Giant Bombcast 09-07-2010

[0] Hey everyone, it's Tuesday, September the 7th, 2010, and you're listening to the Giant Bombcast.

[1] I'm your host, Ryan Davis, joined by Vinny Caravella.

[2] Hey, Ryan Davis.

[3] Hey, buddy.

[4] How's it going, buddy?

[5] Pretty good.

[6] Jeff Gerstman's in the house.

[7] Get a little weird at that end of the table.

[8] This corner of the table, we're keeping it tight for the 2G.

[9] What?

[10] For the year 2000.

[11] Keeping it mad icy.

[12] Brad Shoemaker's here as well.

[13] Hello.

[14] Hey, Brad, how's it going?

[15] We just got back from PAX.

[16] PAX was this past weekend, and I think it's safe to say it whipped our asses pretty thoroughly.

[17] Who's tired?

[18] We're all tired.

[19] Oh, man. Yeah.

[20] I slept like a good night's sleep last night and then slept most of the car ride in this morning.

[21] Yep.

[22] Still a damn mess.

[23] Yeah.

[24] I woke up really good this morning and was like, all right, yeah, I got like seven hours solid uninterrupted sleep.

[25] This is awesome.

[26] And then it's just kind of it's worn on.

[27] I just I remember going to bed last night and then just tossing and turning could not fall asleep at all.

[28] I was exhausted and fall asleep.

[29] And then it must have been like two or three in the morning.

[30] I just feel this hand on my shoulder and Jesse's voice.

[31] Yeah, I couldn't sleep well at all.

[32] Did that help?

[33] I don't remember.

[34] I kicked her off the bed.

[35] You relax.

[36] This is what I'm talking about.

[37] Did she make you some more milk?

[38] No, but she did have Chinese food waiting for me when I got home, which was pretty damn awesome.

[39] You said that while we were dropping off.

[40] I was like, oh, man. Yeah.

[41] Oh, that sounds so good.

[42] I had cheese and crackers when I got home.

[43] Like three, and then I went to sleep.

[44] Yeah, that was good.

[45] Buddy, some sleep.

[46] Let me tell you.

[47] Sleep of the dead.

[48] That's good stuff.

[49] It's just, I don't know, all this hotel stuff I did last week.

[50] Oh, yeah, because you were in L .A. too.

[51] Yeah.

[52] All that did is remind me that I need a new bed.

[53] I need a new mattress.

[54] Bad.

[55] Like you were getting better sleep in other places.

[56] Yeah.

[57] Yeah.

[58] Yeah.

[59] I know the feeling.

[60] I'm sleeping in my guest bedroom because I realized that the guest bed is better than the bed in my bedroom.

[61] So that's weird.

[62] That is weird.

[63] It's like, oh, I just sleep in this weird tiny room and not the big spacious nice room.

[64] Brad, how was your bed situation?

[65] My mattress has a spring poking out of it.

[66] Oh, man. We should go group bed shopping.

[67] Are you handicapped?

[68] I just put enough blankets on it so I couldn't feel it anymore.

[69] Are you kidding?

[70] Really?

[71] I'm totally serious.

[72] Jesus Christ.

[73] Don't get a mattress.

[74] We all need to go.

[75] Jeff, you're not wrong.

[76] Or flip it over.

[77] We need some sort of mattress sponsorship here.

[78] Mine is pushing eight years old.

[79] Mine is older than that.

[80] Mine is well older than that as well.

[81] I inherited mine from my parents when I moved out of my house.

[82] So they had it for a good long time, and then I've had it for a very long time.

[83] You got the big one, right?

[84] The king?

[85] California king.

[86] I'm also rocking a Cal King with a similar upgrade path.

[87] Yeah.

[88] You know what bums me out about the California King?

[89] What's that?

[90] Like, you think it's just the biggest bed possible, but isn't the split, like, one of them is wider and the other one is longer?

[91] California King is wider and the other King is longer.

[92] Right, so there is no, like, definitive biggest bed.

[93] Yeah, exactly, you're right.

[94] It's with the King King.

[95] Like, three people can sleep on this California King.

[96] Right, but not if they're Shaq.

[97] But my feet hang off of it.

[98] Right, exactly.

[99] Doesn't, like, mattresses, like...

[100] quadruple their weight over the course.

[101] Yes.

[102] They absorb you.

[103] Yeah.

[104] And the more you sleep on them.

[105] Yeah.

[106] That's disgusting.

[107] It is, but it's also factual.

[108] And dust mites.

[109] I know.

[110] Yeah.

[111] It's also, it's also like dead dust mites and stuff.

[112] It's so awesome.

[113] Dead bed bugs, huh?

[114] Yep.

[115] Yep.

[116] And bodies.

[117] Bed bugs are a very different thing.

[118] Yeah.

[119] No, I know.

[120] But you were, why were you, you were thinking about bed bugs recently.

[121] Why were you?

[122] I saw some on the news recently.

[123] Cause I, Yeah, because they've been all over the news lately about how bed bugs are back.

[124] They're spreading.

[125] I was staying in a hotel, and I was like, oh, man, what if this weird, trendy hotel is infested with creepy stuff?

[126] It's going to get all over me. They were back like five years ago, too.

[127] Yeah, I remember that, too.

[128] I don't know where they went, but they're back.

[129] They were on tour.

[130] The answer is that DDT needs to start being shot out of air conditioning vents in hotel rooms.

[131] Like the wrestling move?

[132] Yeah, yeah.

[133] Jake the Snake Roberts needs to burst into your room, talk about how he's got chocolate on his shirt, freebase cocaine, and then execute his finishing move to put you to sleep.

[134] Yeah, it would knock you right out.

[135] You'd sleep like a baby after having someone do a DDT on you.

[136] You wouldn't even care about all the bed bugs.

[137] Yeah, exactly.

[138] I think realistically, Ted DiBiase is probably a better man for the job, but what are you going to do?

[139] The man's a little more in demand.

[140] Yeah, that's true.

[141] Easier to get Jake the Snake.

[142] Exactly.

[143] So other than it making us all feel like tired old men, I thought that PAX was a lot of fun this year.

[144] Excellent.

[145] Yeah.

[146] It's big.

[147] Yeah, yeah.

[148] It's something that we talked a little bit about on our panel on Friday night just from our initial impression, just the expanding scope of PAX.

[149] Yeah.

[150] They're taking up more floor space in the convention center there.

[151] Our panel wasn't even in the convention center.

[152] We were at a ballroom in a hotel nearby.

[153] Baller room.

[154] And it was a baller room.

[155] Thank you, Vinny, for that extra piece of wordplay.

[156] I feel like this year I didn't see it all.

[157] I never felt like that at previous packs.

[158] Oh, I always felt like that because I never even...

[159] This year was probably the first year that I even saw the tabletop stuff.

[160] Really?

[161] Like every other year it's just been somewhere where it's like, I don't even know where that, I wouldn't even know how to find it.

[162] It's somewhere over there.

[163] Like there's still like the free play areas.

[164] I never saw any of that stuff.

[165] I guess there was.

[166] Someone told me that there was a room full of steel battalions set up.

[167] They had a five on five steel battalions set up.

[168] I was like, Drew really wanted to go see that.

[169] Upstairs or something.

[170] That convention center is also.

[171] the most Byzantine collection of escalators and corridors you can imagine.

[172] That's a hard thing to navigate.

[173] For some reason this year, too, getting to the convention center, I never got my bearings.

[174] Usually I have a path laid out, and this year I feel like I got lost every time.

[175] Yeah, I definitely walk in the streets, was like, what?

[176] I think it's just normally we went the other way out of the hotel, up past that liquor store.

[177] Maybe.

[178] I was just going down the hill because it was easier.

[179] I think this year was the year that I figured out what's downtown.

[180] We were following you most of the time.

[181] And then when you weren't there, I was just like, where are we?

[182] Where's Nike Town?

[183] It's near.

[184] Yes.

[185] It's not that far.

[186] Yeah, a bigger show and a lot of stuff happening.

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

[188] I'm going to hit too much of the same stuff we hit on our panel because you can go and download that now.

[189] We put that up on Monday.

[190] So if you weren't able to make it two packs into our panel, we have full audio of the 90 -minute panel we did.

[191] Do we know when the video is going to go?

[192] It's in the process.

[193] It's going to be a three -part thing.

[194] So three half -hour chunks.

[195] Makes sense.

[196] Which we're going to throw it all up at once.

[197] Well, that'll probably be up by the time you hear this.

[198] By the time you hear this, that should be up.

[199] So you can soak in the full video.

[200] I would probably recommend the video.

[201] I would too.

[202] Like I get, you know, you want to listen to stuff on your iPod while you're driving or, you know, whatever.

[203] But there are enough visual components to that performance.

[204] I think it's worthwhile.

[205] So what didn't we talk about?

[206] Let's talk about what we played at PAX.

[207] Vinny.

[208] Actually, let's all talk about...

[209] Brad and Jeff, you guys, again, talked about this a little bit on the panel.

[210] Duke Nukem Forever.

[211] This was maybe the biggest, craziest thing at the show.

[212] Wait, what?

[213] Duke Nukem Forever.

[214] That was there?

[215] Yeah.

[216] We played it.

[217] What are you talking about?

[218] We're talking about it.

[219] We played that.

[220] I miss everything.

[221] What PAX were you at, man?

[222] I don't know.

[223] Was it PAX Midwest?

[224] Yeah.

[225] Was it PAX Middle East?

[226] PAX Texas.

[227] PAX Middle East.

[228] Oh, yeah.

[229] We all got hands on that at some point.

[230] Yeah, yeah.

[231] Saturday or Sunday, as we were leaving the show, we managed to sneak in and see, first off, that kick -ass trailer that they're showing, or they were showing behind closed doors at PAX, which was chilling.

[232] I got chills watching that.

[233] I'm not sure exactly why, but there's something about it like, oh, this is a thing, and here's all this stuff of this thing.

[234] I mean, it's just, I think, a well -produced trailer.

[235] Also having Steve Gibson give a little talk before that and kind of just laying out the history, which I thought was also very interesting because I personally did not realize how involved some of the Gearbox guys were in the development of Duke 3D originally.

[236] Randy Pitcher worked on that game.

[237] I didn't know he made the first two levels of that game.

[238] That's crazy.

[239] The best two levels.

[240] Yeah, like the stripper area and the adult bookstore and all that stuff.

[241] Yeah, arguably at least some of the most iconic parts of that game.

[242] Definitely, it was your first experience with that game, and you were like, oh God.

[243] That's what I think of when I think of Duke.

[244] Yeah, I think about playing Duke match on that first level.

[245] And it was, for me, that information was important because it made this not...

[246] oh, just some dudes are finishing this.

[247] It's like people with a connection to the franchise.

[248] Also figuring out what Triptych Games was.

[249] Yes.

[250] That it was actually just some of the 3D Realms guys that refused to stop working on the game.

[251] Was it three guys?

[252] Is that the whole Triptych game?

[253] No, it was more than that.

[254] More than that being like nine or ten, I think.

[255] So they're still involved and now officially involved.

[256] They're not just like...

[257] finishing up a game on their own.

[258] They don't own any rights to or anything weird.

[259] Did they just become three or a gearbox employees or are they still, they're a separate entity.

[260] That's a little logo at the bottom of that.

[261] That company now has a website.

[262] It didn't until like Sunday or something.

[263] It finally went up.

[264] It was like trying to search for information about what that was.

[265] And it wasn't until we went back and heard Steve's presentation that he mentioned who those guys were.

[266] I was like, okay, this, this makes a lot more sense.

[267] The thing, the thing I got, from that trailer was...

[268] I don't think this is the Duke Nukem that I remember playing.

[269] This is more the version...

[270] It seems like the persona of Duke after that whole ventrilo thing.

[271] This is like balls of...

[272] That is the Duke that I feel like they have gone after or that they're portraying here.

[273] I don't remember him being so damn...

[274] Crass?

[275] Yeah, crass.

[276] Sure.

[277] It's what you...

[278] Yeah, totally.

[279] It's not what Duke Nukem 3D was.

[280] It's what you imagine it to be.

[281] Right.

[282] With this much detachment from it, you imagine Duke Nukem just to be this dirtbag.

[283] It's the legend of Duke.

[284] I don't know how to even put it.

[285] It's what Duke would have to do in 2010 to have the same impact that Duke 3D had when it came out.

[286] Yeah, it's the game's selling point.

[287] Like, that is the...

[288] top bullet point back of box feature you know like crass as hell right otherwise it's just a shooter it's just a dude saying balls of steel to people like that which we were not shooting when it happened but uh after we interviewed randy pitchford at the at pax uh he did mention like you're talking about man we got to find the guy with the oldest pre -order and you know do something like treat him real well or just like have john st john call him up and just say bowls of bowls of steel so yeah so that's what i got i was like oh yeah okay yeah so it's like you know the guys in charge of this game yeah know of the ventrilo harassment videos and like are thinking about it so that's that to me says that that that that's the duke nukem i want i guess sure sure yeah not that just the you know here are some Bruce Campbell quotes.

[289] There were things he was saying.

[290] Maybe it was in the trailer.

[291] Maybe it was in the demo because a lot of crossover.

[292] Like lines that I wasn't even putting together.

[293] Like my balls, your back or something like that.

[294] Or just like stuff that like one liners.

[295] I was like, what are you even talking about?

[296] What are you saying?

[297] Yeah, like.

[298] The thing for me was kind of realizing that like to make Duke work.

[299] you have to be pretty thoughtful about how stupid it is.

[300] Like, it has to be stupid.

[301] Yeah.

[302] But you have to figure out, like, kind of clever ways to make it stupid.

[303] And I mean kind of clever ways.

[304] Like, the thing that jumped out at me probably the most from the demo from playing it, other than kind of the oddly aged feel of some of the stuff, was that, you know, you get this rocket launcher.

[305] And when you pick up ammo for it, you can only hold 69 rockets on it.

[306] Yep.

[307] 69.

[308] That's the joke.

[309] These are the jokes.

[310] But someone had to think of that.

[311] Someone had to think that.

[312] Gearbox is going heavy with the 69 jokes, too.

[313] I mean, that's going to be the new level cap for Borderlands.

[314] True.

[315] So, you know.

[316] Will the final boss in the new DLC be Duke?

[317] Is that going to be the twist?

[318] What?

[319] Crossover?

[320] No. Because they own Duke.

[321] That was the other thing that came out from all this is that Gearbox just bought Duke Nukem from 3D Realms and I guess, you know, squashed whatever beef with 2K.

[322] I wonder what the state of all that, you know, the lawsuit stuff that was flying back and forth between 3D Realms and 2K.

[323] I think now that the game's going to get finished, I think everything will probably be fine.

[324] Yeah.

[325] You know, like...

[326] Because Gearbox was in a unique position that they were cool with the 3D Realms guys.

[327] That was cool hearing.

[328] And they were cool with 2K.

[329] It was cool hearing Steve Gibson talk about that.

[330] Like, these guys are fighting, but we're cool with you, and we're cool with you, so let's see if we can work something out.

[331] Let's sit down and talk this out.

[332] Yeah, they're in a unique position.

[333] Or they were in a unique position to do all that, and it's weird.

[334] It blows my mind that Broussard's soul.

[335] Like, he always seems so fiercely independent, you know?

[336] It was like my way or the highway.

[337] Like, we are finishing this game on our terms.

[338] will pry Duke from my cold dead hand.

[339] Yeah, but, you know, that's the sort of thing that, you know, I could very much see a guy like him saying to 2K who, you know, was in the process of not giving enough money to finish the game and suing him and all that, you know, it's like all that other stuff.

[340] But, you know, if the right people came along, if his old homie Randy pitched for dinner.

[341] If he could...

[342] feel good about passing that torch off to someone who genuinely cared about it and putting them in control of it which you know now gearbox totally is right maybe that that to me is probably i'm guessing but that's probably what the difference is and in the process equipping himself to play poker full time right yeah i think it's also a really good thing for the for the game because it gives them agency and kind of ownership of like let's make this game really good because we now own this Right, they're invested in it in a significant way.

