Giant Bombcast 09-27-2011

Hey, everyone's Tuesday, September twenty seven, twenty eleven, and you were listening to the Giant podcasts. That's right, folks, letna turn my mic down. I'm feeling a little hot, a little hot. Yeah. If any Caravella is here, hey, you're gonna turn my mic up? Sure, I'm feeling cool today. There you go here, everybody, see if we all if we all talk down here like this and we can record, really get real close on that. They turned me wa I want to try

that turned Let me let me try that? Oh man? Yeah, see Brad Shoemakers in there's going with any of you? How do we put on the demon voices? The kid? It's been a long show. Hey everybody. Oh, there we go now everyone's too loud o Barella, Patrick Leppic, Brad Shoemaker brain hurts, all all here, you're all here, You're all here. I was just good. Are we sure it's not a dream? Jeff? One two one two one two, open your mind one two.

Jeff Gershman's in Las Vegas right now on assignment, on assignment. He's seen EA games assignment to bet mean Nickel in the slots. Yeah, do you gi him Nickel before he left, you're like whatever, signed to funding Nickel like five cents no Buffalo Nickel. I did give him the Buffalo Nickel before he left, and he said he'd take that to Vegas and share its drug slang Buffalo Nickel whatever, man, I confirmed, I'm a I'm hoping this coffee will help me out some Yeah. I just refelled the mugs.

Ryan is still in a fever dream. Yeah, yesterday, I left left here early so I could go home and sleep for an extended period of time, and during which I was treated to a bunch of crazy goddamn dreams. Remember any of them. Yes, yes, there was even some borderline lucid dreaming, which is fun. Yeah. Yeah, he said they were nightmares.

Yeah, there was some some kind of you know, well, is this this dreams where it's like, this is weird and I don't know if this is gonna become scary, but it has the potential to get and now you're aware that it could become scary, thus you are scared. Yeah, there's this guy on my laptop. He said, I had to get the mars. He was wearing a towel. Real weird. I don't know that device was huge. Why did the device need to be so huge? Nose? No the yeah, okay, for one, yes, how would that

get through his nasal cavity without completely obliterating all of the bone. I don't, I don't know what they thought in nasal cavity was like some kind of giant storage room inside your head. I'm pretty sure that I don't. I don't know, I'm no doctor. But well that and then also just the laptop thing, like the giant suitcase thing three or something in the nine actually, okay, so yeah, that's why it was that huge. That was

just that was small for that was like that was spy ship. That was like their futuristic, like the top of the line, best stuff that we've got into one giant, bloody gumballs out of your nose. There was a game that what we call reference recently displosion man. Yeah right, Pixel is leading charge on in game total recall references. Gut Stringer didn't have one, did it? At least not that anybody's I haven't played it. M man,

they broke their streak. I wasn't really playing attention. She'll put it, she'll put it, I'll put it in a call out and see. I'm sure they're in there. Do you shoot guys? Yeah, that's okay, all right, fair enough, like you pr spin masters, right of course it's in there. You're able to just lodgic out anything here, steel a draft, just debate me, motherfucker Sherlock Holmes up in air, any

Caravella. I went to get to the Starbucks to get coffee. Instead they handed me green tea, and I was already out of the place before I realized, you get your coffee. It's like, oh, this is so hot. I can't do anything with this for the next five to ten minutes. So I was five to ten minutes away before I looked down and realized this is not coffee at all. Throw it out. No. I drank it, but it didn't. I feel like a coffee drinker getting tea is

better than a tea drinker getting coffee, though. I just I'm not even convinced that it had caffeine in it. Yeah, the sleepy camemeal. And you're right. I think a coffee drinking could deal and be like, okay, whatever, it's hot and hot. I think it's caffeine in it. I hope it does. Mean there's nobody who can't drink tea? Right, some people you can handle some teas. I like teas. It has a very inoffensive flavor, so it's it's just enough to have, but it's very

mild and its effects are negligible as opposed to like it. Like coffee will jack you up if you're not attuned to it. I wish I still had that innocence. You know, this coffee is not doing me and you Vinny, Vinny and and Bradley here, I have a reason, yeah, but not really. It was our own. No, it's I'm not saying it's a I mean it's a reason. I'm not saying it's a good row. It was a good reason. You guys hoarded it up. Oh my god.

