011] Yeah, that's what I found myself doing just in that quick look.

[1012] Spamming the same two spells together over and over.

[1013] And I'm sure that it benefits you to use stuff that's a little more complicated, but your guys are after you the entire time, so you don't have a lot of time to sit there and queue up spells.

[1014] With the multiplayer, it's a little bit different because the guys will go after somebody else and you can sit in a little bubble and kind of queue up stuff.

[1015] It's fast -paced.

[1016] It's fun.

[1017] On the multiplayer, it's fun because you can revive the other guy.

[1018] So, again, you can kind of burn through it a lot faster.

[1019] Yeah, I've seen a lot of complaints about the checkpointing in that game.

[1020] I bet it's brutal.

[1021] I shouldn't say checkpointing so much as kind of the saving.

[1022] If you quit out and you come back in, you're always going to start at the beginning of that chapter.

[1023] Yeah, and the chapters are pretty long.

[1024] Yeah, that's kind of unfortunate.

[1025] So, had fun with that.

[1026] Magic is pretty cool.

[1027] With a K. With a K and a C. Yeah.

[1028] And an A. What's that spell?

[1029] Magica.

[1030] So I don't know if I would go back and play through it again, but it seems like you might want to just to try other spells.

[1031] Sure.

[1032] Well, did you try anything like arena or challenge stuff?

[1033] That seems like that's where you'd want to really screw around.

[1034] Yeah, all kinds of.

[1035] You got kind of cool weapons that you pick up too, which I didn't expect.

[1036] And that stuff's fun.

[1037] I am excited to get into Dead Space 2 at some point.

[1038] That was actually my goal was like, I'm going to burn through all this Dead Space 3 stuff and get into Dead Space 2 because I hear that game's awesome.

[1039] And then I just got bogged down.

[1040] and all that Space Breeze stuff.

[1041] Probably should have just skipped all that.

[1042] Dude, the Hacker Suit.

[1043] Yeah, Hacker Suit's all right.

[1044] Super worth it.

[1045] But you know what?

[1046] You could have played Ignition for about five minutes to get the Hacker Suit.

[1047] I was more interested in setting up some of the story stuff.

[1048] I don't know if it will pay off.

[1049] I don't know that Ignition does all that much to set it up, other than what happens in the last five minutes.

[1050] Yeah.

[1051] I mean, I don't know.

[1052] I haven't played Dead Space 2, so maybe they'll reference some of that stuff.

[1053] Yo, there's monsters.

[1054] What?

[1055] You didn't play Ignition, did you?

[1056] No. Then how do you know that?

[1057] Because I saw the end of it on Brad's play.

[1058] There's monsters.

[1059] Yo, there's monsters, and it's in space.

[1060] What?

[1061] Space monsters.

[1062] No such thing as space monsters.

[1063] Also, there's space religion.

[1064] And space monsters.

[1065] Is it just like space jam?

[1066] It's not a space jam.

[1067] It's a dead space.

[1068] It's a dead space.

[1069] Two.

[1070] So that's it.

[1071] Great.

[1072] Yeah.

[1073] Great.

[1074] Thanks, Vinny.

[1075] I had both consoles kicking.

[1076] Yeah.

[1077] You didn't actually play the thing that we went to play last week, did you?

[1078] I played it.

[1079] You didn't play it?

[1080] You watched it.

[1081] I'm not sure what you're talking about.

[1082] What are you talking about?

[1083] Dragon Age.

[1084] What about Dragon Age?

[1085] I thought Vinny played that.

[1086] Oh, no. You didn't play it.

[1087] That's right.

[1088] That's up now.

[1089] I'll wait my turn.

[1090] Sorry.

[1091] Yeah, that's right.

[1092] I'm done.

[1093] Cash me out, Genie.

[1094] Hey, Jeff.

[1095] Hey.

[1096] What up, dude?

[1097] That's not much.

[1098] Just doing whatever.

[1099] How was your weekend?

[1100] It's all right.

[1101] I don't know.

[1102] How were the pizza rolls?

[1103] Disgusting.

[1104] Do you want a box of taquitos?

[1105] No. Yes.

[1106] Are you sure?

[1107] Yes.

[1108] Okay.

[1109] What brand of pizza rolls do you figure?

[1110] Totino's.

[1111] The only brand?

[1112] Totino's.

[1113] So we got a bag.

[1114] Me and my roommate.

[1115] I've never seen another brand of pizza roll.

[1116] Three year running tradition.

[1117] Three years.

[1118] Yeah.

[1119] Yeah.

[1120] That's happened three times.

[1121] It's a trend.

[1122] Pizza roll party is happening all over the nation.

[1123] Bagging 90.

[1124] Get a big bag of pizza rolls for the Super Bowl and make yourself sick on them.

[1125] And I probably took down two -thirds of that bag.

[1126] Friday night, Brendan was saying that I should expect you to not be in today.

[1127] The disturbing part is that at the end when all the pizza rolls were gone, I still kind of felt okay.

[1128] I didn't feel great, but in years past I've been like, I need to lay down.

[1129] I can't actually.

[1130] This is the worst thing that's ever happened to me. This time I was like, this is gross, but I'm not incapacitated.

[1131] But if you want to go for a jog or something, I could probably use it.

[1132] You want to throw a couple more of those pizza rolls in there.

[1133] If you're not doubled over clutching your midsection.

[1134] You've come out ahead.

[1135] Yeah, I guess.

[1136] You're not doing pizza rolls right.

[1137] Yeah, that's more what I was thinking.

[1138] Do you make all the rolls at once?

[1139] No, no, no. That was my real.

[1140] That's folly.

[1141] That's amateur shit, man. I want to know about the logistical process.

[1142] The logistical process is that you leave the oven on for the first three quarters of the game.

[1143] And by the end of it, you're wondering, why is the kitchen all smoky and smell like fire?

[1144] Oh, because it's been cooking all the charred gunk in the bottom of my oven.

[1145] Anyway.

[1146] Any video games?

[1147] Fantasy Star Online.

[1148] Oh, you got a new one of those coming out, right?

[1149] Yeah, actually, yes.

[1150] Fantasy Star Online 2 is supposed to be out this year on the PC.

[1151] But that's not what we're talking about.

[1152] So I got ready for that by playing the first one.

[1153] Or the PC version of the first one.

[1154] Join the club, baby.

[1155] There you go.

[1156] Yeah.

[1157] Get that whole back catalog in.

[1158] So they actually took the servers down for PSO Blue Burst.

[1159] They took the U .S. servers down a while ago, I guess.

[1160] But in Japan, the servers were running until like October, November of last year.

[1161] I forget what the path of that thing was.

[1162] It's like 04, 05 is when this current version came out.

[1163] So is that like version 2?

[1164] Phantasy Star Online?

[1165] It had version 2 content in it.

[1166] And they eventually came out with what they called episode...

[1167] Basically, they called it episode 2.

[1168] And they also put out episode 4.

[1169] Because episode 3 was the crappy card battle game for the GameCube.

[1170] Yes, it was.

[1171] And people are running private servers for the game.

[1172] So I decided to kind of see what that's all about.

[1173] And check in on that.

[1174] And that ended up with like a 10 -hour stretch on Saturday.

[1175] Played a whole shitload of PSO.

[1176] Yep, level 18.

[1177] Gotta keep feeding this mag.

[1178] Do you make your mag look like a Genesis yet?

[1179] No, I was always terrible at feeding mags the right stuff to get them to do that.

[1180] I just never understood.

[1181] Because at some point it's like, I don't know, I think it figures into the mag stuff, but you have to name your character the right way so he gets the right section ID.

[1182] Oh.

[1183] What is a mag?

[1184] You have to feed it.

[1185] It's like some kind of space chow.

[1186] Sort of, kind of.

[1187] But it hangs out behind you or floats above your shoulder.

[1188] Sometimes it'll split into two.

[1189] And it evolves as you feed it.

[1190] So you feed it healing items or anti -paralysis or anti -poison items and stuff.

[1191] And it has four meters that fill based on how you're feeding it.

[1192] And so power will level up or dexterity will level up.

[1193] And it earns basically super attacks.

[1194] over time.

[1195] And as it evolves, it'll learn more.

[1196] So the first one that I get is the class that I always play is this sick dolphin that shows up in rainbow space and then darts through enemies and hurts them.

[1197] And then there are a bunch of other ones for all the lesser classes out there.

[1198] So, bottom line, you've got to feed your mag.

[1199] Go, man, you've got to feed your mag.

[1200] So every 10 minutes or something like that, you can feed your mag three items.

[1201] But you have to remember to feed it.

[1202] Oh, it's time to feed my mag.

[1203] What if you don't feed it?

[1204] Nothing happens.

[1205] But nothing happens.

[1206] You miss the window?

[1207] Yeah.

[1208] I mean, once the timer's expired, you can just feed it whenever.

[1209] But for maximum efficiency, you want to feed that thing.

[1210] Like people were putting out applications to run on the PC while you were playing on the Dreamcast.

[1211] A mag auto feeder?

[1212] No, a mag timer.

[1213] So it would go off and you'd be like, oh, I've got to feed my mag.

[1214] That's pretty crazy.

[1215] Was there any VMU mag connectivity?

[1216] No, I don't think so.

[1217] I don't think there was any meaningful.

[1218] You could make your mag fight a chow.

[1219] How could they not let you put your mag on the VMU so you could feed the mag when you're out doing stuff?

[1220] The best thing you could do with the controller ports on a Dreamcast controller where PSO was concerned was put a game shark in that thing.

[1221] Because that was what they fixed basically later on is that all of the...

[1222] All the character stuff was stored client -side in the original game.

[1223] So you could play it offline, you could take it online, same character, but then you just had people hacking, giving themselves the best armor and all this other stuff and ruining the game.

[1224] Yeah, which was a lot of fun.

[1225] Throwing off any semblance of balance or anything because all of the rarest items everyone then had.

[1226] Yeah, so with the PC version, they tried to institute a bunch of stuff to try to prevent that sort of thing when they were running the servers.

[1227] It sounds like they had mixed success with that at best.

[1228] And now they have private servers so now I can actually just say I want the experience points to be like 1000x what they normally are or I just want to be a GM and be able to warp anywhere and do anything and all this silly stuff.

[1229] It's just kind of interesting to mess around with because they added a ton of like when they did episode 4 on the PC they added a ton of crazy stuff to that game.

[1230] Even episode 2 which I didn't play because they wanted a regular fee for it.

[1231] They added all kinds of crazy business to a game that already had all sorts of insane shit in it.

[1232] Jeff, can I ask you a question?

[1233] Yeah.

[1234] Why do you like PSO?

[1235] I don't really know.

[1236] I found myself kind of asking myself that question.

[1237] Because it seems to have a lot of the components of things that you actively hate.

[1238] You know, it's the same reason I like Borderlands.

[1239] Like the loot.

[1240] Yeah.

[1241] Is pretty cool.

[1242] And it was kind of the first of its kind for consoles.

[1243] I mean, at the time, absolutely.

[1244] There is a lot of nostalgia.

[1245] There's a time and a place, but the continued.

[1246] The other thing I did is immediately go tell a friend of mine who I played a ton of PSO with back in the day, like, dude, you should get in on this.

[1247] So at one point we were playing PSO, and I was like, this is fucking cool.

[1248] To what end, though?

[1249] Where are you going with this?

[1250] I don't know.

[1251] There's nothing.

[1252] He's getting ready.

[1253] To what end?

[1254] To all video games, though.

[1255] Like, that's...

[1256] In the moment, man. Yeah, that's, you know, the...

[1257] Man, video games are totally pointless.

[1258] Oh, no. My life.

[1259] We got to go.

[1260] This podcast is over.

[1261] Let's go build a bridge or a village or something right now.

[1262] We got to make a difference in this world.

[1263] According to Jane McGonagall.

[1264] Who?

[1265] What?

[1266] Yeah.

[1267] Books.

[1268] Books.

[1269] Come on.

[1270] She's one of the teachers at Hogwarts.

[1271] Yes.

[1272] I'm not believing any of her bullshit books.

[1273] Potions and – I don't know if that's – She was on Colbert.

[1274] Yeah.

[1275] I forget her name.

[1276] You got her name right.

[1277] Is that right?

[1278] Okay.

[1279] So I don't know.

[1280] Is the world going to end soon?

[1281] Is that the nature?

[1282] Is that the gist of it?

[1283] Yeah.

[1284] That whole thing is quasi -legal, obviously, because it's private servers of a game.

[1285] It's a gray area.

[1286] It's a lot of other stuff.

[1287] I don't know.

[1288] That game works for me in a way that none of the handheld games have.

[1289] And I probably, if they had not attached a monthly fee to the multiplayer in Phantasy Star Universe on the 360, I might have stuck with that a little more too.

[1290] The world would be a different place.

[1291] I totally finished it single player and tried the multiplayer when I was reviewing it and stuff.

[1292] Couldn't justify the cost.

[1293] Or the game just didn't.

[1294] Well, that's the thing.

[1295] These games are not MMOs.

[1296] And even, you know, they did add content over time, but a lot of it was really hacky.

[1297] It was like MK Trilogy style of we have these parts, we're going to try and cobble them into something new that doesn't necessarily break stuff.

[1298] We made the green guys blue.

[1299] Yeah, kind of.

[1300] Also, this guy has a diagonal spear now.

[1301] Yeah, or yes, yes.

[1302] We added AOL logos all over it for this special AOL quest.

[1303] That's the sort of stuff they do.

[1304] did with the PC version of Phantasy Star Online.

[1305] Which is why it makes sense that with the most recent, I think it was like Infinity 2 or whatever it was that they put out in Japan, there was all sorts of tie -in business with drink companies and Japanese logos all over every single bit of that thing.

[1306] But it's not an MMO.

[1307] It's a four -player game.

[1308] It's a dungeon crawler.

[1309] It's Diablo.

[1310] It's Guild Wars.

[1311] It's space.

[1312] It's a less ambitious Guild Wars.

[1313] But even by any of those standards.

[1314] It's pretty simple.

[1315] Again, at the time, there was nothing like it on a console.

[1316] But there's nothing in there that justifies them charging a regular fee for it.

[1317] And that's the biggest problem.

[1318] There's the rib.

[1319] So that's kind of the thing.

[1320] She played a bunch of fucking PSO over the weekend.

[1321] So if they're going to put out Phantasy Star Online 2 and try and charge people for it.

[1322] I don't know.

[1323] It had better be a completely different game, which is kind of what they said.

[1324] I found myself like reading, going back and rereading the very small bits of information about that game that came out when they mentioned they were doing it.