[343] They're not just hired guns by 2K.

[344] It's like, well, let's bring in Gearbox and make them finish it, and that'll be that.

[345] It's their thing.

[346] Randy did say that Broussard and Scott Miller can be as involved as they want to be in the process.

[347] Just because they sold the rights off doesn't mean they can't come and speak their mind about how it's going.

[348] I'll tell you what I was bummed about with the demo.

[349] So you start the demo off urinating, right?

[350] Yeah.

[351] But you can't turn and urinate until I just pee all over the floor.

[352] Yeah.

[353] Yes, that is exactly what I try to do as well.

[354] It's not fully interactive.

[355] I'm stuck peeing in this urinal as opposed to just all over the damn floor.

[356] You guys think that was just the start of the demo, or is that actually how the game opens?

[357] I don't think you can take anything away from that demo as far as timeline goes.

[358] I bet that game opens with that level.

[359] I mean, it kind of has to because that's just like the end of Duke 3D.

[360] Well, if they're that close to finishing it, maybe.

[361] If it's not just something there, they'll change up because that was a pretty good tutorial too for all the controls.

[362] But yeah, can't piss on the floor.

[363] You mean the left trigger to aim, right trigger to shoot?

[364] Sprint.

[365] Did you get that stuff down by the end of that?

[366] I'm still working on it.

[367] The beer button never worked for me. Yeah, that was a shame.

[368] I almost wonder if that was just a joke they put on that card and it doesn't even actually exist.

[369] I have to pick up the beer first.

[370] Yeah, I think I just have to find it.

[371] Or I was hoping he would just bust a hole through the urinal when he was peeing.

[372] Just shoot a goddamn hole right through it.

[373] Suggesting that Duke's stream is so powerful that it'll just go right through porcelain.

[374] Just push the right trigger and it just cracks the urinal right in half.

[375] These are all great pieces of feedback for Gearbox.

[376] And they can incorporate that into Duke Nukem Forever 2.

[377] Or Duke 5.

[378] So that's the crazy thing.

[379] My understanding is that if they want to crank out more Duke games after this, they are free and clear to do so.

[380] So what if they put out Duke Nukem Forever and then have a follow -up 18 months later?

[381] I don't even like out of control.

[382] Like it took us 13 years for the first one and this lengthy and then we just knocked out the other one.

[383] A whole new engine, just a whole new.

[384] Yeah.

[385] So there was another project back in June that that was mentioned in the lawsuit stuff that Gearbox was working on something called Duke Begins.

[386] And so I just kind of figured that this was, you know, like in context now that this that was just some smokescreen cover up for.

[387] Duke Nukem Forever or something.

[388] Yeah.

[389] But it turns out that is not the case.

[390] That sounds like that's not the case.

[391] Like there's an article that Chris Morris did for Gamasutra and a couple other stuff where those guys are being a little cagey about what Duke Begins is.

[392] So like is there another game?

[393] Are they simultaneously working on two Duke Nukems?

[394] I would kind of...

[395] I would really be interested in the origins of Duke, like just some dude who turns into this crazy.

[396] Well, if you go play Duke Nukem and Duke Nukem 2, like they're not crazy like Duke 3D is.

[397] No, but he's already an action dude, right?

[398] Yeah, yeah.

[399] I want to see some dude just kind of like come into it.

[400] Before he became the Duke?

[401] Yeah, just some dude.

[402] What if they just went and remade Duke and Duke 2 as first -person shooters?

[403] Had him kind of coming into it over the course of that.

[404] Yeah, that'd be cool.

[405] Let's see Duke and other, because we've seen, we've got side -scrollers, third -person, first -person.

[406] Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

[407] I'm still not convinced that this is a forever game that's going to come out.

[408] Before we start talking about Duke Nukem Billiards and Duke Kart.

[409] I mean, we played it.

[410] That's more than I thought would ever possibly happen.

[411] A lot of people played it a lot of times over the years.

[412] No one that I ever knew.

[413] I never met anyone personally that had played Duke Nukem forever.

[414] I talked to someone once who had played it.

[415] Yeah, you have.

[416] Okay.

[417] I can think.

[418] Who's that dude who went down there and filmed it or whatever and went down there?

[419] Jace Hall.

[420] Okay, Jace Hall.

[421] He played it.

[422] He did.

[423] Weird, right?

[424] I don't think they'll make it.

[425] I think it'll come out.

[426] They're going for early 2011?

[427] That's what they're saying right now, it sounds like?

[428] They're saying 2011.

[429] Okay.

[430] I totally think it'll come out, and I think they'll make at least one other game after it.

[431] And I think you're right.

[432] I think the turnaround will be like a year and a half.

[433] It was one of those things that I loved from...

[434] From our panel, from the micro panel, our recursive panel inside our panel with Gary Witta, Michael Pachter, and Jeff Green.

[435] Gary Witta talking about the development of Duke Nukem Forever, comparing it to opening a jar of pickles.

[436] Like you're just trying forever.

[437] You can't quite get it, and you hand it to someone else, and then you just twist it right away.

[438] Here you go.

[439] I guess I loosened it.

[440] Yeah, that was good.

[441] I did all the starting work.

[442] Let's talk about some other stuff that we played at PAX.

[443] Jeff and Brad.

[444] Do you want to talk more about MK?

[445] You guys played a bunch more MK between our last podcast.

[446] Did we pick much else up?

[447] I don't know.

[448] Not necessarily.

[449] The characters talk a lot more in their intros than I remember from E3.

[450] I think that might be new to it.

[451] They've got some character voice during the intros.

[452] I like how when they play, they just immediately skip through all that stuff.

[453] Yeah.

[454] Whatever.

[455] Let me get into the game.

[456] Yeah.

[457] Yeah, I started getting more into just kind of how their EX moves or whatever they're going to end up calling them work.

[458] You know, like Cyrax is in this build, so is Katana.

[459] That's new for Gamescom forward, basically.

[460] I can tell you, you can launch Katana's Square Punch in the air now.

[461] What?

[462] Yeah.

[463] Oh, man. Yeah.

[464] Wow, that's weird.

[465] Yeah.

[466] I know Vinny is blown away over there.

[467] Whoa.

[468] Wow.

[469] With the Square Punch, you sure?

[470] Yeah.

[471] Okay.

[472] I did it.

[473] Dude, that's weird.

[474] I know it is, right?

[475] I don't even know what to make of that.

[476] That's kind of cool.

[477] There's that.

[478] Every time we play that game, it's like we get just enough time to start remembering how to do the stuff and start feeling slightly competent.

[479] Start getting better at the timing of doing things.

[480] Or remember how to do the x -ray moves or whatever.

[481] And then as soon as you just start to get a grasp on it again.

[482] You have to see.

[483] We've got to go.

[484] You guys must have seen it, too.

[485] A couple of x -ray, Johnny Cage, groin punches, which were weird.

[486] He can groin punch the female characters.

[487] Yeah, he's been able to do that before.

[488] That hurts, man. I thought he could do that, and then it didn't do anything.

[489] Yeah, I thought I remembered it just being ineffectual or something.

[490] No. At some point in the past, I've had that punch work on ladies, I think.

[491] I bet it does.

[492] I kind of like how Johnny Cage seems like a dick.

[493] Like with the tattoo.

[494] I hate that tattoo.

[495] I love the tattoo.

[496] I wish they'd take that off.

[497] No. I think they're just playing into the character that I always assumed Johnny Cage was.

[498] Oh, I know they are.

[499] He's a total papa's ass.

[500] Yeah, totally.

[501] But not even in an endearing way.

[502] No, he's just an actual dick.

[503] Totally.

[504] That guy just looks like he sucks.

[505] The only reason it bothers me is that I grudgingly am finding myself enjoying playing him.

[506] I understand that at least at this point he may be a tad overpowered.

[507] Yeah, I mean, they haven't even really begun to do balance passes on a lot of these characters yet.

[508] They don't even have the roster, like the select screen, half filled out publicly yet.

[509] Sounds like from here on out, we're going to start hearing more about the story in that game as well as more of the characters.

[510] So is there time travel involved or something?

[511] Yeah, if you go by the previous MK games, there absolutely is.

[512] Well, have they said anything about where this takes place?

[513] You know, before.

[514] Once you involve time travel.

[515] It doesn't matter.

[516] Anything can happen.

[517] I'm kind of surprised.

[518] Because it also lets them rewind a lot of the characters that got introduced.

[519] And it makes the roster make sense and all that sort of stuff.

[520] Some people died, right?

[521] Like John Cage.

[522] I'm just surprised that they're even like trying, like making any effort to link whatever fiction there is for MK between.

[523] past games in this game.

[524] I think that's cool.

[525] Yeah, I think it's cool that they're able to do something like a reboot but still have a story.

[526] The problem is that then this is still a universe where Quan Chi can exist.

[527] True.

[528] Like the possibility?

[529] Yeah, like there's even just, even if they have maybe minimized those chances, being linked to a universe where Quan Chi does exist is not the best thing for MK.

[530] Yeah, you're probably right.

[531] I just don't think it needs it.

[532] I think that you can start over.

[533] I don't think beyond the first three games, there's really any value in trying to continue the fiction of that series because everything past that kind of sucks as far as that stuff goes.

[534] Heart racing stuff canon?

[535] That happened?

[536] Yep, that all happened.

[537] Okay.

[538] Puzzle game.

[539] I really hope they acknowledge all that stuff in the story.

[540] They all became chess pieces at one point.

[541] That was real.

[542] Conquest mode.

[543] That's right.

[544] They did the chess thing.

[545] Remember the chess thing?

[546] The Archon.

[547] Yeah.

[548] Man, that was cool.

[549] They did some weird...

[550] You know, like, the core games were terrible, but they did some really cool, weird shit with some of those later NK games.

[551] They had, like, adventure mode in one of them.

[552] Yeah, Conquest.

[553] Like, the fighting was never terrible.

[554] Guess how that was spelled.

[555] Yeah.

[556] It was just different.

[557] It was too different for me. It just wasn't what I remembered.

[558] Yeah.

[559] I mean, it was crazy.

[560] I mean, this whole thing, if you look at the legacy of Mortal Kombat, I think we've even said it before, but...

[561] No other fighting game has done this, has completely rebuilt the fighting system from the ground up multiple times like this.

[562] Several times over.

[563] Yeah.

[564] This is going to be what the third full, or I guess you could say this is, you'd say MK versus DC was kind of the third full rebuild that all of the PS2 era games kind of built off of each other in some way.

[565] And then this is kind of...

[566] I guess you could tie its legacy to the DC Universe stuff in some way, but it definitely feels different than that.

[567] Yeah.

[568] I mean, every other fighting game, they never do that.

[569] It's like, here's how you do this move, and here's how you'll do it forever.

[570] Right.

[571] For better or for worse, it's neat that they're at least doing that.

[572] Well, they needed to.

[573] They have done that over the years.

[574] I mean, they've needed to.

[575] Like, when they went to 3D, they really wanted to make that.

[576] Yeah.

[577] It seemed like they wanted to make it as 3D a fighting game as they could.

[578] It's just that how they did it ended up being kind of messed up.

[579] Yeah.

[580] It was fun to watch.

[581] It was really fun to watch everybody else play, too, because any time I've ever seen it, Spock, on a closed door or something.

[582] Yeah.

[583] And watching Ed out on the floor, kind of like doing the arms crossed, kind of like turn over, whisper the Hector when somebody did something.

[584] Like, what's he saying?

[585] Did you change something right now?

[586] It draws a good crowd.

[587] Yeah.

[588] It's visually stunning.

[589] We were playing each other on the big screen for a little while there, and people were watching us, and we weren't even necessarily linking together all the super crazy stuff that some of those other guys can do.

[590] Are there just like...

[591] The re -hit combo, like punch, punch, punch?

[592] Because when I was watching you guys play and watching some other guys play, I was like, man, everybody's really good.

[593] There is some already.

[594] I think there's juggles, but there's also, yeah, there's some ground combo stuff.

[595] But they're not as exacting as the MK3 ones.

[596] It's not like you have to know it's like high punch, block, low kick, low kick, high kick, or something like that.

[597] So you can get away with it.

[598] So it'll be like 1 -1 -2 or like, what are they?

[599] front arm, front arm, rear arm, or something, you know, whatever they are.

[600] Yeah, I wish they had just gone back to high and low.

[601] It doesn't make sense from the 3D perspective of when you're on the right side of the screen.

[602] That's literally the reasoning, is that your arms are in different positions.

[603] So they can't go left -right like Tekken necessarily.

[604] Sure.

[605] It makes some sense.

[606] I'm just glad that generally if you hold back and hit...

[607] I want to say low kick, but whatever.

[608] It's probably rear kick.

[609] You're probably going to get a sweep out of it.

[610] Brad, tell me about Portal 2 Co -op.

[611] It stars robots.

[612] Are they named?

[613] I don't think they have names.

[614] So this is going to be a completely separate campaign from the main story campaign?

[615] Yes and no. I mean, you can play it separately from the menu.

[616] Like, you start it up, and it's like, you know, play story mode, play co -op.

[617] But it does have some kind of minor story ties to what happens in the main story mode.

[618] Of course, they're not saying anything about what those are.

[619] But these two robots, they are on the side of Gladys.

[620] Maybe.

[621] I don't know.

[622] They didn't give a lot of sense of what the narrative aspect of it is.

[623] At least as far as the content of the portal puzzles, it'll be...

[624] Completely separate.

[625] I mean, it's definitely still it's still within that like test chamber framework.

[626] Sure.

[627] No, the levels are not the same.

[628] Oh, yeah.

[629] Absolutely.

[630] Separate game.

[631] Here's my biggest concern.

[632] Everything.

[633] So you get there are four colored portal.

[634] Yeah.

[635] Yeah.

[636] Right.

[637] What colors are we talking about here?

[638] It's actually like two shades of each.

[639] So like you had blue and what was an orange?

[640] Yeah.

[641] Blue and orange before.

[642] Yeah.

[643] Now you have like a sort of a purplish blue and a regular blue.

[644] I'm done.

[645] Is that bad for you?

[646] It doesn't work out well?

[647] It depends.

[648] I have to see it.

[649] It's by robot.

[650] So one robot has two shades of blue and the other robot has two shades of orange.

[651] When I played it back at E3, it didn't seem insurmountable.

[652] Okay.

[653] Damn colorblind.

[654] I know.

[655] Where's my ramp?

[656] But one of the things you can do in that game is take over someone else's portal.

[657] So you can shoot a portal at the other player's portal.

[658] Oh, it doesn't go through it?

[659] Or portal over it.

[660] But without changing the positioning?

[661] Yeah.

[662] Oh, weird.

[663] I don't think they mentioned that.

[664] So that ends up being, if that ends up being super key, you're going to need to be able to look at those and go, okay, that's the other player's portal and I need to hit it.

[665] Right.

[666] And that sort of thing.

[667] And there was a lot of timing -based stuff.

[668] Did they show off the kind of co -op communication stuff?

[669] Yeah, they showed all that stuff.

[670] There are a lot of weird little scripted gesture moves you can do.

[671] You can do them independently, like wave at each other and stuff, but you can also go up and press a button to hug.

[672] Tell me – wait, hold on.

[673] I mean more like you can point at a spot on the wall and hit, like, the button and tag it.

[674] Yeah, they call it the ping tool, and it literally just puts, like, little sort of crosshairs, like, floating on top of the – So you can say, you know, if you're voice chatting, you say, okay, you need to shoot a portal here.

[675] Right.

[676] And then I'm going to jump, and you're going to shoot another portal under me so that I'm flying through this way or so that the energy bridge is coming out.

[677] It turns out that thing is context -sensitive, so it will – change its appearance and stuff based on where you shoot it what's around it and stuff i actually because i talked to uh talked to eric and chet from valve and i asked uh when they were talking about the ping tool and all the waving and stuff i was like can you straight up play co -op without voice chat they were like you probably could yeah probably with all those two though yeah like optimally you should probably be talking to this person but like with the ping tool and all the moving around poignant stuff.

