Giant Bombcast 04-19-2011

[0] Hey, everyone.

[1] It's Tuesday, April the 19th, 2011, and you're listening to The Giant Bombcast.

[2] I'm your host, Ryan Davis.

[3] Joining me, Vinny Caravella.

[4] Hey.

[5] Jeff Gerstman.

[6] Hello.

[7] And Brad Shoemaker.

[8] Hi.

[9] And Patrick Klepek.

[10] Oh, shit.

[11] Oh, what?

[12] I don't know what I'm supposed to say.

[13] Just read it as it is on the page there.

[14] Grandma's home -style chocolate chip.

[15] It's guaranteed fresh until printed date, April 19th.

[16] Patrick, the best ad man we got.

[17] All right.

[18] Very timely.

[19] So I won't get sick if I eat these today.

[20] Maybe you should just jump on those cookies right now.

[21] Or, you know, just wait until after we finish the podcast.

[22] Yeah.

[23] You're at your deadline now.

[24] What happens to those cookies after this?

[25] I don't know.

[26] Like, you open it up, there's just hair.

[27] They've grown hair.

[28] Yeah, they just sprouted hair.

[29] It's like, oh, that's grandma's cookie.

[30] These are hairy cookies.

[31] Oh, goddammit.

[32] What?

[33] What?

[34] You have to keep this podcast going now after you do something like that.

[35] You're going to sit there and think about what you just did.

[36] Grandma's cookie has a new great taste.

[37] God damn it.

[38] What you been playing?

[39] Patrick Klepek, newest member of the Giant Bomb family.

[40] We're having him in here for this week's podcast.

[41] We'll see how it goes, Patrick.

[42] No promises, but maybe we'll have you on future episodes here.

[43] I'll cross my fingers.

[44] All right.

[45] It's absolutely thrilling to have you here.

[46] I couldn't be more happy to have you as part of our organization now and running our news stuff.

[47] Did you sign all your paperwork?

[48] Yeah.

[49] Yeah, it's great to have you.

[50] You forgot one signature, so you're not allowed to say it officially.

[51] For the folks who maybe don't know you from past gigs, you want to give them just a little taste of that Patrick Klepek magic?

[52] That's a lot of pressure.

[53] Just a nibble.

[54] Just a nibble.

[55] A tiny bit.

[56] Give them your credentials.

[57] Where are you coming from?

[58] Start at the beginning.

[59] Actually, yeah.

[60] Actually, it's very funny that I'm working with Brad now, considering that we have a long -ass history together.

[61] I thought we agreed not to speak.

[62] I've known him since.

[63] Man, I don't know.

[64] I was probably 12.

[65] Did you go to an Atlanta one?

[66] Yeah.

[67] We're talking about E3 here.

[68] You made it to an Atlanta E3 because that was 97, 98.

[69] E3, 98.

[70] It was the one where Metal Gear Solid was unveiled.

[71] I think I was 14.

[72] Okay.

[73] I remember your dad was there.

[74] Yeah.

[75] My first appointment that I went to with ASCII Software, Rob Pickleman Fleischer.

[76] Oh, wow, really?

[77] They made that horrible N64 game, like the skateboarding game they put out.

[78] You shouldn't remember it.

[79] I went to that appointment with my dad.

[80] Nice.

[81] Yeah.

[82] That's pretty amazing.

[83] What was that, Gaming Age?

[84] Who were you taking an appointment with?

[85] No, Gamers Online with a Z. Back when Zs were still kind of cool.

[86] Was that like geocities .com slash gamersonline .com slash Times Square slash 1492 frames or no frames?

[87] Always go with the frames.

[88] So you've been at this for a while.

[89] Yeah.

[90] You're an old hand.

[91] I've been to every E3 since.

[92] That means E398.

[93] So in 2011, it's more than a decade to be three years.

[94] That's crazy because when I went to my first CES, I was 16.

[95] So you were 14 going like that's – man, was I alive?

[96] I don't know.

[97] I guess maybe not.

[98] I don't know.

[99] You could fire him for that.

[100] If you could just get your shit and get the fuck out.

[101] I didn't sign that last signature.

[102] But you've been doing news for a variety of different organizations, and now we are lucky enough to have you here doing news for us.

[103] Yeah.

[104] Anything that – before we kind of jump into this, anything you want to just let the audience know about kind of your approach to doing the news?

[105] Yeah.

[106] I mean one of the things that we all talked about like when I was talking about coming in was that – Places like that do aggregation, places that cover everything, those places do it real well.

[107] The one thing about Giant Bomb is the stuff that you guys cover is you care about it or you bring your own personal spin to it.

[108] So it's basically, you don't need to see everything.

[109] You come to a site because you want to see the stuff.

[110] you should see, like the stuff that people care about or there's something they want to tell you about it.

[111] So that's kind of the same approach to the news section.

[112] It's going to be that, is that it doesn't have to have everything.

[113] We're going to have the stuff you want to talk about, but we're also going to go in -depth on the things that we can spend the time doing.

[114] I would better compare it to something like a rock, paper, shotgun.

[115] It's like a place that really goes in -depth on some really interesting topics, but they don't cover everything.

[116] But what they do cover, they cover really well, and you feel like you come away with it.

[117] A little informed, but also entertained.

[118] Some original content.

[119] Break -ins of stories.

[120] Yeah.

[121] I love it.

[122] Yeah.

[123] We can actually say breaking and have it mean something instead of being the kind of ironic use that we use it with currently.

[124] Or that broken chair behind me. Yeah.

[125] Well, that's been breaking for a long time.

[126] That is just legitimately broken.

[127] That's exclusively ours, too.

[128] You're not going to find that busted -ass chair anywhere else.

[129] True enough.

[130] I'm happy again to have you here and I was happy to see that you are already experiencing the joys of the Giant Bomb Photoshop thread.

[131] Yeah, really enjoying the Photoshop thread.

[132] Wait, is it still the same thread?

[133] I think so.

[134] Did he just get added?

[135] Did he make him new?

[136] I think it's both.

[137] We're up to like 60 Photoshops.

[138] The Doom one was really good.

[139] Then I requested it to be an Independence Day screen captures, and then they started doing that for me. They will take requests.

[140] It's true.

[141] I appreciated that.

[142] Then I got a whole string of lost ones.

[143] I got a whole string of Facebook profile pictures for like a year at this point.

[144] Do you have any game credits?

[145] Because that's when it all starts going.

[146] No, not yet.

[147] I don't know.

[148] It's been a long day.

[149] It could have happened.

[150] Something could have happened in there.

[151] Something could have happened.

[152] You got special thanked in something weird.

[153] Then you'll have a database page forever where all those pictures can live along with the horrible lies about your life.

[154] A lot of weird made -up factoids about your hair.

[155] A lot of things you just never knew about yourself, really.

[156] Maybe I can learn something.

[157] I just let them roll.

[158] Let the myth build.

[159] But this is not the only crazy thing happening this week.

[160] This is already a crazy week, but this is an extra crazy week.

[161] We've got Patrick coming on, and we have a shitload of big games coming out this week.

[162] Not even just coming out.

[163] A lot to talk about.

[164] This could be the longest podcast of all time.

[165] That's impossible.

[166] I don't know.

[167] Well, no, we already did eight hours.

[168] All right.

[169] You're right.

[170] This could be the longest.

[171] No, I can't do that.

[172] No, we're not doing that.

[173] All right, well, we should talk less about that and talk about it.

[174] All right, let's do it.

[175] Go, go, go.

[176] We're going to go more quickly.

[177] Hey, Vinny, what have you been playing?

[178] Not much.

[179] Fantastic.

[180] Hey, Patrick, what have you been playing?

[181] A lot of Picross.

[182] That's fantastic.

[183] Yeah.

[184] It's awesome.

[185] Hey, Jeff, what have you been playing?

[186] It has three dimensions.

[187] Oh, he's been playing Picross 3D.

[188] Yeah, you've been playing 3D?

[189] Yeah, yeah.

[190] You know you're addicted to a game where you're putting off things that you really should be doing?

[191] Just to keep playing that goddamn game.

[192] Yeah, definitely.

[193] That was a lot of...

[194] Yeah, there were like dinner engagements that I was like hours late for.

[195] I was like, oh, I was just accidentally sat here playing Picross instead of actually putting on clothes and getting dressed.

[196] Yeah, and I realize you can't play it if you've been drinking because otherwise you can brute force the logic of that game where I'll just sit there and I'll just break them.

[197] I'll just break them.

[198] Like, you're not supposed to do that.

[199] That's not the fun.

[200] The fun is the math.

[201] If I had a couple beers, I'm like, fuck this puzzle.

[202] Give me the stupid camera.

[203] I just don't want to see the duck.

[204] Come on.

[205] Let's go.

[206] Ugh.

[207] All right, Vinny, I'm sorry.

[208] I know it was funny at the time, but I really do want to know.

[209] That was all true.

[210] I played Dragon Age some more.

[211] I'm still burning through that.

[212] You're not done with Dragon Age 2 yet?

[213] I don't know where it's all going.

[214] I'm putting the hours in.

[215] They're just racking up.

[216] I'm in the 30s somewhere, and people keep coming up to me like, I beat that game in a half hour.

[217] What are you, crazy?

[218] I thought you were in the 30s.

[219] I thought the entire time we've been talking to you, you've been like 30 hours in.

[220] Maybe that's what's happening.

[221] Maybe somebody keeps resetting my clock.

[222] Oh, that's no good.

[223] No, I was in the 20s.

[224] It's weird.

[225] Steam is keeping a different clock than Dragon Age saves are keeping.

[226] So Steam says I'm in my 20s.

[227] Dragon Age says I'm in my 30s.

[228] I'm in the late 30s now.

[229] Wait, hold on.

[230] Multiple system clocks.

[231] It's like a health check.

[232] It's like, how old do you feel?

[233] It's like, oh, late 20s.

[234] 30s with the new 20s anyways.

[235] You put 90 hours in.

[236] You feel terrible.

[237] Brother, you look it.

[238] Yeah.

[239] So that game is still rolling along.

[240] I don't know.

[241] How many times have you seen the same dungeon?

[242] Like, every time, I think.

[243] It's just weird.

[244] As I keep going, there's parts of me that are enjoying the game more, like story -wise, and enjoying it less mechanic -wise.

[245] So, like, as I'm getting more invested in the wrap -up to the story, like, things are rolling along.

[246] Let's go back to this dude's house again for the billionth time.

[247] And it's like, I don't want to do that anymore.

[248] Now I just want to finish the game.

[249] Like, I just want to see the conclusion.

[250] I don't want to go on these dumb missions that are just like, we got to go get a flower from that same spot you've been in for a hundred times.

[251] Along the way, you'll probably get jumped by like seven gangs of dudes that mean nothing to you at this point.

[252] So that's what's happened.

[253] I'm getting good loot.

[254] So my guys are really powerful, and I'm just tearing through guys.

[255] Might this be the game that breaks Vinnie Caravella of his completionist bug?

[256] No, because I still need to clear the map of everything, but it's just...

[257] If you're just trying to blow through stuff, wouldn't you just skip the non -story critical stuff?

[258] I know that's a side quest.

[259] I'm not going to bother.

[260] So on the PC version, you push R, attacks nearest enemy, just like attack the nearest dude.

[261] So what I'm doing now, since all my guys are pretty strong, the games are normal.

[262] It's not like Nightmare.

[263] Just selecting all dudes and just hitting R. Do you just have like a woodpecker?

[264] Yeah.

[265] It's basically just my finger just R, R, R. So everybody is attacking the nearest guy, and I don't need to cast any spells.

[266] Just a little drinking bird.

[267] That game sounds really exciting.

[268] Making a compelling argument to want to play that game.

[269] It's a shame.

[270] Well, at least it's easy.

[271] At least you just have to hit the R button.

[272] If the primary form of input is you're just going...

[273] And then you'll hit a battle like a big dragon that is supremely hard and you've got to pause it and do all the tactics and stuff like that.

[274] It just seems like there's the same mob over and over again.

[275] It's like, go to position C. And along the way, dudes will just pop out of the air and fight you, guys with masks on, and then go to position D and the same thing will happen.

[276] What is it about the dudes popping out of nowhere that bothers you?

[277] Because you mentioned this repeatedly when discussing Dragon Age 2.

[278] What is it specifically about?

[279] That's not enough.

[280] Who cares where they come from?

[281] Why do they need to be on the map at all times?

[282] Because you run up and then you see a gang ahead of you and you're like, alright, there's seven guys there, let's just run in.

[283] And then you kill half of them and then like...

[284] Like 15 more just pop out of the – just spawn.

[285] Yeah.

[286] Just poof.

[287] Well, they're horrible magical creatures.

[288] No, they're just dudes.

[289] Apparently not.

[290] They're horrible magical dudes.

[291] Yeah.

[292] Pretty horrible and slightly magical.

[293] More magical than you.

[294] So like it just seems like – Popping out of the ground.

[295] It's like literally just making the fight longer.

[296] Yeah.

[297] And that's annoying.

[298] And like my – So you just want the game to be over already.

[299] Pretty much.

[300] It's like, you know, it's an RPG, so it's supposed to kind of like wrap itself around you, right?

[301] And just be like the suspension of disbelief and everything.

[302] And like when you just see guys just pop out of the air, it's just...

[303] I'm already in the same dungeon I've been in seven times.

[304] See, that as a complaint, as a critique, seems completely valid.

[305] I guess I wouldn't see how dudes are introduced into the combat as being the thing that's going to break.

[306] You know, pausing time, maybe that kind of breaks my suspension of disbelief.

[307] If you were playing Mass Effect 2 or something and you see a room full of dudes and then suddenly dudes just are popping out behind counters, wouldn't you be like, this is kind of stupid?

[308] Like you can figure out a better way to like call in reinforcements or something or have them come through a door.

[309] You're just going to like poof, just appear.

[310] You know, it would mix things up some because you always know what door they're going to come through if they're going to come through a door.

[311] I think it's going to be that one over there.

[312] The open one.

[313] Or the one that you haven't made it to yet.

[314] The one that you're trying to get to.

[315] The one that this time is not cemented over.

[316] Yeah.

[317] Yeah.

[318] Yes.

[319] So anyway, I'm really enjoying Dragon Age 2.

[320] Like I said, I actually am enjoying some of the story beats a little bit more.

[321] Doesn't it sound like they could chop out like half the content of that game?

[322] It'd be twice as much fun?

[323] Isn't that the whole thing that you're just running into repetitive dungeons and repetitive combat except for like the interesting boss scenario?

[324] Yes, it feels artificially long.

[325] Like rather than being a 60 -hour game if it was just 30 hours?

[326] Well, it's probably going to wind up being like 40 -something.

[327] So if it were like 20, but you can't sell like a 20 -hour RPG, right?

[328] If they were like, you know, average game time is like 15 hours, people would have thrown a hissy fit.

[329] So I feel like it's been artificially expanded.

[330] You just revisit these dungeons, find these generic loot items.

[331] Wouldn't that be better than you being like, yeah, most of the game sucks.

[332] Probably.

[333] Yeah, but not on the box.

[334] You're going to make a game in 18 months.

[335] What else are you going to do, though?

[336] I don't know.

[337] Make Uncharted.

[338] Pad it out.

[339] Make Uncharted 2.

[340] Right, which is like eight hours.

[341] Yeah, that game's great.

[342] Yeah, short game's not a problem.

[343] Anyway.

[344] I played, this was the better RPG for me in my time, Might and Magic.

[345] Fuck yeah, let's talk about Might and Magic, Clash of Heroes.

[346] That game was really cool.

[347] Yeah.

[348] Yes, it is.

[349] Yes, it is.

[350] And did you play the DS version?

[351] I played the DS one.

[352] I was holding out for the HD one.

[353] So I sunk a lot of time into that.

[354] So I made it through the entire Elven campaign, I guess you said.

[355] You were in that game like all day Saturday.

[356] Yeah.

[357] I had a weird Saturday where I was on Xbox Live in the morning and not again until like 5 p .m. You bookended that day like the whole way through.

[358] So that game is not very complicated to play physically.

[359] And then pushing R is not very hard.

[360] So I was doubling my time there.

[361] I was making it through Dragon Age 2.

[362] Solving puzzles.

[363] I kind of like doing push -ups between rounds of Counter -Strike.

[364] At the same time, baby.

[365] It's a lot of multitasking.

[366] While playing.

[367] Yeah, while playing.

[368] So the only problem I had with...

[369] Is it Clash of Heroes?

[370] Yeah, Clash of Heroes.

[371] It got really hard after the elves.

[372] And all of a sudden, I felt really under -leveled for the entire knights part.

[373] For the humans?

[374] Yeah.

[375] So, like, I don't know how far you made it, but...

[376] I made it through the Elven campaign, and then I got to the humans, and then I was like, hey, pull up achievements.

[377] See what those look like for this.

[378] Oh, man. And they're fucked.

[379] That's the one.

[380] They're fucked.

[381] That is my one and only bone to pick with that game.

[382] It's a pretty petty thing to get annoyed with.

[383] Well, because you beat that Elven campaign, and you don't get anything.

[384] But that's the thing.

[385] The achievements can be used as such a great carrot on a stick, such a great motivator.

[386] I'm like, oh, okay.

[387] If I get to the end of this thing, then they're going to give me ten more.

[388] Yeah, let's keep going.

[389] Sure.

[390] I was like, okay, break time here.

[391] Let's take a look.

[392] Literally, I have to finish every single campaign and get everything to get more points.

[393] Not only that, but after you finish the first fifth of the game, if you didn't do everything properly up to that point, you're boned for the rest of the game.

[394] Let me back up.

[395] You might be able to go back after you finish the whole game, but once you get to the second campaign, you can't go back to the first.

[396] It's a linear story.

[397] If you missed any side missions, any puzzle battles, anything, you're boned on all those achievements.

[398] But the game is really fun.

[399] Totally.

[400] It shouldn't just be played for achievements.

[401] I totally agree with that.

[402] It is actually really fun.

[403] Except when I felt like I was completely under -leveled for all those guys.

[404] Because you can't grind.

[405] There's nothing to grind against.

[406] There's more bears.

[407] There's side quests.

[408] I lost the bears because now I'm with the humans.

[409] But there's still a finite number of side quests, right?

[410] It's not like you can keep repeating them.

[411] Right, no. But there's enough optional quests there.

[412] Actually, you know what?

[413] I didn't even jump into the human stuff, so I have no idea.

[414] So it's the same thing.

[415] It's like bounties.

[416] It's like, go get these guys.

[417] And on the human side, they're all like three levels higher.

[418] And like one level higher makes that game incredibly hard.

[419] And like three levels higher, you just feel like a dude is tearing right through you.

[420] I was finding the Elven campaign, I could take someone two levels higher than me if I was like really focused and on it.

[421] Yeah, absolutely.

[422] I might be misunderstanding how to play the humans because they're all...

[423] Well, technically, their charge times are a lot longer, like minimum charge times, like two, and most of the guys are three.

[424] Whereas with the elves, you get those archers that are one, and that's awesome.

[425] So there's a lot more fusing, I think, on the humans.

[426] Oh, okay.

[427] More fusing.

[428] You got to get a lot of fusing.

[429] How about linking?

[430] Any linking?

[431] You got to need more linking.

[432] More linking and fusing.

[433] Got it.

[434] And so it was really hard.

[435] But I'm really digging that game, despite that I hate the art style.

[436] What?

[437] Yeah, I'm with Vinny.

[438] That's cute.

[439] It's cute, but I don't know.

[440] Something about it.

[441] Maybe a little cheesy.

[442] Cheap anime or something.

[443] Maybe.

[444] I hate to use the word amateurish, but maybe just a little bit.

[445] I feel like it might have worked better on the DS than it did.

[446] I'm actually curious what the pipeline was like producing that game.

[447] Did they do all that stuff at that resolution ahead of time?

[448] I guess they must have, right?

[449] It's either that or they went back and redrew it, which seems like a lot of extra work.

[450] I just don't think...

[451] Yeah, it just doesn't scale that well.

[452] It looks...

[453] Yeah, it looks...

[454] Anytime any dialogue coming up, I'm just...