[1325] And they say like, it's an entirely new work.

[1326] That's what the translation was.

[1327] It better be.

[1328] And again, I love the balls on putting out a game, putting out 18 peripheral games, and then putting out another game and calling it two.

[1329] I love that.

[1330] Well, that's it, man. It is, too.

[1331] Everything else is all set somewhere else.

[1332] Like, this could be a return to...

[1333] Go back to Pioneer 2, man. Think about it.

[1334] Pioneer 3.

[1335] What?

[1336] Pioneer 3.

[1337] No, Pioneer 3.

[1338] Pioneer 2 has now exploded as well.

[1339] Oh, God.

[1340] As long as I can be a...

[1341] Now there is nothing but lobby races.

[1342] As long as I can be a short, thick, dark -colored robot with a mushroom -style head that shoots gigantic rifles.

[1343] Yeah.

[1344] I'm okay with that game.

[1345] Anything else?

[1346] No. Great.

[1347] No, man. Duh.

[1348] All right, Brad.

[1349] Let's get into it here.

[1350] All right.

[1351] What are you going to start with?

[1352] Let's start with Namco.

[1353] Oh, God.

[1354] I forgot about that.

[1355] Yeah.

[1356] Man. Yeah.

[1357] It's a busy week.

[1358] It was.

[1359] Jeez.

[1360] All right.

[1361] Tell me about Namco.

[1362] Where do you want to start therein?

[1363] Because even they had a lot of stuff going on.

[1364] Even they had a fair amount of stuff going on.

[1365] So Namco had an event in San Francisco last week.

[1366] In sunny, sandy beaches of San Francisco.

[1367] They showed off...

[1368] Well, they first had a roughly 36 -hour stage presentation that we skipped.

[1369] Give or take.

[1370] We did not make it for that.

[1371] Which, yeah, we did not sit through that.

[1372] But then they also had some games to play.

[1373] Yep.

[1374] And we played them.

[1375] We did.

[1376] And they include...

[1377] Ridge Racer 3DS.

[1378] I feel like I should be in the control room telling you that.

[1379] We're going to have the clip ready.

[1380] Just stretch it out.

[1381] Stretch it out a little bit.

[1382] Dementia.

[1383] Ridge Racer 3DS.

[1384] Yep.

[1385] Played it.

[1386] I'm thinking my way around the room.

[1387] I'm visualizing the room that we went to.

[1388] Well, maybe we should just run down all the 3DS games at once because I don't think any of them alone are substantial enough to support the conversation.

[1389] Actually, we'll talk.

[1390] Ridge Racer 3DS is a Ridge Racer in 3D.

[1391] Okay.

[1392] How's that look?

[1393] It looks okay.

[1394] It looks like a Ridge Racer game.

[1395] What does the bottom screen do?

[1396] Is there some kind of auto drift button?

[1397] I think it had a map on it.

[1398] You know what?

[1399] That's all I remember.

[1400] I'll tell you this about the 3DS, and it's something that I just realized right now, is that it is fucking impossible to change your focus from the top screen to the bottom screen.

[1401] When you're locked into looking at shit in 3D on the top screen.

[1402] Don't look at anything else.

[1403] Yeah, you don't want to avert your gaze.

[1404] You don't want to change, because there were definitely times where I was playing it, and I don't know if I tilted it, or what happened, but suddenly, oh no, I'm cross -eyed, oh no!

[1405] I'm seeing everything double.

[1406] I ended up playing Ridge Racer in 2D for about half of the race that I played.

[1407] And at that point, it kind of looked like a PS1 game.

[1408] Did you auto -drift?

[1409] No. I know how to drift now, right?

[1410] They were talking about the auto -drift feature, but I don't know enough about Ridge Racer to...

[1411] I hit the brake and I started drifting.

[1412] There you go.

[1413] All the drifting is auto -drifting.

[1414] I did a 360 reverse spin around a corner, so the drifting works.

[1415] When I saw Ridge Racer, it was the one in 3D that...

[1416] made me...

[1417] Oh, the 3D one.

[1418] Yeah.

[1419] You know, the one I was playing in 3D.

[1420] I don't know which one you were playing.

[1421] It was ours in 3D too.

[1422] It was the one where if you put the 3D slider up all the way, it was just insane.

[1423] Like, my eyes were just swimming.

[1424] It's pretty intense.

[1425] Well, I think what it is is I feel like they really punch the car out of the background.

[1426] Maybe.

[1427] Like, that is the number one most prominent thing that really jumps out.

[1428] Out of the screen.

[1429] Like the ratio for like the distance of things and how much 3D they are giving you doesn't feel natural in there.

[1430] It feels like the car is being stretched way the fuck out.

[1431] But then the rest of the background doesn't have necessarily that same kind of depth.

[1432] It was hard for me to focus on that one.

[1433] It's a lot.

[1434] You definitely have to.

[1435] All of them so far I've found you have to kind of find your.

[1436] your comfort, your sweet spot for where you can actually look at it.

[1437] Which for me was about maybe a third of the 3D.

[1438] That's about all I can say.

[1439] Mine's about two -thirds is about where I like to set it.

[1440] 66 % 3D.

[1441] About there.

[1442] 66 .2, let's say.

[1443] You don't have any...

[1444] I'm going 67.

[1445] You don't...

[1446] What?

[1447] I'm going 67%.

[1448] I wonder if this is a factor.

[1449] You don't wear any kind of corrective lenses.

[1450] No, I have great eyes.

[1451] I have the best eyes.

[1452] Vinny, I don't like you wear contacts, as do I. Maybe I lost focus somewhere.

[1453] I don't know if you had this experience or not, but I could feel palpable eye strain.

[1454] I have super eyes.

[1455] You know what it's like not having any kind of lenses on?

[1456] You just get a headache because your eyes are constantly straining to see everything.

[1457] How super are your eyes?

[1458] Well, we should test it.

[1459] We should see how far I can read stuff because I can read stuff pretty far.

[1460] You can read stuff pretty far.

[1461] You don't even have to put the slider up.

[1462] You just see it in 3D naturally.

[1463] Yeah.

[1464] Well, I see all of you guys in 3D right now.

[1465] It's crazy.

[1466] Close my eye.

[1467] Now what do you got?

[1468] Oh, God.

[1469] Nothing.

[1470] Oh, no. One of the Namco guys actually recommended that you hold it closer to your face.

[1471] Really?

[1472] I tried that, and it was always a great solution.

[1473] It was a lot easier to see.

[1474] I mean, for what it's worth.

[1475] Well, these guys should go through the rest of the games before general impressions.

[1476] Yeah, sure.

[1477] Other 3DS games include...

[1478] They had something called Dual Pin Sports, which is basically like...

[1479] Yeah, tell me about that.

[1480] It's basically Wii Sports for the 3DS.

[1481] But...

[1482] Requires two styluses?

[1483] Two styluses!

[1484] It's twice the stylus.

[1485] Double stylus.

[1486] They said they are examining their options and may include a second stylus in the box.

[1487] This is a game that requires two styluses.

[1488] They're examining their options for the system that doesn't come with two styluses.

[1489] He would not confirm that they had worked out their plans exactly, but they were hoping to include another stylus.

[1490] We all know you already have a DSi.

[1491] Take the stylus out of that.

[1492] That's really their only other option.

[1493] But, I mean, that was just a bunch of boxing and baseball and archery, I think.

[1494] So at that point, you literally have to have the DS on a table.

[1495] Yeah, I had to set it down in front of me and just kind of...

[1496] Right.

[1497] Do your thing.

[1498] So what is that?

[1499] You got, like, stylus on the bottom screen, just wherever, and then the actions on the top screen in 3D?

[1500] Yeah, basically.

[1501] Like, boxing was sort of like one stylus per hand kind of stuff.

[1502] Weird.

[1503] And then they have that...

[1504] Pac -Man and Galaga Dimensions.

[1505] Is that the name of the whole package?

[1506] Yes.

[1507] So it's two separate games they're kind of bundling because neither is really...

[1508] big enough to justify a game on it.

[1509] Can't really call it a minigame collection if there are only two.

[1510] But it's not a minigame collection.

[1511] Even together, I don't know.

[1512] It's like a minigame warrants a retail release.

[1513] Maxi game collection.

[1514] We'll see, but the Galaga part is basically a...

[1515] They're both...

[1516] They both use the 3D Galaga more so...

[1517] No, no. Oh, does Pac -Man not?

[1518] The most mind -blowing part of that package is that that Pac -Man game, which is half of that cart...

[1519] Yeah.

[1520] is completely in 2D.

[1521] But the reason for that is that both of these games use the tilt and motion functions of the 3DS.

[1522] Yeah, that may be.

[1523] That's the...

[1524] The foremost feature there, I think.

[1525] The guy that was at that kiosk, I asked why is Pac -Man not in 2D, and he actually said something about kind of the art assets they were using, like the style of the game they thought did not lend itself well to 2D, but I figured, you know...

[1526] You've got to tilt that fucking 3DS around a bunch, and you're not going to be able to keep track of the 3D.

[1527] That's totally fair, but it's weird to me because I assumed the platform maker would have this requirement.

[1528] The stuff should work in 3D.

[1529] Maybe that's why the Galaga part is thrown in there.

[1530] He totally said, well, we've got the Galaga that's in 3D.

[1531] We figured that would satisfy that requirement.

[1532] I love this idea of 2D games on the 3DS.

[1533] It's sneaking them in, though.

[1534] Just a pack -in.

[1535] We have Mario Brothers.

[1536] It's in 3D.

[1537] Now we're good.

[1538] Yeah, we have Mario Brothers in 3D and Mario Clash.

[1539] But they're just going to start doing the Mario Advance thing where they just put a tiny little arcade game in there every time.

[1540] That's in 3D.

[1541] That's in 3D, and then the rest of the game is regular flat.

[1542] We don't have to worry about that.

[1543] So those were the 3DS games?

[1544] Yep.

[1545] So general impressions on the 3DS.

[1546] This is like kind of big first hands on.

[1547] Seems like a decent piece of hardware.

[1548] Since E3 at least.

[1549] It's like in the field.

[1550] You know, I think the 3DS feels good in the hand.

[1551] I think that they've done well on.

[1552] Yeah.

[1553] Nintendo has done their part.

[1554] Analog stick is nice, right?

[1555] They made the hardware.

[1556] They made some nice improvements to it since E3.

[1557] They've rubberized that.

[1558] What are they calling it?

[1559] The analog thing?

[1560] The analog thing.

[1561] There's a name for it.

[1562] Analog disk.

[1563] Like slide pad or something like that.

[1564] I don't know.

[1565] Whatever.

[1566] DS Max.

[1567] Yes.

[1568] I'm not a fan of those little clicky buttons underneath the touch screen.

[1569] I don't know about you guys.

[1570] The start and select and home.

[1571] I wasn't a fan because I couldn't fucking see them.

[1572] Yeah, it was really dark in that basement and basically impossible to find.

[1573] You'll get used to that, I'm sure.

[1574] I played some there after we were doing our rounds and I was like, well, I'm waiting for Brad to play Ridge Racer before we take off here.

[1575] They've got this Pac -Man Championship Edition for PSP set up.

[1576] I'll go play that.

[1577] What the hell.

[1578] Guys, Pac -Man is still pretty good.

[1579] That's the first.

[1580] That is Championship Edition, and it's PSP Mini, too.

[1581] So it's five bucks, and it's not even as feature -rich as some of the other Pac -Man products that have come out recently, which were, I thought, fairly Spartan to a certain degree.

[1582] This is like five modes, no leaderboard, just go.

[1583] But Pac -Man, even though it's way, way harder and way slower than DX Championship Edition, is still some baller shit.

[1584] Huh.

[1585] Huh.

[1586] Huh.

[1587] Huh.

[1588] What were they demoing on the go?

[1589] No, it's funny because the game came out...

[1590] That day, I think.

[1591] They had it running on a PSP debug system.

[1592] Like full on with the giant tower and all that shit.

[1593] Yeah.

[1594] I thought that was a little bit odd.

[1595] King's Contract.

[1596] Knight's Contract.

[1597] Knight's Contract.

[1598] I didn't play much of that.

[1599] What is that?

[1600] It's almost out.

[1601] It's a 360 PS3.

[1602] It's Game Republic.

[1603] Game Republic.

[1604] It's making that.

[1605] Is that downloadable?

[1606] They of Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom.

[1607] Oh.

[1608] And also Genji.

[1609] I don't know.

[1610] It looked okay.

[1611] It seemed like a...

[1612] What do you do in it?

[1613] Pretty standard character action.

[1614] Okay.

[1615] God of War, Devil May Cry kind of stuff.

[1616] How does it look?

[1617] It seemed all right.

[1618] Yeah.

[1619] It was running at mostly 60 frames a second.

[1620] But like the art, did it look...

[1621] Because Majin was like kind of weird.

[1622] Yeah.

[1623] It had a last generation kind of look to it.

[1624] It looked okay.

[1625] They have a certain grit to their games, Game Republic games.

[1626] I'm not saying Majima was terrible looking, but it just definitely had that weird...

[1627] Remind me of Enslaved.

[1628] Something about the quality of the textures.

[1629] It almost seems like a style thing more than necessarily a tech thing.

[1630] I don't know.

[1631] Sure.

[1632] That's out in like two weeks.

[1633] I don't make game engines.

[1634] Let's take a look at that.

[1635] Inversion.

[1636] Yeah, Inversion.

[1637] I think that's probably their biggest thing of the day.

[1638] They ended.

[1639] We got there at the tail end of the presentations, and that's what they ended with.

[1640] And they were doing a lengthy demo of Inversion, and then we played some Inversion.

[1641] This is coming from Saber Interactive.

[1642] Guys that made Time Shift.

[1643] Coming out next year.

[1644] This time next year.

[1645] Busy guys, those Saber guys.

[1646] They certainly are, at least in theory.

[1647] Sounds like it.

[1648] In rumor.

[1649] I think we broke this thing down, right?

[1650] We determined it was about 80 % Gears of War.

[1651] About 15%.

[1652] What did we say?

[1653] Dead space?

[1654] Yeah, 15 % dead space.

[1655] And about 5 % fracture.

[1656] Yeah, about that.

[1657] Oh, which parts?

[1658] Just a smidge of fracture.

[1659] You've got to be careful when you add that fracture and it's potent stuff.

[1660] Basically, it's like Dr. Pepper.

[1661] It's kind of apocalyptic -y urban environments.

[1662] Okay.

[1663] Cover -based third -person shooter.

[1664] Very familiar controls.

[1665] Yeah, absolutely.

[1666] You know, roadie run, everything you kind of anticipate from that.