So Gears War three we launched nine o'clock play session. They're complete, Yes, one to fifty on normal, normal difficulty, it's six and a half hours. It took us over over six hours a sand bar six hours finished at like three fifteen last night. Drew was saying that. So Drew said it took us about and Jolly also just off handedly said yeah, I did it about four so the fifty yeah, and I thought he hadn't finished. So I don't think he's I don't think he's finished. I think he

might have been talking about Gears too. Okay, yeah, he was talking about Gears two Horde. Okay, that is a long time. Yeah, so he was taking a full campaign for a short game. I think we spent about two hours Drew was hand on that last last wave Wave fifty. I didn't think it was that long. We've been We've been to hell and back, all right, paint me a picture, story word picture. I heard something about a Brumax one on one conversation and multiple Brumax over a period

of hours. But you took one. You took one times. I fought brue Max by myself, and I almost took down the second one, but I did. Yeah, wait, forty we pulled a Brumack on the boss? Is that forty? Was it? Went? Because I thought the big first boss set was either guns or Berserkers, and then I think Reavers the second time. I don't think. No, I don't think we ever got Reavers until until near the end. I can't remember sister player. I definitely

remember the Gunkers being a problem, though. Guggers are bitch the way they jack those enemies. Up is is crazy because every ten waves, it's like they get they get double health or double damage or double accuracy, and those things stack. Every time you hit another tenth wave, like it adds on a new one of those, but it maintains the previous ones, so it's exponential. Yeah. So well, so by the end they have all the buffs you have none. Yeah. I think the worst one is the accuracy.

Yeah, because they can they can hit you from anywhere, like the across the map. A boomer will shoot its boomshot at like forty five degree angle and it will sail, it'll love it across the entire map and hit you with it, and it's nothing you could have done. It is. Well, you can move if you see it coming, but if you don't,

theoretically there are many situations where you would have no way. So we were playing this map called Sandbar, which if you were to just divide it down the middle, it was pretty essentially a mirror image on either side. Right, this is the one we played during T and T. Yes, yes, so one was happening during T ANDT. So basically, let's just say at the back of the map looking forward, you're on this kind of

fortress right and to the right of you are staircases. To the left of you as the staircase and the enemies are all gonna come assail you, almost like storming Normandy from the beaches up until the fortress. Okay, and so into the middle of the map. From the fortress there's right, they kind of overlooks out this battlefield, so they basically they storm the sides and come

up, come up through those staircases. So for I'd say about forty waves, we did find Drew and I were on the right hand side holding it down. I think, Brad you and Will kind of on the left hand side, and Gary with a was floating back and forth to whomever was taking the most at the time, right U. And so for forty waves, which is probably about four hours, we did the same thing. So I had Drew and I had kind of come up with a great system memorized.

For four hours, you're doing the same thing of like you know, I would soften them up as they'd come through, and then he'd reach true and Drew would take them down and would do this, and you're buying defenses as it goes on. A little tower defense. Yeah, like Razor wire and stuff, and I suspect you and will also have just a system after about four hours of like you kind of know what's called the waves are varied, right, but you snipers coming in sometimes you have granted years, that's what

we were Okay, that's what we were playing on. Ye. So at some point, like around forty two forty three, it started getting to the point where they would just breach the defenses so much. At about a minute or two in it would just be like fall back into the fort everybody fall back into It was just it was sheer attrition at that point, yeah, because I mean they were soaking up so much Amo, we couldn't stop the although it was just a tidal wave of enemies coming in, so buy about