[678] Describe the robots for me. I am having a hard time visualizing.

[679] One of them is, oh, you haven't seen them?

[680] No. There's pictures out.

[681] Oh, you may have seen them because they were on the side of the booth, so I don't know.

[682] They kind of just look like the personality spheres, but with arms and legs.

[683] Almost like a turret, though, right?

[684] One of them has like a blue eye and the other one has an orange one.

[685] Basically, one of them is sort of tall and skinny and the other one's a little more squat and fat.

[686] But they're still kind of just like the sleek white plastic.

[687] They absolutely look like they came off the Aperture production line.

[688] Okay, okay.

[689] That's enough.

[690] They put out a teaser before PAX that you may have seen with the robots in it.

[691] It was all CG.

[692] No, I watched the last two things they put out when they did the Stephen Merchant announcement, and I watched the initial reveal trailer with Gladys.

[693] I kind of, after watching that stuff, kind of like, all right.

[694] I kind of want to avoid some Portal 2 stuff here because I'm afraid they still have enough of a ramp up.

[695] I'm afraid that I'm going to see too much of that game.

[696] You'll learn too much about U .S. presidents.

[697] That first game was such a surprise and a delight.

[698] I want to have as much of that experience as I can.

[699] I had to kind of grit my teeth when I booked this appointment because I knew we needed to cover the game, but yeah, I don't want to see any more.

[700] I watched a bunch of those.

[701] They put out a barrage of the different techniques you'll be using.

[702] Man, there's a lot of stuff going on, like the slippery gel.

[703] Yeah, the gel, the jumping gel.

[704] I'm worried that it's a little mechanically dense.

[705] But they also said, Brad, you mentioned in your interview, I think they had said that this is basically like four times the portal.

[706] Yeah, yeah.

[707] So the story mode and the co -op mode both are said to be twice the length of the first game.

[708] So, you know, you have a lot more time.

[709] to get familiarized with all these different mechanics.

[710] That's definitely true.

[711] And they'll be able to introduce them to you at a much slower pace.

[712] It's like all those trailers that show all that madness.

[713] That all obviously has to be late game stuff.

[714] I remember the first Portal trailer, when they put that out, that very initial one, like, whoa, how does any of this work?

[715] This looks too goddamn crazy.

[716] But by the time you got to those points, it was manageable.

[717] It was crazy, but it was still manageable.

[718] Something that really surprised me was they were running the PC build but playing it with an Xbox controller, which seemed to be a big trend at this show because Duke was the same way.

[719] I'm sure logistically it's easier to get a big box of controllers than it is like a bunch of mice and keyboards.

[720] But Portal actually has in -game signage, like icons.

[721] The iconography is that of an Xbox controller when you have one plugged in.

[722] Oh, okay.

[723] Which is kind of weird to see in like a non -Games for Windows Live enabled game.

[724] Yeah, it makes sense that, you know, I'm sure that that'll change depending on what controller you use on the PC and they'll need those controller icons.

[725] Have they announced their release plans for it yet?

[726] Yeah, it's out on everything.

[727] At the same time?

[728] I mean, yeah, obviously they had the art in from the Xbox version and stuff.

[729] It's just weird for Valve specifically.

[730] I don't know.

[731] I've always felt like Valve games were kind of meant to be played on the PC, but it's just me. You know, I think that...

[732] Ideally, a game like Portal is more about the puzzle solving than about the dexterity stuff.

[733] So you could probably play it.

[734] I played through the game with an Xbox controller.

[735] The first one, it didn't really have trouble.

[736] But you play a lot of games with an Xbox controller.

[737] Sure.

[738] You know what?

[739] So do millions of people.

[740] Sure, sure.

[741] But I don't know.

[742] Probably, in a lot of cases, more than play action games.

[743] Probably, yeah.

[744] But I know people who put down the first Portal on the Xbox because...

[745] Because they're pussies?

[746] No, because they don't play a lot of games.

[747] They don't have adaptability.

[748] Well, you can get it on the PC then.

[749] Everybody's happy.

[750] If you watch some of the speedruns of Portal on YouTube, it are very clearly all being played with mice.

[751] That stuff has to be mouse and keyboard.

[752] All that stuff that they are doing is definitely dexterity.

[753] After E3, I went through the advanced maps in the first Portal on the Xbox just to get the achievements.

[754] That shit was hard.

[755] Really hard.

[756] Because you have to shoot some portals at angled surfaces, like at the apex of a jump and stuff like that.

[757] You just have to be pointing the right way.

[758] Yeah, it's really tough.

[759] Anyway.

[760] Portal 2.

[761] Yeah.

[762] Catch it.

[763] That looks so good.

[764] I don't know what they've done.

[765] Is that still like Source?

[766] Yeah, it's still Source.

[767] I mean, they upgrade.

[768] Well, they're constantly upgrading and rewriting stuff.

[769] It's an evolving engine.

[770] This just looks dramatically better.

[771] They just don't necessarily call it like a...

[772] they don't add numbers to that stuff, right?

[773] So it's not like a generational shift.

[774] I mean, I think that's typically how most engines evolve anyway.

[775] Sure, but I guess to the point of like, you've never gone to like, this is Unreal 3, this is Source 4.

[776] It's just Source.

[777] Highly modified Source.

[778] All right, so interview with Chet and Eric, forthcoming.

[779] Look for that.

[780] And the co -op, the whole demo we will have up as well.

[781] Oh, we capped that?

[782] Yeah, they let us shoot it.

[783] Awesome.

[784] Awesome.

[785] Vinny, you didn't play anything at the show, did you?

[786] Nothing.

[787] I talked to a guy about a DeLorean.

[788] That's right.

[789] We did.

[790] We shot an interview with the director of episode one of the Back to the Future game being produced over at Telltale.

[791] And we shot that with him sitting in a sweet -ass replica DeLorean.

[792] A real DeLorean, but, you know, with all the Back to the Future.

[793] Time machine shit.

[794] Flux capacitor was fluxing when I walked by.

[795] It was fluxing hard.

[796] I never saw it.

[797] I never found it.

[798] It was pretty good.

[799] I knew the answer to this question already.

[800] I knew the response I got, but I went, oh, there's no Mr. Fusion on the back there.

[801] shot me a dirty look.

[802] Shame on you for even asking that.

[803] I was like, no, no, no. This is the DeLorean that rolled off the back of the truck in Back to the Future 1.

[804] But he had all the Back to the Future 2 shit in the car.

[805] He had the hat and the shoes and Biff money.

[806] He did have a hat and the Nikes in there.

[807] The Nikes are releasing some sort of Back to the Future inspired sneakers pretty soon.

[808] These looked like them.

[809] I don't know if...

[810] If it's those ones or if there's some other ones.

[811] No, because if the ones you were looking at looked exactly like movie props.

[812] No, they still had laces.

[813] Okay.

[814] They weren't like the full.

[815] But they were like, you know, super high top.

[816] Glossy.

[817] Yeah, white glossy.

[818] What happens when we hit 2015?

[819] You're going to see some serious shit.

[820] They have to put that whole line out and make cover boards, Jeff.

[821] But I can't say, you know, we talked to the dude for a while.

[822] I can't say that I necessarily...

[823] know much more about what that game is.

[824] Are they making an adventure game that has Back to the Future in it?

[825] Uh -huh.

[826] Okay.

[827] Then, I mean, you kind of know what kind of games those guys make.

[828] True, but they've been kind of mixing it up some more lately.

[829] Like, you know, we also talked to the guy behind Puzzle Agents.

[830] Yeah.

[831] Part of their, part of Telltale's pilot program, which just came out on iPhone and iPad.

[832] And, you know, that's a fairly different game.

[833] From what Telltale usually makes as far as which is why it's part of their pilot program and Back to the Future is not.

[834] He did say, and if I recall correctly, he did say this would be more a kind of traditional Telltale puzzle game or text -based adventure or whatever.

[835] Dialogue trees.

[836] Say Great Scott.

[837] Then Jurassic Park, which will be a little more action -y.

[838] I think, right?

[839] I think he said out there.

[840] I think he kind of just like gestured his hand.

[841] He's like, Jurassic Park.

[842] And just kind of like threw his hand over in a direction as if to suggest that that game is going to be weird.

[843] By the bathrooms.

[844] In a way that we haven't tackled before.

[845] Also news to me in that interview was this game takes place after 3.

[846] Or, you know, again, we're talking about time travel here.

[847] But in the continuity, in the canon.

[848] Is that right?

[849] I don't think so.

[850] You know, because we've had this conversation where we'll have to go and play back the tape.

[851] Okay.

[852] Because I thought that he said it took place after the first movie.

[853] And you thought it took place after the third.

[854] We do know it takes place in 1985.

[855] Right.

[856] Like that's the base year for this or whatever.

[857] But either way, this is not a remake.

[858] This isn't a retelling of any of those.

[859] It's a completely new story that has the blessings of Bob Gale.

[860] Yeah.

[861] One of the co -writers of the film.

[862] And Christopher Lloyd's on board.

[863] And how do you fit in?

[864] I guess with time travel, you can fit in wherever.

[865] Right.

[866] So we were talking about this after the show while we were waiting to leave Seattle.

[867] This game needs to open with the Enchantment Under the Sea dance sequence happening.

[868] And you see the original.

[869] Marty McFly there with the parents, and you also see the black jacket hat, Back to the Future 2.

[870] But you've got to pull back further and have a third.

[871] You're the third set.

[872] Because it just needs to get as...

[873] They need to layer it as hard as they can against what they did in the first films.

[874] Like we talked about before, it's just going to turn into primer at some point.

[875] Yeah.

[876] I want it to be just ridiculous.

[877] You have to make a flow chart to figure out.

[878] I mean, they could just remake the trilogy, but have you...

[879] play as Marty, as a different Marty, ensuring that all of those events actually happen, which would be pretty awesome.

[880] You could easily gin up like, hey, there's a new threat or there's something that's going to fuck all this up.

[881] So you have to make sure that the events of Back to the Future 1, 2, and 3 happen as they are remembered by doing all sorts of other crazy shit.

[882] One of the things that stuck out from that interview, from that conversation, was talking about the challenges of They have time travel, which is kind of a great out.

[883] You can make up a lot of shit using time travel.

[884] But most of the Telltale games have been set in universes that are ruled by pure absurdity.

[885] There is no real internal logic to Strong Bad or Sam and Max or those sort of properties.

[886] A little more reality, I guess, as far as how stuff works.

[887] Yeah, as far as item combinations go and so forth.

[888] So I'll be curious to see how they tackle that stuff.

[889] But I like the, you know, they release some character art. Yeah, what do you guys think of those characters?

[890] I like it.

[891] It looks fun, yeah.

[892] I really like it.

[893] They look kind of weird to me. Christopher Lloyd just looks weird.

[894] I mean, I think they need to be kind of like grotesquely exaggerated.

[895] Yeah, grotesque is a good word for it.

[896] But it's a good grotesque.

[897] It's a weird look to Doc Brown, like the kind of sunken eyes and the really prominent forehead and stuff.

[898] That's kind of how Chris Lloyd's a weird fucking looking dude.

[899] Yeah, sure, sure.

[900] I don't know.

[901] It's a little extreme for my taste.

[902] And we exchanged Marty's for a little bit also during that interview.

[903] That's right.

[904] Who can do the best Marty?

[905] Marty!

[906] This seems to be a nice reverence there for that.

[907] Sure, yeah.

[908] Clearly.

[909] Who doesn't love Back to the Future?

[910] I don't know.

[911] I was kind of wondering.

[912] Jerks.

[913] Jerks.

[914] I guess.

[915] Jeff, you play anything else at the Penny Arcade Expo 2010?

[916] Not really.

[917] I mean, I went around and shot a bunch of interviews and stuff like that, but talked to people, shook a lot of hands, but didn't play a ton of games.

[918] Bradley.

[919] I didn't play it, but we could talk briefly about Torchlight 2.

[920] Wait a second.

[921] I saw people playing it.

[922] I played Kung Fu Live.

[923] You did play Kung Fu Live.

[924] That's a Kanan?

[925] No, no. That is a PlayStation Network game that uses the camera only, not a Move game.

[926] So I really have no idea what this is about, so paint me a picture.

[927] It's about Kung Fu.

[928] It's about Kung Fu.

[929] Yes, it's taking place as we speak.

[930] It's Kung Fu happening right now.

[931] It's all the time.

[932] It is an eye toy style game where they're scanning the background and then you are standing there.

[933] Like punching ninjas off screen?

[934] Yeah, except it is kind of a platformer.

[935] Like they make you really small.

[936] Oh.

[937] So you're kind of like you're throwing your arms to the left or right to like do power punches.

[938] And that's kind of also moves you in that direction.

[939] If you hold up one arm straight up and the other arm straight out, you'll shoot lightning out of your straight out hand guys.

[940] It's also a four -player game, so while you're doing the camera stuff, three other players with controllers can control the on -screen dudes and fight you.

[941] How is that?

[942] It's goofy.

[943] Okay.

[944] I mean, it's a downloadable game.

[945] There's a fair amount of latency there, at least in the version that they were showing, with regards to your movements translating on screen and stuff like that.

[946] But the whole game takes place at such a pace that that's not necessarily totally...

[947] destructive to the experience so uh it's it's silly you do like almost a little if you kick a foot out and lean your head back and jump your guy does a backflip you know and you can use it to jump up on platforms you fight a boss that's like eight times as tall as you are and it's you on the screen it's the image of you it's not like you are not controlling some anime character or something like that it is it is you Your background less you?

[948] Yeah.

[949] So do you need a full body shot for that?

[950] Yeah.

[951] Okay.

[952] So you need some room?

[953] Your feet can get a little cut off, which was happening when I was watching some people play.

[954] It's one of those things where if the camera gets moved at all during the process, the whole game's broken.

[955] So don't jump too much.

[956] Right.

[957] Yeah.

[958] I don't know.

[959] I saw something.

[960] Maybe you guys saw this in the Kinect area, but the Ubisoft, what's the workout one?

[961] Your Shape.

[962] They had, instead of just a fiery dude, they had the actual person mapped on the screen this time.

[963] Like from the camera.

[964] Have you guys seen that yet?

[965] Like where it's like the actual video of the person, not just like on fire.

[966] Yeah.

[967] And it didn't look so good.

[968] They should just turn that back off.

[969] Maybe I was looking at something else.

[970] Fire is totally just straight up like base level Kinect diagnostic model.

[971] Like it's not.

[972] So it's probably way better.

[973] That's probably why it's way better.

[974] The fire stuff.

[975] Yeah.

[976] But even then, it was like the fire stuff.

[977] You could see a faint image of yourself under it.

[978] So I don't know if it's a setting or something, but what I saw of it would look real weird.

[979] Anytime that thing has to try and pick out you from the background, that's tough.

[980] Infrared technology, man. Anyway, Torchlight 2?

[981] Oh, yeah.

[982] Hey.

[983] The sequel to Torchlight?

[984] I didn't get to play it.

[985] There were a lot of people there.

[986] So I just talked to Max Schaefer instead.

[987] I don't know.

[988] What do you want to know?

[989] We know the basics, right?

[990] How many classes are there?

[991] Four.

[992] What are they?

[993] None of them are.

[994] They're actually only talking about two of them right now.

[995] They ripped out all the old ones.

[996] Those are all gone.

[997] So there are four total?

[998] Four classes and all new, yeah.

[999] Mod tools still in there?

[1000] Yeah, they're actually going to support mods a lot more directly now.

[1001] Cool.

[1002] They were already pretty directly supported.

[1003] Yeah, but in terms of having an interface to launch mods more easily.

[1004] And they're even saying co -op is the big thing.

[1005] It's got multiplayer.

[1006] That was the thing it needed.

[1007] When we talked to Max originally about Torchlight, and he was like, yeah, the code's all out there.

[1008] They'll probably make a co -op.

[1009] Somebody was working on a co -op mod.

[1010] But anyway, so yeah, it's co -op.

[1011] It's not just four players like Diablo style either.

[1012] They're saying maybe six, maybe eight.