[1667] No active reload.

[1668] That's basically why it's at 80%.

[1669] You're saying the active reload is 20 % of the players of your experience?

[1670] You tell me. I could see someone making a case for that.

[1671] You have crazy gravity powers.

[1672] Yeah, I do.

[1673] You can shoot gravity.

[1674] So it's kind of crazy because at first glance, like, oh, so all of this cover stuff doesn't mean anything because I could, like, oh, those guys are behind cover.

[1675] Let me shoot out this ray of gravity.

[1676] Gravity juice.

[1677] Craziness at them.

[1678] And then them and everything around them kind of floats up and is kind of discombobulated for a second.

[1679] They can still move.

[1680] So it's like they rise up behind the cover, right, because they're floating in the air.

[1681] And at first they're kind of like.

[1682] Spin around going like, what the fuck is going on?

[1683] And they figure it out.

[1684] And they start shooting at you.

[1685] But then they're exposed and you can shoot them more easily.

[1686] It's a cool looking effect.

[1687] The way it looks, there's a lot of debris around.

[1688] So all that comes up as well.

[1689] So you'll be running by an office chair and it'll bump you in the shoulder and it'll just kind of float and spin through the air.

[1690] It feels a lot like the zero -g stuff in Dead Space 2.

[1691] Just a lot of objects just sort of lazily floating around you and stuff.

[1692] Second part of that demo.

[1693] they also had the environment of the entire world shifting.

[1694] So all of the gravity went sideways.

[1695] So you're standing there on the street, and you're in this urban area, so there's big, tall buildings beside you.

[1696] You're running down the street, and all of a sudden, oh, fuck, gravity!

[1697] And then everything shifts sideways, and now you're standing on the side of this building.

[1698] Okay.

[1699] And it seems like it's kind of set.

[1700] It's not something that would trigger randomly necessarily.

[1701] At least the way this is presented seems like there is a specific path to be taken now that you are on the side of this building.

[1702] Does everything that was on the street crash into the building as well, like cars and whatever else, peoples?

[1703] I don't recall.

[1704] That doesn't sound scientifically possible, guys.

[1705] Are you on a ship?

[1706] Maybe not.

[1707] No, it seems like you were on an earth.

[1708] Bad things are happening.

[1709] Not necessarily earth.

[1710] Oh, maybe Earth.

[1711] I don't know.

[1712] Yeah, it might be Earth.

[1713] Welcome to Earth.

[1714] It could be.

[1715] Hard to say.

[1716] Are you in a dream?

[1717] Within a dream?

[1718] We're not talking about that right now.

[1719] Is the dream collapsing?

[1720] You know, we'll have more to announce.

[1721] We're trying to keep story elements close to the vest right now.

[1722] Inversion.

[1723] I don't know if they did that game any favors by showing it this early because it's a...

[1724] Good year and change away from release.

[1725] There's performance issues, yeah.

[1726] So is that the fracture part then?

[1727] That's the 5 %?

[1728] It sounds conceptually interesting.

[1729] Yeah, it's kind of neat.

[1730] It certainly does sound interesting.

[1731] I don't know if it's enough to be like...

[1732] I'm not sure if Namco is positioning this as one of our big new IPs.

[1733] This is going to be a huge push for us here.

[1734] Because it seems too immediately derivative to be on the level of a Dead Space or a Gears or anything like that.

[1735] To kind of get in the ring and stand on its own.

[1736] Exactly.

[1737] This would be like, oh, this is a good weekend or good middle tier.

[1738] I don't know.

[1739] It's your Vanquish.

[1740] Sure.

[1741] It is like a Vanquish.

[1742] I could see that.

[1743] We'll have to see when Gears 3 actually ends up coming out.

[1744] Because, I mean, they have moved it to holiday, but it could be like a September thing.

[1745] Like Microsoft's been doing Halo in September.

[1746] Right.

[1747] But they'll probably do Halo in September this year.

[1748] Maybe.

[1749] We'll get to that.

[1750] Well, whatever.

[1751] We'll see.

[1752] I mean, this is out in February of next year, so maybe it's far out enough from Gears 3 that people will be kind of looking for something new in that vein, maybe.

[1753] February of next year?

[1754] Yes.

[1755] Okay, that is not a year and change.

[1756] That is less than a year.

[1757] Well, it's like late February, I think.

[1758] It was, yeah, it was like a year and a couple of weeks.

[1759] Yeah.

[1760] Okay.

[1761] So change.

[1762] That's change.

[1763] All right.

[1764] Yes.

[1765] You got it.

[1766] Awesome.

[1767] Great.

[1768] Perfect.

[1769] What's the conversion rate like on time?

[1770] I think those games always seem to kind of live and die by their design.

[1771] Like once you get past the cool factor and you're like, yeah.

[1772] Yeah.

[1773] It's the quality of the game.

[1774] Like what do you guys do with your crazy gravity game?

[1775] Because Fracture was actually kind of cool for like the first two levels where you're like, this is kind of cool.

[1776] And you're like, now do this for seven more hours.

[1777] I'm like, I don't want to do that anymore.

[1778] Shut up and do it.

[1779] All right.

[1780] No, Fracture, I won't.

[1781] I'm putting my foot down, Fracture.

[1782] Ground goes up, ground goes down.

[1783] Ground goes up, ground goes down.

[1784] Tide goes in, tide goes out.

[1785] There's no miscommunication there.

[1786] Explain it to me. I want a game where I can make the tide roll in wherever I am.

[1787] Give me a cover -based third -person shooter where I can just make the tide roll in wherever I am.

[1788] Heck of Mars doesn't have that.

[1789] Just whoosh.

[1790] And then everybody washes away.

[1791] That's it.

[1792] Make the tide go out.

[1793] And then there are puzzles.

[1794] There's water here.

[1795] What do I do?

[1796] Tide goes out.

[1797] Oh, all right.

[1798] Yeah, I made the tide go out.

[1799] Now I can run through here.

[1800] Yeah, well, where did the moon come from?

[1801] What?

[1802] Where did it come from?

[1803] God.

[1804] Well, you win.

[1805] Oh, damn.

[1806] That's the end of the game.

[1807] It's when you embrace the faith of Jesus Christ.

[1808] You play as a moon man and have power over the tides as someone from the lunar surface.

[1809] I feel like that game has been made in Japan somewhere.

[1810] And then sometimes you've got to get on a rock and then make the tide go in and then the rock floats because it's a light rock.

[1811] It's a moon rock.

[1812] And then you park the sea.

[1813] And then you jump up to get on top of the building.

[1814] Tide goes out.

[1815] And then tide goes out.

[1816] Somebody should make a game with lunar gravity.

[1817] Has anybody ever done that?

[1818] Demolition Derby.

[1819] Bounding around everywhere.

[1820] VMX racing for the PlayStation 1.

[1821] Had a whole course set on the moon.

[1822] You always remember the name.

[1823] I never did.

[1824] Demolition Derby.

[1825] Construction Kit.

[1826] Demolition Derby.

[1827] Racing Destruction Set.

[1828] Set.

[1829] Yeah, that didn't mean gravity.

[1830] You can do any kind of gravity you want on that.

[1831] Jupiter Gravity.

[1832] Wipeout Fusion for the PS2 at a moon level.

[1833] I mean like a platformer where you're just like bouncing around.

[1834] Just get a game.

[1835] Gigantic Leaps.

[1836] Lunar Lander.

[1837] Yeah.

[1838] Gary's Mod.

[1839] Yeah.

[1840] There's that game, that NASA game they released on Steam.

[1841] Oh, that's right.

[1842] Oh, God.

[1843] I never played that.

[1844] You can't see me making game quotes around game.

[1845] No, it was just a recruitment tool.

[1846] Red Rock RTX was on Mars.

[1847] RTX Red Rocks, yeah.

[1848] That NASA game was just a recruitment tool.

[1849] Yeah, yes.

[1850] It's like Last Starfighter.

[1851] Well, great.

[1852] Good.

[1853] Recruit people for NASA.

[1854] Not after you see what you have to do in that game.

[1855] It's like anti -recruitment.

[1856] Is this really what you do?

[1857] Because I thought this would be exciting.

[1858] Make more science.

[1859] Take your temperature again.

[1860] Make more science.

[1861] I thought I was going to find Transformers out here.

[1862] I guess we got some extra time on the mission.

[1863] We can bring a turtle up for these kids who want to know about turtles in space.

[1864] We got to talk to the director of the new East Combat game.

[1865] We sat down and...

[1866] What's the story with that?

[1867] Salt Horizon, right?

[1868] Yeah, that's what it's called.

[1869] That sounds right.

[1870] I think that's right.

[1871] Assault Horizon?

[1872] I'm pretty sure.

[1873] Yes, yes.

[1874] We made that up.

[1875] That's a great name.

[1876] That's right, because it has the close -range assault feature.

[1877] That's the big innovation that they're bringing to the table.

[1878] That's right.

[1879] So basically iron sights.

[1880] Yeah, for your plane.

[1881] For your plane.

[1882] Like more dynamic camera work for that.

[1883] Like when you see it, when it's in action, it makes sense.

[1884] It looks really slick.

[1885] It takes over a certain amount of your flight control.

[1886] So you can aim a bit.

[1887] So you can aim more accurately.

[1888] And it seems like basically...

[1889] This is a console, not PSP?

[1890] Yeah, console.

[1891] This is the full complement of consoles.

[1892] Because Ace Combat is always just a lock -on game.

[1893] Yeah.

[1894] And then shoot your missiles and then you're done.

[1895] Like this, all this...

[1896] Close quarters.

[1897] What is it?

[1898] Close quarters combat?

[1899] Close range assault.

[1900] Close range assault.

[1901] I think that's what they're calling that.

[1902] I can't remember the name of the features.

[1903] CQB, you've got to take...

[1904] Planes have to learn Krav Maga.

[1905] I mean all the close -range assault possibilities.

[1906] But it makes the...

[1907] All that crap.

[1908] It makes your Vulcan cannons or machine guns or whatever actually useful.

[1909] Cool.

[1910] And it seems it looks really nice.

[1911] It doesn't have a crazy story.

[1912] That's actually what kind of concerned me. How long does it take to get into the game?

[1913] Yeah, I guess not as...

[1914] So the guy directed, like, I think he said...

[1915] Four and five.

[1916] Four and five.

[1917] So he knows his way around a crazy Ace Combat story.

[1918] Yeah.

[1919] And one of the things they were saying is they didn't – they realized that they had gotten trapped into kind of a pattern as far as the structure went of just briefing, mission debriefing, and then rinse and repeat through the entire game.

[1920] So they're going to mix it up some with the structure, having cut scenes go directly into gameplay, just stuff to make it more dynamic.

[1921] That stuff sounded good.

[1922] That sounded like streamlining.

[1923] Yeah, that's modernizing.

[1924] But also I guess they're saying they received the feedback that some people felt that the sincerity levels of storytelling in past Ace Combat was perhaps a bit high.

[1925] Yeah.

[1926] Is that how they put it?

[1927] Well, you know, going through a translator here.

[1928] I don't know that that was the exact message, but yeah.

[1929] But basically like...

[1930] Wait, like they were taking themselves too seriously?

[1931] Basically like someone said that, yeah, like the storytelling is too sincere and too serious.

[1932] So that was like the one thing that set it apart from every other flight combat game that's ever been made.

[1933] Well, they're still going to have a big crazy story in it, but it sounds more like just the style of it.

[1934] Like they had a U .S. military consultant come in and they talked about planes and scenarios and things like that.

[1935] Dudes playing volleyball.

[1936] When we aim, we aim down the sights.

[1937] But dude, forget all that.

[1938] You want to roll this out?

[1939] It's a big hot exclusive.

[1940] You want to take this one?

[1941] You've got the personal history.

[1942] It's more deeply relevant for you.

[1943] I suppose so.

[1944] So he's talking at this point.

[1945] Should I tell the whole story?

[1946] I'm going to tell the whole story.

[1947] He's talking about the mission structure stuff, like, oh, you'll be playing as the fighter pilot or whatever, and you might go directly to a cutscene, or you might see something from the perspective of the bomber pilot, or you might see something from the perspective of the helicopter pilot.

[1948] I said, so is that just like story stuff, or are you actually going to play as the bomber or the helicopter pilot?

[1949] Lengthy exchange in Japanese.

[1950] Like back and forth.

[1951] And then the translator's just like, I don't know if I could say anything about this right now.

[1952] And then like PR from off to the side immediately.

[1953] Just no. Just a hard no. Like, no, you can't say anything about this?

[1954] Like, no, you can't say anything about this.

[1955] And we're like, well, okay, well, we know what that means, but whatever.

[1956] That's what you're going to fool anybody.

[1957] Dude just, like, is going through debug menus while we're talking here, and just a loading screen comes up where it's all in Japanese, except for one word right in the middle, Apache.

[1958] And so we're all sitting there like...

[1959] Oh, okay, you're just going to show it to us now.

[1960] And clearly PR's like, God damn it.

[1961] He obviously wanted to show it.

[1962] Yeah, it's always that struggle of if you ask a developer about something, they always want to show it to you.

[1963] They always want to say, hey, look at this, check this out, what do you think?

[1964] But PR's like, don't fucking...

[1965] I think with a game like that, it benefits them to show, hey, this is different from the last few.

[1966] As early as they possibly can.

[1967] We saw a crazy helicopter level.

[1968] Was it, in fact, crazy, or was it just a helicopter level?

[1969] It was kind of crazy.

[1970] It was a lot of ground assault.

[1971] He was blowing up a lot of tanks and shooting at guys in the city and stuff.

[1972] That was the thing that struck me most of what they had been showing of this new Ace Combat game.

[1973] Ace Combat is always way up in the air.

[1974] Right.

[1975] You get close to the ground, you're like, eh.

[1976] This stuff is built around being very close to the ground.

[1977] It seems like at least a lot of the missions they're showing.

[1978] They said that, yeah, there will be some of that, you know.

[1979] Sky high, crazy stuff as well.

[1980] But, yeah, a lot of interaction with the ground.

[1981] A lot of just aerial combat near the ground.

[1982] A lot of, like, the one area we saw with Jet was in some sort of, like, industrial oil field or something.

[1983] And there was sort of a lot of, like, weaving between, like, oil wells and stuff like that.

[1984] That's kind of sounds fun.

[1985] Like, especially it seemed like in the close range stuff when you're zoomed in on that mode.

[1986] Like, you're kind of going in between a lot of obstacles and stuff.

[1987] It looks, yeah, they've made it look real nice.

[1988] They've made it look more exciting.