so we were able to hold them off. We started dying around wave forty two once and the thirties and yeah, so buy about forty nine is where we really hit got stuck. Yeah, we got so we got to like forty four forty five and almost gave up if you remember that. Yeah, we're probably kept wiping in that base. And then we just started cheese the map layout. Right, So at that point we're like, this position is no longer tenable, we need to find a new spot to hang out,

and we decided to go into There are two sides of the map. One is a cave with two entrances and there's like just enough room in there to kind of dodge left and right for five dudes in there, and there's like an amlo chest and a brick wall which will give you some cover a short brick wall. The other side is a similar setup without the brick wall, and there's no cave, so it's just open on the top, but it's like kind of a narrow little entrance and exit. Yeah, so we set

up. We were like, let's just try something else. We're gonna give up. We're done, and we go into the little alley one that does not the cave, and we actually cleared that wave on the first shot, I thought, I think, and we did, so that cemented in our minds that that is that is the way to go. This works. So we stayed there for about a couple more waves, and then we wasn't working anymore, so we decided to go to the cave. And the cave is

the I think the basic we had. So we hunkered down in the cave, which was fantastic because you now have five guys in a very small, confined space, so you a limit, and as soon as you go outside the cave is hell right, it's just crossfire of all the bad guys fields and inside the cave, and literally you're talking like two steps out you're dead, two steps back, you're safe with it within the five guys. So it eliminated the possibility of anybody going rogue and kind of running off and being

like, let's get the fuck back here. We all have to concentrate. So we just had this band of five guys with focused fire on everything that it's either gonna come left or it's gonna come right through this narrow engines. And it was fantastic because all these huge guys that we were having problems storming us, we're going down really quickly when you have five guys pumping bullets and the key. The key was really just minimizing those points of ingress right into

our position. It was like, all right, they're on the left or they're on but not only that, keeping everybody together, which is hard when you tell somebody's like come on, stay together, it's sorry, I am, I know you're over there. What are you doing? You're you're running out to get together, and like with this it was like death or or stay alive. So even if you tried, if you tried out, you

learned very quickly oh nope. And we were all getting so tired that it was a lot of it's definitely getting to the point where it was like people being very loose with each other in terms of like fucking don't go out there, like I'm just gonna go. I'm down, like ya, of course you are. Of course you're down. Get the just do you crawl back to me if you can make it. I'm not going out there because I'm

gonna die. And so it wasn't quite that bad, but it was kind of like, you know, four waves later and be like all right, everybody, stick to where are you going? I just want to scout and see it. I'm down. I'm going to get the scores down. I'm down. I'm down, And then it would are you down? Yes,

you need to pick up? You need to pick up. We're like like like assembling this list of jargon basically like shorthand for all the stuff we needed, and so it's mostly like left right, need to pick up left, right and need to pick up, which means that you're changing out ammo.

So we got to level fifty, which is the last level, which is a boss wave, and they randomize the giant boss that's gonna give you a hard time, right, So it's either gonna be a Brewmac one brewmac, h a whole host of Reavers, which we thought would be the easy ones. At least two berserkers. Yeah, two perserkers was one of four gunkers is another one at least four gunkers, and uh, what was the one where the armored Cantus came in? He came in with whom we got.

Armored Cantus is with revers with the reavers. So first wave, first shot, Level fifty, we're in the cave. Bus See we got a and you don't get the achievement until you beat fifty. We're excited. It's about it's about one o'clock one thirty around there. I had no time. I deal at the time was get a giant Brewmac and we're like, fuck, okay, we're in the cave. Stay in the cave. We fight off all of the little guys and pretty quickly too, because we were rolling at

that point. Everybody was still fresh, and we're like we're gonna beat it, and then we realized, well oiled. Yeah, the Brumac had not engaged us. At this point, We're like, oh shit, he totally got stuck stuck on like the geometry because he's huge, and we're in this little cave and like this is gonna all work out. Let's go fight the brumat. No, we spill out of the cave, I think with within

like three minutes, everyone else is dead except for Brad. And we had run into this situation probably about twenty waves ago, maybe ten, where Brad everybody had wiped and Brad literally had to spend a half hour picking off a Brumac by himself. I basically had to kite the fucking Brumac. I mean luckily, the way this map is arranged, there's a big bottle of water in the middle that nobody can walk on, so it's basically a big donut.