[1013] Wow.

[1014] I figured it was going to be two.

[1015] Yeah.

[1016] So with respect to the mod stuff, they're going to run some matchmaking on their side, but the server, the hosting is all player side.

[1017] Right.

[1018] And they're saying you're going to be able to run a server with the mods that you want, like Quake style.

[1019] Huh.

[1020] Yeah, so they'll link you up, and then if I were playing with Brad, he would take control, he would host it, and then if Brad quit, I would take control.

[1021] And if there are weird mods out there that we want to run with, I can leave my server running with those mods enabled, and it's like a custom experience.

[1022] It sounds really cool.

[1023] What else?

[1024] They have a writer this time.

[1025] Like, I guess last time it was just whoever had some time here and there was, like, writing little bits of the dialogue and stuff.

[1026] Is that like you said, new pets?

[1027] Yeah, they're doing a bunch of stuff with pets, but they weren't saying what yet.

[1028] I mean, there were so many mods that added classes and pets and stuff to the game that that's almost inconsequential.

[1029] Like, great, they totally should launch with that stuff, but you know the community is going to...

[1030] Totally, yeah.

[1031] Billy and all sorts of weird holes.

[1032] He did say it would be nice if they could hit the same price point, but he was not.

[1033] He did say low.

[1034] He said they'd like to put it out at the same price.

[1035] They lost at $20?

[1036] $20, yeah.

[1037] That'd be great.

[1038] But that price was all over the place.

[1039] It went on sale so much time ago.

[1040] It was like $5 at one point.

[1041] One of the guys that was there literally said, this is our Diablo 2 to Diablo.

[1042] People had already drawn that comparison because that's exactly what it is, but it's got the expansive overworld now with different towns you go to.

[1043] They said the landscape is all randomized like the dungeon was before.

[1044] What about the MMO?

[1045] I guess they've hired five more people for this, and they're pretty much all hands on deck on Torchlight 2 right now.

[1046] But so much of the stuff they're doing in this game is necessary to have in place to make an MMO, like the networking stuff.

[1047] Character customization, that's the other thing.

[1048] They had the static art before.

[1049] So you can have male and female versions of all four classes now.

[1050] Awesome.

[1051] And you can tweak out all kinds of like facial appearance and stuff like that.

[1052] You know what?

[1053] That honestly truly hindered my enjoyment of the first one.

[1054] Like being able to just tweak the dude a little more.

[1055] I mean the loot.

[1056] The loot changed pretty appreciably.

[1057] Yeah, that's true.

[1058] I still just felt like I am just warrior man. Yeah, I agree with you.

[1059] Whoever that guy is.

[1060] It needed more, and they're doing that.

[1061] So, yeah, between having the co -op code in place and the character customization and stuff, a lot of that is what they need to build the MMO off of.

[1062] Also, I like playing as a lady and being limited to one class, for that's a bummer.

[1063] And I can't remember what the...

[1064] Vinny, you shot that interview.

[1065] Do you remember what the other class is they're talking about?

[1066] They have the Railman.

[1067] Was it like the Farseer or like the Wanderer or something like that?

[1068] Maybe, yeah.

[1069] I don't quite remember.

[1070] The Rogue.

[1071] Weird thing about shooting interviews in that format, like a lot of the time you're trying to think of your next question while they're giving the last answer, so I don't always catch everything they say.

[1072] Right.

[1073] It's delicate art. It is.

[1074] Especially at a loud -ass convention center.

[1075] Definitely.

[1076] Absolutely.

[1077] Well, that interview will go.

[1078] Yeah, yeah.

[1079] Did you manage to...

[1080] Jeff Bridges is in this game.

[1081] Also confirmed.

[1082] I've been working on a Jeff Bridges mod.

[1083] I can confirm.

[1084] Did you manage to get any of the gameplay that was happening right there?

[1085] There might be some in the background, but I didn't shoot it.

[1086] I wish I'd gotten on a station and played it, but at the same time, you kind of know how Torchlight plays.

[1087] Yeah, I mean, it looked good when I saw it going up on there, but I thought Torchlight 1 looked pretty good, too.

[1088] Yeah, yeah, this definitely got the same really super cartoony art style to it and everything.

[1089] It seems like weather effects and stuff like that.

[1090] Yeah, I saw people outside and stuff like that.

[1091] It looks really nice, yeah.

[1092] I'm super looking forward to it.

[1093] The last thing I need to clarify, a mistake I made three or four shows ago.

[1094] When I said the perfect world had bought Runic, not correct.

[1095] One of the Runic guys, Colin, thanks dude, came up and gave me a bunch of shit for that.

[1096] They're an investor.

[1097] They invested money.

[1098] I actually saw a message from that same cat.

[1099] It kind of sounded like they had bought them, but that it hadn't really changed anything culturally.

[1100] They haven't actually acquired the company.

[1101] They did invest money.

[1102] Runic is still an independent developer.

[1103] Perfect World is publishing the MMO but not necessarily Torchlight 2.

[1104] The console versions are also sort of happening.

[1105] We're working on them here and there.

[1106] Regardless of the MMO and console versions are kind of like back burner.

[1107] All their energy is all about Torchlight 2.

[1108] Is that coming out this year?

[1109] No, but they're trying for early next year.

[1110] Spring -ish next year.

[1111] They were showing Torchlight 1 at PAX last year, right?

[1112] Yeah, that's where we discovered it, actually.

[1113] I remember we were there, and I saw it, and I was like, oh, okay.

[1114] I just remember people talking about this.

[1115] And then somebody was like, Schaefer's.

[1116] They were like, dudes that made Diablo are making this.

[1117] I was like, all right, we've got to go see that.

[1118] Turn it around.

[1119] Turned out pretty well.

[1120] Yeah, we're really looking forward to that.

[1121] So I spent a lot of my time at PAX in the PAX 10 area and just in kind of the indie zone that they had set up there.

[1122] Welcome to the IndieZoo.

[1123] I thought that was kind of where the most interesting...

[1124] I was a little put off by the main floor this year because it felt way too much more like E3.

[1125] It's getting that E3 creep.

[1126] The whole show felt a little more...

[1127] Maybe it was just the way that we personally spent our time.

[1128] We did end up hanging out with a lot of developers for a lot of it.

[1129] But it felt a little more industry to me this year than it was in the past.

[1130] A little more press event?

[1131] Maybe a community event?

[1132] A little bit.

[1133] Part of it for me was just like the booths were just built up more like Disney had their Tron and Epic Mickey booths from E3 there on the floor, which again, I'll reiterate what I said before, they obviously spent a lot of money on that shit, so I can't fault them for wanting to bring it out.

[1134] And I'm sure that to the general public who's going to PAX and kind of wants to have this fun...

[1135] big video game convention experience, that's probably totally rad to them.

[1136] Like, oh, look at all this awesome Tron shit.

[1137] Otherwise, you would just have, like, here's a card table with a TV on it and a game.

[1138] Which was kind of what I, for me, that's always kind of been the weird charm of PAX.

[1139] It's like, you know, developer is standing behind this table.

[1140] you know ready to talk to me about his game as soon as he's done selling t -shirts exactly like you worry you worry about the corporate influence kind of crowding out that grassroots kind of indie spirit so i mean yeah and it's i can i can see that shit at other shows i cannot necessarily see a lot of these indie games yeah but the people that are supposed to be going to pax can't see it at those i know i get it i get it but for me it's still like that's the draw on the flip side those indie devs can't necessarily exhibit at the bigger shows yeah So, yeah, I soaked in a lot of the PAX 10.

[1141] Although, despite having spent so much time over there, I had no idea that Jonathan Blow was showing off The Witness.

[1142] I played a game that was – I stood and, like, stared at and talked to the developer of a game that was right next to where his – because he actually – Spy Party or whatever.

[1143] No, no. They were in that same booth.

[1144] They were all part of that same booth.

[1145] But Retrograde, which was right next – right fucking next to – I stood there for, like, 15 minutes between playing the game and watching other people play the game.

[1146] And, like, the TV was basically just facing just away from me that had the new Jonathan Blow game.

[1147] And I was like – Fuck!

[1148] That was the area with Monaco and all that stuff?

[1149] Yeah, Monaco and Spy Party were there, which I will get to play because the beauty of indie devs is that stuff that I didn't end up getting hands -on time with at the show, turns out I can just email those guys.

[1150] So we have Monaco here.

[1151] It was the grand prize winner of the IGF.

[1152] Oh, do we?

[1153] That game is weird.

[1154] It's really cool.

[1155] Greg Kassavan, who was there as part of the PAX 10 with Bastion, I talked to him a little bit and he said, dude, you have to go check out Monaco.

[1156] Monaco's really cool.

[1157] It's very, very interesting, and I heard a lot of interesting stuff about Spy Party as well, so I definitely want to check those out at some point.

[1158] And several of the PAX 10, and we talked to all of the developers of the PAX 10, and there's a lot of incredible promise there.

[1159] Some games that are just straight up already out, which you can go get.

[1160] Altitude was there.

[1161] You can go buy that shit.

[1162] People love it.

[1163] Talk to Carl.

[1164] Talk to Carl.

[1165] What up, Carl?

[1166] Shibuya had come out just that Saturday.

[1167] That's right.

[1168] Friday.

[1169] Saturday.

[1170] Friday.

[1171] I guess that sale's over now, right?

[1172] Yeah, yeah.

[1173] It was a $0 .99 sale, so now you have to pay a whole $1 .99.

[1174] We talked about the colorblind stuff.

[1175] Good, good.

[1176] Because that game's unplayable.

[1177] Yeah.

[1178] See, it's a bummer.

[1179] I wish that you could share my enthusiasm for Shibuya because I think it's really clever and fun.

[1180] I got to like level three of the first mode there, level two or something.

[1181] If I stare at it long enough and make sure it's at the right angle, I can...

[1182] And the colors are next to each other, and then they can kind of...

[1183] They were aware, though.

[1184] They said, yeah, we've heard that actually a couple times already.

[1185] We're going to try and work out something.

[1186] There's already a title update forthcoming for that because there's...

[1187] They can call them patches on the iPhone.

[1188] Don't worry.

[1189] It's not a title update.

[1190] All of the achievement stuff was being erased between sessions currently.

[1191] If you exit using the exit button instead of using the button on the phone.

[1192] No, it's not.

[1193] That's not the experience I've been having.

[1194] Oh, I thought that was it.

[1195] My experience has been when I quit the game, all my data goes away.

[1196] Oh, I keep mine.

[1197] Well, la -dee -da.

[1198] Well, la -dee -da.

[1199] It's your fancy pants.

[1200] It's not like there's a quit button or anything in the game.

[1201] There's an exit button.

[1202] Is there?

[1203] I'm looking in the wrong places.

[1204] Anyways, that game's awesome.

[1205] It's like two bucks.

[1206] It's on the iPhone.

[1207] You should check it out.

[1208] You can see colors.

[1209] Bastion's there, and we've...

[1210] We've covered and will continue to cover Bastion.

[1211] That show was the first time I got hands -on play with Super Meat Boy.

[1212] And that's a game that I would describe as a motherfucker.

[1213] It is downright villainous with the level of difficulty.

[1214] The high level of villainy.

[1215] Yeah, but it's also very deliberate in that.

[1216] They're like, no, we make the levels short but crazy hard so that it's very challenging but not...

[1217] like, you know, infinitely frustrating.

[1218] It's not like you're going to fight a giant Mike Tyson at some point or anything.

[1219] It was all, it was kind of baffling for me. That was another IGF game.

[1220] So we have a build of that here too, but they were so short and I was getting through them and then like going in other weird directions.

[1221] I was like, did I go through the wrong warp pipe or something?

[1222] Am I in the wrong world right now?

[1223] Like.

[1224] It didn't seem to be a lot of thematic consistency between the levels.

[1225] Oh, no, they jump all over the place.

[1226] It's very pastiche.

[1227] In some levels, they'll just be like, here it's a NES game, or here it's a Game Boy game, as far as the visual style goes.

[1228] Does that affect the lead character as well?

[1229] So you always kind of stand out from the background?

[1230] No, he definitely is affected by the visual style stuff.

[1231] Cool.

[1232] Yeah, yeah.

[1233] I think that game's really cool.

[1234] I think it's very interesting.

[1235] The experience that I kept on having watching other people play, and kind of my own as well, pretty much everyone would rage quit that game.

[1236] Pretty much everyone would get to a point where they'd be like, fuck this, slam the controller down, and be like, alright, I'll be back.

[1237] So it's like they were pissed off at the experience, but also kind of hooked at the same time.

[1238] So I think it takes a certain level of odd masochism.

[1239] That game's coming out not too far off.

[1240] That's part of the game feast.

[1241] So that's, it's the grand finale of Game Feast, which I think it's October 20th.

[1242] A3rd, 1st.

[1243] A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4th, A4 Let's see, what else?

[1244] Solace, which again is a...

[1245] So that's a DigiPen game.

[1246] Actually, it'd be like a DigiPen sophomore project that a bunch of students put together.

[1247] So they won't ever be able to actually sell that as a game because DigiPen technically owns that shit because that's how that stuff works.

[1248] That sounds nefarious.

[1249] Bullet heaven.

[1250] Yes, bullet heaven, which is what I had been calling a rhythmic bullet heaven on my own.

[1251] And then I talked to the dudes and they said, that's basically what we've been calling it internally.

[1252] What makes it heavenly and not hellish?

[1253] You don't die right away.

[1254] Yeah.

[1255] Well, that and also basically like it's pretty short.

[1256] It's a shooter, but it has kind of a flow style.

[1257] Oh, I saw that.

[1258] It has a similar aesthetic, too.

[1259] The aesthetic is similar, but also it's like you collect orbs from enemies that you've killed, and that lets you kind of upgrade your ship, as it were.

[1260] There's a sound mechanic, too.

[1261] There's kind of a backbeat going on, and every action on the screen adds some sort of musical element to it.

[1262] It's done in such a way that it actually works as music.

[1263] It's not just like, oh, here's some weird ambient sounds that occasionally come together to sound like music.

[1264] It's done well.

[1265] And each stage is one of the stages of grief, was it?

[1266] I can't remember.

[1267] I think, yeah.

[1268] Alcoholism?

[1269] Something like that.

[1270] There's one stage that's just called depression.

[1271] There's like five levels.

[1272] That you don't shoot in.

[1273] There's one just like no shooting level.

[1274] Anyways, I was calling it a bullet heaven because the whole thing kind of peaks at the end where there's this sequence where you're just getting more and more powerful, and eventually you are just spewing bullets out from all directions, just hundreds of bullets coming out of you.

[1275] Basically, you are like the asshole boss in the worst part of a bullet hell game.

[1276] It's done in such a way like you're so used to a bullet hell just getting harder and harder and harder until you're at the end where it's just completely fucked constantly.

[1277] Like, this actually had a satisfying arc of being able to get to the end, and you are just...

[1278] the most badass thing there, just completely laying waste to everything.

[1279] And it felt really good.

[1280] Like it was just a really, you know, just to take that convention and flip it on its head that way I thought was interesting and super effective.

[1281] What's the commercial path for this then?

[1282] Like does DigiPen start selling it at some point?

[1283] I don't think there is one.

[1284] I think they own it.

[1285] Yeah, you can go download it.

[1286] Oh, it's out there now.

[1287] It's out there now.

[1288] I played it before the show started.

[1289] I think DigiPen owns it, right?

[1290] DigiPen owns it outright.

[1291] Those guys, like they would have to go and...

[1292] I guess rewrite code or something to try and turn that into a commercial product.

[1293] That's kind of the weird thing about the PAX 10.

[1294] It's not like it's a competition and there's a winner.

[1295] It's kind of just like here is a showcase of 10 awesome indie games.

[1296] Some of them are out.

[1297] Some of them are still in development.

[1298] Some of them will never be able to be sold.

[1299] They're just cool little indie games.

[1300] Those guys were clearly just thrilled to be part of that because it's...

[1301] If nothing else, just great exposure for them as burgeoning developers.

[1302] Yeah, that game seems really cool.