[1989] And, yo, it got helicoptered.

[1990] What?

[1991] I could say officially.

[1992] Officially.

[1993] Officially.

[1994] No. And then even after he showed it to us, the PRs was like, all right, this is off the record.

[1995] Do not mention this.

[1996] And I was happy to say, just for your information.

[1997] We're not dirtbags.

[1998] If you say I can't say anything about this, I'm not going to say anything about this, but I know that it's in there.

[1999] Did you just say something about it?

[2000] She came out afterwards and said, yeah, right, you're clear to talk about it.

[2001] Made a few calls.

[2002] No crazy motion stuff for it then, huh?

[2003] No, K 'nex or Moons?

[2004] No, I thought they mentioned Moons.

[2005] They're just making a game, man. I've wanted to be into the Ace Combat games for a while, but it's just the gameplay.

[2006] Yeah.

[2007] You know, it's just the same stuff over and over again.

[2008] And it's because of the story that I was like, man, you know, I was here from, like, you know, the people that were reviewing it.

[2009] Like, you know, it's exactly what you would expect it to be.

[2010] Except the story's crazy.

[2011] It's like it's told from the perspective of a kid who's on the other side.

[2012] So it's like you're just seeing, like, this war -torn country that you're creating.

[2013] And it's...

[2014] It's heavy.

[2015] Mind -blowing.

[2016] It's super heavy.

[2017] And I'm like, man, that sounds great, except for the part where it's just I've got tone, fire a rocket.

[2018] I've got it again, fire another rocket.

[2019] Now there's the escort mission that I don't want to do and turned it off.

[2020] We'll see if they actually pull it off, but it seems like they are actively trying to address issues of structure and kind of gameplay pacing for this one.

[2021] We didn't get to touch it, so I don't know how it feels.

[2022] But there was that.

[2023] They had a shitload of mobile phone games and iPad games.

[2024] Yeah, I think I saw Ridge Racer on an iPad.

[2025] They put that out a while ago.

[2026] I said, I'm not going to touch that.

[2027] Then they had that other thing that we were not aware of.

[2028] Ridge Racer Unbounded.

[2029] Until a couple days later.

[2030] Was that there?

[2031] I guess they showed that same trailer that morning.

[2032] Okay, yeah.

[2033] All anybody has seen is that trailer.

[2034] That was also the presentation where they said, hey, Dark Souls.

[2035] Yeah, I kind of wish I had seen Dark Souls.

[2036] I'm feeling this weird compulsion to try that game when it comes out.

[2037] I don't know.

[2038] Why not?

[2039] I'm going to make my screw face at you.

[2040] We should all try that game when it comes out.

[2041] I'll give it a shot.

[2042] Yeah, I have a long history of loving games that From Software makes.

[2043] Exactly.

[2044] I don't know why there's any question then.

[2045] I actually spent some time.

[2046] Sorry, I was finishing my post in the endurance run.

[2047] Submit!

[2048] You know what?

[2049] Editing that part out.

[2050] We can't say endurance run on this.

[2051] We're not talking about that right now.

[2052] I don't know how many times I send emails that just say no in them.

[2053] Do you respond to them?

[2054] Yeah.

[2055] Well, we get them on the Bobcast constantly, and I just want to let them know.

[2056] No. Sorry, you were saying about your love.

[2057] What was I saying?

[2058] You love From Software games.

[2059] Yeah.

[2060] So when they announced all this stuff, I was talking to Will.

[2061] And I said, yeah, like From Software, right?

[2062] And we were talking about Chrome Hounds and some other stuff.

[2063] And I went and looked at the page of, like, here's the list of all the games From Software developed and ran down the list.

[2064] The best I could come up with for my own personal, like, yeah, okay, was 3D Doc Game Hero.

[2065] That's pretty good.

[2066] It was all right.

[2067] Come on.

[2068] I thought you and Kingsfield went way back.

[2069] No. I mean, yeah, like in a joking, like, Kingsfield.

[2070] Jesus.

[2071] I didn't even know they were Chrome Hounds.

[2072] Chrome Hounds was okay.

[2073] I actually really actively dislike Chrome Hounds.

[2074] Really?

[2075] There are people that are crazy for Chrome Hounds.

[2076] There are people that are crazy for Armored Core.

[2077] That was the other part of that announcement.

[2078] They're doing Dark Souls and they're going to put Armored Core 5 out here in 2012.

[2079] That's not the style of mech game I want to play.

[2080] Maybe they'll turn it around for me personally with these two games.

[2081] They don't have to.

[2082] Like, I don't care.

[2083] Those games don't need to be for me for the world to keep turning.

[2084] If you want to play Armored Core 5, be my guest.

[2085] I don't want anything to do with it.

[2086] Though some of the stuff, like Commander Mode and all this other stuff, sounds potentially cool for people to like that sort of thing.

[2087] Probably if they're making something that's a spiritual successor to Demon's Souls, unless they get the part where the gameplay is kind of bad in a deadly premonition sense, maybe not that rotten.

[2088] That's just unfair, man. It's kind of like, we're going to look past the kind of messed up controls and just chalk it up to, this game's hard.

[2089] Like, no. It didn't have to be.

[2090] There's better ways to.

[2091] divine your difficulty.

[2092] Yes.

[2093] And I still have a thing for Demon's Souls where I kind of still want to get back in there, but there is some stuff that you have to really kind of look past.

[2094] Punishing and ugly.

[2095] That game does...

[2096] You've got to give me something.

[2097] You've got to give me something.

[2098] But there are things in there that are really novel and kind of unique.

[2099] Yeah, and that stuff seems great.

[2100] That'll come out.

[2101] And when people talk about the game lovingly, I look at that stuff and go, yeah, that stuff sounds amazing.

[2102] But for me personally, I'm never going to get past the hurdles of the gameplay.

[2103] Right.

[2104] And it's not necessarily about the difficulty.

[2105] It's about the – it does not control very well.

[2106] It's like what you're doing in it, which I'm hoping they – address in this and do some novel things well there's a lot of very curious there's a lot of repetition and sort of pattern memorization involved too right a lot of like learning when to expect things to happen and like being ready for because there's like a lot of i mean this is my impression having not played it for me for me it was like you get one -shotted and stuff right it was more of just kind of not really knowing what to do like very little guidance in a very complicated uh kind of combat system okay that's from software yeah kind of that is that is like that that tip anything that they've ever put out, as far as I can tell.

[2107] And the people that love it, I think...

[2108] Kingsfield, that's it right there.

[2109] I think they find it hugely rewarding, where they're just like, I got it.

[2110] I've mastered it, and I get it all.

[2111] But getting to that point can be...

[2112] the patience involved getting to that point can be really testing.

[2113] Chrome Hounds, I just was like...

[2114] There were people that love, that still talk about Chrome Hounds.

[2115] You can't play it anymore, right?

[2116] I just didn't understand why you had to run for like 20 minutes to get back into a fight.

[2117] Because it's real!

[2118] Because that's what Steel Battalion did.

[2119] Yeah, I don't know.

[2120] Anyway.

[2121] I'm with you.

[2122] Let's go.

[2123] All right, now give it a shot.

[2124] Ridge Racer Unbounded is being made by Bugbear, the flat -out guys, and it basically looks like, well, the trailer shows nothing.

[2125] Right.

[2126] Other than...

[2127] No. There's a lot in that trailer.

[2128] Other than...

[2129] Nothing about the game.

[2130] Here is Ridge Racer girl, and she gets out of one super hot car and gets into another super hot car.

[2131] But it's a muscle car.

[2132] And then...

[2133] Drives it down an alley, slams it into the side of a taxi.

[2134] T -Bone's a taxi.

[2135] T -Bone's a taxi.

[2136] Not even, like, swerving to avoid it.

[2137] Just goes straight, and then there's a slow -mo shot of the taxi flying up in the air and flipping end over end while you drive under it.

[2138] That's some muscle car, man. That's how it works, right?

[2139] The cars just fly over you.

[2140] So, yeah, I'm getting a real kind of burnout -y.

[2141] I'm getting a real flat -out -y kind of vibe.

[2142] Yeah, I guess that's probably more.

[2143] And the font reminds me of Need for Speed Underground.

[2144] Man!

[2145] It's like a lot.

[2146] Oh, my God!

[2147] I think that's why it's unbounded.

[2148] Because it's underground.

[2149] It's in a lot of the same letters.

[2150] So maybe people see it and go, this is kind of...

[2151] It's kind of nuts.

[2152] The first time I saw that, because you had mentioned something before that.

[2153] Holy shit.

[2154] Unbounded is not even...

[2155] That's a terrible, terrible, terrible name.

[2156] What does that even mean?

[2157] I don't know.

[2158] Terrible name.

[2159] It's just Unbound.

[2160] You would say it's Unbound.

[2161] Yes, it's been Unbound.

[2162] It's been Unbound.

[2163] Not that it's been Unbounded.

[2164] Unbounded.

[2165] Most Unbounded.

[2166] But yet, and so this is blasphemy, this is a blight upon all that is Ridge Racer, so on and so forth.

[2167] Yet I can't help but be interested because Ridge Racer has just become so rote and just, like, completely stagnant to the point where, like, the best they can offer is, like, it'll feature machines and tracks from machines and courses from previous games in the Ridge Racer franchise.

[2168] Like, yes, so do all the other ones.

[2169] Nice going, guys.

[2170] All you guys do.

[2171] The only thing they've done to Ridge Racer over the years was R4 when they came with the JogCon.

[2172] That was pretty sweet.

[2173] JogCon was dope.

[2174] And then they added Turbo when they put it on the PSP.

[2175] And then that was in, like, Ridge Racer 6 and 7.

[2176] Wow, there's been that many?

[2177] I didn't even know that.

[2178] Yeah.

[2179] Yeah.

[2180] So, yeah, no, I agree entirely.

[2181] I think that...

[2182] So they have to, you know, and it's nice that they're at least trying to do something, though this is ridiculous.

[2183] This is...

[2184] But is it Ridge Racer?

[2185] I mean, this is not the kind of ridiculous that Ridge Racer's been, but it's not like there is this, like, serious pedigree.

[2186] For the series, it's crazy cars doing crazy things.

[2187] Ridge Racer has a fan base, but it's probably not big enough to matter, if I had to guess.

[2188] So why not take some chances with it?

[2189] Obviously, they had to have known going in, putting that trailer out and saying what they said about that game.

[2190] was not going to do them any favors with the handful of people that still hold Ridge Racer dear.

[2191] But for them, there's Ridge Racer in the 3DS.

[2192] And, you know, I'm sure they'll make normal Ridge Racer games.

[2193] Yeah, I don't think this...

[2194] Yeah, this doesn't cancel out any other regular Ridge Racer game.

[2195] Well, it's like the last time Namco did something crazy with racing, they put out that R racing evolution in like 2003 or something.

[2196] And it was like a simulation style.

[2197] It was closer to a simulation.

[2198] What was that for?

[2199] It was Xbox and PS2 and maybe GameCube.

[2200] Or Racing Evolution.

[2201] R, colon.

[2202] I remember that coming out.

[2203] Racing Evolution, yeah.

[2204] And it was not a good game.

[2205] And I remember at the time thinking like, oh, this is going to be like the big Ridge Racer reboot.

[2206] I have to imagine at some point they were thinking about calling it something that tied it a little more closely to Ridge Racer.

[2207] Though R. Racing Evolution.

[2208] That's what I said, isn't it?

[2209] I thought you said Revolution.

[2210] No. No, because it's Ridge Racer Revolution.

[2211] It wouldn't be.

[2212] Well, whatever.

[2213] The cover of this looks like a Ridge Racer game.

[2214] Yeah, it kind of does.

[2215] It kind of does.

[2216] So at some point, that probably was a Ridge Racer game, and they held back.

[2217] Even with, like, Japanese computer girl in racing outfit.

[2218] It's even her, I think, isn't it?

[2219] Anyway, whatever.

[2220] Whatever!

[2221] So it's nice that they're trying something.

[2222] Like, at least, you know, let's hold out.

[2223] Like, obviously, it's not going to be...

[2224] The Ridge Racer game that every other Ridge Racer game has been.

[2225] But every other Ridge Racer game has been that game.

[2226] They've covered you.

[2227] They've taken care of you.

[2228] Yeah.

[2229] Exclusively.

[2230] Considering they just keep re -releasing games with old courses and stuff in it.

[2231] Yeah.

[2232] Who cares?

[2233] Give it a shot.

[2234] Yeah.

[2235] Do something.

[2236] Let's see what happens.

[2237] That's totally my feeling on that.

[2238] And that, I think, is Namco.

[2239] I think so.

[2240] And that's a wrap.

[2241] Now Bandai.

[2242] Oh, God.

[2243] Yeah, they got Power Rangers.

[2244] Yeah.

[2245] Yeah, they're Bandai.

[2246] Apparently, the Power Rangers were there.

[2247] What?

[2248] So, we lose.

[2249] We didn't want him to go to jail or something.

[2250] I thought Joey was missing for you.

[2251] Yeah, we didn't see Joey that day, unfortunately.

[2252] Was Amy Jo Johnson there?

[2253] Yeah, but in costume, so he couldn't talk.

[2254] That was just Joey.

[2255] I know, I wish Joey was Amy Jo Johnson.

[2256] Where are you going?

[2257] It's got to think I'll be right back.

[2258] It's got 20 minutes.

[2259] Woo!

[2260] All right.

[2261] So there's that.

[2262] I'll let you get to yours.

[2263] Okay.

[2264] Oh, wait.

[2265] No, you go with yours.

[2266] You go ahead.

[2267] Who's what now?

[2268] You're next.

[2269] Oh, man. I don't even know what we're talking about.

[2270] Go ahead.

[2271] Dragon Age?

[2272] Call her.

[2273] Go ahead.

[2274] Should we talk about Dragon Age?

[2275] Go ahead.

[2276] Yeah.

[2277] So you guys went and saw Dragon Age 2.

[2278] Dragon Age Origins 2.

[2279] Go ahead.

[2280] Yes.

[2281] Dragon Age 2.

[2282] Oh.

[2283] Okay.

[2284] Go ahead.

[2285] Turn down your radio.

[2286] Okay.

[2287] Let's talk.

[2288] I played...

[2289] You played it.

[2290] Some of that.

[2291] Yeah.

[2292] I played three separate sections.

[2293] I kind of feel like I know more what the game's going to be like now, but not totally.

[2294] I mean, it's hard to make a judgment.

[2295] What version were you playing?

[2296] I played Xbox.

[2297] If it was entirely up to me, if I had my druthers, I probably would have played it on the PC just because I feel like that is where the big fat question mark is on this game.