[455] There is a lot of dialogue in that game.

[456] And a lot of loading, too.

[457] Yeah, that's the other thing.

[458] And a lot of ripping off the Lord of the Rings.

[459] Everything rips off.

[460] It's true, but the main character during the Elven campaign is a female elf princess named Anwen.

[461] Anwen, yeah, yeah.

[462] Not to be confused with Arwen.

[463] There are also treants.

[464] I noticed that, too.

[465] Yeah, and also treants for the living trees.

[466] Also humans.

[467] Umans.

[468] Umans.

[469] Yeah, some of that stuff's a little on the nose for my taste, but...

[470] But just, like, it's not really a strategy game.

[471] It's more of a puzzle game.

[472] It's a puzzle game.

[473] Which is why I like it, because I'm not big into, like, Final Fantasy tactics or anything, but everyone kept saying, you'll like this game even if you don't like those games.

[474] And it is, if you approach it like a puzzle game, because of the linking and the fusing, that it's a lot of fun.

[475] I mean, it's as much a match -three game as it is, like, tactical combat.

[476] Yeah.

[477] It's right up there with Puzzle Quest.

[478] I mean, if you like Puzzle Quest, go for it.

[479] Go to town.

[480] This is your choice?

[481] Yes, this is the good competition to Puzzle Quest.

[482] I also feel like it's a little more visceral than Puzzle Quest.

[483] Something a little more action -y about it.

[484] It's because of all the bears.

[485] Bears.

[486] Deer.

[487] Griffin.

[488] The deers are awesome.

[489] I kept the deers with me. Every time they go over one of those walls, you're kind of like, you guys are fucked.

[490] This guy's fused and late.

[491] It's like 22 points.

[492] Daigo.

[493] It's very satisfying.

[494] It's a really good game.

[495] Yeah.

[496] It's a really good game.

[497] I popped in Neverwinter Nights 2.

[498] Yeah, what was up with that?

[499] I saw you.

[500] Yeah.

[501] Well, because that was time you could have been grinding Audio Surf or Super Meat Boy or Toki Tori.

[502] Wait, you mean Neverwinter Nights 2 wasn't on the list?

[503] So at some point while playing Dragon Age 2, I was like, am I forgetting what RPGs are like?

[504] I was like, I'm going to go back into Neverwinter Nights 2 and totally just remember.

[505] I'm not sure if I really need RPGs to go back there, but.

[506] I suddenly remembered what that involved.

[507] Like, all right, this is why I never finished Neverwinter Nights 2.

[508] Because it took me about an hour to two hours to get to where I could hit the main or even start the story after the character creator choosing every talent, every spec.

[509] Am I chaotic, good, neutral, whatever?

[510] You're like, I just want to fight dudes.

[511] Just want to hit R. Just want to hit R. Don't do anything in this game.

[512] Yeah, so I jumped into that for a bit and jumped back out pretty quickly.

[513] Pool's cold.

[514] So that was it.

[515] By tasking three games at once.

[516] But I was really on a mission to get Dragon Age 2 done because there's so much stuff coming out.

[517] And I was like, every system of mine is going to be locked up.

[518] For a while now.

[519] For a while.

[520] And I was like...

[521] Dragon Age 2 just doesn't have the hooks in me to make me peel away and come back.

[522] So I was like, if I don't make it through this weekend without finishing Dragon Age 2, this could be it.

[523] And I didn't.

[524] And I'm scared.

[525] Throw it away.

[526] Just throw it away.

[527] I'm worried.

[528] I've got my sealed copy of Dead Space 2.

[529] I should just throw it in the trash.

[530] It'll do that.

[531] No, no, no disrespect to the game.

[532] I'm just saying, at this point, sorry, Dead Space 2.

[533] You'll probably have to play some Dead Space 2 in, let's say, late November.

[534] Come the end of the year, you're going to need to know about that game.

[535] I want to play it.

[536] It's not begrudging.

[537] Did you ever finish the first one?

[538] Nope.

[539] Come on.

[540] Nope.

[541] Come on.

[542] I also did not finish the first one.

[543] Yeah.

[544] You enjoyed the second.

[545] Yeah, so go play the second one.

[546] But what was the problem was that when I bought the second one, I'm like, all right, I'm just going to bust through the first one real quick, and then I'll be able to get straight into the second one, and I'll be good, and I'll finish this other thing that I've been putting off forever.

[547] But I played, like, 30 minutes of the first one, and then...

[548] The story doesn't really matter in Dead Space.

[549] And then got distracted.

[550] You could just play Dead Space 2.

[551] I already totally know everything that happens.

[552] I mean, there's actually a big movie you can just pop on the main menu that just says, like, previously on Dead Space.

[553] Yeah, I know.

[554] It doesn't require me to open the package.

[555] Let's talk about the games we're actually playing.

[556] Anything else you're actually playing?

[557] No, that was it.

[558] That was your trio for the weekend?

[559] I kept seeing all this stuff.

[560] I mean, we'll talk about it some more, but all that Steam stuff going on, and it kept crossing my mind to leave something running, but I didn't do it.

[561] Yeah.

[562] I didn't want to do it.

[563] I didn't want to play that game.

[564] This is why we fail, then.

[565] I didn't want to be.

[566] Whatever.

[567] Amazon is bringing my power.

[568] So we can learn to pick ourselves back up.

[569] Patrick Klepek, anything else other than the pie cross?

[570] I played, like, half of the stacking DLC in Hostobo King.

[571] It's real short.

[572] Yeah, I bought that.

[573] I haven't really fired it up yet.

[574] It's about an hour.

[575] I kind of figured, looking at it and seeing what the achievements were and stuff, I figured, yeah.

[576] It takes you about a minute to run through the entire environment, and you know your spots.

[577] If you want a little bit more, I don't think I needed, like, any more.

[578] I think I got my fill out of the name.

[579] You stacked.

[580] I stacked enough.

[581] I don't know.

[582] I love that game.

[583] I'm guessing it's the same as, like, any one of the levels from the main game, right?

[584] A lot smaller.

[585] Really?

[586] It's not like you're going to, you know, like on the ship stage where you've got, like, huge multi -level.

[587] Like, it is this little section.

[588] Like a little town square.

[589] Three little offshoots.

[590] Really?

[591] Is it just those three puzzles?

[592] Two of them have, I think, three or four solutions, and then one of them involving...

[593] These stacking zombies, which is pretty awesome, has, like, six solutions.

[594] But it really, if you know, like, it really could in no way take you more than two hours to finish.

[595] It's pretty short.

[596] I mean, it's more stacking.

[597] Like, it's, you know, take it or leave it.

[598] If you liked it, you want more, then it's kind of the same thing.

[599] But, yeah.

[600] Jeff Crispin.

[601] Hi.

[602] How's it going?

[603] Great.

[604] Do you want to talk more about Mortal Kombat?

[605] Yeah.

[606] Sure, okay.

[607] Yeah, I could do that.

[608] Or do you want to save talking about Mortal Kombat?

[609] For what?

[610] For later in the podcast?

[611] For the eight other opportunities this week that you'll have to talk about Mortal Kombat.

[612] No, I mean, you know, some people aren't going to catch all that stuff.

[613] They need to know.

[614] Jeff.

[615] Yeah.

[616] Let's talk about Mortal Kombat.

[617] You guys talk about Mortal Kombat.

[618] I'm going to look at my iPad for a little bit.

[619] It's so goddamn good.

[620] I'm actually...

[621] You know how you guys talk about Mortal Kombat?

[622] I want to hear you guys talk about Mortal Kombat.

[623] I want to talk about Mortal Kombat because that game looks really good.

[624] Yeah.

[625] That game does look really good.

[626] It's probably the...

[627] greatest story mode a fighting game has ever had.

[628] And that's the best news you can tell me. Not even just the story mode.

[629] Which is a weird thing to even say, because who cares about fighting game story?

[630] But this game, it takes a lot of cues from Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe structurally.

[631] So it's not like pick a character, beat the game, see the ending.

[632] It has all that stuff, but the main story mode, actually you jump from character to character as you go from chapter to chapter, and it's just kind of giving you this narrative as you go.

[633] You think with that, I'm going to pause you there because you're like, do you think that's a selling point for that game at all?

[634] Because they didn't mention any of that.

[635] Remember when we had that interview at GDC or something?

[636] Yeah, they weren't really talking about it.

[637] I don't think it's because they didn't think it was a big deal.

[638] I think they just didn't want to get in.

[639] Quite the contrary.

[640] I think they thought it was a really big deal, and they kind of wanted to hold it back.

[641] You think?

[642] I just feel like that would have sold me on the game.

[643] That's a valid point.

[644] As we were talking about how I'm not a real good competitive player, knowing there's a real compelling single player, I would have been that...

[645] This is one of the best suites of single player modes in fighting games.

[646] It has the mission mode.

[647] It has the challenge tower, which is basically the mission mode from Soul Calibur on Dreamcast, where they're kind of feeding you different.

[648] win conditions and weird objectives yeah like it's like oh now you're both bleeding so win fast uh Or weird stuff like that.

[649] Or you don't have arms, so any arm -related special move does not work.

[650] There's one where instead of attacking, you're actually just flinging limbs at people.

[651] So when you hit kick buttons, your legs fly off, and they eventually grow back, and your arms will fly off, and your head will fly off.

[652] Wait, what happens until they grow back?

[653] Does your torso just hover?

[654] You will always have one leg.

[655] So do you hop?

[656] It's not really a hopping animation.

[657] It's just the walking animation, but with only one leg.

[658] That's better than hopping.

[659] It's better than hopping, yeah, definitely.

[660] Confidence.

[661] Yeah.

[662] So they've come up with a bunch of ridiculous stuff.

[663] And even in the Challenge Tower things, they've written little stories for some of it.

[664] And some of it's just like kind of self -serious.

[665] Mortal Kombat stuff.

[666] It goes through the plot of Shaolin monks in some parts of the challenge tower.

[667] Oh, in the challenge tower.

[668] I saw some of that in the video review where there was zombies attacking and there was Fight the Director when you're Johnny Cage.

[669] They have characters that are exclusive to the challenge tower where it's just like, here's this movie director.

[670] It doesn't have any special movies.

[671] There's dialogue boxes that pop up.

[672] There's dialogue boxes where Melina is saying that she made you a teddy bear and she really wants you to have it, but then you have to...

[673] beat the shit out of her because you don't want no fucking teddy bear that's right um and you know like so some of it's like really goofy but it's all pretty well done but then there's an entire contextual narrative yeah yeah that's like retelling it's it's like the star trek reboot in a way so it's like this alternate timeline that is fairly similar to the events of the first three games if you if you care about that stuff uh if you don't care though it's actually it's told really well.

[674] So it's interesting to watch.

[675] And it weaves in and out of pre -rendered cut scenes to fights almost seamlessly.

[676] I wouldn't have believed if they had said, yeah, there's a good story in there.

[677] I feel like I've never seen something this well done in a fighting game.

[678] I don't mean that in a hyperbolic sense at all.

[679] It's really well done.

[680] Maybe they thought that people would just laugh at them.

[681] Yeah.

[682] Like, it's laughable that you would brag about, like, oh, we're going to have a good story in our Mortal Kombat game.

[683] Or, like, the text on your windscreen is real long.

[684] Yeah, yeah.

[685] So maybe this is, like, their way of, like, kind of testing the waters.

[686] And if people really respond well, they can.

[687] They've got stuff.

[688] So when you beat any of these fights, when you win any of the story mode fights, like, it does the wind pose and stuff like that and, you know, kind of zooms in for a quote from the fighter.

[689] And every single one of them is custom.

[690] for that situation in the story.

[691] So they've gone and recorded dialogue there, and then it drops back in a cutscene.

[692] You watch some pretty nice cutscenes for a couple minutes, and then that eventually leads to another fight.

[693] So then you fight, and you'll go to another chapter, and you'll start controlling a different character.

[694] So it's a good way to kind of learn the different characters as you go.

[695] Well, I think the important thing to note about the flow of that story mode is that the in -between scenes are full -motion video.

[696] which allows them to stream the next fight in.

[697] Yeah, so it's loading in.

[698] There's literally, at least from what I saw, you never see a load screen.

[699] There's literally never a load screen from the time you start to the time you finish.

[700] It's totally seamless.

[701] But even more on top of that, the fight takes place almost like within the cutscene you're watching.

[702] It's not like all of a sudden you're at the pit.

[703] It'll literally cut from...

[704] It's like a camera change.

[705] It's literally a cut from the last frame of the FMV to real time right before the fight.

[706] So you're walking through the environment.

[707] The cutscene's taking place.

[708] in the environment the setup's all there for the fight and then all of a sudden just locks into 2D bars come up you fight bars go down guy wins and the camera pulls back and like cutscene continues playing which is for me awesome because it's just like it's basically these fights that are taking place within this story that makes sense some of the fights are so fucking cheesy well like the second fight in the story mode the chapters are all broken up by character it's like chapter one johnny cage and you go through like three or four fights with him the second fight of that chapter is like he's hitting on sonya and trying to pick her up And she's, like, not having any of it.

[709] She shouldn't.

[710] And at some point, they're just like, all right, fuck it, let's fight.

[711] And they, like, totally fight.

[712] And there's blood going everywhere just because, like, she wouldn't go out with it.

[713] But there's also no fatalities, right?

[714] Right.

[715] The story mode is not about fatalities.

[716] Right.

[717] So you can't, like, what people do.

[718] No, people die in that story.

[719] Like, it is, you know, it is pretty crazy.

[720] Well, people died, like, historically in that timeline.

[721] Right, yes.

[722] In one through three, like, you know, certain people die in certain games.

[723] So, you know, with this being kind of a retelling and an alternate timeline, able to play around with some of that stuff uh which is pretty interesting they do some interesting things with key characters that you wouldn't expect that leaves them in really weird spots for whatever they do from here their kind of way of like acknowledging like yeah mythology is really fucked up yeah so this is our chance to kind of like get it back and like you know rein it back in and maybe we can do a little better this time yeah i suspect there's some of that that they'll be able to to do a better job this time with the characters they introduce and that sort of stuff.

[724] Hopefully they don't just roll into MK4 with the same character.

[725] Here you go!

[726] So why do you think they put Quan Chi in this game?

[727] He factors in the storyline in meaningful ways.

[728] Not necessary.

[729] So not necessary.

[730] I mean, he doesn't seem bad in the game, right?

[731] I'm no MK expert, but he seems like a totally reasonable character.

[732] I mean, they already had evil sorcerers and big bads and stuff.

[733] You just didn't need another one, but whatever.

[734] I'll live with it.

[735] He's an agent of the boss of MK4.

[736] Tie -ins.

[737] How do you guys feel as MK fans who know way more than you probably should about some of the mythology stuff?

[738] Some of the character origin stuff, because I didn't know much about it, but the cyborg stuff and seeing those guys go through seemed really cool.

[739] It's cool to see that stuff.

[740] That's new, right?

[741] That's not something...

[742] The reasons for the Lin Kuei becoming robots is the same.

[743] That existed before.

[744] Seeing all those events portrayed in that much detail is kind of new.

[745] Yeah, it's neat.

[746] It's from when the lore was good before it got way too crazy.

[747] And they even reined it in a little bit.

[748] MK3's story was already kind of like...

[749] And here it's maybe not quite as out there as it was originally.

[750] So it's their chance to kind of do it over and do a better job this time.

[751] As opposed to just like, we need four static screens to play during attract mode before people fight.

[752] Hopefully people will never see them because they'll just be fighting.

[753] But just in case.

[754] This is before Wikipedia.

[755] Yeah, yeah.

[756] We need 150 words that sum up exactly why this game exists.

[757] Go.

[758] Goro, portals, wizard, dark, fight.

[759] So Sindel was, okay.

[760] Just skip it.

[761] And she has to be resurrected on Earth.

[762] And the act of that opens up the portal.

[763] Fight.

[764] Fight.

[765] And then you can actually fight in the game, right?

[766] There's fighting also.

[767] Yeah, you can fight guys.

[768] But a lot of story.

[769] You know what's combat?

[770] With K. You know what's crazy to me is that in just about any other fighting game, the story mode is just an arcade ladder.

[771] It's like ten guys in a row.

[772] You get like two paragraphs and two or three pieces of art done.

[773] At best, you get the Tekken endings.

[774] You get some weird FMV that doesn't make any sense, but that's great.

[775] So not only does Mortal Kombat have that crazy, elaborate, lengthy story mode, it also has that.

[776] It also has a real arcade story mode.

[777] I only saw one of the endings on that thing.

[778] I saw the one you were talking about.

[779] Wait, so there's a whole separate arcade mode with individual character endings?

[780] I don't know if they're all like that, but the one I saw was pretty goofy.

[781] They're not all as goofy as the one you saw.

[782] That one was straight up...

[783] Second style.

[784] Yeah.

[785] Real self -referential.

[786] That one's pretty awesome.

[787] It's silly.

[788] Well, because the main narrative is going to be the same.

[789] There's no choices in it.

[790] It's always the same, right?

[791] And then these are like individual character.

[792] Yeah, so it's like, what if this person won the tournament?

[793] That sort of thing.

[794] And you probably would play some of that just to grind out points because they've got the whole crypt and all that stuff.

[795] Yeah, you need to unlock stuff.

[796] You get most of the coins you'll need for unlocking things in the crypt by completing the story.

[797] You get plenty, but not enough to actually unlock everything.

[798] So, yeah.

[799] want to go through the story mode the the real shame is you don't get any coins online none none what is that so you can't like you can't game it or whatever what about in theoretically in ranked games you should be able to but i wasn't getting any there either so that's not good it's unfortunate but at the same time i'm i have unlocked everything in the crypt already all right what about uh you earned something in king of the hill what is that Respect points.

[800] Actually, back up a second.

[801] I haven't really seen King of the Hill being played.

[802] What is that?

[803] So it's got a similar multiplayer set of features to Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe.

[804] It's got that lobby system where you can join rooms and do stuff like that.

[805] It's got one -on -one fights.

[806] It also has tag battle because the whole game has tag battle now for two -on -two fights.

[807] And then King of the Hill mode is like their endless match or their quarter match, whatever you want to call it.

[808] It's eight players join into a fight and spectate while two people fight.

[809] Yeah, that's the long short of it.

[810] You know, the person who wins the fight stays on.

[811] The loser goes to the back of the line.

[812] The catch is that they have built in avatars to this stuff.

[813] So on the 360, it's your 360 avatar.

[814] On the PS3, I guess it's, you know, they built a bunch of MK -specific avatars.

[815] I always hope it was not those ugly ass home guys.

[816] It's your PlayStation Home guy.

[817] Yeah, no. It's your PlayStation Home guy wearing his sponsored T -shirt.

[818] Giant scorpion suit.

[819] Oh, my God.

[820] That would be pretty good.

[821] I wish it wasn't.

[822] No, they just made, like, super deformed MK characters for that stuff.

[823] And you can actually view it full screen like it was a regular fight, but you can also kind of...

[824] Drop that down a little bit to less than full screen and you will see all the avatars kind of along the edges of the screen, like along the bottom.

[825] Like, you know, they're sitting in theater seats watching it and the two fighters are kind of on either side and making, you know, fighting animations.

[826] And the six people that are spectating, you can actually kind of cheer and boo by hitting buttons.

[827] They have like hidden emotes in there and stuff.

[828] you can turn around and throw up devil horns if you hit, like, up -down Y, you know, or up -down triangle, as the case may be.

[829] So isn't there some kind of currency involved in this mode?

[830] Yeah, so at the end of those fights, the winner gets respect points, and every person is able to judge the fight on a scale of 0 to 10.

[831] Is that a K2 respect?

[832] No, no. It's only things that start with C. They don't always go back and insert Ks into the middle of words.

[833] Because that's too much.

[834] It's too far.

[835] It's over the line.

[836] It's over the line.

[837] Yeah, so you can get points from the person you beat as well as the people just spectating the fight.

[838] And then there are achievements for getting 5 ,000 respect points overall, which seems like that's the only thing where they would factor in.

[839] The annoying thing is that I've been playing it.