[1303] Also, a game that I'm going to play now, I have a copy of it, I didn't play it at PAX, Foul Space, in which you play a rooster named Astrocock, who hates the sun.

[1304] Great.

[1305] because, you know, has to wake up every morning to crow because of the sun.

[1306] So he decides he's going to fly into space and destroy the sun, only to get there and to realize that the sun is actually full of Vikings dressed in lingerie.

[1307] Okay, go on.

[1308] That's pretty much it.

[1309] That's the setup.

[1310] Yeah, that's the setup.

[1311] And then from there, things get a little weird.

[1312] It's kind of high contrast.

[1313] Oh, yeah.

[1314] Everything's very silhouetted as far as characters go and just colored backgrounds, but the characters are just in black.

[1315] Looks cool.

[1316] It's got an interesting visual style to it.

[1317] It's kind of a platformer.

[1318] There's running and jumping and platforms and double jumping, but you're also shooting, and you have kind of an aiming reticle to let you know whereabouts your...

[1319] Remember Abuse?

[1320] Yeah.

[1321] Aiming system seemed kind of similar.

[1322] Again, I haven't played it yet.

[1323] I will be playing it soon.

[1324] And this was on a PC.

[1325] Yeah.

[1326] So mouse and keyboard very easily.

[1327] As long as the computer's not dying while we're trying to watch it.

[1328] Felt bad, their computer.

[1329] They didn't have it plugged in.

[1330] I was like, dude, I've been there so many times.

[1331] Where it was set up, and they'd been going all morning, and no one even thought, and then suddenly in the middle, like, oh, it just stopped.

[1332] What happened?

[1333] Oh, the laptop's not plugged in.

[1334] Damn it.

[1335] Yeah, I think file space looks awesome and has a ridiculous everything.

[1336] I guess.

[1337] And it's being developed by a developer called Pixelandy.

[1338] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[1339] Props to Jack Thompson for that one.

[1340] Plane Weaver is a weird, weird, weird game, which, again, I think you can download it now.

[1341] And it was part of some bizarre, like, Danish, like...

[1342] collaboration of an art school and a tech school and a museum or something.

[1343] Basically, it was a game that was made in a month.

[1344] They had one month to make this game, and this is the game that they made.

[1345] A little, like, cameo -ish.

[1346] Yeah, you were playing this little girl who could run around and jump and platforms.

[1347] It's like third person, and then she can shift into these different, like a spirit mode in which she can fly through walls, and then she can also become this big ogre thing that can bust up stuff.

[1348] It seemed very weird, but I think kind of the, I don't know, the big draw there is that, you know, it was made in a month.

[1349] And that's pretty crazy that you could make anything even remotely playable in a month.

[1350] At least it seems that way to me. Let's hear Puzzle Bots, which again, you can go buy that shit.

[1351] It's out there.

[1352] It's like five bucks.

[1353] We're an adventure game.

[1354] Kind of.

[1355] I mean, no, it's a puzzle game.

[1356] Sure.

[1357] It's like you walk into a room and you are one of several robots and you have to manipulate items and figure your way through the room.

[1358] Yeah.

[1359] Different robots, different abilities.

[1360] We've got interviews for that.

[1361] Interview with Aaron.

[1362] Yep.

[1363] Retro City Rampage, which is kind of like that 8 -bit looking GTA game.

[1364] Yeah.

[1365] Like weird Contra references.

[1366] Weird everything references.

[1367] It's full -on wholesale references being made in that entire game.

[1368] But it seems...

[1369] I approach that stuff generally pretty cautiously, but it seems like it's being done with a kind of enthusiasm that I can get behind.

[1370] So, you know, into it.

[1371] And that's pretty much...

[1372] And there's also Altitude, which we've talked about in the past.

[1373] What was the Simi or...

[1374] Oh, there was Hegemony.

[1375] Philip of Macedon.

[1376] It's beyond me. He kind of compared it to the Total War games, and I'm like, all right, this looks very technically competent and historically accurate or whatever, but it's clear over my head.

[1377] All right, smart enough for that.

[1378] Sorry, I'm just an idiot.

[1379] I called you by the wrong name during this interview.

[1380] Apologize again, please.

[1381] So sorry, Rob.

[1382] Rob.

[1383] Rob.

[1384] Not Tom.

[1385] Not Tom.

[1386] Rob.

[1387] I see how you can make that mistake.

[1388] In the process of interviewing 10 different people.

[1389] It was Rob and Carl, Eddie.

[1390] Eddie.

[1391] Aaron.

[1392] Two Jordans.

[1393] Two Jordans.

[1394] Danny.

[1395] Aaron.

[1396] Danny.

[1397] Greg.

[1398] Yeah.

[1399] Now I'm going to forget somebody.

[1400] I can't remember the...

[1401] The Solace guy?

[1402] Oh, no, he was a Jordan.

[1403] He was one of the Jordans.

[1404] It was like, I don't even want to say it.

[1405] Who's the guy who was shown off the plane?

[1406] Yeah.

[1407] Oh, I think he was a Carl, too.

[1408] No, I think he was like a Johan.

[1409] He had a really crazy last name, I remember.

[1410] But, yeah, a lot of people run around.

[1411] It was Korsgaard was his last name.

[1412] Oh, nice.

[1413] Good call.

[1414] Yeah.

[1415] I can't remember his first.

[1416] It's called Korsgaard.

[1417] I guess so.

[1418] I'm pretty good about myself remembering names right now.

[1419] And everybody was real beat, too.

[1420] He was just like, I don't have a voice anymore.

[1421] It was like the third day of the show.

[1422] Yeah, yeah.

[1423] We were hitting all this stuff up.

[1424] While you guys were doing that, me and Drew were down in the depths of the show near where there were a lot of 20 -sided dice.

[1425] And there's one game down there amongst the motherboard manufacturers and Catan players and whatever the heck else was going on there.

[1426] Skulls of the Shogun.

[1427] Yeah.

[1428] Yeah, from Haunted Temple.

[1429] Went and saw Jake.

[1430] Yeah, went and shot a little interview with Jake talking about how that game's coming along.

[1431] Sounds like the spring season, which is one of the four looks of the game, is just about complete.

[1432] Okay, right on.

[1433] And they've got to work on some of the other stuff.

[1434] They're talking about a lot of interesting things for that game that I think are going to make it, that sound like they can make it stand out as far as turn -based strategy goes.

[1435] You say the words turn -based strategy to someone and they go, I don't want to do that.

[1436] It's hard.

[1437] My head hurts.

[1438] but it seems like they're striving to make it as accessible as possible.

[1439] He was talking about all the things they did to the UI, and they're streamlining parts of the game already and replacing bits and ripping stuff out to try and make it something that just about anyone can pick up and play, almost like an arcade -y kind of turn -based strategy game.

[1440] And he said that they're working on a collision system that is basically, theoretically, adding a physics system to the game, which is not something you would expect a turn -based strategy game.

[1441] So the idea is that you'll be able to knock guys out of the ring, as it were, by hitting units off of cliffs and stuff like that.

[1442] Is that slated as a downloadable game?

[1443] Yeah.

[1444] I think that's what makes this PAX really interesting in all the smaller stuff is in the last few years, those small games you see have a real chance of being played at some point.

[1445] It's not like you have to seek them out.

[1446] From a website or something like that, they will come on a distribution platform that you...

[1447] You already have an account on.

[1448] Yeah, and they might really take off.

[1449] Yeah.

[1450] I mean, I started to keep harping on the IGF, but Limbo was an IGF finalist before...

[1451] Yeah, you get the impression that there are some of these games that you can look at and be like, this could be the next Limbo, this could be the next Braid.

[1452] Right.

[1453] I mean, yeah, six, eight months ago, Limbo was the next Braid before there was a Limbo, you know?

[1454] Right.

[1455] I played it for the judging, and I was just like, this is...

[1456] Pretty amazing.

[1457] And then it came out, and everybody else said the same thing, and it sold a shitload.

[1458] Yeah.

[1459] Yeah.

[1460] And you can get it, and it can be priced appropriately, let's say, for its length and stuff, and you can enjoy it for that.

[1461] It's exciting.

[1462] I think it's one of those things that's most exciting to people that have been playing games for a very long time because that spirit of kind of experimental game development that you saw through the 8 -bit era and through a lot of the 16 -bit era is gone.

[1463] Right.

[1464] In most, you know, big budget games.

[1465] Well, the risks are just way too high.

[1466] So it's, you know.

[1467] Too expensive.

[1468] Not a lot of third -person fucking cover -based shooters in the PAX 10 this year.

[1469] Sorry to say.

[1470] Which is good.

[1471] I love just how inventive and weird and bizarre, you know, most of these games are.

[1472] They're taking...

[1473] Even when they're in a familiar genre, they're just taking them in weird -ass directions.

[1474] Experimentation aside, it's a very direct conduit.

[1475] To focus the talent of a few people.

[1476] Yeah.

[1477] Without being diluted by focus groups and marketing studies.

[1478] And not having to worry about super intense technology.

[1479] You can work with older or simpler stuff.

[1480] But they still look good.

[1481] Yeah.

[1482] They're still visually.

[1483] Well, I think stuff like Limbo is really making a great point of you can make something look fucking fantastic using relatively simple tech.

[1484] It's styled over tech.

[1485] Yeah, absolutely.

[1486] Which I'm all for.

[1487] It's graphics artistic over graphics technical.

[1488] I'm going to jump across this table and murder you now.

[1489] Moving on to our next category.

[1490] You did that to yourself.

[1491] I don't have any other categories.

[1492] No?

[1493] No. I don't really have any news.

[1494] Like kind of the news was PAX.

[1495] Beer Box owns that Duke Nukem.

[1496] Oh, really?

[1497] Yeah.

[1498] When did that happen?

[1499] I don't know.

[1500] A couple.

[1501] A couple months ago.

[1502] Archon was at the show.

[1503] Yeah, Archon.

[1504] Crazy.

[1505] And battle chess.

[1506] It was like battle versus chess.

[1507] Oh, is that what it was?

[1508] Yeah.

[1509] Whatever, man. Yeah.

[1510] Get me some floppies and sit down and start playing some games.

[1511] So yeah, the only news story that I have is just a massive fucking bummer, which is that the lead designer of Company of Heroes Online died in a car crash on Friday night.

[1512] Yeah, that was terrible.

[1513] Brian Woods.

[1514] So he was in the car with his six -month pregnant wife.

[1515] Who survived.

[1516] Who survived.

[1517] Or who was in care right now.

[1518] Yeah, and then in the other car there was two people died from that car and two people are still alive.

[1519] And it sounds like the...

[1520] The circumstances under which this happened were entirely avoidable and bad.

[1521] Yeah, that was a huge, huge bummer.

[1522] I guess that happened on Friday.

[1523] That was Friday, so it's a good goddamn shame to hear something like that.

[1524] Sympathies go out to the wife and their family.

[1525] Yeah, and the whole family and anyone.

[1526] Obviously, also everyone at Relic that has to be fucking them all up pretty badly right now.

[1527] It seems like a pretty tight -knit company there.

[1528] That's a real shame.

[1529] Yeah, bummer.

[1530] Yeah, I know, I know.

[1531] It's even hard to just wrap the situation.

[1532] Yeah, like, all right, let's move on.

[1533] Let's talk about video games.

[1534] Let's just pull our...

[1535] So I was using a chainsaw to cut someone's head off.

[1536] Like, we need to get better at our news style.

[1537] Talk about headshots.

[1538] Network news style.

[1539] In other news...

[1540] In other news...

[1541] Puppies.

[1542] Puppies.

[1543] Bad for the environment?

[1544] I hope not.

[1545] Turns out, no. Oh, thank God.

[1546] Well, tune in at 11.

[1547] Right on the full report, you'll want to see this.

[1548] Killing puppies, good for the environment.

[1549] Yes.

[1550] Was that really it from PAX?

[1551] I'm trying to think of anything else we just ran around and caught up on before we kind of closed the book on that.

[1552] Yeah, there were a billion things at PAX, as we've said.

[1553] Like, I didn't get to see Monaco, I didn't get to see Spy Party, but we're going to see Monaco and we're going to see Spy Party.

[1554] Spy Party dude wants to just come over here, so.

[1555] So that might just happen.

[1556] Totally spy.

[1557] Totally party.

[1558] All right.

[1559] Yeah, there's the Archon thing.

[1560] I guess those Harmonix chuckleheads were there.

[1561] I didn't really see any of their stuff.

[1562] We stopped and took a look at it.

[1563] One of the games has plastic instruments.

[1564] The other does not.

[1565] They both look pretty good.

[1566] Was that Mad Cat setup like their official setup?

[1567] That was Mad Cat's setup.

[1568] So where was their setup?

[1569] I never even saw Harmonix proper.

[1570] Their setup, you...

[1571] were there at their setup when I was playing Kung Fu Live.

[1572] I walked in through the bathroom.

[1573] I was completely out of sorts.

[1574] I didn't know where.

[1575] But when you saw...

[1576] Pope taking pictures of me. Like, their booth is right next door to that.

[1577] Okay, I didn't even look over there.

[1578] I didn't see that.

[1579] It was, like, full of pool toys and a hand -drawn sign that said Rock Band 3.

[1580] I was, like, on the way to go and shoot stuff with Vinny.

[1581] I was just going to use the bathroom, and then I saw you guys, and I just stopped, finished talking to Chris Baker from Marvel, so I was, like, I was scattered.

[1582] Hand -drawn, really?

[1583] Hand -drawn.

[1584] Man, they kind of downgraded.

[1585] What the hell is going on?

[1586] I mean, last year they had a huge...

[1587] Huge booth.

[1588] Remember that?

[1589] It was like the four corners of the booth had setups on it.

[1590] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1591] They kind of said that you get young.

[1592] You guys are kind of embarrassed.

[1593] You guys are going to come and make fun of our booth and it will be totally different.

[1594] We're going to make fun of them either way.

[1595] A suit of armor there.

[1596] I don't know.

[1597] It was cool.

[1598] For what it was, whatever.

[1599] People were playing Dance Central.

[1600] People were playing Rock Band.

[1601] It wasn't that much different of an experience, I think.

[1602] Graphics artistic.

[1603] Graphics artistic, not graphics technical.

[1604] Got it.

[1605] Was Guitar Hero out there at all?

[1606] No. Activision had zero presence at the show.

[1607] Well, GoldenEye was at the Nintendo booth.

[1608] So there were Activision games that were there in some form, but that's about it.

[1609] Hmm.

[1610] I mean, they just had their big Call of Duty reveal thing anyway, so they got that out of the way.

[1611] Yeah.

[1612] Which, actually, I talked to some.

[1613] That was the other great, or always the great thing about PAX is...

[1614] getting to meet lots and lots and lots of Giant Bomb fans out there in person, shake some hands, get the Pax Pox.

[1615] Some of you have very damp hands, and it kind of was creeping me out.

[1616] I don't mean to diss, but...

[1617] You run around the convention all day.

[1618] Yeah, I mean, some people.

[1619] But I'm very much, I have that.

[1620] I'm very much like a wipe on pants.

[1621] Like, it doesn't matter where my hand has been.

[1622] Like, quick wipe before I shake anyone's hands because, yeah, there's some wet -handed dudes out there.

[1623] Yeah, it's a little bit.

[1624] It's a hot place.

[1625] Yeah.

[1626] Holding a lot of crap.

[1627] Yeah, fun to put faces to some of the mailbags we've gotten.

[1628] Yeah, we've had a lot of heavy -hitting mailbag contributors show up at the show, and that was awesome.

[1629] Those gods among men from Georgia that sent the Chick -fil -A.

[1630] Indeed.

[1631] The man who made those excellent posters of us, there's a Dave One forthcoming, he said, so that's awesome.

[1632] I don't remember who I was with, but I met the guy who sent the hot dog toaster.

[1633] Yes.

[1634] Oh, really?

[1635] I was with you.

[1636] I think you were there.

[1637] I don't think I met him.

[1638] Yeah.

[1639] Awesome.

[1640] Great time had by all.