[2298] Is it still going to be a PC -focused game?

[2299] Because they already said you can't pull the camera as far out.

[2300] You can't make it an Infinity Engine game, basically.

[2301] But just the technical nature of pulling footage, like getting direct feed from an Xbox, is easier.

[2302] So we went with that.

[2303] It was really funny before the event.

[2304] One of their PR people was IMing me, asking what kind of character we wanted for the event.

[2305] They were like, what gender do you want?

[2306] It was like a female.

[2307] Did they have your character there?

[2308] And I was like, why don't you make her a brunette?

[2309] No, actually, we ended up just using like a stock.

[2310] Right.

[2311] Awesome.

[2312] I guess that's tough.

[2313] Actually, I told him we actually didn't give a shit.

[2314] Right.

[2315] We just played with like a stock male warrior.

[2316] But the point is they had three different saves at three different, very distinctly different parts of the game.

[2317] And it was like probably 10 to 20 minutes of content per save.

[2318] So it's kind of hard to get a broad picture of how everything's going to fit together exactly, but the three different areas that I played in seemed very Mass Effect -esque in the sense that it was really directed, like everything was funneling you in one direction.

[2319] Definitely, from when I saw it a while ago.

[2320] A very narrow path.

[2321] Consistent with your experience.

[2322] It seemed that way, yeah.

[2323] Sadly, I never got around to playing DAO, so I don't know if that's similar.

[2324] I assume that was a lot more kind of open.

[2325] That was a lot more hitting the map and all these passages that kind of spider off into different dead ends or something.

[2326] But for all I know, these were all specific little dungeon -y areas that kind of spawn off a big map.

[2327] It was really, like you said, very tough to get to the bigger picture of what was going on.

[2328] I do know...

[2329] You never made it to the second floor.

[2330] You never saw, like, the city stuff they were showing?

[2331] I think you were upstairs the whole time.

[2332] I think I missed that part.

[2333] The city stuff, they're, like, some city that you're in.

[2334] I don't know the name of it.

[2335] Reldon.

[2336] Probably.

[2337] Yeah, okay.

[2338] There are, like, different districts of the city.

[2339] There's, like, you know, there's an old town and whatever.

[2340] The slums.

[2341] That's where the rats are.

[2342] Stuff like that.

[2343] So, like, when you would exit one of those, you would get, like, this.

[2344] This pub owner needs you to kill rats.

[2345] All right, go to the basement.

[2346] Like, when you'd exit one area, you would get, like, a big sort of, like, static map with just icons of other areas, and you'd just, like, pick an icon and kind of warp to it.

[2347] That's similar.

[2348] Is that similar?

[2349] Yeah.

[2350] Okay, so that stuff's kind of the same.

[2351] Just such a Mass Effect vibe from, like, the UI and the menu stuff.

[2352] Well, I mean, the first Origins used, you know, radial menus.

[2353] Yeah, but this is, the influence is much heavier here.

[2354] Like, they've got the straight up the conversation wheel.

[2355] It's so similar that when you're talking to a guy and you've moved into, okay, I can keep talking to him or I can move on, it's investigate on the left or...

[2356] Let's get a move on on the right, basically.

[2357] Just exactly the same.

[2358] That in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing.

[2359] It's not a bad thing.

[2360] I'm just saying they have taken some really specific cues from the other big game that BioWare is doing.

[2361] It was interesting for me to see the console version because having played it through on the PC, the UI looks completely different on the 360.

[2362] Everything is mapped.

[2363] What seems like...

[2364] But again, that was true in Origins.

[2365] I played both versions, and they were wildly different.

[2366] Right, so it's really interesting to see it kind of going down on the 360.

[2367] It seems intelligently kind of mapped onto the controller as best you can, I guess, for a lot of that stuff where you do have to dig in a little deeper to get to your spells at points.

[2368] I mean, the way it works, I don't know if this is probably similar to the first one, but you've got...

[2369] So A is just attack.

[2370] It's just like...

[2371] Hammer on the A button, and you're going to swing whatever you're holding.

[2372] The other three face buttons are mapped to specific abilities, and you hold a trigger to change those to another set, which I think is basically how they had it set up.

[2373] Sounds about the same.

[2374] And then you do the whole pause the action and pull up a big wheel if you want to get all the rest of your stuff.

[2375] And cue stuff out of powers.

[2376] Yes, totally.

[2377] But here's where it seemed interesting to me in just watching you play.

[2378] It seemed like the actions as you were doing them were like you'd hit one of your spells.

[2379] and you'd immediately jump into some kind of combat thing that seemed a lot more action -oriented.

[2380] Like they happen as soon as you hit it?

[2381] Yeah, like you were rolling in or, you know.

[2382] I mean, I think that's probably where you would feel the Mass Effect influence the most is, like, one of their big pushes with this game is we want the action to feel more like action.

[2383] It feels very immediate, for sure.

[2384] We want it to not feel as much like D &D dice rolls as the first game did.

[2385] Like, the fighter I was playing or the warrior had, like, a charge move, and, like, you would want to actively...

[2386] align as many guys up as you could before you could use that to get the maximum damage.

[2387] And so the parts that I think speak to some of that are the first boss battle that you were playing...

[2388] It wasn't really a boss battle, but the first big encounter you got into that we saw where you were just actively dodging the dude's moves.

[2389] Like, you're rolling out of the way.

[2390] It's like a big ogre, and it would charge you, yeah, and you just move.

[2391] And you're trying to position yourself behind him and get in there.

[2392] And then there was another fight where you were actually hiding behind pillars to avoid attacks.

[2393] Like, you fight this big sort of, like, rock demon thing that, like, once in a while it'll get in the middle of this.

[2394] You're in this, like, crypt area with all these pillars.

[2395] And he'll, like, rise up in the air and kind of charge up.

[2396] And, like, the immediate visual cue is, I need to get the fuck out of the way.

[2397] So you run over behind the pillar, and then he just starts emitting all this energy that flies everywhere except directly behind those pillars.

[2398] There's definitely some timing elements and a lot of positioning yourself properly and stuff like that.

[2399] Yeah, and so I did see some of the PC stuff.

[2400] I was watching some other people play the PC stuff, and it seemed to play very similar to the original Dragon Age, where you're just kind of pausing, queuing up, and you have your bar on the bottom.

[2401] It definitely has the big fat icon bar with a zillion icons on it.

[2402] I thought it looked good.

[2403] I was coming in with lower expectations than I left with, and I was kind of excited to see that I'm back on the Dragon Age.

[2404] Go, go, go train.

[2405] You did, like, what, 100 hours in the first one or something?

[2406] I did, and then I lost my save for Awakening, and I never got to finish that.

[2407] Now I do.

[2408] How do you feel about this kind of...

[2409] I feel like the other big thing is this is not just a direct continuation of the first game.

[2410] It's not just like, Shepard's back and better than ever.

[2411] No, this could have nothing to do with your original character if you don't want it to.

[2412] How do you feel about that?

[2413] Well, you can have it if you want to.

[2414] You can still do the import or whatever.

[2415] When you import, do you play as your character?

[2416] No. Or do you just see that character?

[2417] Yeah.

[2418] I think world comes in.

[2419] In fact, yeah, what they've said is I think it's just the more like the decisions or the things that happen with the broader implications are the things that will show up.

[2420] Which are probably just kind of like, you know, three lines here or there.

[2421] Yeah, the Rackney Queen says what's up.

[2422] Yeah.

[2423] What up, Rackney Queen?

[2424] Not much.

[2425] I'm into being alive.

[2426] Thanks.

[2427] Here's my space dream.

[2428] All right, please.

[2429] So, yeah, it's probably just that.

[2430] There are too many ways that game ended to make that...

[2431] They already did weird things in Awakening, which were just like, you can't do that.

[2432] Like, that's not how it...

[2433] That's totally...

[2434] Well, that's how it happened.

[2435] Oh, okay, fine.

[2436] And so in order to do that, it would have been really weird.

[2437] So it doesn't bother me that much.

[2438] I'll go to my Mass Effect 3 for that.

[2439] Would it bother you if this turned out to be the same universe as Mass Effect just...

[2440] Hundreds, if thousands of years prior.

[2441] Well, it's already, obviously, the same universe as Dead Space.

[2442] Yeah, right.

[2443] Because...

[2444] No Necromorphs?

[2445] I want to say someone at BioWare already said no. Okay.

[2446] To that idea.

[2447] Well, when you open the portal and they come through right.

[2448] I mean, that's the end of Mass Effect.

[2449] And then it pops up a big splash screen.

[2450] And it's like, hey, buy Mass Effect 3.

[2451] I mean, it doesn't have to be the same universe.

[2452] Dragon Age 3 versus Mass Effect.

[2453] And they open up this portal and then these Jedi come falling out.

[2454] What?

[2455] Jedi.

[2456] I love those guys.

[2457] Thanks for playing the demo.

[2458] Check out.

[2459] Code Tour 3.

[2460] Come play Knights.

[2461] Please.

[2462] The Old Republic coming soon.

[2463] Please come play The Old Republic.

[2464] For God's sakes.

[2465] No, we need to.

[2466] No. Like, everyone.

[2467] Tell people.

[2468] All you fuckers.

[2469] Tell everyone you know.

[2470] Star Wars MMO.

[2471] Ours, though.

[2472] There's another one.

[2473] Don't get that one.

[2474] Sign your pets up.

[2475] For it.

[2476] Free 30 days.

[2477] Free 30 days for our pets.

[2478] Goldfish.

[2479] Sign your pet up.

[2480] We give you a free pet.

[2481] Great.

[2482] Think about that.

[2483] I'm on board.

[2484] Yeah?

[2485] I liked what I saw.

[2486] Yeah, it seems cool.

[2487] That's good.

[2488] The combat was pretty fun.

[2489] It seemed a lot to move just a lot faster, which will make a lot of people.

[2490] I know a lot of people who were just like.

[2491] I just don't want to start that ball rolling because I just don't want to put 80 hours into a game.

[2492] And the Dragon Age Origins stuff, yeah, Dragon Age Origins could drag.

[2493] There are just parts where you're just, like, cleaning out dungeons and drag.

[2494] And this was, like, the parts you played were just, like, here's the start of almost an instance.

[2495] Start this instance and, like, go, and within 10 minutes you were up to a big fight.

[2496] Sure.

[2497] It just didn't have that same kind of storyline.

[2498] Now, was that part of everyone's experience with Dragon Age or was that you just going, like, I'm going to clear out this dungeon?

[2499] Well, like I said, there are a lot of like, do I go down this path?

[2500] Do I go down this path at Dead End?

[2501] But it's probably a lot of mine.

[2502] They claim there is as much or more optional content as the first one.

[2503] Also, I don't know if this is...

[2504] This was a big deal for you.

[2505] But with your party now, you might get an option to a dialogue option within the tree to talk to one of your party members who might know a little bit more about something you're talking about.

[2506] Whereas in Dragon Age Origins, they would just chime in if you had the right party member with you.

[2507] They'd be like, well, I'm a wizard and that looks fucked up.

[2508] And now you could be like, hey, we're talking to all these wizards.

[2509] You're a wizard.

[2510] Why don't you handle this and chime in on this conversation tree?

[2511] I would buy a T -shirt that says.

[2512] I'm a wizard and that looks fucked up.

[2513] Well, you should subscribe now.

[2514] Whiskey Media Premium Memberships.

[2515] Sign up today for...

[2516] Look, guys.

[2517] I'm a wizard.

[2518] I'm a wizard.

[2519] I'm a wizard.

[2520] And that looks fucked up.

[2521] It's the picture of Orko.

[2522] Why should I care what you have to say about this?

[2523] Look, guys.

[2524] I'm a wizard.

[2525] Whoa.

[2526] Okay.

[2527] And that looks fucked up.

[2528] I just want to say, I didn't know.

[2529] Going into this?

[2530] Yeah.

[2531] I didn't know you were a wizard.

[2532] It's cool.

[2533] I should have figured that out.

[2534] Well, it's like, you know, it's either I'm doing this or I'm heading to the Jamiroquai concert.

[2535] And I get the Jamiroquai concert thing a lot.

[2536] Yeah, I mean, I just assumed.

[2537] Well, that's Jamiroquai thing, so.

[2538] So I apologize.

[2539] I didn't know you were a wizard.

[2540] Thank you for clarifying that.

[2541] Obviously, that shit.

[2542] It is driving me virtually insane, all the people saying that I am into Jamiroquai.

[2543] We've got an interview, a quick look roadshow.

[2544] We definitely have some content that's up on the site.

[2545] Video content.

[2546] We hope.

[2547] Video up there.

[2548] You should watch it if it's there.

[2549] If not, trying to picture what we're talking about.

[2550] If it's still there.

[2551] We'll see.

[2552] Looking forward to seeing it come out.

[2553] I guess the character stuff is the only thing that kind of bugs me out a little bit.

[2554] You play as guy or girl, right?

[2555] Yeah, as Hawk.

[2556] Yes.

[2557] Yeah.

[2558] And it's not like no more origin stories.

[2559] I guess we're not in origin anymore, but that was some of my favorite stuff from that.

[2560] Well, I mean, Mass Effect, you are Shepard, but you still get to pick an origin story.

[2561] Yeah, but not like in Dragon Age.

[2562] You're talking about a playable origin story.

[2563] Yeah, like the opening of Dragon Age.

[2564] It's pretty awesome.

[2565] Where you're like, I'm a dwarven prince, or I'm an elvish wizard.

[2566] Yeah, I mean, actually, come to think of it, me and you have both played through the intro of that game with different characters, and it's exactly the same.

[2567] Remember they brought it by here and you played as a...

[2568] In the new one, in 2.

[2569] Yeah, in 2.

[2570] I just wonder, like, the way that they're showing this game off, I wonder if they got the feedback of when they were showing the first game off that, like, all this shit just looks totally overwhelming.

[2571] Because they showed, whenever they showed the first Dragon Age...

[2572] Like they would always emphasize like you can make a billion different decisions with your 85 party members and everything can be fucking completely on and crazy in a complex old school RPG kind of way.

[2573] And for a certain part of the audience, people are like, fuck yeah.

[2574] Remember when we went to that event in L .A.?

[2575] Yeah.

[2576] And they were showing the PC version.

[2577] Yeah, like, no one's beat this.

[2578] They were like, hey, hey, we got a save for you.

[2579] Why don't you try it?

[2580] You know, and then you obviously are going to wipe on it.

[2581] And they were like, oh, yeah, by the way, that's one of the hardest bosses of the game.

[2582] Nobody today has beaten that.