[840] I don't know who has the game already, people breaking street date, whatever.

[841] There are copies of the game out there I've been playing online for the past.

[842] four or five days.

[843] Some people just always give zero points.

[844] Just no respect.

[845] Just no respect.

[846] What is the range?

[847] It's zero to ten.

[848] Okay.

[849] Whole numbers.

[850] Just got to be dicks online.

[851] So you could actually just let the controller sit there and you wouldn't hold up – you hold it up a card like you're an Olympic judge or something like that.

[852] And you could just set the controller down and you would still give zero points that way.

[853] So these people are actually making an effort to go down to zero because the thing defaults to five.

[854] Oh, so wait.

[855] So they're moving the indicator down to zero and hitting the button.

[856] They're just being a dick.

[857] They're being a dick deliberately.

[858] We just want to get done faster and also be a dick.

[859] If they got done, no. I don't think it really speeds it up.

[860] I think the timer still counts down the same way.

[861] Even if you go down to it and hit the button?

[862] Yeah, because everyone has to vote.

[863] There's always someone who is not there not voting, so it always counts down.

[864] It's just people just going out of their way to say, fuck you.

[865] And I hate it.

[866] I hate it.

[867] Were you getting a lot of tens as well?

[868] I've gotten some tens from people.

[869] I've gotten some four.

[870] It's annoying because there's stuff like that.

[871] That's not a fucking three.

[872] I fought way better than that.

[873] One through ten is a little strange.

[874] You should go to five stars.

[875] Five stars makes a lot more sense.

[876] Do you get too much granularity like that?

[877] Six.

[878] People don't know what to do with ten points.

[879] What do you do when you get a two?

[880] What the hell does a two mean?

[881] I don't know.

[882] I lay off 20 % of my dev team and we start working on a sequel.

[883] Yeah.

[884] So, yeah, that's been frustrating because I demand – I deserve more respect than I've gotten from some of these people out there.

[885] They just can't handle that I'm so much better at this game than they are.

[886] But those are the people you're going to fight, right?

[887] They're all in their same lobby.

[888] So maybe they're just like trash talk.

[889] Like that's their way of going.

[890] Yeah, I guess so.

[891] I give zero respect.

[892] Come bring some.

[893] And then you're like, well, no. But it's like someone that you just beat giving you zero.

[894] It's like, dude, I just beat you bad.

[895] Yeah, well, I can understand that.

[896] Yeah, I guess.

[897] I guess.

[898] I don't know.

[899] That guy shouldn't even be allowed to vote.

[900] Yeah, probably.

[901] I think the minimum should be one.

[902] You should always get some sort of respect.

[903] It's true.

[904] And zero only unlocks if you never moved your character.

[905] Yeah, exactly.

[906] They'll know that you got to game the systems.

[907] Yeah, definitely.

[908] That's an auto zero.

[909] No one even has to vote.

[910] It's just like, dude didn't even touch the sticks.

[911] Yeah, nothing.

[912] But yeah, the fighting system is very cool.

[913] Does it tell you what your average is for that stuff?

[914] It does tell you the average.

[915] All the points just total up.

[916] So when you join a room, it tells everyone how many respect points you have overall.

[917] Yeah.

[918] All right, how's the training stuff?

[919] The training stuff's all right.

[920] It's not very deep.

[921] They kind of take you through some real basic stuff about the basic attacks and the basic movement.

[922] Any combo stuff?

[923] No, no. They teach you some basic stuff.

[924] Like a little bit.

[925] Like three, four hit combos at the beginning.

[926] They kind of show how to string a few things together.

[927] If you go to the move list, it just kind of lists stuff, and it's not really hard to mash those combos out.

[928] It's really just about...

[929] You need to learn the timing for your juggles and kind of what you can and can't do with that.

[930] Do they show you like the special move combos, like combos that will involve like Scorpion's teleporter?

[931] No, they don't.

[932] It's just like here are the kind of dial -a -combo.

[933] moves that will string together.

[934] Like the basic hits that'll get together.

[935] If you hit XXY, it'll be this three -hit combo.

[936] If you hit XXB, it'll be this.

[937] That sort of stuff.

[938] Then there's a fatality trainer in there, which is good for teaching you what they mean.

[939] When they say, do this fatality from sweep distance, it tells you exactly what that means, which is nice.

[940] That was the most annoying thing in the arcades back in the day.

[941] Oh my god.

[942] Everyone was using different notation for what is just one step out.

[943] Oh, you mean sweep distance.

[944] Yeah, yeah.

[945] We just use a ruler on the arcade machine.

[946] We eventually figured it out.

[947] Like one inch out, go.

[948] And you just get the ruler out and you put it up on the arcade machine so you knew what sweep distance was to get to it.

[949] But then you go to some arcade that has a different size monitor.

[950] They use the conversion kit or something.

[951] Oh, man. I don't know.

[952] Yeah, so they're pretty good about showing you how to do fatalities, which is nice.

[953] I mean, you really need to know like three moves.

[954] Yeah, it's like jump distance, sweep distance, and touching, I think, are the three.

[955] Have you seen if every stage have a stage fatality?

[956] No, I don't think every stage has one.

[957] But plenty of them?

[958] A lot of stages?

[959] Yeah, there's a lot of stages.

[960] They also have multiple times a day for some of the stages, which is pretty cool.

[961] That was a nice touch.

[962] You know, some good kind of throwback music from the older games in there, too.

[963] Some remix stuff.

[964] Did you test?

[965] Somebody was saying online that, like, if you hold start or something when you...

[966] pick your stage like you get the old music.

[967] I have not even used the stage select thing yet.

[968] So just tons of hidden crap.

[969] Yeah, they've got like hidden characters that show up if you do specific things in arcade mode.

[970] So like if you are on the temple stage and Noob Saibot is in the background instead of Shinnok and you win both rounds without blocking, you will fight Noob Saibot at the end of that fight.

[971] I also love that they put in like...

[972] rumored glitches from the old games as actual like I think was it in the in like the the death forest stage like there was always the rumor that you could get eaten by the tree yeah and now you can get eaten by the tree it was always your friend said oh man it's just this new version of the game it's this new test kit they got it never existed how many Kano transformations have you done?

[973] seven or eight no that's yeah that's I wish that it had, like, a weird stat screen full of...

[974] Actually, it does have some pretty interesting stats, like, per character.

[975] One of the things they want you to do is to master every character, and they have, like, five metrics per character.

[976] It's, like, time spent.

[977] Yeah.

[978] Like, blood spilled.

[979] Blood spilled.

[980] Number of x -rays you've hit.

[981] Number of finishers you've hit.

[982] How is the blood measured?

[983] Pints.

[984] Pints.

[985] Pints.

[986] Yeah.

[987] Crucial distinction.

[988] But then to master the time spent, it's 24 hours per character.

[989] They've got an achievement in there for mastering every character.

[990] So you just leave the game running on an infinite?

[991] Yeah, if you turn off the timer.

[992] I actually tested that out.

[993] That totally would work.

[994] But you still have to hit 100 finishers and x -rays with that character.

[995] You're also going to red ring your machine in the process.

[996] How many characters are there?

[997] 20 -ish?

[998] High 20s, I'm going to say?

[999] Do you think there are playable characters yet to be discovered?

[1000] No. Really?

[1001] No, I don't know.

[1002] They mined the disc at this point.

[1003] The disc data has already been exposed.

[1004] Yeah, I think that people have dug through it.

[1005] There are two unlockable characters that you get from playing through the story.

[1006] I'm not going to ask you what's up with Kratos because we don't have the PS3 version yet.

[1007] Yeah, no, we're going to go out and buy that one.

[1008] By the time this podcast airs, we will purchase the PS3 version.

[1009] By now we know what is up with Kratos.

[1010] But what is up with...

[1011] character on the Xbox or the lack thereof?

[1012] I don't think there is one.

[1013] I saw that it was just they thought of it too late.

[1014] The Sony one just came together and they just didn't even think of it.

[1015] The money changed hands for co -marketing whatever.

[1016] I don't know why it happened over there.

[1017] It actually sounded like they tried to get in touch with Epic and they actually wanted to get something together but it was just too late in the production process.

[1018] DLC is possible.

[1019] I racked my brain.

[1020] I was like, what on the Xbox would even be appropriate?

[1021] I guess it would have to be something from Gears.

[1022] Like Marcus Fenix.

[1023] Gears is basically the only one who can.

[1024] Locust.

[1025] No Alan Wake with a flashlight.

[1026] He plays that dude with one of his moves.

[1027] The guy who has the two chainsaws on that pole from Gears 2.

[1028] Remember that big dude?

[1029] That guy would be alright.

[1030] Yeah.

[1031] They can always just dig out Killer Instinct characters, because that's rare.

[1032] See, that would be pretty intense.

[1033] Banjo.

[1034] People would flip out if they did that, though.

[1035] But, like, would enough people flip out to sell copies of that game?

[1036] Like, Kratos is, like, a cool bullet point.

[1037] We got Spinal.

[1038] People are like, what the fuck are you talking about?

[1039] We got Jay Allard.

[1040] We got TJ Combo in here.

[1041] Oh, dude, what?

[1042] Now you're talking.

[1043] See, they could just use the Kratos model for Jay Allard.

[1044] Just some straps and zooms into his hands.

[1045] Hit you with his snowboard.

[1046] Get the jacket and hoodie from the Alan Wake model and slap it on there.

[1047] Pretty good fatality.

[1048] Puts a zoon on your ears.

[1049] Blows your head out.

[1050] Some of those fatalities are awesome.

[1051] Yeah.

[1052] Some are alright.

[1053] Yeah, some are better than others, for sure.

[1054] Some of them are really graphic.

[1055] Some of them are like, really, you know?

[1056] For years now, I've been talking about all the violence in those old Mortal Kombat.

[1057] What were we getting upset about?

[1058] Some of them are a little uncomfortable.

[1059] Those games were just, you look at them now and they look silly.

[1060] You look at this game like, yeah, that's kind of fucked up what you're showing me there.

[1061] Who's pulling people apart?

[1062] The noob sidebar.

[1063] Unless there's something I haven't seen.

[1064] One of the striker ones, where he just shoots the guy?

[1065] Yeah.

[1066] Oh, with his gun?

[1067] Yeah, he just fucking shoots him in the head.

[1068] Like, there you go.

[1069] But it's like the graphic disintegration of the head.

[1070] Shang Tsung has that also.

[1071] Well, is it Sindel who screams in the ear and the side of the face?

[1072] Oh, that's the one I was thinking of.

[1073] Yeah, yes, yes.

[1074] She screams in the side of the face and the brain and everything just pops out the other side.

[1075] But it's not just like red burst.

[1076] It's like very detailed.

[1077] Like, all right, this is where the skull cracks and this hemisphere...

[1078] blows out.

[1079] There goes the brain.

[1080] Smoke like fills them with smoke and then all their flesh melts from the inside off.

[1081] You kind of want them to add a couple more ribcages in there and be like ha ha ha.

[1082] This is funny right?

[1083] This is camp.

[1084] The thing that you do notice after playing a whole lot of the game is that you see a lot of parts get reused in terms of just like the way people separate and the way they look inside.

[1085] It's like, okay, yeah.

[1086] So you had this.

[1087] Like Johnny Cage has one where he karate chops him in the head and splits their head in half.

[1088] But it's still attached to the body.

[1089] And then he takes an Oscar or some sort of unnamed award.

[1090] Sure.

[1091] And jams it in the hole that he has created.

[1092] And he says, like, and the winner is?

[1093] And the award goes, too.

[1094] Smack.

[1095] Like, buries it in and then the guy falls over.

[1096] It's just, it's gross.

[1097] It's crazy.

[1098] That's pretty good.

[1099] Yeah, it is a good one.

[1100] Remember how they were telling us they had all that pent -up need to make new fatalities because they didn't get to for DC?

[1101] After DC, yeah.

[1102] You could see the fruit of all that angst.

[1103] So next MK game, T again.

[1104] Right.

[1105] Maybe it's better for the franchise.

[1106] The following one could be brutal.

[1107] Just do kind of off years for MK games.

[1108] Even the x -rays are pretty good.

[1109] Some of the x -rays are unpleasant to watch.

[1110] Brad, you and I were framing through some trailers before the game.

[1111] got here of some of the x -ray stuff.

[1112] It's like, you know, it's not just like, you know, okay, x -ray shot and then you see the hand hit the head.

[1113] It's like, you see the way the skull or, like, the bone is fragmenting.

[1114] Oh, there's a little piece chipped off and it's just floating around inside their body now.

[1115] Oh, God.

[1116] Kano's...

[1117] He has two knives, and he fucking just sticks them right through their legs, one and then the other.

[1118] And you see the knife going through the bone, just snapping it.

[1119] You're like, this is fucking great.

[1120] Who is it that's got two?

[1121] Maybe it's Molina with the size, but somebody has two blades that she literally just sticks straight through the eye sockets all the way in.

[1122] I think that's Katana with the fans.

[1123] Maybe that's what it is.

[1124] There's a couple of eye sockets.

[1125] Like reptiles got like an eye poke.

[1126] I hope the New Yorkers listen to this.

[1127] So what do you think?

[1128] Do you think this is going to be enough to bring Jack Thompson out of retirement?

[1129] No, I don't think so.

[1130] It's all in good fun at the end of the day.

[1131] I mean, it's still in such a ridiculous fantasy setting.

[1132] Whatever, tell that to Australia.

[1133] Tell it to our friends.

[1134] Oh, you know what?

[1135] I learned I met a fine New Zealander on the trip that we'll talk about in a minute last week.

[1136] And he said that everybody in Australia that can't get games just buys them from New Zealand because they all get sold there.

[1137] And they're very easy to come by.

[1138] Everybody in Australia buying New Zealand copies.

[1139] People setting up Underground Railroads to get copies of MK.

[1140] Choo -choo.

[1141] Just floating them across.

[1142] That seems like a fine game.

[1143] It is quite good.

[1144] And we're playing it on TNT this week.

[1145] Yep, we are.

[1146] Yeah.

[1147] It's quite the package.

[1148] And Brad won't be here.

[1149] Oh, God damn it.

[1150] Let's do it again next week.

[1151] Come on.

[1152] Jeff's trying.

[1153] It'll work.

[1154] People will be with me. Change the name of that program.

[1155] There's MK.

[1156] It's MK and T. Well, you know, that way we can do it this week because it's the big week that is out and people really want to see it.

[1157] And then the next week it will be out in Europe, so we can play with those people.

[1158] I feel like, again, I only spent two or three hours with it.

[1159] Maybe you would agree with this.

[1160] But fighting system notwithstanding, because say what you will about the way it's put together mechanically, it seems like pretty much a new standard for a single -player at -home fighting experience.

[1161] I would agree with that.

[1162] Just the amount and quality of stuff that they packed in there is just crazy.

[1163] Definitely.

[1164] I think the fighting system is really sharp as well.

[1165] I think some of it's going to come down to personal taste, and I can't really speak to it from a tournament perspective.

[1166] I'm waiting for, I mean, we're only a month out from you.

[1167] They had a patch already, and it sounds like they corrected two infinites that were already in the game.

[1168] Nice that they're fixing stuff.

[1169] I'm curious to see how Evo goes.

[1170] Do you think this game will penetrate into Japan?

[1171] Do you think finally they will pick up MK?

[1172] No. Why not?

[1173] It's got brains and blood.

[1174] It doesn't exist in an arcade.

[1175] Sure, but why not?

[1176] I don't know.

[1177] The aesthetic is not really palatable to the cultural taste.

[1178] It might as well be a first -person shooter.

[1179] Might as well.

[1180] Brad Shoemaker, tell me about Bethesda.

[1181] Oh, my God, dude.

[1182] And Utah.

[1183] I don't even know where to start.

[1184] You want me to start with Utah?

[1185] Yeah.

[1186] How was Utah?

[1187] You were in Utah last week.

[1188] It was good, dude.

[1189] It was snowing the whole time.

[1190] Well, not the whole time.

[1191] High altitude.

[1192] Quite a bit.

[1193] We were at 8 ,000 feet.

[1194] Yeah.

[1195] Have you ever been at 8 ,000 feet or higher?

[1196] I've been to Denver.

[1197] It's hard to breathe.

[1198] It's weird.

[1199] You walk up steps that shouldn't really wind you, and you are panting at the top, and you don't know why.

[1200] It's because the air is thin.

[1201] There's not as much oxygen in it.

[1202] Also, you shouldn't drink that much.

[1203] You could drink a lot faster at higher elevations, right?

[1204] Like the first night of dinner that we were there, I had like two drinks, and I was just like, whoa.

[1205] And then you guys had your whiskey drinking contest.

[1206] Yeah.

[1207] That place made their own whiskey.

[1208] It was a distillery.

[1209] Was that the place with all the pictures of the mayor playing in a band?

[1210] Yes, there was like a country and western cover band when we got there, and then we found out that the guitar player was also the mayor of Park City.

[1211] It was amazing.

[1212] How big is Park City?

[1213] It was amazing.

[1214] Well, considering we got there the day after the season ended, probably about 5 ,000 people.

[1215] I mean, it was like a ghost town.

[1216] We literally flew in the day after the last day of skiing.

[1217] Why they brew their own whiskey.

[1218] You need something to do in the off -season.

[1219] So what were you doing there?

[1220] Seeing Bethesda games, man. They got some games.

[1221] Like what?

[1222] I saw them all.

[1223] Tell me about Skyrim.

[1224] Was Wet 2 there?

[1225] No, no Wet 2.

[1226] What?

[1227] Wet 3?

[1228] Sorry to disappoint.

[1229] Just skipping 2, going right to 3.

[1230] Complete the trilogy in two games.

[1231] It's far more efficient.

[1232] They had so much stuff that I had brought my notes.

[1233] I have a notebook here.

[1234] Look at all those notes.

[1235] Look at your notes.

[1236] I wrote down a bunch of stuff.

[1237] But is that an EA notepad?

[1238] Do you want to...

[1239] Shut up.

[1240] It is, isn't it?

[1241] It is.

[1242] Do you want to start with Skyrim?

[1243] Because they're good.

[1244] Yeah, what's up with Skyrim?

[1245] Yes.

[1246] Gentlemen, I need you to sit down.

[1247] We're already sitting down.

[1248] One extra sit down.

[1249] So you're telling the people that are listening should be sitting?

[1250] I can't sit down any harder than this.

[1251] Brace yourselves.

[1252] Wait, hold on.

[1253] Now I need to stand up.

[1254] Everyone who's listening, sit down.

[1255] If you're running, stop for a second and put your hands on your knees so that you're at least braced.

[1256] Okay, there you go.

[1257] I'm just going to say it.

[1258] They took out Speed Tree.

[1259] What?

[1260] All right, you can keep running.

[1261] Okay.

[1262] What?

[1263] They took out Speed Tree.

[1264] So no trees?

[1265] Yes, there are no trees.

[1266] What did they replace it with?

[1267] There are, in fact, no trees in the game.

[1268] This is why this game is taking so long to come out.

[1269] No, they wrote their own foliage system this time.

[1270] What's it called?

[1271] I don't know.

[1272] Did you ask?

[1273] There are trees.

[1274] No. Not have the opportunity.

[1275] Why did we even send you to Utah?

[1276] They showed an hour of this game.

[1277] So you didn't ask.

[1278] How do you know that Speed Tree's not in it?

[1279] Because they said.

[1280] Like, they were talking about it.

[1281] But how do you say it?

[1282] I don't even know why.

[1283] It was Todd Howard giving the presentation.

[1284] I don't even know why they brought it up.

[1285] He was like, yeah, we lost Speedtree.

[1286] We wrote our own tree system.

[1287] Are they licensing their own fully system?

[1288] Whoops, crap.

[1289] I'm paraphrasing.

[1290] The dragon tree did not do what they needed it to do.

[1291] I'm paraphrasing here.

[1292] They are no longer using Speedtree because they have their own tech for that.

[1293] How do the trees look?

[1294] Great.

[1295] Fantastic.

[1296] It all looked good.

[1297] They looked randomly generated procedurally.

[1298] Were there a lot of them?

[1299] Yes.