[1641] Indeed.

[1642] All right.

[1643] So that's PAX.

[1644] That's news.

[1645] Let's move on, gentlemen.

[1646] Talk about some new releases?

[1647] Yeah.

[1648] There's, turns out, a ton of them this week.

[1649] We're good.

[1650] What?

[1651] Try and restrain your excitement.

[1652] I know we don't have time for this, but it's happening anyways.

[1653] Batman the Brave and the Bold for the Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii from Warner Home Video Games.

[1654] That's coming out.

[1655] Spider -Man Shattered Dimensions for the Wii PS3, 360, and DS.

[1656] So if your man needs are met this week in the realm of video games.

[1657] Do you like your Batmans or your Spidermans?

[1658] You get a lot of them.

[1659] Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep for the Sony PSP.

[1660] NHL Slapshot.

[1661] for the Nintendo Wii?

[1662] They said there probably wasn't going to be a digital release of that Kingdom Hearts game.

[1663] It was going to be disc only.

[1664] Sorry, PSP Go owner.

[1665] Curious.

[1666] The one.

[1667] That one is me. You.

[1668] And you don't care about Kingdom Hearts?

[1669] I don't know where my PSP Go is.

[1670] Also, that's maybe a larger issue.

[1671] Is it really, though?

[1672] I said maybe.

[1673] Okay, fair enough.

[1674] NHL 11 for 360 and PS3, so there's your hockey.

[1675] Yeah, play EA's weird Wii hockey game or their regular 360 PS3 hockey game.

[1676] Yeah.

[1677] And that's that.

[1678] So a bunch of move software is coming out this week.

[1679] You sure about that?

[1680] It's being listed by retailers that's coming out this week.

[1681] It's just software?

[1682] Just software.

[1683] It's supposed to be the 17th that all that stuff really comes out.

[1684] But yeah, maybe they're putting the games out ahead of time.

[1685] A handful of stuff like sports champions, start the party.

[1686] Like for the public?

[1687] Yeah, like these are retail listings that are supposed to come out today.

[1688] This definitely happened before where software is out ahead of the hardware.

[1689] Dreamcast games were out before the Dreamcast was out.

[1690] Just get ready.

[1691] In some cases, yeah.

[1692] Imagine it.

[1693] Sometimes distribution takes a little longer, so they want to give it an extra time there.

[1694] They want to make sure that their game is on shelves for when the hardware actually shows up for people to use it with.

[1695] The iPet is out this week.

[1696] Sports Champions, Start the Party, Kung Fu Writer.

[1697] All that stuff.

[1698] Also out this week, Tom Clancy's Hawks 2.

[1699] Clance.

[1700] Little Clance for you.

[1701] Little T .C. Little Clance.

[1702] Keeping it down.

[1703] Keeping it Clance.

[1704] Keeping it Matt.

[1705] Super Clance.

[1706] Super Clance.

[1707] Super Clance.

[1708] Play the new Tom Clance he talks to.

[1709] Two words.

[1710] Super Chopper.

[1711] Yeah, okay, yeah.

[1712] Once again, big shout out to John Vignocchi for his thunderous appearance on our...

[1713] our PAX panel, and also Jeff Green, Gary Witta, and Michael Pachter.

[1714] That was one of my favorite things.

[1715] I went back, so we put up the podcast audio version of that panel, and listening to it, I'm like, fuck.

[1716] This might be the best thing we've ever been a part of.

[1717] We've peaked now.

[1718] I'm afraid that that was so awesome, and it was just a...

[1719] It was a fun time for us, and the guests were rad, and we had good segments.

[1720] I'm like, shit, is that it?

[1721] Is that where it crests?

[1722] No more.

[1723] Let's just end it.

[1724] Let's just retire.

[1725] Now we need two hours next year.

[1726] We might get it.

[1727] We did get the 90 minutes rather than the hour that most people get at PAX panels.

[1728] We still managed to not have much time for Q &A.

[1729] We had a good amount of time for Q &A.

[1730] Well, it was better than before.

[1731] We had, like, 20 minutes of Q &A.

[1732] I thought that we had the right amount of time for Q &A.

[1733] There was still, like, this crazy long line of people whose questions didn't get asked, but, you know, that was...

[1734] We hung around long enough afterwards, I think, a lot of those questions.

[1735] We were hanging around for, like, an hour after...

[1736] At the show.

[1737] Yeah, right outside the hall.

[1738] And then after the show.

[1739] And then after the show, we went and had meet -up.

[1740] We had drinks at the Gameworks, and then went over to Tap House and hung out with a bunch of...

[1741] Up to, like, three.

[1742] UFC Undisputed 2010 for the PlayStation Portable.

[1743] And this Sunday, Professor Layton and the Unwound Future for the Nintendo DS.

[1744] Get your Layton on.

[1745] This week's Xbox Live Arcade releases Plants vs. Zombies for $15.

[1746] And Dance, it's your stage for 800 Microsoft points.

[1747] $800.

[1748] Or for $800.

[1749] That's probably not a great value.

[1750] Or it's the best game ever.

[1751] No, that's $10.

[1752] Well, it comes with its own stage, so...

[1753] Oh.

[1754] And on the PlayStation Network, we have...

[1755] What?

[1756] Tear Over.

[1757] Is it Tear Over?

[1758] Yeah.

[1759] My text file got fucked up, so I'm here, so it's...

[1760] What's that?

[1761] It looks kind of Moon Patrol -y, but also has kind of a neon...

[1762] I have a description.

[1763] Like, line graphic.

[1764] Geometry War style?

[1765] Yeah, sort of.

[1766] Sounds all right.

[1767] Gameplay is based on navigating a terrain rover through over 40 stages of puzzling arcade levels in five different 2D art styles, including the icy vistas of Conjolata.

[1768] Terror Rover features three local multiplayer modes for up to four people, leaderboards, and PlayStation Network trophies.

[1769] I didn't really explain anything.

[1770] It's not necessarily like super side -scrolly shooter like Moon Patrol really was, but you are...

[1771] controlling a rover that is sort of like the thing from Moon Patrol.

[1772] All right.

[1773] Does that have six wheels?

[1774] I think so.

[1775] All right.

[1776] I don't know.

[1777] I saw it before E3, and it looked pretty cool.

[1778] It's a rover.

[1779] A rover.

[1780] A rover.

[1781] We should get a hold of it and try and do a quick look or something.

[1782] Sure.

[1783] Tune in September 9th for back -to -back all these released quick looks.

[1784] When is that?

[1785] That stuff's out now?

[1786] The PlayStation stuff?

[1787] Tomorrow.

[1788] Today.

[1789] It's out now.

[1790] Today, yes.

[1791] It is out now.

[1792] Yes.

[1793] What was that?

[1794] Come on.

[1795] Let's get it together.

[1796] You know how to do this.

[1797] You know how this works.

[1798] Where am I?

[1799] Break this fucking chair.

[1800] Well, yeah, we'll have plenty of hours at some point with cameras rolling this week.

[1801] Great.

[1802] Yeah.

[1803] Live quick look.

[1804] B -Y -O quick look.

[1805] Yeah.

[1806] Stack them up.

[1807] So we got nothing else for the show.

[1808] So we just, I don't know.

[1809] Who's got a quick look?

[1810] Let's do a quick look of every game room game.

[1811] Game room marathon back to back seven hours.

[1812] Go.

[1813] It's the best idea that we've had for this entire live show, and you know it.

[1814] I've come to hate your game room quick looks.

[1815] Why?

[1816] I want you to be on the rest of them, then.

[1817] I don't want anything to do with your game room quick looks.

[1818] Until they're done.

[1819] I don't think it's good.

[1820] They've been done for months.

[1821] I don't think it's going to take much longer, personally.

[1822] Yeah.

[1823] Until they stop putting out games.

[1824] Yeah.

[1825] Again, they stopped putting out games a while ago.

[1826] I don't know.

[1827] I just played a game of concentration for the Atari 2600.

[1828] It has a game right in there.

[1829] Oh, man. It was the worst sound.

[1830] It's complete silence.

[1831] I like those.

[1832] I actually heard that, and I'm like, yeah, that's an Atari 2600 sound right there.

[1833] Well, I don't have any other quick looks here, but I do have emails.

[1834] Oh, how about the other releases?

[1835] That's it.

[1836] I have a quick look.

[1837] Oh, we don't have emails.

[1838] I still have to throw it over to my man Jeff Gershman for the Nintendo Downloads this week.

[1839] Take it away, Jeff.

[1840] All right, they actually wrote a little something.

[1841] They actually do write a little something up front this week or every week, but this week it's a little better.

[1842] I don't know.

[1843] You've earned a day off.

[1844] No matter what kind of labor keeps you busy on most Mondays, today is the perfect day to just relax and enjoy yourself.

[1845] To help put you in the leisurely spirit, this week's new downloadable games for Wii and Nintendo DS systems, TMTM.

[1846] Offer welcome diversions for everyone under the sun.

[1847] Mosey into an atypical Old West adventure with Fenimore Fillmore the Westerner for WiiWare TM Service.

[1848] Live out your secret samurai fantasies with the Neo Geo Classic Samurai Showdown 3.

[1849] Showdown spelled incorrectly by being spelled correctly.

[1850] They put a W in showdown.

[1851] My samurai fantasies are very secret.

[1852] Now available on the Virtual Console TM Service.

[1853] For some fun on the go, the Nintendo DSiWare TM Service.

[1854] Now lets you test your tile -matching skills with Simply Mahjong, interact with rare birds in My Exotic Farm, or get your six -string kicks with Music On Acoustic Guitar.

[1855] Now you know the names.

[1856] All right, let's talk about the games.

[1857] What's coming out for WiiWare?

[1858] For WiiWare, 1 ,000 Wii points from Revistronic.

[1859] It's Fenimore Fillmore, the Westerner.

[1860] The Westerner is in quotes.

[1861] There's no colon.

[1862] It's Fenimore Fillmore, and then in quotes, the Westerner.

[1863] Welcome to the West.

[1864] Come and see the fastest cowboy in action.

[1865] Visit a typical Western town with a grand saloon, a sheriff's office, and a bank.

[1866] Meet the classic doctor, the powerful master of the land, an industrious pioneer, and men and women who raised a great nation with their blood, sweat, and tears.

[1867] But there are things that cannot be helped in one of them.

[1868] Very typical in the West is the continuous fighting between farmers and cattle ranchers.

[1869] While farmers used to win the sympathy of most people, cattle ranchers had more money, more men, and more power.

[1870] Only a cowboy as peculiar as Fenimore Fillmore could side with the farmers when the rest of the cowboys are paid by the merciless and sinister cattle rancher.

[1871] Wasn't this like a network, like a syndicated show in like 73 or something?

[1872] Lorne Green.

[1873] Yeah.

[1874] Stars as Fenimore Fillmore, the westerner.

[1875] Virtual console this week, Samurai Shodown 3, the Neo Geo version, published by D4 Enterprise.

[1876] This is a fighting game.

[1877] Released in 1995 as a sequel to the previous year's release of Samurai Shodown 2, again.

[1878] They got the title right in the title of this bit, but every other place where they have to spell showdown, they have included the W. They've spelled it wrong.

[1879] Though this is the third installment of the series, the story takes place between the first and second installments.

[1880] Players can choose from 12 samurais seeking to defeat Zankuro Minazuki.

[1881] Along with minor upgrades from the last version, such as the ability to press buttons to fill your rage gauge and the ability to defend in midair, you can also select from slash and bust personality types for each character.

[1882] Each type has its own set of special moves you can take advantage of, effectively doubling the amount of characters you can play.

[1883] That is only kind of lying.

[1884] I don't like Samurai Shodown 3 very much.

[1885] I don't think many people like Samurai Shodown 3.

[1886] Two is the one, right?

[1887] One and two, but to me, it's two.

[1888] I thought you were going to go for 20's newscaster on that one.

[1889] I kind of started to.

[1890] Which seemed appropriate because it's such an old game.

[1891] I don't know.

[1892] It was there at the beginning, then you lost it.

[1893] I don't really go into these.

[1894] So basically, unless the title suggests something extremely specific, which in the case of Samurai Shown 3 would be probably really racist.

[1895] I had a weird email come into the Bombcast address basically suggesting the idea that we had been discussing of randomized characters.

[1896] Oh yeah, just like put a bunch of characters in a hat.

[1897] Yeah, and then pull one out.

[1898] So someone suggested it.

[1899] Almost exactly as we had described it, which was kind of weird to me. Well, because I'm not just a member of this podcast, but also a fan, I'm going to make a standing request for 20's newscaster and also Knife Show.

[1900] For these ones?

[1901] Or just any time?

[1902] It doesn't even have to be today, but I hope and pray that someday...

[1903] We'll see what happens.

[1904] Simply Mahjong.

[1905] Wait, hold on.

[1906] We're at DSiWare now?

[1907] This is DSiWare.

[1908] Okay.

[1909] Simply Mahjong.

[1910] From Engine Software, Nintendo DSi points TM.

[1911] Simply Mahjong gives you exactly what you want.

[1912] Pure Mahjong on your Nintendo DSi system.

[1913] Pure uncut heroin.

[1914] Mahjong is a Chinese tile matching game.

[1915] Even though you already knew exactly what you wanted and it was Mahjong.

[1916] We felt the need to include this sentence.

[1917] It was simply Mahjong.

[1918] We felt we had to write this sentence describing what Mahjong was.

[1919] Even though it's exactly what you want.

[1920] And even though there's already a billion Mahjong games on DSiWare.

[1921] The tiles are arranged in a special pattern with their faces upward.

[1922] A tile is said to be open if it can be moved either left or right without disturbing other tiles.

[1923] The goal is to match pairs of identical tiles.

[1924] Because this is really Shanghai and not Mahjong.

[1925] Mahjong is like a card game.

[1926] You play it with multiple players.

[1927] Like this is...

[1928] You use Mahjong tiles to play this, but it's more commonly known.

[1929] I think it's a licensed name, but they traditionally call it Shanghai.

[1930] Also, you bet money on Mahjong.

[1931] On real Mahjong.

[1932] Yeah, or you play it in an arcade and video of naked ladies is displayed while you play.

[1933] Or on meme.

[1934] Like I said, in an arcade.

[1935] The game is finished when all pairs of tiles have been removed from the board or there are no exposed pairs remaining.

[1936] The simple game design and easy intuitive controls make it a game that the whole family can enjoy.

[1937] The game features 50 puzzles in each level to provide hours of fun.

[1938] That's not what I wanted at all.

[1939] Simply Mahjong.

[1940] It's exactly what you want.

[1941] I think we owe it.

[1942] Someone owes it to someone to figure out what the best Mahjong game on DSiWare is.

[1943] Exhaustive video series.

[1944] One man's hunt.

[1945] Are there more Mahjong than Sudoku games?

[1946] Yes.

[1947] You think?

[1948] Absolutely.

[1949] My Exotic Farm.

[1950] Oh, man. From Bip Media.

[1951] 200 Nintendo DS iPod.

[1952] My Exotic Farm is an exotic farm simulation game.

[1953] In the beginning, all you own is an empty field, a few pennies, and a single parrot.

[1954] Wait.

[1955] We heard this somewhere.

[1956] This is a fucking mad lib of a description of like last week's farm game.

[1957] It's literally the exact same.

[1958] Yeah.

[1959] Let me see some of these.

[1960] If you feed and take care of it, the parrot will make feathers that can be sold.

[1961] With this money, you can buy new animals at the farmer's market and purchase equipment from the shopkeeper.

[1962] Little by little, as your farm builds up, you will unlock bonuses, including a well, a great green macaw, a guard dog, and a 4x4.

[1963] You can also exchange animals with your friends who play My Farm or My Exotic Farm.

[1964] Oh, it must have been My Farm or something.

[1965] Yeah.

[1966] There it is.

[1967] My farm is a livestock farming simulation game.

[1968] At the beginning, all you own is an empty field, a few pennies, and a single hen.

[1969] If you feed the hen and take care of it, she will lay eggs that can be sold.