[2583] And I'm like, oh, also, I haven't played it for the 60 hours that would have gotten me up to this point.

[2584] So I don't know.

[2585] I don't have the intricacies of my party down.

[2586] And I didn't sit there reading the tool tip on every one of the 20 spells on my bar.

[2587] So, I mean, that was always the problem with them showing off the first game was you'd be like, okay, well, this seems cool if I had played the 20 hours up to this point.

[2588] but this is awesome.

[2589] But since I haven't, I can't really get anything meaningful out of this hands -on time because it's too much to just sit down and be like, all right, I'm suddenly playing Dragon Age.

[2590] So I feel like they're being very deliberate with two of showing more isolated, more controlled, easier to understand.

[2591] I think it also works out because they do have a first game out.

[2592] That's true.

[2593] That they can kind of say, well, you know, in the first game we had this.

[2594] This game we're doing this.

[2595] So there's at least that point of comparison.

[2596] But I think that that's fostering the concern that they are just dumbing it down the hell out of this.

[2597] Which it sounds like maybe they're not.

[2598] Maybe they're not.

[2599] Or at least not as much as some people are worried about.

[2600] The skill trees and stuff are still all over.

[2601] Yeah, yeah.

[2602] So I should say as much as some parts of the UI feel like Mass Effect.

[2603] Another part that's really weird is when you pause it.

[2604] You hit start.

[2605] you get that exact same radial menu with basically the same options as Mass Effect.

[2606] I think that was in the Origins as well.

[2607] Yeah, I mean, maybe that's just standard hardware stuff.

[2608] But a lot of the stuff feels really reminiscent.

[2609] But anyway...

[2610] Like with Mass Effect 2, some of their solutions for the more convoluted gameplay systems were to reduce them almost out of existence.

[2611] You know, like the inventory and stuff.

[2612] Like this definitely still has a big fat list of swords and armor and stuff that you can turn on and off.

[2613] What about torches?

[2614] Do I need to have torches to light a path?

[2615] I don't think you do.

[2616] I don't think so.

[2617] I didn't say torches.

[2618] I hate being somewhere and then it gets dark and you ain't got no torch.

[2619] But also the skill stuff in particular.

[2620] Like, you know, the classes in Mass Effect, it's like every class.

[2621] has four skills and upgrade them or don't.

[2622] But the fighter alone, there were like six different disciplines with probably...

[2623] Almost like a tech tree.

[2624] Six to eight skills per...

[2625] One of the tech trees, infinite torch.

[2626] Yeah.

[2627] I hate that.

[2628] Flame hands.

[2629] One of them is infinite blowjobs.

[2630] I'm going to min -max.

[2631] For blowjobs?

[2632] That one, just...

[2633] That's my preference.

[2634] I guess it's the rumor right now.

[2635] I also kind of dug the art style.

[2636] I like it.

[2637] I don't know.

[2638] It looks like Dragon Age.

[2639] I feel like they got more personality.

[2640] It's a little more comical.

[2641] It's a little more like swords are huge.

[2642] It's more exaggerated.

[2643] Maces are big.

[2644] Actually, yeah, you're right.

[2645] That two -handed sword that guy had, like the hilt alone on that thing, was like as big as most swords.

[2646] And that hammer, that giant mallet.

[2647] It's not like Final Fantasy extremes, though, is it?

[2648] You're creeping up.

[2649] Not to such a cartoonish degree.

[2650] It's not like it's like pinball scores.

[2651] It definitely stands out.

[2652] I think it helps.

[2653] I think that game needed more distinctive...

[2654] personality arts.

[2655] Like, the first game to me was like, we have made our extremely standard fantasy game.

[2656] Real generic.

[2657] Elves are elves, dwarves are dwarves.

[2658] Yeah, exactly.

[2659] Yeah, just, you know, your Tolkien derivative.

[2660] Low fantasy.

[2661] Yeah.

[2662] Now it's like, alright, well, we can make some stuff crazier and add a little more.

[2663] Dude still get bloodied up real good.

[2664] Yeah, they do.

[2665] Yes, they do.

[2666] That is to a cartoonish degree.

[2667] It's ridiculous.

[2668] But the first one was crazy, too.

[2669] Yeah, I guess so.

[2670] It's like you literally took a bloodbath.

[2671] I think the guy had some perma -blood across his nose, too.

[2672] Oh, that's a...

[2673] That's like a customization thing.

[2674] You can pick to have a smear.

[2675] Always have blood?

[2676] I think.

[2677] I'm pretty sure I saw that.

[2678] Face blood.

[2679] Permanent face blood.

[2680] And that's when they have their conversations after they're soaked in blood.

[2681] Hey, what's up?

[2682] We should go take a nap.

[2683] I can't see.

[2684] This shit is fucked.

[2685] I'm a wizard.

[2686] This shit is fucked.

[2687] I want you to know that.

[2688] I'm supposed to be far away casting spells.

[2689] This would be no blood on me. So this is...

[2690] I don't even know if my spells make people bleed.

[2691] Hey, remember when I wiped on that fight?

[2692] Remember when I was like, everybody's dead, and now I have to fight this guy alone when they brought it by?

[2693] Yeah.

[2694] Brad, everybody wiped, and he had to fight it with one guy, too.

[2695] That sucked.

[2696] Just a horrible battle of attrition of like, oh.

[2697] That ain't cool.

[2698] And then on Friday, I went to a bunch of, Drew and I went to a series of sweets.

[2699] in a hotel in San Francisco to look at some Atari goods.

[2700] What can you talk about?

[2701] I could talk about their downloadable slate that they have coming up, including Yars Revenge, of which we have a Quick Look EX up on the site.

[2702] That's already out.

[2703] You check that out.

[2704] What's that?

[2705] Are these all game room releases?

[2706] No, they're making a new...

[2707] I'm not going to play this game with you, Jeff.

[2708] Dungeons & Dragons Daggerfall?

[2709] No. Dungeons & Dragons Daggerdale.

[2710] There we go.

[2711] What's that?

[2712] Like action RPG, dungeon crawler set in the D &D universe.

[2713] Like Dark Alliance?

[2714] Sub Dark Alliance.

[2715] But, you know, there's loots.

[2716] There's hammering on buttons to stab goblins.

[2717] Sub Dark Alliance in terms of complexity, right?

[2718] Yes, yes, yes, yes.

[2719] Of not quite that level.

[2720] Also, again, you can pull the camera out if you so choose to, but the camera seems a little more third -person -y.

[2721] You can go four -player co -op.

[2722] Behind the back -ish.

[2723] Yeah, yeah.

[2724] Four -player co -op.

[2725] What was it?

[2726] Human Fighter, Elven Rogue.

[2727] Beholder.

[2728] Dwarf, wizard, no, Thyra the Valkyrie.

[2729] But that kind of thing where it's like the class and the race are bound.

[2730] That's your one -off.

[2731] There are four characters to choose from.

[2732] What class you want to play as determines who your character is.

[2733] This is downloadable?

[2734] This will be in the spring.

[2735] Play through a little dungeon sequence and it seemed promising.

[2736] I like that style of game.

[2737] But their thing was like, hey, we realize that D &D fans don't want everything.

[2738] Everything does not need to be Neverwinter Nights as far as the seriousness and the depth of the role -playing elements.

[2739] You can have stuff that's a little lighter, and that's kind of what we want to do with this.

[2740] Are there kobolds in it?

[2741] Very probably.

[2742] Awesome.

[2743] How about gnolls?

[2744] Maybe.

[2745] Bugbears?

[2746] Vaco.

[2747] It's maybe starting to get a little...

[2748] Gelatinous Cube.

[2749] God, I hope so.

[2750] Man, when you saw the Gelatinous Cubes and fucking Dark Alliance, fucking how awesome was that?

[2751] Those were sick fucking Gelatinous Cubes, too.

[2752] It's one of the good things about that Realm of the Mad God browser game.

[2753] Oh, yeah.

[2754] There's a hella cubes.

[2755] Is there a lot of cubes?

[2756] Yeah.

[2757] Gelatinous...

[2758] The Gelatinous Cube.

[2759] One of my favorite D &D tropes.

[2760] Gelatinous Cube.

[2761] Brethren's better than Sly.

[2762] And you just see...

[2763] Yeah, well...

[2764] And you see, like, bones floating in them.

[2765] That's great.

[2766] It's fantastic.

[2767] I don't like that.

[2768] I like that.

[2769] I like my gelatinous cubes cute.

[2770] No, see, I like chibi gelatinous cubes.

[2771] I love the idea of...

[2772] Gelatinous cube SD.

[2773] Gelatinous cubes sound so dumb, and the idea that it could even be sinister, I think is really funny.

[2774] Why does it maintain its cubic shape?

[2775] What is to be gained?

[2776] Why anything about gelatinous cubes?

[2777] Why did Gary Gygax say, you know what would be great?

[2778] He was eating Jell -O squares.

[2779] He was taking vodka or doing Jell -O shots.

[2780] Doing Jell -O shots.

[2781] Worshipping the devil.

[2782] Yeah.

[2783] It just came to him.

[2784] We've gone around to the sewers underneath our city with nothing but Jell -O shots to keep him company.

[2785] He said, these things are a monster, man. And then he said, monster manual.

[2786] Real bad.

[2787] I think that looks potentially cool.

[2788] And then also...

[2789] Ghostbusters Sanctum of Slime.

[2790] Which is being made by, I can't remember what they're called now, but formerly Wanako, the Assault Heroes people.

[2791] Oh, right.

[2792] And Assault Heroes 2.

[2793] This kind of reminds me of the underground, on -foot sections of Assault Heroes.

[2794] Huh.

[2795] Except you're playing as no -name Ghostbusters.

[2796] What universe are we in?

[2797] Larry Venkman.

[2798] Ghostbusters universe.

[2799] Now they're like recruiting.

[2800] Do they even try to explain it?

[2801] If it were me making that game, I wouldn't even try to explain it.

[2802] It seems like they're kind of like...

[2803] It's not the original Ghostbusters.

[2804] We made up some new Ghostbusters franchise.

[2805] You don't need to explain where they came from.

[2806] There have been plenty of cases where they've done that in the past.

[2807] You know, all the weird Ghostbusters stuff.

[2808] They seemed...

[2809] Well, whatever.

[2810] I guess that wasn't the real Ghostbusters.

[2811] They seemed pretty realistic about expectations on that one.

[2812] Like, you know, whatever.

[2813] It's got the Ghostbusters in it.

[2814] You hear the proton pack.

[2815] There was some weird color -coded combat in it.

[2816] So you could hit a bumper so you went from proton pack to this other kind of attack that you could shoot out.

[2817] And then enemies that were yellow, you would want to shoot with one thing, and enemies that were red, you'd want to shoot with the other thing.

[2818] Crap.

[2819] Pretty simple, it seemed.

[2820] I'm boned.

[2821] I don't know.

[2822] That game looks like a Xbox Live arcade and PlayStation Network downloadable title.

[2823] It is.

[2824] Is it a dual joystick shooter?

[2825] It is.

[2826] It is a top -down dual joystick shooter.

[2827] You can cross the streams.

[2828] What?

[2829] You can cross the streams.

[2830] Don't you think after...

[2831] I guess you'd have to.

[2832] But don't, yeah.

[2833] For one, logistically, don't you have to.

[2834] But also, don't you think that at some point the Ghostbusters would work out that kink in their technology?

[2835] Laws of physics, man. Don't mess around.

[2836] Imagine every atom in your body exploding.

[2837] See, that seems like if you're going to try and make a serious business around these proton packs, like, that's a really serious...

[2838] Why do you think the Peckler wants a Peck?

[2839] Peck?

[2840] That's a considerable bug in your heart.

[2841] That to me just says, yeah, that just comes with the territory.

[2842] But no, you bootstrap.

[2843] Dangerous times, dangerous tools.

[2844] But then you refine.

[2845] You bootstrap and then you figure out how to make it something that you could give to a franchisee.

[2846] Who's to say that problem can be corrected?

[2847] This game.

[2848] Then they wouldn't have an unlicensed Utah bomb.

[2849] This game says so.

[2850] Oh, wait.

[2851] I was waiting for you to explain the consequence of crossing those streams.

[2852] No, there is no consequence.

[2853] I'm saying that they said you can cross streams, and at first I was like, ah.

[2854] I'm like, yeah.

[2855] Why not?

[2856] Why not?

[2857] I was waiting for you to be like, yeah, you can cross streams, and then it kicks you straight to the dashboard.

[2858] Nope.

[2859] And erases your save.

[2860] Nope.

[2861] And it says, busted made me feel good.

[2862] And red rings your console.

[2863] Go ahead and cross those streams like nuts.

[2864] Is Ray Parker Jr. one of the Ghostbusters in this game?

[2865] Did they make him an honorary?

[2866] No, I don't think so.

[2867] Man. There's Ray, there's Parker, there's Junior.

[2868] Okay, all right.

[2869] Pretty simple.

[2870] And then there's Sam.

[2871] Pretty simple game.

[2872] Yeah, it was like a three -player co -op, two -player co -op, four -player co -op.

[2873] Four -player co -op.

[2874] Four -player co -op.

[2875] You play Slimer?

[2876] Slimer was there.

[2877] I shot Slimer.

[2878] Is it really Slimer?

[2879] Yeah.

[2880] The real Slimer.

[2881] It's the real Ghostbusters, real Slimer action figure set.

[2882] It's good that they were able to get the Lagnus rights for him.

[2883] The level I played took place in the Sedgwick Hotel.

[2884] It seems like they're pulling a lot of supporting characters.

[2885] Wait a minute.

[2886] So you're not the real Ghostbusters, but it still takes place in the city where the real Ghostbusters plied their trade.

[2887] Or have at least at some point plied their trade.

[2888] So it's not like, hey, you're in some other city and you're a new Ghostbusters franchise.

[2889] It's conceivable that they would have retired.

[2890] I think I actually would have liked if they were like, across the country, there's this other...

[2891] come up Ghostbuster team that is like, we could do that better.

[2892] One day they woke up and the Hollywood sign was covered in burning slime.

[2893] Right.

[2894] And they're like, oh man, there are ghosts here too.

[2895] Here's our approach.

[2896] We can cross the fucking streams.

[2897] I don't know what you guys were doing.

[2898] East Coast don't know shit about busted ghosts.

[2899] Yeah.

[2900] East Coast, West Coast.

[2901] West side of busted motherfucking ghosts.

[2902] Jumping through the O in Hollywood sign, which turned into a portal.

[2903] We gotta cross streams to close said portal.

[2904] Think about it.

[2905] Yo, Wizard, what do you think?