[1300] All right.

[1301] I don't know how to feel about this.

[1302] How long did it take them to create the trees?

[1303] I don't know.

[1304] I didn't have a lot of access.

[1305] There were more important questions needed to be asked.

[1306] All right, Patrick, first assignment is...

[1307] Following up with Speedtree to get a reaction.

[1308] There you go.

[1309] Yeah, your first assignment.

[1310] First assignment.

[1311] From Elder Scrolls.

[1312] In Dragon Age 3.

[1313] Somebody asked me something about Skyrim.

[1314] There's so much.

[1315] It was an hour -long demo.

[1316] Tell me about the engine.

[1317] How long was the demo?

[1318] Do I close oblivion portals in it?

[1319] Faces.

[1320] Can I stand up?

[1321] Sure.

[1322] All right.

[1323] Please, please do.

[1324] When you talk to a dude, does the camera go all weird and square off with them?

[1325] The camera...

[1326] kind of locks into a fixed position, but you can still sort of move it around as if you were moving your head while you're talking to them.

[1327] Or at least I didn't get the sense that you can walk around the room while they're talking to you.

[1328] You're still kind of in this one -on -one sort of...

[1329] Does it look as mechanical as...

[1330] But you know what I'm talking about.

[1331] It absolutely does not.

[1332] They don't stand stark, upright, rigid.

[1333] face kind of locked with you.

[1334] They sort of gesture around.

[1335] It's the shoulder squared thing that always gets me. Oh, I'm facing you.

[1336] Now we are engaged.

[1337] They'll gesture a little bit.

[1338] They'll kind of move back and forth on their feet and stuff like that.

[1339] It's not nearly as rigid as it used to be.

[1340] Tell me about Gamebrio.

[1341] It's gone.

[1342] Also gone.

[1343] They were just using...

[1344] Are we using any middleware?

[1345] It seems like they're using all their own tech now, actually.

[1346] This game's ASCII.

[1347] What happens, you buy id, you think, oh, we're going to make our own engines now.

[1348] Then we're going to go to space.

[1349] So with real engines, that we also made.

[1350] To Gambrio, just the rendering.

[1351] That was just like the rendering stuff that they were using.

[1352] So they're doing their own rendering now.

[1353] What about Bink?

[1354] Bink?

[1355] I don't know.

[1356] It's PhysX.

[1357] Any of the rad game tools involved?

[1358] I want to say Havoc might be in there.

[1359] These are the hard questions.

[1360] This is the stuff people want to know about.

[1361] What sort of middleware does Skyrim use?

[1362] Right, right, right.

[1363] What kind of sound blaster technology?

[1364] Okay, what is the story in this game?

[1365] Who are you?

[1366] They're dragons.

[1367] What are you doing?

[1368] You are a viking.

[1369] Okay.

[1370] Actually, I mean, as before, there are like ten different races you can pick.

[1371] But no matter what you pick, you are dragonborn, which means...

[1372] You have like dragon blood?

[1373] Yeah, something like that.

[1374] Did you fight a dragon?

[1375] You have the spirit of a dragon in you or something like that?

[1376] Did your dad fuck a dragon?

[1377] I hope so.

[1378] Is Sean Connery in this?

[1379] They're not saying, but I hope that's it.

[1380] There's got to be some sort of like interspecies dragon fucking going on.

[1381] Is the dragon trying to teach you its dogma?

[1382] I really hope that's the case.

[1383] I knew that dragon was a pimp.

[1384] Check out this dude I brought in my cave.

[1385] So just to start from square one, Skyrim is like a province of this world, kind of like Oblivion.

[1386] It has existed before the game.

[1387] Like people who know this lore are, you know.

[1388] Yes.

[1389] It's like the northern area.

[1390] It's very mountainous and rocky and snowy.

[1391] Hence Utah.

[1392] Yes, indeed.

[1393] Yeah, that place looks just like this game.

[1394] I understood why we were there after.

[1395] It was good because we were pretty baffled beforehand.

[1396] Yeah, I was like, hmm.

[1397] It's populated by the Nords, which are basically Vikings.

[1398] Everything looks Viking -esque.

[1399] It's all, like, the architecture's all Scandinavian -looking.

[1400] What's the problem?

[1401] Dragons are there.

[1402] They have come back.

[1403] Oh, no. Dragons have been missing for a while now.

[1404] We're in, like, a new age.

[1405] Truly, truly.

[1406] Truly?

[1407] The age of dragons.

[1408] So is everybody united against the dragons?

[1409] They didn't go a whole lot into the specifics of the storyline, other than, like, your character has some connection to the dragons, and so they're actually, like, spells you can learn from dragon.

[1410] lore or dragon like ruins and stuff.

[1411] What do the dragons want?

[1412] To kill you.

[1413] Gold.

[1414] Where the fuck all the trees go?

[1415] Gold.

[1416] Where are these trees?

[1417] They just want gold.

[1418] Dragons always want gold.

[1419] Dragons always want gold.

[1420] So you just want to pay them off?

[1421] Dragons want treasure.

[1422] It's one of your dialogue options with the dragons.

[1423] I've got a real question.

[1424] Will this game have vats?

[1425] Or vats equivalent?

[1426] Nothing to that effect.

[1427] Will I get a gun?

[1428] Probably not.

[1429] You get an arrow.

[1430] Will I more likely than not have to use a sword and shield to fight dudes?

[1431] I would not refer to this game as Fallout with swords.

[1432] I'll put it that way.

[1433] Going back around.

[1434] They've definitely rolled a lot of stuff in from Fallout 3, but the VAT stuff is not...

[1435] Did you see combat?

[1436] Yeah, absolutely.

[1437] Is there blood?

[1438] Is it just like...

[1439] Pinging up against the guy.

[1440] You know the melee combat?

[1441] Like the last Oblivion?

[1442] Yeah.

[1443] Remember Oblivion melee combat?

[1444] I don't want to.

[1445] Don't bring me back there.

[1446] No?

[1447] Not a fan?

[1448] No, I hate it.

[1449] You sort of like blindly hacked at stuff.

[1450] They just keep running into you and they bounce back and they run forward.

[1451] It looked still kind of like that.

[1452] There was one fight where there was like a scripted sort of like kill animation at the end where he kind of like stabbed the guy in the chest.

[1453] That's something.

[1454] Which is kind of neat.

[1455] Still first person, right?

[1456] Yeah.

[1457] So, man, like, again, I'm just all over the place because there's shit.

[1458] So much to talk about here.

[1459] Third person is actually like a viable option now.

[1460] It does not look like complete shit, which is a huge photo.

[1461] The only time you switch to it is by accident.

[1462] Oh, dude.

[1463] It broke the game.

[1464] I'm not supposed to see this.

[1465] It was so bad in those old games.

[1466] Yeah, they've applied the animation blending to your character, and they've tweaked the third person camera movement and stuff, so you can totally play it in third person if you want.

[1467] They showed it.

[1468] It looked fine.

[1469] They said they still consider it a first -person game, but you have that option.

[1470] So the combat is still just whacking dudes with the sword?

[1471] There's way more to it than that.

[1472] I'm just saying the sword interaction with enemies looks still kind of like you were sort of swinging.

[1473] I tell you, you're never sitting up, crouching on top of rocks, just killing dudes as they just turn into the rocks.

[1474] I don't know if you're going to exploit it like that.

[1475] Basically, the guys never look like you hit them with a sword.

[1476] It's just kind of like you were flicking them backwards.

[1477] In that sense, I would say it looked like you were connecting a little more solidly.

[1478] Especially with that kill at the end.

[1479] I guess the magic stuff is what seems the most advanced over Oblivion.

[1480] I know you could assign spells to both hands in that game, right?

[1481] To my recollection.

[1482] Pretty sure you could have two spells at once.

[1483] Geez, I don't remember.

[1484] Somebody is screaming at their iPod right now.

[1485] I'm just thinking Bioshock 2 right now.

[1486] What?

[1487] Yeah, yeah.

[1488] You're talking about Bioshock 2?

[1489] You could have the drill and you could have...

[1490] That's all I can see right now.

[1491] Okay, whatever the case was with Oblivion.

[1492] In this one, you can put spells on both hands and combine them together.

[1493] Whoa, like Bioshock 2!

[1494] Oh, goddammit.

[1495] More like Magicka, actually, is kind of what it reminded me of.

[1496] So you combined them?

[1497] Yeah, so there was a point where he was fighting a guy with a sword in one hand, and he put his heal spell on the other.

[1498] And they have super quick contextual pop -up menus per hand.

[1499] It can stab you to life.

[1500] So you're going to like pause the action and just flip through a menu and change from like shield to heal spell on your left hand if you want in like two seconds.

[1501] Does it animate or is it shield?

[1502] I think it just sort of disappears.

[1503] I don't remember.

[1504] I want finger spells.

[1505] Like each finger I want a different spell so I can cast all.

[1506] Next gen, man. Come back.

[1507] We too.

[1508] Don't worry.

[1509] Finally.

[1510] Anyway, so he's healing himself with his left hand while he's fighting this guy, and then he switched to the heal spell in the other hand, so he had it on both.

[1511] Super heal.

[1512] And it was just this orange glow around the hand that he was just sort of zapping himself with, but when he had it on both, he kind of zapped them together in front of him and created this giant heal orb.

[1513] And then got, like, a massive kind of health boost from it.

[1514] And there was another part where he had, like, an area of effect, like shockwave on one hand, and then he equipped fire in the other.

[1515] That sounds new to this game.

[1516] And then made, like, a fire wave.

[1517] I don't remember that from a moment at all.

[1518] Yeah, yeah, there were definitely no spell combining.

[1519] You can definitely mix up spells.

[1520] Like, well, I think you could do it, like, out of context of battle.

[1521] Like, you could go...

[1522] to certain places and mix spells, like create new spells, sort of.

[1523] But this seems like you're doing it more on the fly.

[1524] I didn't mess around with spells too much in Oblivion.

[1525] I mostly cut guys.

[1526] I play games like that with swords and shields.

[1527] Is it class -based, or can anybody learn a spell at any point?

[1528] I think you can pretty much do whatever you want.

[1529] I mean, you don't pick a class at the beginning, I don't believe.

[1530] Are you dropping points into spells?

[1531] Yeah, so they streamlined.

[1532] So you have three attributes now instead of like the eight or whatever.

[1533] It's basically just strength, stamina, and magic, and that's it.

[1534] There's no, like, intelligence, agility.

[1535] They definitely condensed a lot of that stuff.

[1536] They said they'll level up by jumping.

[1537] No. You just still level up by doing a lot of that stuff, but they took out athletics, so you're not going to...

[1538] You forgot about that.

[1539] No, no. No, we're putting a rubber band.

[1540] Yeah, that was fucking goofy.

[1541] That was so dumb.

[1542] By just, you know, having the difficulty scale, and oh, whoops, I jumped my way to level 18.

[1543] It's getting the shit beat out of me now.

[1544] So what else?

[1545] Keep going.

[1546] Is Patrick Stewart in the game?

[1547] Is there more than one voice for all the lizard dudes?

[1548] Max Vaughn.

[1549] Side out.

[1550] Yeah, he's in there.

[1551] Great, he's good.

[1552] They said they've got other recognizable voice talent, but they didn't say who.

[1553] Patrick Stewart?

[1554] No, I don't think so.

[1555] Didn't he die in the last one?

[1556] He was still alive.

[1557] He was a king?

[1558] Patrick Stewart's still alive.

[1559] Yeah, you were about to get me freaked out here with that sentence.

[1560] Well, at least we have the porn equivalent to take his place.

[1561] That's true, although he does look a lot more like Ben Kingsley.

[1562] Did you like what you saw?

[1563] Yeah, absolutely, dude.

[1564] The biggest problem with this game for me is that it's not finished and playable right now.

[1565] It looks fantastic.

[1566] Is there an inventory limit?

[1567] I don't know.

[1568] Is there encumbrance?

[1569] Fuck.

[1570] Should I ask about that?

[1571] That was the question that needed to be asked.

[1572] I bet there is.

[1573] So all the UI stuff, they only showed the Xbox version.

[1574] The UI stuff, at least on the console, looks definitely a lot more streamlined than it used to.

[1575] Did you see most of these games on console?

[1576] I don't think they had a single PC at this event that I remember seeing.

[1577] Everything was console.

[1578] So DX9?

[1579] Kind of crazy.

[1580] Yeah, this is a DX9 game on the PC.

[1581] Okay.

[1582] Yes, he said that.

[1583] Oh, did he really?

[1584] Yes.

[1585] Okay.

[1586] Straight up, all the shaders and everything are DX9.

[1587] Like, you'll get a little bit of performance with the DX11 card, but don't expect, like, crazy tessellation or anything like that.

[1588] But all the menus, all the everything that you would do with an interface pops up, like, over top of the game world.

[1589] You're not, like, popping to some, like, storybook interface where you're flipping pages or anything like that.

[1590] It's all just, like, real, like, minimalistic looking just overlays on top of the action.

[1591] Seems like you can get to everything really quickly.

[1592] Are there any companions or anything like that?

[1593] Probably.

[1594] I don't know.

[1595] It was definitely a very, like, sort of critical path, golden path kind of demo.

[1596] It was like, you know, he knew that he needed to go down this path to this town and then up into these mountains to these ruins.

[1597] Like, it was pretty clearly, like, defined what he was doing.

[1598] What else?

[1599] I'm sure that stuff is in there.

[1600] He's got a big notebook.

[1601] That was a lot of notebook.

[1602] He played some Rage.

[1603] I did play some Rage.

[1604] Let me turn...

[1605] Are they going to put that game out?

[1606] Yeah.

[1607] September?

[1608] September.

[1609] They announced that date a while ago.

[1610] What did you see?

[1611] Rage was also on a console on 360?

[1612] Yeah, on 360.

[1613] But you got to play this.

[1614] I played the 360 version, yeah.

[1615] Did you swap a disc?

[1616] The weird part is that the stuff they let...

[1617] No. The stuff they let us play was missions that they've been showing for like eight months or something.

[1618] Since last year, I think.

[1619] Is it the first time it's playable?

[1620] Didn't you play it last year?

[1621] It was one of those judges' things where it's like, touch the controller to make sure it's interactive.

[1622] You pressed the A button to jump, so you played it.

[1623] Did you see the guy with the colander on his head?

[1624] No. He was not in there.

[1625] So the demo that they had was...

[1626] I know what you're talking about.

[1627] The demo was only disappointing in that it was launched from...

[1628] what was basically a cobbled together debug menu it was just like here's five like discrete missions you can launch from a menu to see how the shooting is but like that game revolves around a big wasteland hub right like you were not able to just jump into that hub and drive around and find stuff to do it was like you're loading like loading screen into a mission finish that pop back to the menu do another mission that seems like a little weird for a game that's out in september yeah i mean i don't i don't think by any means they're like Behind schedule.

[1629] It's not ready or whatever.

[1630] I just don't think they're ready to show a lot of stuff.

[1631] They probably just weren't ready to waste a bunch of time building a demo or something.

[1632] Exactly, yeah.

[1633] So how the shooting is.

[1634] Yeah.

[1635] Guess what?

[1636] They haven't forgotten how to make a good shooting experience.

[1637] It feels great.

[1638] They remembered after Doom 3?

[1639] Ha ha ha ha.

[1640] I mean, whatever.

[1641] I'm not joking.

[1642] Whatever.

[1643] The feel of Doom 3.

[1644] I'm talking about the nuts and bolts of a first -person shooter.

[1645] The way that the aim moves.

[1646] Yeah.

[1647] Like the dead spot on the aiming.

[1648] The feel of the weapons, like the kickback, all that stuff, like the zooming.

[1649] That stuff's spot on.

[1650] What do they have in there?

[1651] They've got shotguns, they've got a rail gun.

[1652] Yeah, it's an id game.

[1653] You know what?

[1654] Maybe a double shotgun.

[1655] Oh, actually, you know what?

[1656] There's a little bit of new stuff.

[1657] You have the wing stick.

[1658] It's like a glaive kind of...

[1659] What?

[1660] Like a boomerang -y sort of...

[1661] Those are like gadgets and stuff.

[1662] Yeah, so there's a lot of that stuff.

[1663] The actual variety rather than just...

[1664] The weapons have different ammo types, at least.

[1665] So there's...

[1666] What?

[1667] Like armor piercing.

[1668] That's not an id game.

[1669] Well, actually, like the pistol...

[1670] has a thing called i think it's called the big boy or something where it's like half the capacity but like double or triple the damage something like that but but you're right the gadgets uh there's like an rc explosive car um oh wait really there's uh is it gonna come with like a limited edition anarchy edition come with that no that just that comes with a bunch of in -game stuff and that's yeah yeah and that's an ea style like pre -order it and you just get it right and it's just a bunch of like real here's an extra shotgun here is an extra like piece of armor or something um You, you, uh, you loot stuff to make those gadgets.

[1671] So you have to find like, you know, get a wire kit and like three, I don't know, bottle caps and whatever, whatever.

[1672] And here's the car, right?

[1673] You have to go to a bench.

[1674] Nucca cola caps.

[1675] Basically, yeah.

[1676] Like you pop into, no, you just pop into your menu and it's just like, here's the stuff you can make.

[1677] If it's, if you have enough stuff for it, it's highlighted, hit the button.

[1678] That's nice.

[1679] It's in your inventory.

[1680] So you have to go to some special place.

[1681] No, definitely not.

[1682] It seems all pretty streamlined, but you pick up a lot of trash loot.

[1683] Like I picked up a bunch of dog food.

[1684] Couldn't do anything with it?

[1685] It's just a throwback to Wolfenstein.

[1686] I don't know.

[1687] 90 % of the stuff I picked up was not part of a recipe that I had in my inventory, so I don't know what.

[1688] I guess you could sell that stuff to a vendor and just get money.

[1689] Maybe just build a dog food bomb.

[1690] Do you ever get a dog companion?

[1691] Hopefully.

[1692] Does it go into a trash menu or something like that?

[1693] Do you have encumbrance?

[1694] No. So I'm going to jump back just real quickly to Dragon Age 2 because I think this is a trend that is happening in games where you collect stuff.

[1695] So Dragon Age 2, you collect items that automatically are marked as trash and they go in like a trash bin, right?

[1696] Why not just give me the money?

[1697] Just auto -collected.

[1698] Just tell you, I collected 14 things.

[1699] You just got...

[1700] That was the death spank thing, is you had the item that was like the grinder that would grind items into money for you.

[1701] Like, Torchlight kind of did that, too, with the pit.

[1702] Yeah, yeah.

[1703] But it was like, it's like, you basically get these items you could never, ever use for anything else.

[1704] They're marked with little trash things, and it's like...

[1705] It makes it more realistic.

[1706] Like, if you just found the money everywhere, or if you just picked up the items and then automatically turned into money, like, it's a weird kind of contrivance.

[1707] No, just pick up, yeah, just pick up money.

[1708] Well, you know, the world needs trash.

[1709] I don't want to have to go to that.

[1710] It's fleshing out the world.

[1711] But in Dragon Age 2, you can also mark items like, okay, I don't fucking need this.

[1712] Put it in the trash thing so it's not mucking up my weapon menu or whatever.

[1713] But there's also just, you're just literally picking up trash that is always marked as trash that you're just going to have to sell to a vendor at some point.

[1714] You're helping the world by picking up all this trash.

[1715] Wouldn't it be easier if it came over the menu that told you all the...

[1716] crappy items you picked up were converted to this rather than having to do the extra step of like dumping it yourself it just seems so pointless just give me a couple coins like just don't make me go to that vendor and dump this trash off make my item limit lower so if that's what all you're doing is trying to like make me manage inventory at this point that's what it feels like I hate that Yeah, I hate managing inventory as well.

[1717] It's not fun.

[1718] So yeah, just kind of point forward as people are going forward and being like, this is marked as trash.

[1719] It's awesome.

[1720] It's all marked as trash already.

[1721] You just go to a vendor and one button trash.

[1722] It just seems like a World of Warcraft UI mod.

[1723] We'll automatically move stuff to this bag and automatically sell it when you talk to a vendor.