[1970] With this money, you can buy new animals at the farmer's market and purchase equipment from the shopkeeper.

[1971] Little by little, as your farm builds up, you will unlock bonuses including a well, a brister, a macaw, a guard dog, and a tractor.

[1972] You can also exchange animals with your friends who play my farm or my exotic farm.

[1973] There are six kinds of animals to customize, many farm improvements to buy, and bonuses to collect.

[1974] Alright, so my farm better value.

[1975] Longer description.

[1976] Fuck.

[1977] Fuck.

[1978] That's worse than the notebook stuff.

[1979] That's not as bad as my notebook because that's exactly the same.

[1980] Music on!

[1981] Acoustic Guitar by Abilite.

[1982] One player, 200 Nintendo DSi points.

[1983] It's like having an acoustic guitar in your pocket.

[1984] Play your favorite songs easily with the predefined chord option and enjoy the high sound quality.

[1985] Hear the fingers on the frets and the nails while strumming.

[1986] A directory of more than 900 chords shows you how to place your fingers on a real guitar unless you listen to them once selected.

[1987] Five different styles will accompany you to set the mood.

[1988] Pop rock, soft rock, country, ballad, and blues.

[1989] Other features include a palm mute function, a metronome, and the ability to say up to ten sessions.

[1990] That's it.

[1991] There's been another music on game in recent history.

[1992] There's been two.

[1993] I was trying to see if there's been more.

[1994] Now I'm digging into the conspiracy of the recycled descriptions here.

[1995] Descriptions are recycled with the same frequency that the games are.

[1996] Yeah.

[1997] Okay, these two are at least.

[1998] There's music on retro keyboard and music on learning piano.

[1999] Yeah.

[2000] That's it.

[2001] That's it.

[2002] That's it.

[2003] That's all.

[2004] Close that case file.

[2005] Bradley.

[2006] Emails.

[2007] Bombcast at giantbomb .com is our email address.

[2008] First email comes in from Mr. Campbell.

[2009] Username is Peridure on Giant Bomb.

[2010] Colonel Campbell.

[2011] Mr. No, he's not a colonel.

[2012] He's from Kitchener, Ontario.

[2013] Dear sirs, what would be your roster for a Star Trek versus Capcom game?

[2014] Oh my god, dude, what?

[2015] I feel like we've been talking a lot about weird fantastical versus games recently.

[2016] A Tribble.

[2017] What's that?

[2018] Tribble.

[2019] A bunch of Tribbles.

[2020] Oh, yeah.

[2021] Would it be like a pile of Tribbles?

[2022] Or would it just be one?

[2023] Boss Tribble.

[2024] Maybe somebody just gets a Tribble attack.

[2025] Maybe it's just like Mega Man in MVC 2 where it's like Tribbles super tiny but still like...

[2026] Has a giant hitbox or something?

[2027] Or no, it's just super tough.

[2028] Because it's so tiny it's hard to hit.

[2029] I see.

[2030] Or maybe it just like squirts other Tribbles out of it as projectiles.

[2031] Do you get assists in this game?

[2032] Is this a versus game?

[2033] It is a versus game.

[2034] Can you call in the Enterprise?

[2035] Enterprise assists.

[2036] It just beams in your assist characters.

[2037] The Enterprise just flies down.

[2038] Riker beams down, shoots a phaser, and beams back up.

[2039] I think the Enterprise should be a character.

[2040] Fighting Viper style.

[2041] It walks around on the warp nacelles.

[2042] How about all the captains?

[2043] Yeah.

[2044] Yeah, that makes sense.

[2045] Q. How about all the captains except...

[2046] No, Q is the final boss.

[2047] Maybe no Scott Bakula.

[2048] I was going to say no Scott Bakula.

[2049] Oh, come on.

[2050] He could be the Dan of the game.

[2051] Fair.

[2052] But I like Dan.

[2053] Fair enough.

[2054] Beverly Crusher.

[2055] Clearly.

[2056] Yeah.

[2057] I mean, her name's Crusher.

[2058] And she heals, so you call her in for an assist and she heals you.

[2059] I like this plan.

[2060] A lot of assist characters.

[2061] Tasha Yar's in it, but she dies.

[2062] There's no way it actually went.

[2063] I'm trying to think outside the main crew.

[2064] Would you get Borg Picard as well as Picard?

[2065] That would be like Shin Akuma.

[2066] That's just like a palette swap thing.

[2067] It's just a DLC costume.

[2068] Hold down select while you have to press up, up twice.

[2069] He plays a whale.

[2070] He plays V 'ger.

[2071] Now we're thinking.

[2072] He plays V 'ger.

[2073] He plays Kirstie Alley.

[2074] Yeah.

[2075] I like the idea of selecting Tashi R, and then as soon as she comes on, she just dies.

[2076] The tar monster comes out and eats her, and then you play the tar monster.

[2077] That'd be better.

[2078] I'd rather do that.

[2079] Next email comes in from Liam Kell, who's from Canada.

[2080] He says that he's a dude from Canada with a question for Brad.

[2081] I recently watched the MLG stream over the weekend and loved it!

[2082] Not only was Cluck vs. Sock the greatest thing of all time, I feel like it improved my skills as a Starcrafter to see their openers, how they counter, etc., etc. Oh, I didn't see that one.

[2083] My question to you, Brad, is where can I find more live -streamed matches like that?

[2084] I'm a big fan of Husky HD and Day 9, but watching it live -streamed was extremely exciting.

[2085] Where can I learn about these competitions beforehand?

[2086] I saw Husky at...

[2087] Pax, he casted the tournament I tried to go to Saturday night, which took forever to get started, so we left before it started.

[2088] I was wondering why that was a bust.

[2089] You were trying to do that.

[2090] They said it was going to start at 730, and we got there, and they were just lining up the participants at 730.

[2091] See, that's what I was talking about.

[2092] Brad did get in touch with us that night.

[2093] Yeah, because I was trying to see what you guys were doing.

[2094] It was kind of a bust.

[2095] What are you doing?

[2096] Yes.

[2097] Anyway.

[2098] Now it all.

[2099] Clicks into place.

[2100] So I don't know how frequent these live events are going to be.

[2101] The MLG one was in Raleigh, North Carolina, of all places.

[2102] Which is kind of cool.

[2103] Birthplace of Starcraft.

[2104] Kind of cool.

[2105] Oh, I watched some of that stuff.

[2106] Just randomly.

[2107] Someone was telling me that.

[2108] Where is it?

[2109] Where do you tune in for it?

[2110] It totally varies by league or what body is organizing it.

[2111] That was an MLG event.

[2112] The big thing that's happening in Korea, the GOM TV stuff.

[2113] I forget what the acronym is for that.

[2114] But that's...

[2115] That's going to be its own separate thing.

[2116] They're charging a fee for the HD stream of that and stuff and the video on demand aspect of it.

[2117] I'd say probably Team Liquid is the best place to just keep your eyes open because they will talk about every live event that's going to happen.

[2118] So hang out there and you'll probably pick up some build orders too.

[2119] There you go.

[2120] Brian in McKinney, Texas.

[2121] From what you've seen of Comic Jumper, would you say it's accurate to describe it as a modern -day Earthworm Jim?

[2122] From what I can tell, it has wonky platforming, bad shooting, and a crazy -ass premise just like Earthworm Jim.

[2123] Do you think this is an apt comparison?

[2124] That's harsh.

[2125] It's a little harsh, but maybe.

[2126] Has he played it?

[2127] No, but are you going to dispute it now?

[2128] That's a pretty specific assessment to make without putting your hands on something.

[2129] Yeah, but you played it.

[2130] Yeah, yeah.

[2131] Not that much, very little.

[2132] But I never played Earthworm Jim, so I can't say.

[2133] Okay.

[2134] Did you like, thematically, there was definitely, I was looking at a little bit of Comic Jumper at PAX, and I was like, it kind of reminds me of Earthworm Jim.

[2135] Yeah, I guess I could see that.

[2136] I see just like the goofy face and the big bulked out body.

[2137] Yeah.

[2138] That's kind of even on a design level.

[2139] Does Earthworm Jim have beat -em -up melee stuff?

[2140] Because Tomic Jumper seems to go back and forth a lot.

[2141] It's a shooter, and then you're beating guys up, and then you're shooting.

[2142] Like whip dudes with your head, right?

[2143] Yeah.

[2144] Or your body.

[2145] Yeah.

[2146] Your Jim.

[2147] Whoa, there.

[2148] All Jim whipping.

[2149] Yeah.

[2150] Jim here.

[2151] Keep this clean.

[2152] This is Jim.

[2153] All right.

[2154] Next email comes in from William Robinson.

[2155] Esteemed Mr. Bombcast.

[2156] I'm sorry.

[2157] Yes?

[2158] Esteemed Mr. Bombcast.

[2159] Hair Bombcast.

[2160] I'm Sharp Cipher on the site.

[2161] While watching your quick looks and some endurance run, I almost always point to things on the screen and grit my teeth because whomever is playing isn't exploring somewhere or investigating.

[2162] Some item or a prompt.

[2163] When I play games, especially adventure games, I check every room, try to interact with everything I haven't seen before, and sometimes just sit there and look around the room like I was playing photo hunt.

[2164] I mean, my friends call it wall humping because I spent a lot of time walking along the walls in games looking for hidden items in areas.

[2165] Of course, they get exasperated watching me play, but I find all kinds of cool shit they'd never find.

[2166] Is this common?

[2167] Is this something you guys do when you aren't playing for the camera, or is this just some sick problem I have?

[2168] Yeah, we play games differently on Quick Looks.

[2169] Film at 11.

[2170] Is that even a question?

[2171] Yeah, I don't know.

[2172] You don't have to be so dismissive.

[2173] I don't know.

[2174] Yes, when we're playing a quick look, we do want to try and show you as much of the game as possible, which is why while I was watching Vinny play Duke Nukem Forever at the show, I wanted to throttle him because he was doing exactly that.

[2175] I was just like, I'm going to go fuck around here in this spot.

[2176] I'm like, go play through the level!

[2177] I had to tell him to move on because I had been through there before and I knew that they would aggressively kick you off the station.

[2178] But then I went too quickly and just ran up to that dude's feet and started shooting with a rock launcher.

[2179] Yeah, that was...

[2180] A little brash.

[2181] Well, I was trying to end my turn.

[2182] We were swapping sticks.

[2183] Ew.

[2184] Yeah.

[2185] Well, you know, wall humping.

[2186] I mean, yeah, we do play for the camera, but I don't know that that's like too far off from how I will.

[2187] generally play like i you know i like to move through a game i don't i'm a scourer i'm if there's someplace if there's like two pathways in a game and one pathway looks like the very obvious way they want you to go i will almost always go the other way do you go down always do that do you go down one for a while and then once you realize that you haven't hit a dead end yet we'll turn around and go back to you absolutely i always second guess which one is the main path and then i will double back well this path has gone on way too long well obviously one of them is going to always dead end and it's always going to have something worth picking up at the end of it so you always want to go there especially if it's like Singularity where as soon as you go through a door, you can't go back.

[2188] Dragon Age was kind of rough with some of that stuff.

[2189] Really?

[2190] Yeah, where the paths would just circle back on each other eventually so that it could be two paths.

[2191] Yeah, they end up at the same spot.

[2192] Yeah, crap.

[2193] Do you get stressed out playing games like that, like Singularity, where you can very easily, just by crossing a threshold, lock yourself out from picking stuff up?

[2194] That is stressful to me. A bit, like Alan Wake style, where I was searching for all that stuff.

[2195] Yeah, exactly.

[2196] It's like this game is very linear.

[2197] There's no way they're going to let you go.

[2198] I freed myself from all of that.

[2199] I no longer care.

[2200] Let go.

[2201] Just let go.

[2202] Only when it's narrative stuff.

[2203] And I feel like I'm going to miss story bits or something.

[2204] It also seems like it's a better way to notice kind of like bad game design.

[2205] If you're just running past stuff and like, oh, you didn't spend it.

[2206] No, I didn't.

[2207] I didn't pick it up.

[2208] Now I didn't look into that way down the corridor.

[2209] Oh, you couldn't finish the game because you forgot to get this thing all the way back there and you didn't have enough points to upgrade your dude because we left them all in really bad spots.

[2210] Oh, bummer.

[2211] Bummer for your game.

[2212] Get rid of Chia.

[2213] Jack Scorey in the UK asks, I autographed a persona manual between Chie's legs the other night.

[2214] What?

[2215] That's too much.

[2216] That was the page it was open to.

[2217] What was I supposed to do?

[2218] It was the only open spot on the page.

[2219] She's birthing your name?

[2220] Yeah.

[2221] Yeah.

[2222] Save her for Catherine.

[2223] Yeah, I bet you like that.

[2224] I'm making a bad face.

[2225] Yeah.

[2226] And shaking my head.

[2227] I'm making a bad face and shaking my head.

[2228] You have a Chie body pillow, don't you?

[2229] Jake Skory from the UK says, hey, Bombcast.

[2230] Hey.

[2231] I'm sorry, Jack Skory.

[2232] Hey, Jack.

[2233] Still from the UK.

[2234] I'll say hi to Jake as well.

[2235] I don't know if I can believe you on this UK thing anymore.

[2236] Recently, there has been a lot of discussion about downloadable games being too short.

[2237] People think they're paying too much for two or three hours of gameplay.

[2238] Hope you like the multiplayer.

[2239] i .e. Limbo Shank, etc. Well, I had an idea.

[2240] Why not make downloadable games rentable?

[2241] They could be available for a lower price and you could get to play the game for a set number of hours or have the game up to a certain date before it is removed from your profile.

[2242] If people rent retail games that are three or four hours long, why can't we rent downloadable ones?

[2243] Because then you'd be able to finish those games for a much lower fee and the developers don't get as much money.

[2244] Why would they have themselves up to that?

[2245] It's bad business.

[2246] If you want that, it's kind of like what the demo is for.

[2247] Most, if not all, Xbox Live Arcade games have demos.

[2248] All.

[2249] Is it all?

[2250] Yeah, I think that is a straight up mandate.

[2251] You have to have a demo.

[2252] Although you have to be a gold subscriber to get those demos.

[2253] No, you don't.

[2254] That's also bad business.

[2255] Because then you would possibly...

[2256] There are some retail demos that come out for gold members first.

[2257] And they're eventually opened up to silver.

[2258] That's true.

[2259] And multiplayer -only demos are usually gold -only.

[2260] to be gold to plan to plan right i just when are we going to stop having this conversation about length yeah like like like a dollar to hour ratio that's it's important i mean as soon as people have infinite money that's when we'll stop having this discussion yes and then at that point we'll also be completely out of business because no one will need a game review either yeah but i mean there's no there's no hard answer to it like it's I think it's different for every game, and it has to be treated as such.

[2261] I think that's why you get those questions, too, because there's no hard answer for it.

[2262] And also, it's become, I think, a much more relevant question as downloadable stuff has started kind of...

[2263] becoming bigger and and uh expectations and have become higher and prices have become higher because like we had kind of we kind of locked in like retail games cost x bucks and so if it is this length for x bucks then it's a decent deal if it's this length then it's not it's the problem when that's the problem when people lean on like this mental equation they have where I expect Y hours for X dollars, and then they look at something like Limbo, and it's like, oh, it's three hours for $15, fuck you.

[2264] Yeah, and some people accuse people in our position of having a double standard.

[2265] Like, oh, you say that this game's too short and this one's too long.

[2266] But it's not that there's a double standard.

[2267] It's that there's no standard.

[2268] So it's that it always is going to come down to feel.

[2269] It's not about number of hours.

[2270] It's about satisfaction.

[2271] And a game that's too short...

[2272] needs to be that much better for you to feel satisfied at the end of it with a game that short or have some multiplayer or have something satisfying about it.

[2273] Sure, sure.

[2274] But I mean, if it's that good, I don't know that I would even put it in terms of being too short.

[2275] I think any five minutes of Limbo is better than like an hour of most games.

[2276] Yeah, but would you pay $10 for that five minutes and feel good about it?

[2277] Well, no, not for five minutes.