[2906] And just Wizard is like one of the street -talking new Ghostbusters.

[2907] Yo, Wizard!

[2908] I believe the black character does wear his hat backwards.

[2909] Oh, man. Yeah.

[2910] So what else did they show?

[2911] That's all I can talk about.

[2912] Oh, I said Yars' Revenge.

[2913] I don't know about Yars' Revenge.

[2914] It's a rail shooter.

[2915] It is.

[2916] Isn't it like Panzer Dragooni kind of thing?

[2917] Yeah, they compared it to Res and...

[2918] Fuck, I can't remember something else.

[2919] Sin and Punishment?

[2920] Yeah, Sin and Punishment and Res were the games they compared it to because of the combo system that was in place there.

[2921] Some lock -on, but also free targeting.

[2922] So it's not all just like...

[2923] Do you have a melee attack?

[2924] Because that to me is kind of the thing that differentiates Sin and Punishment from...

[2925] No, but I will tell you this.

[2926] When you turn on your shields, it looks like the fucking shield.

[2927] Okay.

[2928] For all the other crazy shit that they did to the art style, like while they've kind of blazed their own weird anime path for the look of that game.

[2929] It looks like the shield around the coat seal, just that block thing?

[2930] No, no, the bar.

[2931] The bar.

[2932] It looks like that.

[2933] It has that crazy random color pattern.

[2934] feel to it except it's circular and goes around you.

[2935] Are you Yar?

[2936] Yes.

[2937] But that thing's like just interference that you can't shoot when you're inside that field.

[2938] Like that doesn't play, man. They're not true to the fiction.

[2939] What is the code deal?

[2940] You know what?

[2941] I'm sorry, Jeff.

[2942] You don't get to be upset about anything about what they do for Yar's revenge.

[2943] That's fine.

[2944] Do they have that, do they license that song by the fucking champs for it?

[2945] No. That does not seem like the style they're going for.

[2946] Is this a downloadable game?

[2947] It is a downloadable game.

[2948] All of these are downloadable games.

[2949] That sounds...

[2950] Okay.

[2951] All of these are downloadable games.

[2952] Yeah.

[2953] None of these would play as full disc releases.

[2954] So good on Atari for kind of making a strong push, or at least making a push.

[2955] On their downloadable stuff.

[2956] That stuff at least, that all kind of sounds better than Haunted House.

[2957] At least for, you know, that's what they're aiming for is the spring.

[2958] Did Haunted House come out?

[2959] It did.

[2960] We did a quick look of it.

[2961] Haunted House.

[2962] That's all I've got.

[2963] Oh, God, we're out of time.

[2964] You don't know.

[2965] Oh, fucking, you don't know.

[2966] Jack is awesome, you guys.

[2967] It comes out this week.

[2968] Yeah.

[2969] And it's awesome.

[2970] If you guys like You Don't Know Jack.

[2971] I pre -ordered a copy.

[2972] Did you get it?

[2973] I did.

[2974] I love it.

[2975] Hopefully it'll come.

[2976] It's great.

[2977] How do you feel about the value proposition there?

[2978] I think it's really solid.

[2979] But again, I love the old games.

[2980] Right.

[2981] I've paid $50 for less than what I'm getting here.

[2982] Like trivia, yeah.

[2983] For seeing it and stuff like that.

[2984] No, even for old, for when You Don't Know Jack was on the PC.

[2985] Originally, in the 90s, when $40 to $50 was a lot more, I was buying You Don't Know Jack games and enjoying them and feeling I was getting my money's worth out of them.

[2986] So I paid $30.

[2987] Is that on sale or is that a...

[2988] That's the price.

[2989] That's how much it is.

[2990] Okay, because on Amazon it was like the slash.

[2991] So Amazon has the slash, but if you go to GameStop, it's just $30.

[2992] Okay.

[2993] So at first I saw that and I thought like, oh no, did I misspeak and say it was $30 when really it's $40 and it's only going to be $30 for a little bit and then it's going to go up.

[2994] So they're just being weird.

[2995] I don't know what's up with Amazon.

[2996] But yeah, I looked at GameStop for it and it's $30.

[2997] I mean, that many questions and that slick production.

[2998] You're getting like 720 questions.

[2999] For $30 is a steal.

[3000] You're getting a ton of questions.

[3001] The quality of the trivia is incredibly high.

[3002] It's good.

[3003] It's got a great sense of humor.

[3004] I just feel like they couldn't get that flow if they randomized it.

[3005] They probably couldn't.

[3006] But the downside is you can basically only play that game once with any given group of people and arguably only once, period.

[3007] And then the challenge aspect of it is going to go away.

[3008] Yeah, how many times do you replay games?

[3009] It has a single use, I agree.

[3010] But I think there's more upside to the format.

[3011] That they chose The past it's been randomized And the problem is that In any trivia game like that The first time you see a question for the second time The magic is over your interest in that game immediately plummets.

[3012] It's like, oh, I'm already looping on the trivia questions.

[3013] Fantastic.

[3014] Even up front about how it all works.

[3015] They're like, hey, so just don't play this episode again.

[3016] So these questions, you've used them up.

[3017] We'll take them out of the loop.

[3018] This is from a genre that you would typically whip out when people come over to your house.

[3019] It's something you want to play in a group.

[3020] Sure.

[3021] You've got to save a couple of episodes.

[3022] How many episodes are there?

[3023] 72.

[3024] So that's the thing.

[3025] There's a ton of them.

[3026] Okay, I guess that's kind of a lot.

[3027] But at some point, you're going to run out.

[3028] Yeah, but there's also going to be DLC that they're going to support.

[3029] If they do a lot of support, then that's cool.

[3030] I feel like the base number justifies it.

[3031] I mean, there's a lot of banter in there.

[3032] Again, price -wise, it is a perfectly fine value.

[3033] It's just that it's so good that you kind of want it to go on forever, right?

[3034] I mean, the danger there is I could easily see one.

[3035] accidentally just burning through the whole thing, not wanting to quit.

[3036] That's the concern.

[3037] This trivia is so good, and these questions are funny, and I love this format.

[3038] Let's keep going.

[3039] You could go through it in a week.

[3040] Oh, no. Oh, when are they going to make another one of these?

[3041] I did it without my friends, and now I'm going to beat them.

[3042] Now it's not fun for them when I know all the answers.

[3043] Beat them soundly.

[3044] I was impressed, honestly, again, as a fan of the old Jack games, how closely they stuck to.

[3045] I expected much more to be changed in the overall format.

[3046] But, like, Dis or Dats and the Jack attack and Screws and even just kind of the behind -the -scenes banter that you hear ramping up to the start of the episode and then the post -episode stuff and the fake commercials.

[3047] Like, they just hit the tone and the structure.

[3048] It just seems like they made another one of those games.

[3049] Exactly!

[3050] They didn't fuck around.

[3051] It's not like, this is a You Don't Know Jack for a new generation.

[3052] This is another You Don't Know Jack.

[3053] Why did it take so long?

[3054] But I feel like it still plays.

[3055] What were they doing all the time?

[3056] Yeah, I don't know what I'm saying.

[3057] That makes it retro or whatever.

[3058] It's not like trivia games.

[3059] Well, but I mean, that's kind of the thing.

[3060] They kind of just stopped.

[3061] I feel like they just reached the point of saturation on the PC.

[3062] Well, they were doing online stuff for a while.

[3063] They were.

[3064] They were experimenting all kinds of crazy business.

[3065] Yeah, around 99, 2000, they were doing crazy weekly shows that they were producing on the web that were...

[3066] Somebody get Builder in here.

[3067] Somebody needs to be held to account for the...

[3068] years of Jellyvision that were really good.

[3069] And then they did that again leading up to this release.

[3070] I wonder just what happened to Jellyvision.

[3071] It's weird that they were able to still exist for all of those years that they weren't making You Don't Know Jack games.

[3072] But here they are with a new You Don't Know Jack game.

[3073] They burn through their money and are like, shit.

[3074] It's time.

[3075] I mean, it's got to the point of diminishing returns where it's like, the new stuff's not moving.

[3076] All right, well, it's going to hang out.

[3077] Just make a Jack game.

[3078] Well, you have to, I think it was, it needed to switch platforms.

[3079] It needed to not just be this PC -only thing.

[3080] Right.

[3081] Because the time that it first came out, you couldn't make those games on other systems.

[3082] Right.

[3083] You could not make You Don't Know Jack work.

[3084] There were multimedia.

[3085] That was multimedia as fuck.

[3086] You needed MPC2.

[3087] To play You Don't Know Jack.

[3088] Goddamn right you did.

[3089] That's out this week.

[3090] I think it's a delight.

[3091] And we're out of time.

[3092] Oh, man. What?

[3093] We're out of time.

[3094] Like, for good?

[3095] We're in like two hours.

[3096] Oh, so we're done.

[3097] Yeah.

[3098] So no news, no nothing.

[3099] You finished our podcast.

[3100] Dude, there's a ton of news.

[3101] Is there?

[3102] Like what?

[3103] Does that mean I can't talk about?

[3104] Rumors about Halo being remade for the Xbox 360 as the 10 -year anniversary of Halo Combat Evolved is upon us.

[3105] Makes sense.

[3106] They're saying that Sabre, those fine folks working on Inversion, might be working on it.

[3107] And it's one of those things that zero official confirmation but is being reported in such a way that it does make sense.

[3108] Right, yeah.

[3109] Where it's like, you guys are using a kind of knowing language where you're like, well, I know that no one at Microsoft is going to flat out deny this story.

[3110] But I'm also not going to get a confirmation, so if I just say supposedly a lot, then I can get away with it.

[3111] Yeah.

[3112] At least that's the feeling that I get from that.

[3113] Battlefield 1943 is not coming to the PC.

[3114] Big effing surprise.

[3115] What?

[3116] Because they need to put more dudes onto crazy Battlefield 3 trailers.

[3117] Like the one they put out last week, where a plane flew through an exploding helicopter.

[3118] I didn't see that.

[3119] And they said, it's got 64 dudes on the PC, so it'll still be giant.

[3120] Is 64 still giant?

[3121] I guess it's still pretty big.

[3122] How many games do that?

[3123] Other than Battlefield and...

[3124] Mag is like a weird experimental outlier, though, where that's the whole point of the game.

[3125] It's not just in service of...

[3126] You're right.

[3127] Mag is still cool.

[3128] I'm not saying Mag is bad.

[3129] So how many people per team, it's 64?

[3130] No, it's 64 total.

[3131] Total, okay.

[3132] And then 24 total on console, I think is what they're saying.

[3133] 64 is a lot of dudes.

[3134] But at some point you start to wonder, why would you even make a console version if you're going to make it that different of a game?

[3135] And the answer, of course, money.

[3136] Money.

[3137] Money, money, money, money.

[3138] Money, money, money.

[3139] Oh, I also saw you playing a little bit of Assassin's Creed.

[3140] Yes, a little.

[3141] I left it on pause all weekend.

[3142] Wait, were you still on Uno?

[3143] Because I just kept coming back to it.

[3144] No, no, I finished one.

[3145] Oh, congratulations.

[3146] How'd that go?

[3147] I am deep into two.

[3148] That's why I was sitting here clenching my fists when you said that we were out of time.

[3149] No, no, no. Let's talk about Assassin's Creed.

[3150] Really?

[3151] Yeah, absolutely.

[3152] We can save it until next week.

[3153] No, no, no. I mean, I'll probably have finished two by next week.

[3154] Well, let's check in.

[3155] All right.

[3156] Are you enjoying two more than one already?

[3157] Dude.

[3158] Right?

[3159] Oh, my God.

[3160] How much?

[3161] I can't even imagine.

[3162] Because I had it going from one to the next.

[3163] Like, immediately.

[3164] Thank God.

[3165] In the space of less than 24 hours.

[3166] I had it trapped in a coffin.

[3167] Because I had, like, a year, right?

[3168] Or, like, two years.

[3169] See, I can't imagine finishing the first one when it was new.

[3170] Yeah.

[3171] Like, I would have thrown it out the window.

[3172] I would have taken a shit on the disc.

[3173] You know, it's like that Halo 2 syndrome of the ending is so frustrating.

[3174] It wasn't the ending so much as just, like, you guys made half a game.

[3175] And then stretched it out.

[3176] You came up with this really amazing framework and then didn't make a fun game around it.

[3177] At the time, though, since it was so new and we didn't have the perspective we have now, at the time, the original Assassin's Creed was fantastic.

[3178] I remember at the time thinking, there's a lot of stuff that's really great.

[3179] But yeah, there are things about it where you're like, man...

[3180] This stuff makes it really hard to love Assassin's Creed.

[3181] I burned out on it originally specifically because there's three mission types and it's just the same shit over and over and over.

[3182] I definitely got something out of the dynamic climbing up a tower, doing the synchronization scan.

[3183] I got a little kick out of that every single time.

[3184] That stuff is beautiful.

[3185] It is...

[3186] I did all of those.

[3187] I did every viewpoint in the first game.

[3188] Yeah, because it's amazing.

[3189] It looks great.

[3190] So what's going on in 2 that's got you so...

[3191] I don't know.

[3192] I mean, the reasons it's so much more approachable and enjoyable have been so well documented.

[3193] I don't think we need to spend a lot of time on that.

[3194] It's a proper open world game.

[3195] There's enough variety that you're always...

[3196] There's always something nearby to do that you haven't done in so long that you wouldn't mind doing it again.

[3197] Have you even become an assassin yet with Ezio?

[3198] How do you define...

[3199] becoming an assassin do you have a sword i've got two blades okay does that count yes okay uh yeah i mean i'm uh i'm on like sequence five oh okay so you played more than a little bit oh yeah i'm like 10 hours into it okay i don't know i think maybe you just turned it on my villa is as renovated as it can be uh how great is that shit huh i hate i hate that you have to go back to get your money every time though that's Well, play Brotherhood.

[3200] Yeah, I know.

[3201] I'm sure that's coming.

[3202] I mean, this is already so much better than the first one.

[3203] Yeah, it's its own thing in Brotherhood.

[3204] It kind of spins out in a weird way in Brotherhood.

[3205] But how great is it?

[3206] And they make less of a deal out of it in Brotherhood, but I still figured out that you could do it, and I would do it all the time.

[3207] I love throwing money on the streets.

[3208] I love just the animation.

[3209] The flagrance with which Ezio just tosses coins out.

[3210] It's like, what?

[3211] And then everybody goes apeshit.

[3212] Yeah, and everyone loses it.

[3213] It's like diving for it.

[3214] Money, money, money.

[3215] Money, money, money.