[1724] It seems like a weird middle ground.

[1725] So developer challenge, make inventory management fun.

[1726] No, because then they'll just do Resident Evil where you had to...

[1727] No, that wasn't fun.

[1728] No, no, there has to be, like, if you are making maximum use of your inventory space, you get some sort of crazy bonus.

[1729] Turn it into match three.

[1730] I don't know.

[1731] Color code the items in your bag.

[1732] Yeah, you want to make room in your bag, you got to break down some of these items yourself.

[1733] That's how you turn them into gold.

[1734] I just feel like we're in this weird middle ground where somebody was like, well, to solve that problem, we mark it automatically as trash.

[1735] Isn't that way better?

[1736] It's like they're addressing the symptoms.

[1737] Yeah.

[1738] That was as far as they could get.

[1739] Someone else was like, no, no, no, no. We are not getting rid of the loot.

[1740] You have to have the loot.

[1741] It's an RPG.

[1742] It's Dragon Age.

[1743] It's not Dragon Age without the loot.

[1744] It's the second game.

[1745] Can't do that.

[1746] No. Some other guy is just like, what if we just equip the better loot every time they find it automatically?

[1747] As long as the loot's still there.

[1748] Right.

[1749] Like, this was the quarter given was fine.

[1750] You can mark the trash loot as trash and put it in the trash part, but you still have to go and cash it in yourself.

[1751] Right.

[1752] And I want an option in there to disable auto trash in case people want to, like, look at, you know, someone had to write these loot descriptions.

[1753] I know what they really did.

[1754] Someone has to look at.

[1755] It's terrible.

[1756] It's just that one guy fighting for it in every meeting.

[1757] Put in your recycle option with an R. We're already using R. That just totally reminded me of the trash stuff.

[1758] Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning also does the trash stuff.

[1759] I think I remember Rich during the panel saying, one button trash, whatever.

[1760] And then when he said it, it didn't register until I'd been playing Dragon Age 2.

[1761] He was like, fuck, just give me money.

[1762] Just don't put the trash in.

[1763] Just don't put the trash.

[1764] No, that's a feature.

[1765] One button trash.

[1766] Getting pumped.

[1767] Anyway.

[1768] How many buttons for trash in Skyrim?

[1769] How do I get rid of my trash?

[1770] Oh, man, I don't know.

[1771] I don't know.

[1772] What else is on that page?

[1773] See, I never got to go to a town.

[1774] That's the thing.

[1775] I never got to roam around and just do stuff.

[1776] All I did was shoot things.

[1777] Did the world seem big?

[1778] What were you shooting?

[1779] What are you shooting that game?

[1780] So, yeah, they've been showing, like, bandits and mutants for the last two years or whatever they've been showing this game.

[1781] So the big reveal on this trip was The Authority, which is kind of like the Crimson Lands.

[1782] Okay.

[1783] Remember how you went from bandits to...

[1784] Yeah, bandits to military dudes.

[1785] Kind of like that.

[1786] Man. Or, like, maybe, like, the Brotherhood of Steel.

[1787] I can't wait for...

[1788] Man, Borderlands 2.

[1789] That needs to happen.

[1790] Like, this rage stuff sounds all fine and good, but...

[1791] Is it fun to play?

[1792] I don't want to play another simple id game again.

[1793] Is there something more to it?

[1794] There's a lot of driving and stuff.

[1795] I did...

[1796] Oh, cool.

[1797] Again, it's hard to get a good round sense of how this game is put together without just roaming around that world.

[1798] Do they need to prove that, yeah, we can make a shooter?

[1799] I think we're all feeling that.

[1800] None of us have a...

[1801] great big picture idea like, what is this game?

[1802] Why do I want to play it?

[1803] Why is it fun?

[1804] Why is it different than Borderlands or, you know, Fallout?

[1805] Well, it's more of a, it's...

[1806] A good bit more of a shooter than Borderlands and way more of a shooter than Fallout.

[1807] Certainly.

[1808] But if that's the only defining characteristic is we have better shooting...

[1809] Well, I don't know.

[1810] How good is your role -playing part?

[1811] How good is the driving handling?

[1812] I would like to just have an hour or two to sit down with a proper build and see how it flows.

[1813] It seems like you can play the first hour.

[1814] That would probably give you a good...

[1815] How are the mega textures?

[1816] It fucking looks amazing.

[1817] I can't believe I'm at the point now where I'm saying for an Xbox game.

[1818] It looks amazing.

[1819] They didn't show the PC version, but it runs at a solid 60 frames a second.

[1820] Cool.

[1821] And probably looks about as good as most of the best -looking games on that platform.

[1822] It's crazy.

[1823] That's cool.

[1824] It's crazy that it looks as good as most of the Unreal stuff and runs at twice the frame rate.

[1825] Yeah.

[1826] They definitely knocked it out of the park on that one.

[1827] Is there multiplayer?

[1828] We will see.

[1829] The multiplayer is a...

[1830] Kart racing something.

[1831] What?

[1832] It's driving based.

[1833] What?

[1834] There's no shooting?

[1835] It's called Combat Rally.

[1836] I'm looking at my notes now.

[1837] There is a...

[1838] So where's Rocket Arena?

[1839] Where's Deathmatch?

[1840] Well, you can put rockets on your buggy.

[1841] And put them in an arena.

[1842] There is no...

[1843] Yes, there is...

[1844] This is an id Software game.

[1845] There is no on -foot, like, eight -player Deathmatch mode.

[1846] What?

[1847] You can't get out of the car?

[1848] This Combat Rally thing wasn't just like...

[1849] It's not just some mode that's in there along with...

[1850] This is the multiplayer?

[1851] Well, yes.

[1852] When you go to the multiplayer tab.

[1853] You launch it from a menu, yeah.

[1854] It's not part of, like, you don't drive up to a thing in the wasteland.

[1855] I'm not saying that.

[1856] He's asking, is that the only mode in the multiplayer?

[1857] This is the multiplayer.

[1858] Okay.

[1859] Okay.

[1860] The competitive multiplayer.

[1861] Did you get the sense from the demo that the car combat is a huge, huge part of this game?

[1862] Actually, one of those five levels that they had was a sort of race slash combat scenario.

[1863] I wonder if you'll spend most of your time in, like, a car.

[1864] But it's hard to say.

[1865] Older demos they've shown, like, you know, when you're going from, like, a town to where a mission is, you'll, like, hit some random bandits and have to fight them in your car and, like, pick up loot and stuff like that.

[1866] But, again, you know, like, let's look at a, you know, full build of the game and see how it all is put together.

[1867] But, yeah, so it's got the car combat.

[1868] There's also the co -op thing called Legends of the Wasteland.

[1869] It's like a two -player co -op thing.

[1870] They basically take, like, small maps from the campaign and kind of...

[1871] built different it's not okay different stories around like like here's what happened here you know like a week before you got here in the campaign it's like a two -player challenge that sounds kind of neat it did seem pretty neat yes are you a named dude You're like the Wanderer.

[1872] Dude, I don't know.

[1873] You're an arc survivor.

[1874] You're like the Doom guy.

[1875] So actually there was like a shot during some trailer or something they showed where the camera actually pulled out and showed the guy and he straight up looks like Doom guy.

[1876] Great.

[1877] Generic looking id dude.

[1878] Whatever, man. Now the story flows together.

[1879] Tying all the threads together.

[1880] At the end, he goes to Mars.

[1881] Or is this him coming back from Mars?

[1882] Like when he left, everything was cool, and now he's back, it's all fucked up.

[1883] He's in the wasteland of Mars.

[1884] No, there would be hell demons there if he was coming back from Mars, because Doom 2 is all...

[1885] Right, it's hell on Earth.

[1886] Yeah.

[1887] How do you know he's not on Mars?

[1888] That's a great question.

[1889] Mars is dusty.

[1890] We don't know what planet this is on.

[1891] It's not red, right?

[1892] It looks red?

[1893] I guess that's fair.

[1894] I don't know.

[1895] We'll find out more.

[1896] Hopefully soon, yeah.

[1897] All right, Patrick.

[1898] Blow the lid off this one.

[1899] I'm still working on a speed tree.

[1900] All right, what's up with Prey 2?

[1901] Keep taking notes.

[1902] Oh, yeah, what's up with Prey 2?

[1903] I saw some of the screenshots.

[1904] They look pretty fucking good.

[1905] Let me blow the live action trailer.

[1906] Wait, you already are?

[1907] Damn it.

[1908] Well, you didn't see that?

[1909] No. It's not good?

[1910] No. I was about to say, let me blow your collective mind and tell you that Prey 2 looks awesome.

[1911] Maybe I'm just blowing Jeff's mind here.

[1912] It has nothing to do with Prey.

[1913] The rest of you seem a lot more open -minded about this.

[1914] Except at that point, why the fuck are you calling it Prey 2?

[1915] Capitalizing off that amazing Prey name.

[1916] Presumably it will connect up to Prey, the rich and elaborate Prey backstory in fiction at some point.

[1917] Is that going to be the co -op mode?

[1918] Potentially.

[1919] Tommy is in there at some point in the story, and that seems like about the only connection.

[1920] The way it starts.

[1921] Prey was okay.

[1922] I had no problem with Prey.

[1923] Prey had a great opening.

[1924] Yes, it did.

[1925] There were some gnarly moments in Prey.

[1926] Definitely.

[1927] There was some dumb shit in that game.

[1928] The end of Prey.

[1929] Not so good.

[1930] I don't remember the end at all.

[1931] You didn't like when you had your awakening when you walked through the spirit path?

[1932] Oh wait, I forgot about that.

[1933] Yeah, Prey was kind of bullshit.

[1934] Prey was like...

[1935] At the time, what was it?

[1936] 2006 when that came out?

[1937] Something like that.

[1938] It was acceptable as a C -level game that everyone gave it B scores because there was nothing else to play.

[1939] It was founded on this whole idea of like...

[1940] Portals.

[1941] Yeah, that was the original portals.

[1942] Yeah, and all this stuff.

[1943] And they used it like twice through the whole course of the game.

[1944] It's like, all right.

[1945] Other portals.

[1946] Guess what?

[1947] I'm inside this crystal ball here.

[1948] All right.

[1949] Guess why?

[1950] No portals.

[1951] Zero portals.

[1952] They've gotten out of the portal market.

[1953] We prayed to when you tell me the description.

[1954] Give the pitch on Prey 2 and don't even mention what Prey, because that sounds exciting.

[1955] It's like an open -world sci -fi bounty hunter game.

[1956] That sounds badass.

[1957] The setup is, so it actually starts during the intro of Prey 1.

[1958] I don't remember this, but they talked about it as if it was sort of like an iconic moment you should remember.

[1959] I do remember.

[1960] It's when you're in that ship, when you first get in the ship and you see a 747.

[1961] There's an airliner in the intro of Prey 1, which, again, I don't remember.

[1962] But apparently...

[1963] The character you play in Prey 2 was on that plane.

[1964] Oh, that's the live action little teaser.

[1965] So I haven't seen that.

[1966] Is that what that's about?

[1967] Yeah, it takes place on a plane.

[1968] So you start Prey 2 like five minutes after that when the plane has crashed on some alien something, space station or whatever, and you're the only survivor and you get out and you start shooting those aliens from Prey 1 and running a straight line.

[1969] And I was like, huh.

[1970] Okay.

[1971] Yeah.

[1972] Great.

[1973] But that's like a five -minute setup, and then you get your ass beat, and you lose consciousness, and then apparently the game picks up like years later.

[1974] And then here it is, nothing to do.

[1975] And then it's a completely different game after that.

[1976] Is that putting prey to bed?

[1977] I was almost like, you could just do that in a cutscene.

[1978] You don't really have to.

[1979] But anyway, so you're this U .S. marshal.

[1980] You're on that plane.

[1981] You end up on this planet called Exodus, which is like, I don't know if the whole thing is covered by city, but it's like a big city planet.

[1982] There's, like, a zillion different alien races there.

[1983] It's, like, a huge metropolis.

[1984] It looks kind of like Blade Runner.

[1985] The catchphrase they're using for the art style is alien noir.

[1986] So it's all, like, it's all dusk, and, you know, there's lots of neon.

[1987] El alien noir coming soon.

[1988] What?

[1989] But, I mean, you know, the look of it is, like.

[1990] You're going to get it sued, man. Okay, sorry, sorry.

[1991] The look of it is something you're kind of used to, you know, probably in a good way.

[1992] A lot of neon, a lot of puddles and glass reflecting the neon.

[1993] All right.

[1994] Wait, who are they using for their puddle tech?

[1995] Speed puddle.

[1996] I think it's all internal.

[1997] Oh, okay.

[1998] Actually, Speed Tree has to do puddles now because they lost the Bethesda.

[1999] That's right.

[2000] That was such a big account for them.

[2001] We've got to figure out a way to turn these trees into puddles.

[2002] We've got nine days, guys.

[2003] Squeeze them.

[2004] Make them blue.

[2005] Make them flat blue.

[2006] I think it's all internal puddle tech.

[2007] It's my favorite kind.

[2008] I'm looking at these notes.

[2009] First person still?

[2010] Yeah, so...

[2011] Human Head is making this, right?

[2012] Same guys.

[2013] Same guys, but I chatted with some of those guys a little bit, and I got the impression that they're pretty sick of the linear run -in -a -straight -line, hide -behind -cover -and -shoot -at -things games.

[2014] That works out great.

[2015] Yeah, same here.

[2016] And they really like open -world stuff.

[2017] They cited Red Dead several times.

[2018] It's similar to Red Dead.

[2019] It's similar to Infamous.

[2020] It's similar to any game that has a rounded area with a bunch of missions in it.

[2021] that you can approach in any order, and that you can do a bunch of side quests in between, and that you have a lot of ways to kind of approach different things with.

[2022] And that people really liked.

[2023] Yeah.

[2024] So first -person open -world game, Skyrim first -person open -world game.

[2025] Rage.

[2026] Rage.

[2027] So pretty much everything you saw there, first person.

[2028] Three first person games with some form of open world.

[2029] What sort of guns do you shoot in Prey 2?

[2030] There are five categories.

[2031] They didn't go into a lot of specifics, but you can probably figure out what the five categories are.

[2032] Human weapons, sci -fi weapons.

[2033] I think it's like pistol, shotgun, that kind of thing.

[2034] There's tons of gadgets, so there's like 20 plus gadgets.

[2035] They didn't go into a lot of them.

[2036] Are there gadgets in Rage 2?

[2037] What's that?

[2038] You gotta find a wire kit and then like three bottle caps or whatever.

[2039] Maybe Bethesda has streamlined the development process too much.

[2040] Maybe they've taken this too far.

[2041] It's just one design die.

[2042] These games all actually do feel pretty different.

[2043] I don't doubt that, but you do like just on paper.

[2044] If you stripped it down.

[2045] Here's the description.

[2046] These all sound like the same game.

[2047] If you reduce it all down, it does.

[2048] To be fair, cross out gun, put sword.

[2049] Man, maybe they should do wet too if they're just going to make it like first person open world acrobatics.

[2050] Are there acrobatics?

[2051] Actually, yes.

[2052] Maybe they shouldn't do what to do.

[2053] There's a big Mirror's Edge -esque urban traversal element to this game.

[2054] The world is pretty much built in such a way that you can access most of it by climbing up ledges or sliding under barriers.

[2055] And it stays in first person?

[2056] Yeah, it never pulls out to third person.

[2057] They didn't let anybody play it, but they said that they have...

[2058] Not completely automated, all of the climbing and jumping and stuff, but they have to a degree that it's not going to frustrate you.

[2059] But yeah, you can climb up ledges.

[2060] You're pretty mobile.

[2061] You see a building and you need to get to the top of it.

[2062] You don't necessarily need to go in the front door and climb every...

[2063] So there's a lot of verticality?

[2064] Because that's not any shooters.

[2065] I would love if there was...

[2066] It's kind of weird.

[2067] You can actually climb up a couple of floors of handholds, and if there are guys over the ledge, you can...

[2068] hang on to the top of the ledge and sort of peek over and, like, take pot shots and duck back down and stuff like that.

[2069] It's hard to picture in first person.

[2070] It is.

[2071] Like, the demo, like, it seemed like there was a consensus reached at this event.

[2072] Like, a lot of people were like, wow, that was really surprisingly awesome.

[2073] It made a really good impression.

[2074] But it's just, it's really open.

[2075] There's a lot of, like, non -linearity, basically.

[2076] You know, like, you can walk around.

[2077] Actually, one of the specific Red Dead examples they gave was, like, you know, you're riding around and you see, like, The woman runs up.

[2078] She's like, oh, my husband's about to be hanged.

[2079] Come help me. Or, like, the stagecoach robbery.

[2080] You know, like, these little events that you would see happening in the world and you could, like, jump in if you wanted to.

[2081] There's a lot of that stuff going on.

[2082] Just kind of randomly generated.

[2083] So, like, they were walking along and they saw, like, this alien getting his ass kicked by all these other aliens.

[2084] And, like, you can go up and kill the bad guys if you want and that guy might, like, give you some money for it.

[2085] Or you could kind of wait until they're done and then, like, go over and loot his corpse.

[2086] You know, there are different ways to interact with that stuff.

[2087] Fallout kind of does that but not well.

[2088] Right.

[2089] Like stuff happens when you're walking around, but it's not interesting.

[2090] It's usually like a crash bug or something.

[2091] Or have you gotten stuck in a crater?

[2092] It's kind of the contrast between like sort of range of possibility versus believability.

[2093] It's like in this there are maybe – because they mentioned they're like, all right, we have come up with like six little scenarios.

[2094] I'm making that number up.

[2095] There are X number of these little scenarios that we have tightly scripted, and they will be scattered around the world, but they will work.

[2096] Whereas Fallout, a zillion things could happen with this broad system they've built, but most of them kind of don't.

[2097] It's a weird contrast.

[2098] Do you have an alien horse or something?

[2099] I don't think so.

[2100] It's like Thundar the Barbarian.

[2101] Yeah.

[2102] There are hover boots at some point.

[2103] So if you're doing the parkour stuff, you can jump off a ledge, and if you have the hover boots, you can sort of glide down to another ledge.

[2104] I like all that stuff.

[2105] That sounds way more interesting than any other part of it.

[2106] I'm just spitting out random factoids here.

[2107] You've got this visor with all these different vision modes in it.

[2108] So there's an economy.

[2109] You make money, and that's how you upgrade all these 20 gadgets and all the weapons you've got.

[2110] They walked into a casino and popped on this visor that scans every alien in the room, and one of them shows up blue, which means he has a bounty on his head.

[2111] So you can walk over to where he's playing craps.

[2112] Alien craps.

[2113] Can I play craps?

[2114] Maybe.

[2115] I don't know.

[2116] They didn't try it.

[2117] What do you think the over -under is that final act of this game, there's some fucking portals?

[2118] I don't know.

[2119] They said pretty explicitly no portals.

[2120] In fact, I believe the phrasing was no portals.

[2121] Maybe they'll just kill Tommy off.

[2122] Possibly.

[2123] He's going to be there.

[2124] What happens when you take a crap bandit?

[2125] So that's the thing.

[2126] It's weird.

[2127] The default posture for your weapon in this game is holstered.

[2128] You don't run around with a weapon sticking out all the time.

[2129] You have to actively pull it out because as soon as you point it at anybody, they're going to react in some way.

[2130] The lesser aliens will cower or run away or whatever, or if you threaten somebody who's not having it, they might go off on you.

[2131] So you can run up behind this guy and pull out your weapon and point it at him if you want, and he'll react in some way.

[2132] You just shoot him immediately.

[2133] You can come up and, like, start talking to them and tell them, like, I'm taking you in or whatever.

[2134] So are there dialogue trees?

[2135] Yeah, there's totally dialogue.

[2136] Like, not full -on trees, but, like, you'll exchange conversation with people.

[2137] But do you have any interaction?

[2138] The way that you interact with them is kind of like if you shoot them or not.

[2139] There are no dialogue trees, but there are ways to answer.

[2140] or make a decision with your fist or your weapon.

[2141] Stuff like that, yeah.