[2278] I guess like that's the, you know, well then money and value equates.

[2279] Yes.

[2280] But I wouldn't call Limbo too short because every minute of it is so good.

[2281] Yeah, I wouldn't necessarily call it too short either.

[2282] Okay.

[2283] I think when you call something too short, you obviously have not reached your interest.

[2284] Like you're saying you wanted more of it.

[2285] You weren't satisfied by it.

[2286] Or you didn't get satisfied.

[2287] At the quality level that it was at, if it had been longer or if it had just been higher quality.

[2288] You didn't get what you wanted out of it.

[2289] You want more.

[2290] You either want more quality or more quantity.

[2291] You're not getting enough.

[2292] Something like Kane and Lynch 2 is a really good example of.

[2293] It either needed to have more to it.

[2294] uh whether that's like being a little bit longer or being just as long with like more interesting variety of gameplay yeah or it needed to be cheaper yeah some games are too damn long it's four hours long and it's kind of the same stuff throughout so right yeah it it varies depending on game depending on genre depending on the amount of money that's being spent but value is an incredibly important proposition absolutely to games it just doesn't equate to like if i think if people out there are looking at it as like Or $60, I want at least 10 hours.

[2295] They're robbing themselves.

[2296] There's no direct dollars to hours.

[2297] I mean, you also have to consider, you know, for some people, they have to value quantity more than they do quality because it's like, hey, if I'm going to play games, if I'm going to buy one game every two months, you want to make sure that game is going to last you that two months.

[2298] So here's $20 and go buy Deadly Premonition.

[2299] Don't do that.

[2300] Stop that.

[2301] You mean Jeff Gersman's deadly premonition?

[2302] I don't know.

[2303] I feel like if you're looking at it from that angle, World of Warcraft is probably the best deal on the market, right?

[2304] $15 a month for a game that never ends.

[2305] That game should be shorter.

[2306] Maybe it never ends, but you eventually get to a point where you've seen it all and probably get fed up with it.

[2307] That's what happened to me. I didn't see all of it, but I was definitely fed the fuck up with it.

[2308] A lot of really long games are like that, though.

[2309] Like Final Fantasy XIII took me over 50 hours to finish, but I bet 40 of that was just playing the same battles over and over.

[2310] Yeah.

[2311] Well, like I said, I think some games are too damn long.

[2312] Right.

[2313] Yeah.

[2314] Too damn.

[2315] Sorry, you're too damn long.

[2316] Moving on.

[2317] Next email comes in from Goran.

[2318] Hey, Bombcast.

[2319] Watching the Persona 4 Endurance Run got me thinking about the Japanese school setting of Persona games.

[2320] I think either Jeremy Parrish or Cat Bailey from 1UP wrote an article of how Charlie's Life is an idealized version of a Japanese high schooler, which is part of why the games are so popular in Japan.

[2321] So that got me thinking, do you think a Persona -like game set in an idealized American school could be fun?

[2322] Don't get me wrong, one of the things that I love about the Persona games is their unique settings since I've never gone to a Japanese school, but I just thought it would be fun to play through an idealized American high school full of the kind of stereotypical high school cliques we have.

[2323] I don't know how well it would work, but I just wanted to know what you thought.

[2324] Yeah, yeah, I was going to say, Bully's not exactly like Springfield Junior High, but it's pretty close to that.

[2325] I don't...

[2326] I don't know what high school cliques are anymore.

[2327] I'm too damn old.

[2328] It's the same shit.

[2329] I think bully is an idealized version of maybe when we were in high school.

[2330] I don't know.

[2331] They weren't like vampire people in high school.

[2332] Yeah, they were goths.

[2333] They weren't like dressing up like vampires.

[2334] But it's a slightly different version.

[2335] Yes, they were.

[2336] They weren't wearing teeth.

[2337] You had people wearing teeth and drinking blood.

[2338] Not necessarily on campus, but yes.

[2339] Really?

[2340] Yeah, weird contacts and fucking teeth and listening to Sister Mary Chain and all that shit.

[2341] Cutting themselves.

[2342] Wow.

[2343] They sucked.

[2344] Whatever.

[2345] Shock.

[2346] Terrible.

[2347] They smoked clove cigarettes and it sucks.

[2348] Yeah, it's like, oh, you know, I work at the pizza delivery place and I put my hair in a hairnet and that totally sucks.

[2349] But my brood has my back.

[2350] Really?

[2351] Yeah.

[2352] Oh, I didn't have any of that.

[2353] Did you have that?

[2354] No. I had goths.

[2355] I mean, there were goths.

[2356] These are just extreme goths.

[2357] You know, just goths that have taken it a little bit further than the other goths.

[2358] Yeah, it's all the same.

[2359] It's all the same shit.

[2360] That stuff, like, it looks different, but it's the same.

[2361] Same social constructs, same mindset, yeah.

[2362] Jocks.

[2363] So you could change some of that stuff a little bit.

[2364] And I don't know that I'd call bully idealized, but I think that is a good comparison.

[2365] Idealized for me. Well, I mean, it's a different setting.

[2366] It's a prep school, right?

[2367] But I mean, it's also like it's bad -ended in art. Like, everyone sucks.

[2368] It's not like it's idealized in a good way.

[2369] But also, it's not even representative of the experience of most school goers.

[2370] I remember at my high school, everyone sucked.

[2371] So it's not idealized.

[2372] It's too realistic.

[2373] It's still The Breakfast Club.

[2374] You can still break out your factions, Breakfast Club style.

[2375] Yeah, that stuff still plays.

[2376] Zac Efron starring in My Breakfast Club remake.

[2377] Called My Breakfast Club.

[2378] Yes.

[2379] Carbon.

[2380] Yeah.

[2381] I like it.

[2382] Jim from Emmett, Ohio.

[2383] Who is the most macho?

[2384] Randy Savage or Super Macho Man from Punch Out?

[2385] Yeah, that's the most macho.

[2386] Super Macho Man isn't actually like macho at all.

[2387] He's all like beach tan, like wimpy.

[2388] Yeah, that's true.

[2389] Now Bald Bull on the other hand.

[2390] Yeah.

[2391] So you think that Super Macho Man, that's an ironic name for that character?

[2392] Yeah, I think so.

[2393] Looks like a wimp.

[2394] Well.

[2395] So whip your ass.

[2396] Well, yeah.

[2397] So maybe that makes him fairly macho.

[2398] I don't know.

[2399] Regardless of his appearance.

[2400] Also, how many Macho Mans would it take to beat Batman?

[2401] Randy Savage?

[2402] Sure.

[2403] If we're going to decide that is the superior macho man. 0 .3.

[2404] That's not very much.

[2405] Oh.

[2406] This email comes in from Brian Presta.

[2407] Hey, Bobcast.

[2408] I think you guys were confused about the whole, or I noticed you guys were confused about the whole Fortune City Las Vegas situation going on in Dead Rising 2.

[2409] Thought I'd write in since I'm familiar with some of the supplemental info.

[2410] I think I figured this out by playing.

[2411] Case zero for like an hour.

[2412] In case zero, Chuck is escaping with his daughter from Vegas, which just suffered a major zombie outbreak.

[2413] The city winds up getting fairly destroyed as a result of the army purging the zombies from it.

[2414] Over the course of the next three years, it gets built back up and renamed Fortune City.

[2415] Then zombies happen again, and then Dead Rising 2, essentially.

[2416] Oh, weird.

[2417] I figured it was like three prolonged years of zombie rule, basically.

[2418] I didn't realize they beat the zombies, and then they came back.

[2419] And also, why would they rename the city?

[2420] Because Japan.

[2421] Yeah.

[2422] How much does Canada, Japan?

[2423] Dude, Canadian Japan is the most fucked up one there is.

[2424] I mean, within the fiction of the world, what would compel the residents there to rename a city?

[2425] You don't want to remember what happened in Vegas.

[2426] I thought where you were going was that Fortune City was going to be kind of like the Reno -like counterpart to Vegas.

[2427] Because New Vegas was already taken.

[2428] Next question.

[2429] Derek in Brooklyn, New York.

[2430] Hey again, Bombcast crew.

[2431] I was the next guy in line to ask a question at your PAX panel before you ran out of time, so I thought I'd email my question.

[2432] Smart.

[2433] Good looking out.

[2434] Clever.

[2435] It's along the same lines as my last email.

[2436] How much editing do you have to do for the weekly podcast, and how long does a video review take Vinny to make?

[2437] For the podcast, I used to edit a lot at the very beginning, like a lot of ums and uhs and stuff.

[2438] At this point, I basically just edit for length or for when segments don't go anywhere or when it's like you can't talk about that on this.

[2439] You can't mention that.

[2440] You can't say that here.

[2441] That's not public knowledge.

[2442] So those are pretty much the only times that I do editing.

[2443] Mostly it's a lot of leveling and sound balancing.

[2444] And we added out a lot of Vinny's actual racism as opposed to his joke racism, which is fine.

[2445] But at some point it's just like, dude, come on.

[2446] And I'll tell you, the longer this goes on, the harder it is for me to tell the difference.

[2447] So it's a blurry, blurry line.

[2448] You can save it on stuff, right?

[2449] So we'll just be able to put out that file.

[2450] I just have the raw originals of all these.

[2451] That's my stand -up album, the raw originals.

[2452] Someday TMZ will get an email.

[2453] I would like to talk to you.

[2454] 200 miles per hour.

[2455] Vinny, video review, what's the length of that process like?

[2456] It just totally depends on too many factors.

[2457] Long.

[2458] Great.

[2459] I don't know.

[2460] Two days?

[2461] Depends.

[2462] Depends how long the video review is.

[2463] Depends how tough the game is to cut into it.

[2464] Depends.

[2465] on what else we're doing at the time.

[2466] Sure, sure.

[2467] I mean, it's kind of a hard thing, I think, for you to nail down necessarily because you're...

[2468] It's never like, oh, I'm just doing a video review.

[2469] I've seen one turn around in a day.

[2470] Drew can whip those out.

[2471] Oh, yeah?

[2472] Yeah, he's pretty good.

[2473] I heard about Drew whipping stuff out.

[2474] Yeah.

[2475] Now who's...

[2476] I can't go back to Seattle anymore.

[2477] Hope that answers your question, Derek.

[2478] Next one comes from Russ in Madison, Wisconsin.

[2479] Hey, Bombcast.

[2480] Three years ago, Halo 3 arrived on shelves on September 25th, 2007.

[2481] One of the biggest video game releases ever.

[2482] And for some odd reason, Activision decided to release their Cabela's Trophy Bucks game on the same day.

[2483] One could just chalk that up to bad timing.

[2484] But this year, the same exact thing is happening.

[2485] Halo Reach comes out on September 14th, and Activision is releasing Cabela's North American Adventures on the same day.

[2486] So I put it to you guys.

[2487] Is this intentional or coincidence?

[2488] Is Activision somehow trying to ride the coattails of a big Halo release, or are they just so many?

[2489] Or are there just so many of these weird hunting titles coming out that they're bound to land on one of the bigger releases?

[2490] And what is up with these weird hunting games anyways?

[2491] What's up with them knowing that?

[2492] Good observation.

[2493] And reading this email, I had to wonder, like, is...

[2494] Is Activision doing some sort of weird counter -programming of things like, well, Halo is such a huge thing that let's just have some first -person, lowest common denominator first -person shooter on a shelf?

[2495] That's the thing, though.

[2496] These hunting games are not even lowest common denominator.

[2497] They're all super intense.

[2498] If you like first -person shooters, you will fucking hate these games because they are...

[2499] Hunting games.

[2500] You were getting tags.

[2501] Oh, I shot the wrong deer and now I get a fine.

[2502] You're not just running around laying waste to every animal you see.

[2503] So they suck.

[2504] You're sitting in a tree stand for eight hours drinking beer.

[2505] Spraying musk around.

[2506] Yeah, totally.

[2507] I bet that it's more that those games are budget titles and there is some probably crossover between the people who do like those hunting games.

[2508] There actually are people who do like them.

[2509] and people who like Halo.

[2510] So if they go in there, there's already going to be a ton of people moving through those stores, but they're not necessarily going to have enough money to go buy two full -fledged games.

[2511] So any other big first -person shooter gets steamrolled.

[2512] But a hunting game like that could probably fly under the radar a little bit and get some additional pickup by just happening to be there at the same time.

[2513] That is my guess.

[2514] I like it.

[2515] Good guess.

[2516] Better than anything I could come up with.

[2517] Brad, any thoughts to add to this?

[2518] I'll buy that.

[2519] Excellent.

[2520] That's going to do it for emails.

[2521] Tabela?

[2522] For a dollar.

[2523] I think it's more like 20.

[2524] Forget it then.

[2525] Sorry.

[2526] Thanks to everyone who wrote in.

[2527] Once again, bombcast at giantbomb .com.

[2528] Email address.

[2529] Gentlemen, we're out of time.

[2530] It's time to call this podcast.

[2531] End it.

[2532] Once again, this Thursday, 10 a .m. Pacific Daylight Time, we are kicking off the Whiskey Media Big Live Live Show Live.

[2533] Eight hours of live streaming shenanigans from all of the Whiskey Media sites.

[2534] Some kind of hours.

[2535] Giant Bomb will be there.

[2536] Many hours.

[2537] Comic Vine will be there.

[2538] Tested .com will be there.

[2539] Screen .com will be there.

[2540] Yeah.

[2541] In the house.

[2542] In the house.

[2543] Special guests.

[2544] Special guests.

[2545] Bizarre performances.

[2546] Just all sorts of random crazy shit.

[2547] Four hours of Ted doing push -ups.

[2548] Ted's in Portland, so we will have no Ted on this.

[2549] Well, maybe later on.

[2550] I bet Joey.

[2551] No, he doesn't land until like 6 .30 or something.

[2552] I'm not watching.

[2553] Party goes outside.

[2554] You're not watching it anyways because you're on too much of it.

[2555] Oh, man. We can find somebody to do push -ups around here.

[2556] Okay.

[2557] Tony does some mean push -ups.

[2558] Really?

[2559] Yeah.

[2560] I don't want mean push -ups.

[2561] I wouldn't think...

[2562] I wouldn't look at Tony and think push -up machine.

[2563] I think he won the intra -office.

[2564] He did, yeah.

[2565] The perfect push -up.

[2566] Yeah.

[2567] Wow.

[2568] He can push up.

[2569] So who knows what will happen?

[2570] Maybe there will be push -ups.

[2571] Yeah.

[2572] Perfect push -ups.

[2573] All sorts of stuff and entertainment and information.

[2574] Absolutely.

[2575] So be sure to tune into that.

[2576] Game demos.

[2577] Live game demos, folks.

[2578] Yeah, absolutely.

[2579] Anything can happen.

[2580] I think there'll be a chat room.

[2581] There will be a chat room of some sort.

[2582] All sorts of crazy stuff.

[2583] Nothing like trying out a bunch of new stuff the day of a life.

[2584] The chat room has been up for weeks now.

[2585] That's true.

[2586] If you go to giantbomb .com slash chat, we have a variety of new features.

[2587] That will eventually be taken down because it's not supposed to be up 24 hours.

[2588] It might be coming down.

[2589] It's been up 24 hours.

[2590] Can we remove the staff cool down by Thursday on that chat?

[2591] I don't know.

[2592] I think if you're a mod, there's no cool down.

[2593] Last time I was in there, Hanzo was actually changing it on the fly.

[2594] He changed his cool down to zero and made everybody else's like 20.

[2595] And so that is what you can expect.

[2596] A wing and a prayer, and we'll all figure it out.

[2597] Seat of our pants.

[2598] Might have a video mixer.

[2599] That would be cool.

[2600] It's my most comfortable place, so be sure to tune in.

[2601] Why would you want a mixed video?

[2602] You know, my mixtapes.

[2603] Okay, cool.

[2604] I'll make you one.

[2605] Dope.

[2606] That's going to do it for this week's edition of the Giant Bombcast.

[2607] Be sure to tune back in next Tuesday for another edition of...

[2608] The Giant Bombcast.