[3216] Did any of you guys play that game in Italian?

[3217] A little bit.

[3218] Did you do that?

[3219] I tried that.

[3220] I tried that for about an hour.

[3221] It's kind of cool.

[3222] It's kind of weird.

[3223] Yeah, it's all right.

[3224] I like it.

[3225] The subtitles are not as pervasive as they need to be if you're going to do that, though.

[3226] None of the ambient dialogue gets translated.

[3227] I just don't know what anybody's saying.

[3228] And even some of the Italian will just show up in Italian in the subtitles.

[3229] That's the frustrating part.

[3230] They didn't rewrite them.

[3231] But the weird part is it's different Italian than what they're saying.

[3232] Oh, yeah?

[3233] Yeah, so they say different words and then the subtitle has a different word.

[3234] It's just weird.

[3235] Did you speak any Italian?

[3236] Enough to know that when the word they're saying is not the word that's written.

[3237] Okay, because my girlfriend was watching me play it and said we should get you over there.

[3238] And I was like, I know he's Italian and everything.

[3239] What sort of subtitling do you guys prefer when it comes to stuff like that?

[3240] There are a lot of games.

[3241] Because I played Dead Space 2 with the subtitles on.

[3242] Really?

[3243] And there are things that...

[3244] You couldn't really, like, opening of the game dialogue that you don't necessarily pick out because it's all scratchy and spooky or it's far off radio.

[3245] I didn't bring that into the review of that game, but that is a problem with that game.

[3246] But you turn on the subtitles and it's all right there clear as day.

[3247] Do you think that's good or bad?

[3248] I don't know.

[3249] At some point, it was good to know what that stuff was, but I felt like it lost some of the ambiance of, you're not really supposed to pick out every single word of this sentence.

[3250] So that was the visceral defense.

[3251] of that issue uh one of those guys posted in the neograf thread for that game saying specifically it's like a lot of psychological like stuff that's supposed to be in his head basically the stuff that's hardest to understand the stuff that's mixed in such a way that you can't really understand it right and they came out saying like well you know those are supposed to be like hallucinations and stuff so if you don't get every word and every nuance it's just supposed to add texture to his insanity right it doesn't look like it's like it's not that's not developing the story yeah yeah yeah That kind of sounds like a cop -out to me. I don't know.

[3252] I think that that's the right answer.

[3253] I think that that's definitely the right move because the things that are being screamed at you by Nicole here and there early on, not really important.

[3254] Sure.

[3255] Even though it does kind of come back around, the kind of core phrase that she keeps saying here and there is not necessarily something that you need to get.

[3256] every time she says it.

[3257] Sure.

[3258] And there's stuff at the very beginning where the, is it Tideman?

[3259] Is that his name?

[3260] Yeah.

[3261] Where he's given the order to kind of execute everybody that you don't necessarily pick out the first time you hear it unless you're running really fast to get closer to where the audio is sourced from.

[3262] And so, yeah, I don't know.

[3263] Like, on one hand, I appreciated being able to see every single bit that they wrote for it.

[3264] On the other hand, it definitely, like, anything that was supposed to be ambient, anything that was supposed to be kind of spooky and crazy was stripped away to just words on the screen at that point.

[3265] Like, here's the script, basically.

[3266] It's absolutely something to be said for, you know, what you can't hear or see.

[3267] Like, I feel like they should have, like...

[3268] Garbled.

[3269] Something about the subtitles.

[3270] They could have made it more clear up front that you didn't need to hear that stuff and in fact it might be better if you didn't.

[3271] Because I feel personally that I've been trained to try to pick out every single word that's thrown at me just to absorb as much information about the game world as possible.

[3272] So every time she would start babbling about something, I would pause and go into the menu and turn on the subtitles.

[3273] Just long enough to see that stuff because you couldn't understand it otherwise.

[3274] Interesting.

[3275] Anyway, I'm playing AC2 with no subtitles in English.

[3276] I went back.

[3277] Well, I'm glad you're enjoying it.

[3278] That feels like the right way.

[3279] The only thing that feels weird is that it feels like it's kind of more garish than the first game.

[3280] Like...

[3281] First Assassin's Creed, for all of its faults, it had a really uniquely austere quality to it.

[3282] You know what I mean?

[3283] I think that reflects the time.

[3284] Ezio is a flamboyant.

[3285] He feels like the protagonist in a Bruckheimer movie.

[3286] Devil May Care, very brash.

[3287] Cocky badass.

[3288] He's got to come through on the other side.

[3289] He's a cocky badass that then a bunch of really rough things happen to his entire family.

[3290] He has to step it up and be like, all right, I got to.

[3291] I can already see that it's going that way.

[3292] It's already.

[3293] He becomes more serious and, yeah.

[3294] I don't know if the statute of limitations up on what happens in this game.

[3295] Absolutely.

[3296] If you haven't played it, the turn is off.

[3297] When the Posse's launched their scheme, like on the Sunday morning services.

[3298] Oh, yeah.

[3299] Like the very, like, Godfather style.

[3300] Yeah.

[3301] Gangland slaughter.

[3302] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[3303] I was just like.

[3304] I was running after those guys.

[3305] I actually failed the mission where you have to defend Lorenzo Medici because the posse guy who tried to kill him is supposed to get away.

[3306] I just kept chasing him over and over.

[3307] I kept failing that mission because I was trying to kill him.

[3308] They definitely make the assassinations feel so much more personal and relevant to you.

[3309] Did you get to the carnival?

[3310] No. I love that.

[3311] That stuff's great.

[3312] I love that section.

[3313] That stuff's great.

[3314] Just visually the stuff that happens in that part is, like Jeff said, that shit is fucked up.

[3315] The game's already pretty fucked up.

[3316] I'm an assassin.

[3317] I am looking forward to seeing what else happens.

[3318] Well, fantastic.

[3319] I'm happy to check in with you again later.

[3320] Yeah.

[3321] I continue to Assassin's Creed.

[3322] Could not be happier to be catching up on that stuff.

[3323] I don't know what the fuck I was doing a year and a half ago when you guys were all playing that game.

[3324] You were saying, oh, I've got to finish the first Assassin's Creed.

[3325] Yeah, pretty much.

[3326] Pretty much.

[3327] You were saying, oh, I'm at this preview of that.

[3328] I don't know.

[3329] I'm glad I finished the first one just to see side by side.

[3330] Exactly how it changed.

[3331] Also, some of the story stuff is kind of cool.

[3332] I don't know.

[3333] Like, I was already aware of the broad kind of underpinnings of the franchise's storyline, like this kind of clash between two factions and stuff.

[3334] And then when you see that stuff play out in the first game, it's just like a flatly delivered line of dialogue.

[3335] Yeah, they don't really do it very well.

[3336] It's like you pop out of the Animus and Kristen Bell is just like, oh, by the way, these guys are Templars.

[3337] Not so much that part.

[3338] It's more the notes from...

[3339] Yeah, that stuff was cool.

[3340] Like where the stuff went, where he went after the Assassin's Guild was kind of demolished.

[3341] Yeah, I think it's stuff that like where you got to in Assassin's Creed 1, you could have just watched the ending to that game in video form and been just as ready to go.

[3342] There's some cool stuff though.

[3343] Not true of Assassin's Creed 2.

[3344] Not true at all of Assassin's Creed 2.

[3345] You got to finish that shit because that game goes awesome.

[3346] Do not play Brotherhood until you...

[3347] I don't know if I can do Brotherhood back -to -back with two.

[3348] That's fine.

[3349] I already did one and two back -to -back.

[3350] Wait a couple years.

[3351] It'll be fine.

[3352] No, I mean, I'll give it a...

[3353] Maybe I'll do my Dead Space Zealot run or something.

[3354] That'll give you time to, you know, play the Assassin's Creed Brotherhood Facebook game.

[3355] Yeah.

[3356] Woo!

[3357] Level up your dudes.

[3358] I figure I should finish Brotherhood before E3.

[3359] Just in case.

[3360] Just in case.

[3361] Best of luck, sir.

[3362] Yeah, there's...

[3363] There's going to be another Assassin's Creed game.

[3364] Sweet.

[3365] Bring it on.

[3366] You heard it here first.

[3367] There's going to be another Assassin's Creed game.

[3368] If you had subtitles to this podcast on, you already know that.

[3369] From last year, they said that already.

[3370] They said, we're going to do another one of these.

[3371] They seem to be going all right.

[3372] No, they said, like, next year.

[3373] So they said, we're going to keep busting these out because people seem to like them.

[3374] I'll play three and a half of those in one year.

[3375] I don't know if you saw.

[3376] What?

[3377] There's going to be a Madden NFL football this year.

[3378] Turns out.

[3379] They showed a screenshot of it.

[3380] Have they really?

[3381] During the Super Bowl, I think, the producer.

[3382] Look, football.

[3383] Yeah, it literally is a blurry screenshot, like a phone shot of a TV.

[3384] And did you see it as a football field?

[3385] You're like, yep.

[3386] They finally did it.

[3387] It's perfect.

[3388] It's the way to.

[3389] This shit is fucked up.

[3390] Do you guys want to know what's coming out this week?

[3391] Sure.

[3392] Is that all the news?

[3393] I want to know.

[3394] Is there any more news?

[3395] I don't know.

[3396] I beat Dead Rising 2.

[3397] Nothing that matters.

[3398] Oh, awesome.

[3399] We don't need to talk about that at all.

[3400] I'm saying we should leave soon.

[3401] A bunch of people got laid off at Harmonix today, and that's a bummer.

[3402] Yesterday, and that's a bummer.

[3403] That's bad news.

[3404] It is.

[3405] Restructuring, putting people on different stuff.

[3406] They're basically...

[3407] Or out of the company.

[3408] Or out entirely.

[3409] New call of Juarez announced.

[3410] Modern era.

[3411] It'll be gritty.

[3412] Modern era cowboy, like Wild West game.

[3413] Really?

[3414] Did they actually say there are modern cowboys or anything in it, or is it just set in Juarez?

[3415] This guy has a cowboy hat on.

[3416] But then the girl behind him is like wearing, you know, shooting sunglasses.

[3417] Yeah.

[3418] That sounds kind of real dangerous.

[3419] Some sort of border militia stuff going on.

[3420] I don't know.

[3421] He's wearing a duster.

[3422] Scarily topical.

[3423] Main dude just looks like a cowboy.

[3424] He's wearing a duster, but then also a flak jacket underneath it.

[3425] And also he's got a cowboy hat on, but then a big pump -action shotgun.

[3426] Yeah.

[3427] Gritty.

[3428] Yeah, I don't know.

[3429] Drugs.

[3430] Yeah, probably, right?

[3431] Drugs or human smuggling?

[3432] Is that where you go with that?

[3433] The cartel.

[3434] Okay.

[3435] Drugs.

[3436] Drugs.

[3437] I think it'll play like Call of Duty.

[3438] No. There will be horses, so that'll be different.

[3439] That's true.

[3440] All right, yeah, that's it.

[3441] New releases this week.

[3442] Test Drive Unlimited 2 for Xbox 360, PC, and PlayStation 3.

[3443] You Don't Know Jack for DS, 360, Wii, and PS3.

[3444] Body and Brain Connection.

[3445] That's a Kinect game from Namco for Xbox 360.

[3446] I believe that has, like, Dr. Kawa Shaman.

[3447] Oh, wait.

[3448] Brain Age.

[3449] We have a copy.

[3450] Yeah, yeah.

[3451] We'll do some of that.

[3452] Trinity Souls of Zillol from Tecmo Koei.

[3453] TNT Racers and Stacking coming out at Xbox Live Arcade this week.

[3454] Oh shit, Stacking.

[3455] Stacking's out this week for $15 on both systems.

[3456] Unless you're a PlayStation Plus subscriber.

[3457] If you're a PlayStation Plus subscriber, you get that shit free.

[3458] That's crazy.

[3459] That is crazy.

[3460] That is the best single application of PlayStation Plus I have heard so far.

[3461] I wonder what wizards think about that.

[3462] It's a great deal.

[3463] I'm a wizard, and this is a great deal.

[3464] PSN.

[3465] Explodemon, in addition to stacking, Explodemon Tales from Space About a Blob and Plants versus Zabombies.

[3466] I thought the blob...

[3467] They're saying this week.

[3468] Sony themselves told me. I said, hey, Sony, what's up?

[3469] They said, check this out.

[3470] GG Series Dark Spirits is out on DSiWare.

[3471] It's 200.

[3472] All right.

[3473] GG.

[3474] I'm afraid I only have time for one email.

[3475] Email.

[3476] This email comes in from Ryan James Bossa in Baldwin Park, California.

[3477] Hey, Bomb Squad.

[3478] So I just got back from the Capcom Fight Club event here in downtown LA where they were showing off Marvel vs. Capcom 3.

[3479] And Seth Killian has a message for you guys.

[3480] I heard Giant Bomb.

[3481] I'm sorry.

[3482] I heart Giant Bomb.

[3483] But they should get off that MK9 crap and start playing a real fighting game.

[3484] That stuff rots your brain.

[3485] So if you have...

[3486] This is from the guy who readily admits that he's not much of a versus series guy.

[3487] Or as much of a versus series pro as he is a straight player.

[3488] Except when he's getting paid to say otherwise.

[3489] Brad, any thoughts on these scathing words from Mr. Killian?

[3490] MK9 is not a real fighting game.

[3491] I don't know.

[3492] See you at Evo.

[3493] See him at Evo, I guess.

[3494] At the MK9.

[3495] Good answer.

[3496] And on that note...

[3497] We should get him in here.

[3498] We'll play a little Marvel.

[3499] Game's out real soon.

[3500] Why not?

[3501] That's out next week.

[3502] Marvel vs. Combat.

[3503] Heard that fight club was popping off.

[3504] Really?

[3505] Yeah.

[3506] Like 1 ,500 people showed up or something.

[3507] Jeez Louise, really?

[3508] We went to that one that was here.

[3509] Yeah.

[3510] We got soap or something.

[3511] Yeah, yeah.

[3512] Heavy.

[3513] On that note, we're shutting down this podcast.

[3514] Shut them all down.

[3515] TNT is happening this week.

[3516] Jeff and I are going to be at DICE for the rest of this week.

[3517] Have fun at TNT and have fun on the happy hour.

[3518] We will.

[3519] And we'll be back.

[3520] Have fun at dinner.

[3521] And also have fun at dinner.

[3522] Maybe we'll talk to you later in the week.

[3523] So have fun at DICE.

[3524] We will have fun at DICE.

[3525] And we'll come back and then we will be here for next week's Giant Bombcast.

[3526] See you then.