[2142] I mean, it's pretty simplified, but you do have, you definitely, like there was a side mission they showed where you had to find this informant to buy the location of your target.

[2143] And you get there, and he's got a bodyguard, and he's like this sleazy dude, and he wants a ton of money for the location.

[2144] So instead of doing that, you can just like off his bodyguard and then point your gun at him, and he's like, oh, fuck, fine, take it.

[2145] And he gives it to you, but then they were like, you know, if you do that, like he may pop up later.

[2146] and come looking for you with more muscle because you did that.

[2147] Can you get that and then shoot him, get the information, then shoot him?

[2148] I don't know, actually, because it seemed like he had active dialogue, so there's a chance he could be a story kind of guy.

[2149] Maybe there's a chance you shouldn't kill him.

[2150] I don't know how they regulate that stuff.

[2151] Yeah, there's a lot going on in the game.

[2152] There's side missions, there's story missions.

[2153] You can do all this stuff kind of however you want.

[2154] You're on this kind of alien...

[2155] world with all these different aliens there.

[2156] Is there any, like, man, Earth is under attack by these other aliens?

[2157] No reference to Earth at all, but there were definitely no other humans anywhere, and they said...

[2158] They didn't go into a lot of detail, but they were like, yeah, the fact that you're a human and nobody else is kind of plays into the story.

[2159] They find out that you're dragonborn.

[2160] Hopefully.

[2161] They're all in the same universe.

[2162] Mom fucked a dragon alien.

[2163] With the smart system, you can hold down a button to traverse.

[2164] Wait.

[2165] I'm going to get all space nerd here for a second.

[2166] The planet is tidally locked, which means that it's always facing the sun on one side.

[2167] So there's actually like three different city hubs that you go to.

[2168] And like one is on the day side and one is on the night side.

[2169] Like one is kind of like right in between.

[2170] So there'll be like, you know, the different kind of aesthetics in the different hubs that you go to.

[2171] It's the night side where all the partying happens.

[2172] I hope so.

[2173] 18 or over on the night side.

[2174] That's right.

[2175] So was that the biggest surprise for you there?

[2176] That game looks cool.

[2177] Yeah, surprise, definitely.

[2178] Absolutely.

[2179] And they had Brink and Hunted, too, which are both out in a month.

[2180] Brink's never coming out.

[2181] Brink's out, dude.

[2182] They pushed out the release by one week.

[2183] Is that their first -person game?

[2184] First -person open -world game?

[2185] It is first -person.

[2186] Yeah.

[2187] There are open spaces.

[2188] Is that their first -person acrobatics?

[2189] It's in a world.

[2190] There are acrobatics.

[2191] There is persistent.

[2192] Definitely.

[2193] Sinking points.

[2194] I found myself wondering if the whole Brink getting moved up a week was a part of the plan all along.

[2195] Like, okay, we're delaying it like a year and a half, but then right at the end we're going to move it up a week and everyone will have forgotten that we delayed it.

[2196] Whoa, they must be on top of their ships.

[2197] Everyone would be so stoked.

[2198] Like, oh, they're shipping early.

[2199] According to, I asked Paul Wedgwood, how did you pull that off?

[2200] And he said, we passed cert the first time.

[2201] Like, they didn't have to go back to cert, so supposedly that gave them an extra week.

[2202] And they moved Hunt It up, too.

[2203] That was supposed to come out the week of E3, and now that is May 31st.

[2204] And that's that weird, like, Gears of War...

[2205] It is very...

[2206] Tolkien...

[2207] Very...

[2208] Fantasy Gears of War.

[2209] Like, low fantasy Gears of War, definitely.

[2210] It's co -op.

[2211] It's got a heavier loot component than I realized.

[2212] It's got straight -up, like, green, blue, purple, coated loot.

[2213] Was that playable?

[2214] Yeah, I played it.

[2215] Does it automatically sell the trash loot?

[2216] I don't think you can sell anything in that game.

[2217] Add that to your standards.

[2218] In fact, you know what?

[2219] You don't have an inventory.

[2220] When you pick up a new shield, you drop a little shield.

[2221] Everything is trash.

[2222] That's it.

[2223] I like that.

[2224] Yeah, it's very simplified and streamlined.

[2225] It was actually pretty fun.

[2226] I was pretty skeptical about that game, but the co -op stuff was pretty neat.

[2227] It's got some technical issues.

[2228] And it's almost out, so that's a little worrisome.

[2229] Strong lineup.

[2230] That's a hell of a trip.

[2231] All around at this event.

[2232] That's a lot of big games.

[2233] It was a lot of stuff, yeah.

[2234] And those big three, yeah, all three of those.

[2235] They pray to say anything about release?

[2236] Next year.

[2237] For sure.

[2238] Definitely not this year.

[2239] So, I mean, if that game is at least a year away, then unless that's all they've done and they have to build a game now.

[2240] It looks awesome.

[2241] Right.

[2242] Next time we see it at E3, it's like, well, no, there's portals.

[2243] We got rid of all that acrobatic shit.

[2244] Actually, Tommy's the main character.

[2245] Tommy's the main guy.

[2246] The other stuff was kind of cool, but it wasn't working.

[2247] This will just be like a reverse Metal Gear Solid 2 bait and switch.

[2248] You think, oh, thank God, I don't have to play this stuff.

[2249] Oh!

[2250] After, like, the first hour, I'm playing this fucking Tommy.

[2251] God damn it.

[2252] Does it really matter?

[2253] You can't see what he looks like.

[2254] Tommy just wakes up.

[2255] He just bummed me out.

[2256] Actually, I didn't.

[2257] Yeah.

[2258] Wake up, Tommy.

[2259] I don't remember.

[2260] All right.

[2261] See, it's everyone.

[2262] It's all the other bad, like, racist, stereotypical.

[2263] It's all the stuff you put out of your mind.

[2264] Yeah.

[2265] Yeah, you remind me all the shit I didn't like about.

[2266] I got absolutely no indication that there's going to be any of that, like, spirituality and stuff in this one.

[2267] In fact, I got a direct indication that there will not be that stuff.

[2268] Do you get to kill your girlfriend?

[2269] Hopefully.

[2270] All right.

[2271] Kill Tommy's girlfriend.

[2272] She's an alien.

[2273] Again.

[2274] Again.

[2275] She's got a bounty on her.

[2276] Brad, you play anything outside of the Bethesda thing we're talking about?

[2277] You had some magic up on your...

[2278] My girlfriend played a lot more of that than I did, sadly, for me. Getting new achievements.

[2279] Trying to play.

[2280] I think that was it.

[2281] You just were leaving copies of Audiosurf running.

[2282] Yeah.

[2283] Let's see.

[2284] Actually, it was mostly Toki Tori.

[2285] That was a good low -impact one to run for like 48 hours without...

[2286] Touching it.

[2287] It didn't work.

[2288] Fat lot of good that did.

[2289] Fucking ass.

[2290] No, I'm not going to.

[2291] I'm not going to get bent out of shape.

[2292] As of this recording, we don't know what's happening.

[2293] Actually, I didn't expect it to come out.

[2294] Did you ever find out what happened with all the numbers when the potatoes ran out?

[2295] It sounded like it was going to unlock a little bit early.

[2296] A couple of hours?

[2297] Yeah.

[2298] Everything could have changed while we've been in here, so it's fairly worthless.

[2299] People are playing it right now.

[2300] Portal 3 is out right now.

[2301] I have to say it was really funny, too.

[2302] I was frantically refreshing that page, trying to figure out dates and all the people that have come up with weird timers.

[2303] I was leaving AudioSurf running, and then I was playing Portal 2 on the Xbox while that was happening.

[2304] That was the thing.

[2305] At some point, I'm like, what am I doing?

[2306] I played through it.

[2307] I was like, why does he care?

[2308] I was sitting there going like...

[2309] Fucking stop it, you assholes.

[2310] You're going to screw up our...

[2311] Because we already agreed to an embargo time, and if this comes out before then, then we're boned on that.

[2312] I'm stressing out over that shit the entire time.

[2313] I'm like, my embargoes!

[2314] You guys are going to ruin my embargoes, and everyone's going to be playing it.

[2315] I'll have to do this earlier.

[2316] Oh, fuck.

[2317] But I've played through Portal 2 twice, so I'm good.

[2318] You're all good?

[2319] Yeah.

[2320] I played through the first one again.

[2321] I might play through it again.

[2322] Yeah, I also played through the first one twice the weekend prior.

[2323] Yeah, I did that on Sunday.

[2324] It took like an hour and a half.

[2325] Yeah, once you know it, it's really enjoyable.

[2326] Well, it's nice when you can just, when you say, all right, I'm just going to enjoy the setting, the style, the dialogue and all that stuff.

[2327] I have to stress out and bang my head against this.

[2328] It was like a little packing game that came with Half -Life when it came out.

[2329] It took like four hours the first time.

[2330] Half it's the puzzles.

[2331] Once you know the puzzles, you just kind of enjoy it for GLaDOS.

[2332] Soak it in.

[2333] I understand the puzzles in the new one become devilish.

[2334] Is that accurate?

[2335] Devilish?

[2336] Yes.

[2337] Diabolical, in fact.

[2338] It makes you feel real smart.

[2339] They're as hard as they were in the first game.

[2340] There's more moving parts.

[2341] Yeah, there's more mechanics, right?

[2342] Yeah, but by the time...

[2343] I found some stuff trickier because the environments were larger, and I found there were multiple situations where I was like, I don't even know where I'm supposed to be headed.

[2344] I think I know what you're talking about specifically.

[2345] There were a couple times where I was like, I'm not sure what...

[2346] There was a ramp that goes over this ledge, and there's this...

[2347] Is it because it's not test chamber facility?

[2348] Is the organic nature of the environment?

[2349] I don't know very much about it except for the screenshots.

[2350] Yeah, I really want to ask if the – The structure of the game breaks from the regimented test room after test room sort of format that I kind of don't also want to know.

[2351] I mean, that's the thing.

[2352] I don't want to speak too specifically at this point.

[2353] I'm not actually going to ask that.

[2354] Everyone should know that there's more environmental variety in this game than there was in the first game.

[2355] I will say that, and I will say that it's not always tests.

[2356] The first game wasn't always tests.

[2357] There is some of that.

[2358] Yes, I'm getting dripped on.

[2359] By the end of the game, the last 30 minutes are...

[2360] You applying that to the warehouse environments and jumping around.

[2361] Which was actually my favorite part of the game, honestly.

[2362] So this has some back and forth.

[2363] This has a lot more story to it.

[2364] This has a lot more plot.

[2365] The first game was all about the reveal.

[2366] The first game was all about, hey, we actually have a plot and also we're trying to murder you.

[2367] That was really kind of that game's big move, right?

[2368] So once that cat's out of the bag, you kind of have to just start...

[2369] telling a story.

[2370] You can't reset back to, we don't know who Aperture Science is, we don't know what Gladys is up to, we don't know that this voice is attached to a name or an AI or any of this other stuff.

[2371] That was actually my concern going into Portal 2, that it was going to be a victim of the first game's success and brilliance.

[2372] They push against so much that defined that first game.

[2373] The game was very easily defined because there wasn't a lot to it.

[2374] Because it was small white test rooms, it was the voice.

[2375] That was really it.

[2376] It was cubes.

[2377] It was the companion cube.

[2378] It was the song.

[2379] And turrets.

[2380] And turrets.

[2381] A few little elements here and there.

[2382] But I'm saying it's like half a dozen elements really define that game.

[2383] Yeah, sure.

[2384] And a lot of that stuff is still in there.

[2385] But they don't lean on it.

[2386] With very, very rare occasion do they stay away from the easy jokes.

[2387] No cake jokes.

[2388] Yeah, I will say no cake jokes.

[2389] All right.

[2390] They've said as much.

[2391] Yeah, they're like – yeah.

[2392] Yeah, I have been fucking sick and tired of hearing cake jokes for a year at least.

[2393] It's time for pie jokes.

[2394] So I can't imagine how sick and tired those guys are of hearing that stuff.

[2395] I think that for the most part though, Jeff, in my experience, like the bigger environments, if you try looking at every nook and cranny, it's – For me, it was like when you get portal vision.

[2396] In the first game, you eventually reach a point where you look at elements like, okay, that's a panel where I'm going to want to shoot a portal.

[2397] Let's look on the other side.

[2398] Okay, I'm going to go around this corner.

[2399] Okay, there's going to be a pit here.

[2400] I'm going to use that to fling over that barrier.

[2401] You start thinking that way.

[2402] I guess at that point in that game, I had kind of gotten to that point.

[2403] You start thinking with portals.

[2404] I got to a point.

[2405] I think I got portal fatigue or something where I could no longer see it.

[2406] Yeah.

[2407] And it was just like, all right, I got it.

[2408] I can see that too.

[2409] There were definitely puzzles in that game where it's like, okay, I need to stop playing this damn game.

[2410] And I would stop playing and then play like four more hours of Mortal Kombat and then come back to Portal and then immediately solve that puzzle.

[2411] It was like that sort of stuff.

[2412] Were you trying too hard?

[2413] Yeah, I think so.

[2414] I mean, that was definitely just don't see it.

[2415] And also the introduction of the new kind of gameplay stuff that they do have in there.

[2416] Yeah.

[2417] broke my old thinking of how to solve the original portal problems.

[2418] Like I was trying to solve everything with this new stuff.

[2419] But then when they start mixing the new and the old together, like after you've gone through basically all the tutorialized stuff, yeah, like putting it all together at the late parts of the game is like...

[2420] I know exactly what you mean.

[2421] There was definitely a moment where I was like, how do I get this...

[2422] Light bridge.

[2423] Like I can't use – oh, wait.

[2424] It's like, oh, wait.

[2425] I have a gun that shoots portals.

[2426] What the fuck am I doing?

[2427] I could just use that.

[2428] What am I doing?

[2429] Idiot.

[2430] It's – yeah.

[2431] So it's – I feel like though that all that new stuff, all the new mechanics, like they blend them together and it can definitely get pretty crazy at times.

[2432] But they – Just like the first game, they playtested the shit out of this.

[2433] So they figured out pretty much the right moment to like, okay, this is when we need to kind of explain what this thing does.

[2434] And there's some stuff they straight up just don't explain.

[2435] There's some stuff that you get to it and they introduce it and you just like figure it out.

[2436] And you just figure it out.

[2437] And it just works that way.

[2438] And it's actually kind of impressive.

[2439] And it's one of those things that they couldn't have known just designing that game on their own.

[2440] That's something that they would have had to have figured out by putting it in front of people over and over again and iterating and saying, well, if we put this around this corner or if we shine a light on this.

[2441] Shining lights on stuff.

[2442] This is the Valve way.

[2443] If you want to figure out where you need to go, where is the light source?

[2444] You mean a literal light.

[2445] I mean literally shining a light.

[2446] There's a flashlight pointing at this thing.

[2447] Yeah, yeah.

[2448] Like in some of the big kind of cavernous areas.

[2449] Are you talking like during like puzzles or like just kind of in between areas?

[2450] Puzzles, yeah, yeah.

[2451] Not the in between stuff.

[2452] Oh, okay.

[2453] Then that stuff.

[2454] There was definitely like one hole.

[2455] There was one like in between area that was really crazy.

[2456] I'm just like I have no idea where I'm even going.

[2457] Yeah.

[2458] And then.

[2459] I mean there's a certain amount of exploration that goes on in that game.

[2460] codified puzzle, and then also when you're in these kind of other areas.

[2461] Yeah.

[2462] Which I didn't mind because that game, I think it looks fucking great.

[2463] I think that Valve is continuing to stretch their tech.

[2464] This game also, more than the first game, looks like a Valve game.

[2465] As far as the types of environments, Valve loves really detailed industrial spaces.

[2466] Because, yeah, Portal didn't feel like a Valve game until you got to the warehouse stuff, and then immediately all those textures reminded you of all the stuff in the Half -Life games.

[2467] This even, like, there's things about the pacing, there's things about the storytelling, there's definitely a lot about the look of the game.

[2468] This falls in line with kind of the greater Valve vision.

[2469] Yeah, ending the Portal kind of looked like Black Mesa, didn't it?

[2470] Yeah.

[2471] Come to think of it, yeah.

[2472] Now, Jeff, you have not taken to the humor in Portal 2.

[2473] I think that there are parts of it that are very funny, but at the same time, I feel like there are characters that you spend a lot of time with or hearing from that you have heard from a lot in the past.

[2474] There were parts where it's like, okay, yeah, I get it.

[2475] Sure.

[2476] Like, yeah, okay, yeah.

[2477] No, it's very funny.

[2478] Like, too much GLaDOS?

[2479] Yeah.

[2480] Is that what you're saying?

[2481] That's, like, GLaDOS doing the GLaDOS thing.

[2482] Like, is that possible?

[2483] Like, objectively, it's funny, but I've gotten enough of it.

[2484] Yeah, absolutely, but yeah, it was definitely like, okay, I've seen kind of enough of that.

[2485] And they know to flip some stuff, and, you know, there are multiple, there are plenty of characters in that game, and I think that all the other characters are very funny.

[2486] I also think that some of that stuff, You run into cases where the best bits of dialogue or some of the best bits of dialogue in that game are in trailers for that game.

[2487] Which is unfortunate.

[2488] Pretty deliberately.

[2489] Yeah.

[2490] I could see that being a ruiner for sure.

[2491] But I have managed to dodge most of the trailers.

[2492] Like I saw some of the very early stuff.

[2493] But I was like, okay, got it.

[2494] So you're talking like the actual game trailers?

[2495] Like the promo stuff?

[2496] Like the Cave Johnson?

[2497] Yeah, like specifically the Cave Johnson stuff.

[2498] Oh, really?

[2499] Really?

[2500] The whole reason I watched that was because I was like, oh, this is safe.

[2501] It's not the game.

[2502] Man. That's kind of frustrating.

[2503] He's a good character.

[2504] He's a great character.

[2505] Those lines are killer.

[2506] He's a great character.

[2507] That's a bummer.

[2508] At the time when those trailers came out, I was like, man, they got him in the booth and did more lines with him for these trailers.

[2509] It's amazing.

[2510] J .K. Simmons, what a sport.

[2511] You did him for free.

[2512] I think some of that stuff is custom for the trailer.

[2513] But enough of it that you were kind of.

[2514] Yeah.

[2515] Yeah.

[2516] Yeah.

[2517] I did not see any of that stuff, so I really enjoyed it.

[2518] I don't know.

[2519] I want to hear about platforms because you played it on the Xbox and the PC.

[2520] I did play it on the Xbox and the PC.

[2521] If you could only play this game on one platform ever, what would it be?

[2522] I guess what is more important, single -player or multiplayer?

[2523] I don't understand how that's relevant.

[2524] Because voice chat is clutch.

[2525] Voice chat is built into Steam.

[2526] That's not an issue.

[2527] Yeah, I don't have a headset on my PC.

[2528] If you have a headset on your PC.

[2529] I do.

[2530] And you have someone to play it with.

[2531] Everybody I know that I play PC games with online has headsets.

[2532] I don't have a headset on my PC.

[2533] I don't play PC games with you.

[2534] And I'm not going to start.

[2535] So my first playthrough on PC for Portal 2.

[2536] Actually, I have a webcam hooked up on my PC.

[2537] It's got a microphone on it.

[2538] Sorry.

[2539] And so I played through it on that like eight hours.

[2540] I could just plug an Xbox 360 headset into my Xbox 360 controller that's plugged into the PC.

[2541] He's not getting it.

[2542] It's not getting that.

[2543] Actually, I do have that on my PC.

[2544] That's what I have, and it sounds like shit.

[2545] We can play like that.

[2546] You and I can play that way.

[2547] We'll play Portal 2 on the PC with Xbox controllers and the Xbox Live headsets.

[2548] With webcams.

[2549] It looks better, but here's the thing about Portal.

[2550] This is true of the first Portal, and it remains true in Portal 2.

[2551] Most of the time, it's not about split -second movement.

[2552] If you're needing to move really quickly to complete a puzzle, you're doing it wrong.

[2553] There were puzzles that I did wrong deliberately.

[2554] After I completed them using the multiple portal to keep falling further technique, I would then be up there and see, oh, I was supposed to do this puzzle this totally other way.

[2555] I did a few that way, too.

[2556] Right.

[2557] You get sent into, I can just use the flinging, and I'm going to use the multiple flinging thing.

[2558] Oh, wait, I could just go up there once and then drop down and it's one fling and then I'm there.

[2559] Yeah, exactly.

[2560] Yeah.

[2561] So, yeah, you're right.

[2562] They have typically pretty easy, like, low -intensity solutions to most of the puzzles.

[2563] I was actually talking more about the visuals than the controls.

[2564] It looks way better on the PC.

[2565] It's still – so going from playing eight hours on the PC and then when we were at Valve, we did that quick -look roadshow with the riders.

[2566] We did that on the Xbox because it was easier to capture with the data that we have.

[2567] No disrespect to PC.

[2568] Those who were wondering.

[2569] And Drew and I are going like, oh, this looks a lot worse than the PC version.

[2570] I should just not look up the PC version if I'm only going to play the Xbox.

[2571] Worse is a relative term, right?

[2572] But then a week passed and we got our 360 copies in the office and I put it in and played through it and it was fine.

[2573] I think that I have not seen the PC version.

[2574] I think it looks fine on 360.

[2575] I bet it looks way better on PC.

[2576] It's all relative.

[2577] But I think it's just...

[2578] It's not the same.

[2579] sort of thing where you're going to look at it and go, oh, this looks disgusting.

[2580] No, absolutely not.

[2581] And the frame rate keeps up.

[2582] It's like someone put a piece of poop on my TV.

[2583] It is not like that.

[2584] For me, it's more like Norm keeps reminding us you only get one.

[2585] Wow, this sounds really dumb.

[2586] You only get one first time playing through this game.

[2587] That's absolutely true.

[2588] I kind of want to play through it on the one that is going to look amazing.

[2589] With the way Valve sends out review copies, I played Portal for the first time on an Xbox.

[2590] No, that was fine.

[2591] Yeah, but he's right.

[2592] I went through and played it on the PC afterwards just because I felt like I should.

[2593] It was like, man, this is so much better, but I kind of don't care anymore because I already know.

[2594] Yeah, because you already played it.

[2595] I feel like Valve is the last company making first -person games that are kind of meant to be played on a PC.

[2596] Yeah, like it looks better, but in the ways that PC games look better of higher resolution.

[2597] I was just wondering because it's been like 18 months, right, since a new Valve game came out?

[2598] Sure.

[2599] Left 4 Dead would have been October 12th.

[2600] Like they're still calling it the source engine, but it's really interesting to see how that thing is changing.

[2601] They just don't give a number to it.

[2602] This could be 4 .6.

[2603] They're not into branding it because they don't license it the way that Unreal does.

[2604] It definitely seems to be evolving just from the look of that game.

[2605] I mean, yeah, it keeps up with the big spaces.

[2606] Some really, really good lighting.

[2607] Yeah, that was the thing.

[2608] Really excellent lighting.

[2609] Maybe not the most technically complicated lighting, but really dramatic lighting in certain areas of that game.

[2610] Yeah, and that game is just, I feel, is just visually extremely dense.

[2611] It's crazy.

[2612] Any given room you go into, like, again, the first game was almost defined by lack of features.

[2613] Like, it has this very specific aesthetic, and it really milks that for all it's worth.

[2614] But this game's these huge rooms, and, like...

[2615] So I was playing for some footage, and they show this bit in one of the trailers, I think.

[2616] You see where the turrets are being assembled.

[2617] You're going through the turret factory at this one point.

[2618] And there's this one section.

[2619] I think there's maybe only one or two of these.

[2620] Maybe there's a few more.

[2621] I don't recall specifically.

[2622] But a little panel where you can see where the turrets are being assembled.

[2623] And it's this...

[2624] Involved process of like, all right, center column comes up, arms come out, then grab the panels on.

[2625] I probably spent like about three minutes just sitting there watching that happen over and over again.

[2626] Just going like, man, this is awesome.

[2627] It's involved.

[2628] It's very detailed and specific.

[2629] The first time I played that game, I fucking blew right past that.

[2630] I never saw that the first time that I played.

[2631] It took like my third approach through this level for me to actually slow down enough to go, oh, hey, there's this crazy thing that's here.

[2632] The box at the end is really funny.

[2633] That I will see.

[2634] And then.

[2635] Run off.

[2636] You know?

[2637] There's...

[2638] Yeah, the game is just...

[2639] A ton of amazing, hilarious signage.

[2640] I actually...

[2641] My first playthrough, I actually specifically sat there with my phone and took pictures every time I saw a great sign.

[2642] I'm like, this is...

[2643] I need to have this for personal records.

[2644] The...

[2645] Oh, I shouldn't...

[2646] I shouldn't say it.

[2647] What's that?

[2648] Protocol.

[2649] I'm going to have to delete that part now because we can't talk about...

[2650] Really?

[2651] Yeah.

[2652] Really?

[2653] People should enjoy...

[2654] People should have...

[2655] For their own.

[2656] You should just bleep every instance of the phrase that we just said.

[2657] Don't actually cut it out.

[2658] Just bleep it.

[2659] Bleep it from my ears.

[2660] I'll bleep out.

[2661] I didn't bleep it from my memory.

[2662] See what you're doing.

[2663] I thought you were going to say that was like a bullet point on the embargo.

[2664] Like, do not discuss.

[2665] Oh, you did it again.

[2666] Stop doing it.

[2667] Yeah.

[2668] Like I said, I don't want to talk too much more specifics.

[2669] Tell me about the co -op.

[2670] It's crazy.

[2671] Is it fun?

[2672] Yes.

[2673] How frustrating.

[2674] Yes.

[2675] It depends.

[2676] I played some with Drew and I played some with Jeff.

[2677] Jeff, what did you think of it?

[2678] It's okay.

[2679] Because I feel like I like the concept of portal co -op more than maybe it would be to actually work with someone to do portal co -op.

[2680] So I'm curious how the, like, markers that they have built in to, like, communicate.

[2681] The markers and the communication I think is great.

[2682] You can initiate countdowns and stuff because they're things that you need to do, you know, like timing -oriented stuff.

[2683] You can hold down a button to get, like, partner view so you can always see what they're doing if you're separated, which is helpful.

[2684] But at the end of the day, I like to play Portal slowly.

[2685] I like to take in the environments.

[2686] I like to spend a lot of time looking at stuff.

[2687] And just the pressure of having someone else in that environment was enough to...

[2688] Point number one, are these at all the same levels from the campaign in any way?

[2689] No. Entirely new campaign, the co -op separate characters.

[2690] You're playing as a robot.

[2691] Different dialogue.

[2692] So number two, is there even the detail there to appreciate?

[2693] Do they bother to put that in since you're kind of being...

[2694] I feel like there's just enough.

[2695] It's not quite the same level.

[2696] There's still plenty of audio gags.

[2697] Oh yeah, you mentioned dialogue, so there is story.

[2698] Is there a narrative?

[2699] Yeah, there's something of it.

[2700] Is there a conclusion?

[2701] Like when you finish it?

[2702] I'm not going to talk about that stuff.

[2703] You don't want to know that stuff.

[2704] Stop.

[2705] Really?

[2706] Is that a spoiler that there's a story in there?

[2707] Stop putting me to...

[2708] This is pretty vague.

[2709] Does it relate to the single player?

[2710] Yes.

[2711] Are you Gordon Freeman?

[2712] God damn it.

[2713] I have to bleep that out, too.

[2714] Oh, that was the thing I was going to bring up on that fucking countdown page.

[2715] You see that tiny ghostly image of the G -Man?

[2716] Yes, you do.

[2717] No, really?

[2718] Did you see that?

[2719] No, I didn't see it.

[2720] Oh, dude, who knows at this point what has happened with it.

[2721] You can see his hair.

[2722] By the time people are listening to this, but if people took a screen grab and jacked the contrast way up and very clear image of the G -Man on that page.

[2723] Oh, that's great.

[2724] I don't know what's going on.

[2725] That's great.

[2726] That's outstanding.

[2727] To Jeff's point about the co -op, I kind of have to agree.

[2728] You got to know the person that you're playing with.

[2729] You have to have no randoms.

[2730] The game even suggests it has an option to find a random partner, but even when you go to hit that button, it's like, hey, man, really, you want to play with a friend.

[2731] Don't fuck this up.

[2732] Being in the same room as Drew when we were playing it.

[2733] I'm sure that must have been helpful.

[2734] I kind of think that would be the ideal way to play.

[2735] You could play it in the same household.

[2736] Yeah, I haven't actually looked at that.

[2737] It's got split screen on consoles.

[2738] At least on the 360, maybe on the PS3.

[2739] Probably on the PS3.

[2740] And you could choose what kind of split screen it is.

[2741] Like vertical.

[2742] I want diagonal.

[2743] It doesn't have the meshing.

[2744] Who plays vertical?

[2745] If you do vertical on a widescreen, you have two non -widescreen views.

[2746] Oh, that's true.

[2747] Horizontal, that's crazy.

[2748] You have widescreen?

[2749] Can I get a 4?

[2750] That's 32 by 9?

[2751] I have to crush Vinny's hopes and dreams.

[2752] You cannot play PS3.

[2753] Early reports from people who bought the PS3 version over the weekend are that the PC copy that comes with the PS3 version, you cannot play co -op between.

[2754] Yeah, because it ties to your Steam account.

[2755] Because it's on the same account.

[2756] So what if you had a separate Steam account?

[2757] Well, you're attaching that free copy to the Steam account you're logging in onto on your PS3.

[2758] There's no way to put the copy on another.

[2759] Well, you can't play your free copy with your purchased copy.

[2760] But you can play PS3 to PC.

[2761] Yes, normally, yes.

[2762] But just not that same copy.

[2763] That's a bummer.

[2764] Even if you don't understand how to do it.

[2765] Even if you're like...

[2766] It's my copy.

[2767] You can let me do local co -op.

[2768] No, because you can't log into Steam from two different locations.

[2769] It doesn't work.

[2770] Steam doesn't work like that.

[2771] So you're logged in on Steam on the PS3.

[2772] You can bring up the Steam overlay in that game.

[2773] It's too bad you couldn't say guest or something and somehow have it connect, but I guess it's asking a lot.

[2774] You're getting a free copy.

[2775] I read that when you play through the PS3 version, you get the Steam achievements and the trophies at the same time.

[2776] Yep.

[2777] That's crazy.

[2778] In lockstep is the verbiage.

[2779] It's kind of a bummer.

[2780] Yeah, well, when you beat Portal 2 on the 360, you get a companion cube for your avatar.

[2781] And it looks fucking sick.

[2782] Yeah, I saw it.

[2783] It's not bad.

[2784] I like it.

[2785] I'm sure I will get sick of it when every single person has that.

[2786] It'll be fun for a week until everyone has it.

[2787] It's not like Meat Boy where not that many people have it.

[2788] No, it's going to be ubiquitous.

[2789] Yeah, it definitely will be because a lot of people are going to play this game.

[2790] And I encourage them to.

[2791] You'll like it.

[2792] I like it a lot.

[2793] I think it's a lot of fun.

[2794] I think they've stepped up.

[2795] Portal has graduated.

[2796] Portal is now as important to the Valve Pantheon as any other of their games.

[2797] Oh, man. I shouldn't say this.

[2798] I would argue that it is the most important to me. I was going to say, not knowing how this game ends.

[2799] Especially if they keep linking it up with Half -Life in the way that they have been.

[2800] But don't say anything.

[2801] We're going to move on.

[2802] Stop bringing it up.

[2803] I don't know what happens.

[2804] Yeah, but they're going to blink.

[2805] We're going to move on.

[2806] Jeff hasn't finished it yet.

[2807] Oh, really?

[2808] I haven't finished it yet.

[2809] We're either going to blink.

[2810] Yeah, we're going to move on.

[2811] No more story.

[2812] No more I hate to.

[2813] That's an impression.

[2814] What's that?

[2815] That's exactly what I am annoyed by every time.

[2816] I don't want to.

[2817] Hmm.

[2818] Well.

[2819] This really is Half -Life 3, right?

[2820] The title card changes after you beat it once.

[2821] So I was up at Valve last week, so I wasn't here to be part of the podcast.

[2822] So I couldn't say that I played Supremacy MMA.

[2823] Oh, yeah.

[2824] A few weeks ago.

[2825] Yeah.

[2826] That was some time back, and I just wanted to mention something about that, having now actually gotten some hands -on time with X. You can play as ladies in that game, can't you?

[2827] I believe there's a ladies' league.

[2828] They didn't show me any of that stuff.

[2829] I was just playing as the dudes.

[2830] That game's kind of Tekken.

[2831] Yeah.

[2832] They brought it by and didn't let us play it a while back.

[2833] And I sat in on that meeting and saw some of that, and I thought it looked interesting.

[2834] Yeah.

[2835] It's like, you know, each...

[2836] Each character, each dude has their own fighting style and it significantly impacts.

[2837] It's going the other way from UFC or esports MMA where the mixed martial art is the homogenized martial art. This dude is a fucking kickboxer.

[2838] This dude is a Russian bear wrestler.

[2839] This guy's Paul Phoenix.

[2840] That's right.

[2841] This guy can do this crazy circular kick.

[2842] Did you say beer wrestler?

[2843] Bear.

[2844] Oh, man. Like, he's got that pose.

[2845] He's got that.

[2846] It's a Zangief kind of thing.

[2847] Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[2848] I wanted to know what a beer wrestler is.

[2849] You know what a beer wrestler is.

[2850] All of them.

[2851] Okay.

[2852] Do they really need to be three MMA games?

[2853] No. No. Probably not, but this is...

[2854] But this one's got ladies.

[2855] This one's so much different.

[2856] You can break limbs in this game.

[2857] This one's like the weird, like, we made an M -rate.

[2858] It's like the Blitz the League of MMA games.

[2859] Yeah, sure, sure.

[2860] Can you juice?

[2861] I don't know.

[2862] I don't believe so.

[2863] You can wear down dudes, like different body parts.

[2864] There's like dog fights going on.

[2865] Is that in the environment?

[2866] Actually, that's one of the things that I appreciate about it.

[2867] Dog fights?

[2868] You love dog fights?

[2869] He plays a dog.

[2870] I love Michael.

[2871] And a dog wrestler.

[2872] It's Michael Vick versus a dog.

[2873] To see who's going to be on the cover of Madden.

[2874] That's right.

[2875] No, that dog's part of the lockout.

[2876] He can't.

[2877] Oh.

[2878] Yeah, I know.

[2879] Brad just left.

[2880] He had enough.

[2881] Do you guys have to move your car?

[2882] He loves dogs.

[2883] Is that there?

[2884] What time is it?

[2885] No, we don't have to.

[2886] Okay.

[2887] Just checking.

[2888] Thank you, though.

[2889] It's getting late.

[2890] Dudes look kind of shiny.

[2891] They still had some serious priority and balancing to do with it, but it has a combo system or something that really does.

[2892] I actually said this feels like Tekken, and they said, well, one of our designers is a world champion at Tekken.

[2893] Like in real life?

[2894] Yeah, in real life.

[2895] The actual designer is an actual Tekken tournament.

[2896] Actual Tekken tournaments.

[2897] Like playing the video.

[2898] Actually playing Tekken.

[2899] Iron Fist.

[2900] No, he is not going to the King of Iron Fist tournaments.

[2901] That's a shame.

[2902] He's not entering the Tekken in that regard.

[2903] He's an actual Tekken champ.

[2904] Yeah, just balls and buttons.

[2905] Mishima Zaibatsu is not a sponsor.

[2906] I love that you know that.

[2907] What else?

[2908] I also played Inversion.

[2909] Oh, is that that Namco?

[2910] Uh -huh.

[2911] Oh, okay.

[2912] Yeah, the gravity.

[2913] Real bad looking game.

[2914] Isn't that Saber?

[2915] That's Saber doing that.

[2916] Yeah, that's Gears of War with crazy physics.

[2917] They showed me a section that was really super crazy and kind of played up the ridiculousness of the...

[2918] the gravity situation of like going into this cave and like there's one wall where dudes are running around on and then some dudes are running around on the ceiling and like when you get shit in that range then the area specific gravity takes effect so there's some real bizarre physics going on and you can you know Pick stuff up.

[2919] I don't know if you're using – I think you're using some sort of crazy gravity tech.

[2920] But you can pick stuff up, flinging it, dude.

[2921] So it's big old physics simulation plus Gears of War stuff.

[2922] It handles fine.

[2923] Yeah, I only said bad because when we last saw it, you didn't get to play with any of the cool stuff.

[2924] It was just like sort of a Gears of War -ish looking game with some powers.

[2925] The trailer looked a lot more interesting.

[2926] This plays up that stuff and they still like – February next year is when it's coming out.

[2927] Yeah, they gave it a date.

[2928] Yeah, they gave it a specific date.

[2929] I remember that, and I was thinking, what the fuck are you guys doing?

[2930] I think it was my birthday, February 7th.

[2931] I think they gave it.

[2932] You fucked up giving people your birthday now.

[2933] We'll see how that goes.

[2934] And that looks okay.

[2935] It still weighs off.

[2936] But I played that.

[2937] And I also played Might and Magic, Clash of Heroes.

[2938] Pray to you also has an anti -grav grenade.

[2939] Does it push you into a portal?

[2940] Oh, yes.

[2941] You know what?

[2942] I lied and they lied.

[2943] There was actually a portal in the demo.

[2944] But not in the way that you think.

[2945] I'm just going to say it.

[2946] How is there another way?

[2947] Now everything is up now.

[2948] It's not a portal.

[2949] It was actually kind of neat.

[2950] It was kind of a neat...

[2951] There are speed trees.

[2952] Everything is thrown into...

[2953] They locked it all behind the portal.

[2954] It was kind of take this long for the Utah brainwash to wear off.

[2955] You're like, wait, there was a four.

[2956] You should see how it is to drink in that state.

[2957] It's weird.

[2958] Oh, yeah.

[2959] I like the local.

[2960] I don't know if this applies to like beer made elsewhere, but the local beer, I think it's like it has to be under 4%.

[2961] Yeah, yeah.

[2962] Because you get so much more.

[2963] Because it's Utah.

[2964] Yeah, I don't think it's an altitude thing.

[2965] The weirder thing was the liquor.

[2966] They have these little clicker devices that go on top of the bottles because they can only legally serve an ounce and a half.

[2967] Per serving, essentially.

[2968] Oh, right.

[2969] So they can't overpour.

[2970] You turn it upside down, you click it, and it fills up exactly an ounce of half inside this thing, and then you open a little door and it pours out.

[2971] It's really weird.

[2972] Can you ask for two clicks?

[2973] No. Wow.

[2974] I think you'd have to come back and buy another drink.

[2975] Yeah, you literally can't ask for a double.

[2976] It was weird.

[2977] Can you drink?

[2978] If you do a shot, can you do it and then just ask for another one?

[2979] I don't know.

[2980] Is there a time period?

[2981] That's a good question.

[2982] Are you a cop?

[2983] You've got to tell me if you are.

[2984] I don't know.

[2985] That's also not true.

[2986] I got pretty close with that whiskey distillery because I had like eight of them in pretty short succession.

[2987] Find your own portal.

[2988] I was holding steady that night.

[2989] Speed and trees.

[2990] Speed and trees.

[2991] The portal in Prey, they actually found kind of a neat non -gameplay related way to like just establish, yes, there were portals in this universe.

[2992] When you track down one of your bounties for a job you had taken from somebody, like when you catch him, you like...

[2993] Throw around some device or whatever, and, like, a portal opens behind him.

[2994] Ghostbusters.

[2995] I don't know if there was a device.

[2996] I can't remember how it worked.

[2997] But anyway, the point is, like, a portal appeared behind the guy, and you, like, sort of levitated him, and you could interrogate him there if you wanted to and, like, zap him or whatever.

[2998] But when you're ready to send him to the guy who wanted to pay for his head or whatever, you just, like, you know, hit a button, and he goes through the portal.

[2999] If the light is green, the portal's clean.

[3000] Basically, yes.

[3001] Man. Anyway.

[3002] Portals.

[3003] Do you guys want to go to news?

[3004] Okay.

[3005] Yeah, I'm sure you're for news.

[3006] Patrick, what's going on in the news?

[3007] Awesome.

[3008] I didn't do anything last week.

[3009] There's that Nintendo?

[3010] We are in a pickle down here.

[3011] Because I have no idea what's going on either.

[3012] A little bit of news out of the Bethesda thing.

[3013] Is all the Nintendo stuff?

[3014] No, I mean like actual...

[3015] Yeah, there's all the Wii sequels.

[3016] I know the stories.

[3017] I just don't know the details.

[3018] I know that EA is getting sued by one of the original programmers of Madden, and it's also a big class action suit.

[3019] That was like two weeks ago.

[3020] No. That was April 8th is when the story was posted.

[3021] Oh, wait, that's like almost two weeks ago.

[3022] Yeah, that's almost two weeks ago.

[3023] The creative director of man left today.

[3024] I wasn't here last week.

[3025] I don't know what happened.

[3026] Was it today?

[3027] I saw some stuff over the weekend that made it seem like he was – The last couple days, creative director left.

[3028] I guess they're forming a new studio in Florida.

[3029] Some casual games thing from the sound of it.

[3030] Probably.

[3031] Yeah.

[3032] That's a – That's usually a good assumption.

[3033] What's this Dead Rising 2 off the record?

[3034] Yeah, we talked about all the Capcom stuff last week.

[3035] That's a what -if type game where they go through the events of Dead Rising 2, but you play as Frank West instead of Chuck Green.

[3036] All right.

[3037] And the load times will be faster.

[3038] I'll take that.

[3039] Oh, they rolled out that shitty update for Netflix for Kinect on the Xbox.

[3040] Yeah, where you can't access your queue.

[3041] It's just a suggested thing.

[3042] So it pulls the suggestions from your queue, but it only shows like six from your queue that it picks at random based on what you like.

[3043] That's cool.

[3044] Also, it doesn't actually show up in the Kinect hub, so I still have to pick up a controller to even launch it.

[3045] So what's the point?

[3046] Yeah, it's...

[3047] Why even do that?

[3048] It's super half -ass.

[3049] When they completely overhaul the whole dash again.

[3050] I know, but just why even put it out?

[3051] I guess because you have nothing else to do with your Kinect.

[3052] When you're watching the movie, can you use the Kinect commands like play, stop?

[3053] Yeah, so once you're in it, it's kind of cool.

[3054] But only for those movies?

[3055] You ultimately have to use a controller to like, I want to pull up because I want to watch Damages or whatever.

[3056] You've got to scroll over to that if it's not in your six that are showing.

[3057] No one's ever said that.

[3058] No. Damage is a good show.

[3059] Yeah, that thing is unfortunate.

[3060] It's frustrating because you want – I want to say Harry Potter.

[3061] That's what I want.

[3062] I want to be able to say like Xbox, Netflix and then have it launch and then be able to be like next page, next page.

[3063] Like I want that shit in there and I feel like the tech is there.

[3064] They can make it happen.

[3065] They're just – They're sucking at it.

[3066] They're sucking at their own thing.

[3067] They're not taking advantage of the shit that they have proprietary exclusive access to.

[3068] It's more that if they make Netflix a very pleasant experience, then you might not buy anything on Zune ever again.

[3069] I don't even turn...

[3070] I mean, I use the Netflix on PS3 now because it got way better.

[3071] No, but theoretically somebody might.

[3072] And also they give me purchase options if I want to buy fucking dumb movies on the PlayStation store.

[3073] So if I'm going to do anything like that, it's not going to be with the Zune thing.

[3074] You could buy, like, the SD and HD versions of Tron Legacy.

[3075] But not get bought the 3A version.

[3076] It was weird.

[3077] Like, the pricing on that on the PlayStation Store is odd.

[3078] But anyway.

[3079] Haven't you bought that thing, like, seven times now?

[3080] This was when I was, like, Jones, like, when I bought it and it hadn't shown up yet.

[3081] And I was like, I just want to watch it.

[3082] And so I was thinking about renting it through PlayStation Store.

[3083] The disc is on the other side of the room.

[3084] Let's rent it.

[3085] Xbox!

[3086] Rent something!

[3087] Ah, you suck, Xbox!

[3088] See, I yell at my PlayStation like that, and it just doesn't care either, so...

[3089] Same difference, I guess.

[3090] You know what?

[3091] You know what needs connect integration is delivery .com.

[3092] I don't get it up there.

[3093] Not in the burps.

[3094] Not at all?

[3095] There's nothing new in sports.

[3096] Nothing like that?

[3097] Oh, dude.

[3098] Yeah.

[3099] I should really open up my delivery .com account and give you a disgusting amount of points on that thing.

[3100] I don't know.

[3101] Mine might be up there now.

[3102] We should compare.

[3103] Because remember, I was living in that apartment for that year and a half that the Safeway was not there.

[3104] Oh, yeah.

[3105] Oh, my God.

[3106] What would you do without that Safeway?

[3107] Delivery .com.

[3108] Holy shit.

[3109] Wow.

[3110] I'm so sick of Andy's right now.

[3111] I can't even tell you.

[3112] Yeah, go to.

[3113] That was my shit.

[3114] Get us here some barbecue pork fried rice and get the Kung Pao chicken.

[3115] I don't like their Kung Pao.

[3116] It's getting too late in the day for us to be talking about dinner foods because I'm fucking dying.

[3117] Yeah, I'm really over here.

[3118] Me too.

[3119] Xbox.

[3120] But we have to tell you.

[3121] Xbox News.

[3122] In the podcast.

[3123] Xbox Wii.

[3124] Yeah.

[3125] Gameformer is saying, yo, they're going to announce a new Wii at E3 this year.

[3126] Yeah, there are a couple other details.

[3127] Like, apparently it's going to have a 6 to 8 -inch touchpad.

[3128] Yeah, on the controller.

[3129] Not in addition to buttons.

[3130] Yeah.

[3131] In addition to it having a sensor so it will be backwards compatible with the Wii and GameCube games.

[3132] Yeah.

[3133] Yeah, exactly.

[3134] That sounds like a very inexpensive, affordable controller to me. I've enjoyed watching the mock -ups because there's no way to figure out.

[3135] Supposedly it has dual analogs.

[3136] Supposedly it has buttons.

[3137] Supposedly it has triggers.

[3138] And it's got a touchpad.

[3139] And it's got a sensor.

[3140] So I guess you could use it as a giant remote.

[3141] Why would you want to?

[3142] Yeah.

[3143] Is it like the Wii remote where you have to turn it sideways?

[3144] Is it two separate pieces?

[3145] I envision an iPad held sideways with console control.

[3146] Remember they were making full -size keyboards that were also Dreamcast controllers or PS2 controllers?

[3147] Yes.

[3148] I imagine one of those, but with a touchscreen instead of a keyboard.

[3149] So it'll be like full controller, grips on left and right, and a touchscreen in the middle.

[3150] I don't in any way understand how a touchscreen makes sense for a game that you have to play on another screen.

[3151] Because when you're calling plays in your football game in NFL 2K, you want to be able to see the plays on the screen, and you don't want the other guy to see them.

[3152] My chow garden.

[3153] That's why you get your VMU in there.

[3154] Can I also raise virtual pets when I go to class?

[3155] Yes, you can raise virtual pets.

[3156] Take your chow with you to school.

[3157] You've got to feed your chow.

[3158] And then no girl will ever talk to you again.

[3159] Why don't they just let you use a 3DS as a controller then?

[3160] You shut your damn mouth!

[3161] Because that would make sense.

[3162] Because it's missing an animal.

[3163] Well, in all seriousness, though, a touchscreen provides no tactile feedback when you use it, so you kind of need to be looking at it.

[3164] Well, that's also one of the things, is that technology does exist, and it's called haptic feedback, which is sort of like the dream child of...

[3165] touch technology because the idea being, you know, you can project your iPad onto a TV, but you're ultimately going to have to look at the thing in order to play with it if there was a way for those screens to essentially turn into buttons.

[3166] But I don't think that's going to happen with this.

[3167] I think that's still a pretty clumsy way to navigate an interface like that because all it is is really forced feedback.

[3168] You know, it's like you get little vibrations as you kind of move your fingers around and stuff.

[3169] I don't think it's precise enough to play a game with.

[3170] I don't know.

[3171] I don't know.

[3172] I mean...

[3173] Nintendo.

[3174] They sold, yeah.

[3175] You know, the line used to be like, the line used to be, well, we'll trust that Nintendo will find cool ways to implement this even if no one else does.

[3176] But, you know, then the vitality sensor happened.

[3177] No, it didn't.

[3178] No, it didn't.

[3179] It never came out.

[3180] We're kind of staring down.

[3181] I'm pretty sure that's just in this new thing.

[3182] When was the last time?

[3183] Maybe it'll have a little hook in the back.

[3184] Just stick your fingers in it.

[3185] We told you.

[3186] When was the last time you turned on your 3DS?

[3187] Stick it in Grandma's cookie.

[3188] My 3DS?

[3189] Yeah.

[3190] You don't have one.

[3191] Ryan, was the last time you turned on your 3DS?

[3192] I've been playing Pacross on it.

[3193] Yeah.

[3194] It scales all right.

[3195] Is your battery dead?

[3196] No, my battery's alive.

[3197] I was just looking to see if I got any street passes.

[3198] I haven't.

[3199] You know what?

[3200] I grabbed...

[3201] You didn't give me mine sitting over there.

[3202] I'm going to have Pacross turned on, though, so it's not getting the street pass.

[3203] I grabbed the Office 3DS before I went to Utah.

[3204] Yeah.

[3205] Because I was going to take it with me. And then it came down to it, and I was looking back and forth between the 3DS and the DSi.

[3206] I took the DSi.

[3207] Because if you forget about it, that battery just straight up dies after two days.

[3208] The battery life and also there's no way to transfer eShop stuff yet.

[3209] That's true.

[3210] Also, apparently it's going to be most.

[3211] Not everything?

[3212] Most purchases, not all.

[3213] Most purchases will be able to transfer.

[3214] Yeah, all those great purchases you guys have been making on your fucking eShop.

[3215] The hope would be that that's licensed stuff.

[3216] Most likely it's only things that they can't renegotiate.

[3217] I kind of think what that would even be.

[3218] I don't know.

[3219] Companies that went out of business.

[3220] Because usually that's what happens.

[3221] Like with rock band stuff.

[3222] If something has to be renegotiated with a new company, they're just not going to do it.

[3223] Unless someone wants to pick up the tab.

[3224] So my notebook 4, 5, and 6.

[3225] Those were all licensed.

[3226] Yeah.

[3227] So HD, is that the big thing?

[3228] See, that's the thing.

[3229] They'll show you Mario and Zelda and they'll...

[3230] And then you go, ah, fuck.

[3231] Yeah, that's it, though.

[3232] You got me. You son of a bitch.

[3233] You did it again.

[3234] Look at this controller that they just took a shit on, and it won't matter.

[3235] But not only that, they'll show you Super Mario.

[3236] Steampunk Zelda will be up on the screen.

[3237] It'll just be Super Mario Galaxy 1.

[3238] Re -release in HD.

[3239] Because it'll just put HDs after everything.

[3240] It'll be that Mario 128 demo, just again.

[3241] But there's 256 Marios now.

[3242] So if this is real, if this announcement's going to happen at E3, is fucking Skyward Sword a Wii 2 game?

[3243] I think they let that be the swan song.

[3244] It's got to be, yeah.

[3245] Or maybe they Twilight Princess didn't release it on both.

[3246] Yeah, but if the release date holds up, which the rumor is that's next fall.

[3247] Like fall 2012.

[3248] Skyward Sword is the last one.

[3249] Nothing comes out for Wii next year.

[3250] They drop it to $99.

[3251] Nothing's going to come out for Wii next year anyway.

[3252] Yeah.

[3253] Wii Play Motion.

[3254] Oh, right.

[3255] Yeah.

[3256] And then they just let that coast as truly a toy at like $99 until they launch the new thing.

[3257] Aside from backwards compatibility, is motion a factor in this new system?

[3258] Well, the controller thing would supposedly have some sort of...

[3259] But do you think it's a big deal?

[3260] That's what I'm saying.

[3261] Aside from playing old games, do you think they will emphasize motion?

[3262] Because what do they do?

[3263] Or is it done?

[3264] Is motion done?

[3265] I think for them it's probably mostly – I think it will interact, but I have to imagine they scale it back because what do they do?

[3266] Right.

[3267] Like Microsoft took the Note controller.

[3268] It sounds like the specs put it somewhere above PS3 and Xbox 360.

[3269] Which for Nintendo is probably fine because they have such strong art that – Yeah.

[3270] If you can play Nintendo games at 720p, that's good enough.

[3271] All they need is so their games can be scalable.

[3272] Yeah.

[3273] It almost just puts them at this weird Dreamcast step where that was better looking than...

[3274] PlayStation and Saturn and stuff, but it's not the full...

[3275] It does seem like it's getting into a weird between -generations kind of territory.

[3276] We'll have to see what it ends up being spec -wise and see if it really does kick off.

[3277] They talked all that gang about how hardware doesn't matter anymore.

[3278] It's about ideas.

[3279] Well, until we stop selling Wiis and we've got to come up with new hardware.

[3280] Well, at some point it's harder to plug a fucking composite into a TV than just get component cables and actual 720.

[3281] Like, who the hell is supporting 480i anymore?

[3282] At some point, like, the actual technology has moved on so far.

[3283] It's like, just put a fucking HDMI port on this thing.

[3284] Honestly, it's harder to keep up with their low -fi stuff.

[3285] I'm not hooking it up to an RF box.

[3286] Like, turn on channel 3 so I can...

[3287] Play some Wii games.

[3288] The real message there is hardware only matters as much as we can sell it at a profit.

[3289] Sure.

[3290] So if they can sell better than Xbox and PS3 level hardware and still make a profit on it at this point, they will do so.

[3291] And it would be potentially like Sony and Microsoft have both just invested, Microsoft considerably more so, in this new kind of extension of their existing platforms.

[3292] If this comes out in a somewhat timely manner, at least with this, there's portability.

[3293] Currently, games come out for the PS3 and 360, and then some B team does some weird rail shooter for the Wii.

[3294] Which doesn't even exist anymore.

[3295] They just don't.

[3296] Yeah, they just stop doing that.

[3297] They just stop doing that.

[3298] No one's buying that shit anyways.

[3299] Just knock it off.

[3300] But I think it's interesting because this essentially...

[3301] I mean it kicks off the next generation of hardware because neither Microsoft nor Sony was going to make a move until they knew what Nintendo was doing because they discounted them last time and you do that at your own ill will.

[3302] So now that I think we might see – I mean I would be shocked if we didn't see the next Xbox at the E3 after this one.

[3303] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[3304] E3 after this one for sure.

[3305] This year, no. They let Nintendo go ahead and see what they do.

[3306] Let them get ahead.

[3307] You think Microsoft and Sony consider Nintendo like an entrant in the race now?

[3308] They drive the conversation.

[3309] In the pure dollars race, they're absolutely right there.

[3310] They're past those other times.

[3311] Isn't it arguably different dollars that they're going after?

[3312] It could be.

[3313] But they want those dollars too.

[3314] Dollars are dollars, man. I know.

[3315] Those are still dollars they're not getting.

[3316] Different audience.

[3317] You know what I'm saying.

[3318] But everyone wants all the dollars.

[3319] I don't know that Microsoft or Sony are capable of getting those dollars.

[3320] Brad Schumacher, do you feel like you will make it through this whole drama without ever buying a Wii?

[3321] Yes.

[3322] Do you see the other side now?

[3323] Well, Alex is offering me his Wii for $20.

[3324] I will pay him $30 just to keep it out of your hands.

[3325] Yeah, okay.

[3326] $30 just to take it and break it.

[3327] Woe is me. I still won't have a Wii.

[3328] What the fuck?

[3329] What world are we in if people are like, yo, you want to buy a Wii for $20?

[3330] What the fuck is going on?

[3331] What does he need it for?

[3332] He doesn't.

[3333] Only comes with composite games.

[3334] I'm going to assign him so many Wii reviews as soon as he gets to the Wii.

[3335] Where he's going, he has a Wii.

[3336] So actually, why he's signing off the other Wii is he just literally doesn't need it.

[3337] Okay, I feel a lot better about this conversation now because before I was like, I don't need a fucking Wii.

[3338] Look at River for 20 bucks.

[3339] I was like, oh, God, games are doomed.

[3340] I was looking at sealed copies of Xbox One Scooby -Doo games over the weekend.

[3341] I've got thousands of boxes at home.

[3342] I'm not ready to give up this way of life and go back to pumping.

[3343] gas realize that all of these plastic boxes are fucking worthless you want to come over play some gun valkyrie is that the is that the pretty much the only console you've missed out on since pretty much me yeah like owning i think so since when you have a saturn since i don't know i got i got a saturn like after the dreamcast came out okay but you had a playstation yeah you had dreamcast or playstation you had ps2 PS2, yeah.

[3344] GameCube.

[3345] Yep, Xbox.

[3346] So this is it.

[3347] Saturn, I would say I missed the Saturn.

[3348] Eh, but you got one.

[3349] I wouldn't say you missed it.

[3350] I got one when it was worthless and all the games were $5.

[3351] What's the RPG?

[3352] so what happened you just missed you missed the xbox game what happened frenzy window what happened was i kept missing out on like it was yeah i mean it was like a good solid two years that that thing was unavailable right like it was like wait outside the best buy or whatever yeah like two years in a row you couldn't really get one of those and i had access to it at the office and i didn't care that much i was like i'll get one when it's Easy to get.

[3353] You do own a Wii game, though.

[3354] I bought Mario Galaxy like the Wii came out, and it's still in the shrink wrap.

[3355] You haven't played Mario Galaxy?

[3356] No. I'll give you a nickel.

[3357] Just wait for the HD remake.

[3358] It's going to be so much better.

[3359] I have a regular controller that's not this weird two -handed part thing.

[3360] I've seen the emulator screenshots of Galaxy.

[3361] It looks gorgeous.

[3362] That's why I say if you just...

[3363] Have like 720p.

[3364] Like their art style is so – Yeah.

[3365] It scales up pretty well.

[3366] It scales so well.

[3367] I'll buy it again.

[3368] Yeah.

[3369] All right.

[3370] Damn it.

[3371] This is how they do it though.

[3372] I'm out of news.

[3373] You guys got any other news?

[3374] Trampom hires new news editor.

[3375] Breaking.

[3376] There you go.

[3377] Breaking.

[3378] News at 11.

[3379] Top story.

[3380] News when that news editor writes some news.

[3381] Because otherwise, I don't know what's going on.

[3382] We're running long here.

[3383] Let's talk about some new releases and then jam on some emails.

[3384] What do you guys say?

[3385] All right, great.

[3386] Portal 2 is out this week.

[3387] Socom 4 is out this week.

[3388] Mortal Kombat is out this week.

[3389] Socom is going to get buried.

[3390] Yeah.

[3391] Final Fantasy 4 Complete Collection for the PSP is out this week.

[3392] Conduit 2 for the Wii is out this week.

[3393] I'm talking about getting buried.

[3394] Section 8 Prejudice is coming out for Xbox Live Arcade this week.

[3395] Yep.

[3396] And Fancy Pants Adventures is your other downloadable thing.

[3397] Which, speaking of, that game has developed, I can't remember, over -the -top games?

[3398] They made one of the best WiiWare games.

[3399] They made NyxQuest.

[3400] It's a Kid Icarus.

[3401] Oh, they did NyxQuest?

[3402] Oh, cool.

[3403] NyxQuest is a great game.

[3404] This game started off as a Flash game and then they...

[3405] Yeah, and then Over the Top ported it for...

[3406] or kind of filled it out with content.

[3407] It's a way different game.

[3408] I played it some at PAX East and got a somewhat N vibe from it of stick figures and weird...

[3409] The multiplayer is fun.