Yeah, So it's basically shriveling the the taking pot shots of the map. Yeah, like dodging the rockets and the and the chain guns and just picking it off. So we're like we're like okay, Brad, like we're all dead but we have confidence you could be this. You did this before, just do it again, and like and so we're all we're all spectator can at this point being like he's coming out this way, he's coming this

way, watch out, and Brad was doing a great job. We're like great, almost dead yeah, and then said ooop, like just dead out of nowhere, just blown up and like a like just one of the rockets, those drunken rockets that just kind of swarm I think what one literally like did our homing just Liken hurled around the way up of the rocket I was hiding behind and just like smacked me. And so we were like all right, but it didn't take us very long to get up to that point again.

Like I said, we was like, that's actually kind of cheesy. We'll just do it again. We do it again. Brumac, I think we got a Brumac again, does not get caught in the jet, literally walks clips through the cave of the cave with like half of its head inside the top of it, just destroys everybody. Thirty seconds, we're all dead again. And then it was dawning on us that wow, maybe that was a random thing and we're all gonna be fucked. So fast forward two hours

later, we have now even wave the same way. We have now realized that the odds of getting a Brumac are totally random because we we we got berserkers sometimes instant death for us. We can't fight them because we're in this cave. The berserkers just running and slaughter slaughter us. We got reavers, which when we got the first time we got revers, we're like, fuck, yeah, we pulled it four aces. This is gonna be easy. Reavers are gonna go down, and they do go down. They go down

quickly, but they supplement that with harder regular guys. So you get like the armored cantus. There's there's a cancers, there's grinders, there's boomers, mullers, like everything is coming in all at once. We died like again immediately. H the other one. The gunkers. Uh. I thought those were the hardest actually, because we were like we got one and we got a gunker and we're like, oh, this is the boss. The gunker. Like everybody focused fire on them. We're like barely making it. Three

guys are down. We finally get one of the Gunker's almost dead and like, I look outside and there's like four more of them out there. They're like, this is totally hopeless. So finally, so we wand up doing the thing where I like, let's try that little valley again. Let's get out of the cave and try that. We try that for a again. Forty five minutes. That doesn't work. You're trying the fortress again, and

that doesn't work for thirty minutes. Finally we get the Broomac again. This is this is pretty late in the in the game, and we've had Broomax before, but they're not getting caught in geometry and we're like, it's not gonna happen. So everybody always looks him like he's the Bomac and he's like he said, no, he's in the cave. You're yeah. This time though, gets caught in geometry again, and so suddenly everybody's kind of just everybody's fallen apart. At the time, it was so late, dude,

we were like walking on eggshells during that. As soon as we realized he was stuck or like, all right, nobody fuck up, but it was crazy. Everybody immediately snapped back into like drag, Yeah, it's just you just watched everybody who was like for like the last hour and a half falling apart, Like the group is getting like people just running across the map,

masturbating in a corner, just doing all sorts of weird ship. Suddenly it's like like you just watched the group like tighten up into a little wad. Everybody's like, okay, let's do it. Everybody's like back to back, you know, yeah, and we did it perfectly. It was like, all right, well here Drew died pretty early though it wasn't that early, but but like it was working, like we were taking out the things like we had the first time. It was really focused, were all very excited,

and I think we almost got everybody out for the Brumac fight. And by this time we had realized do not stick together. From our first time with the Brumac. Everybody just split up because if they if they get one of you, they the rockets. I kill everybody basically be equidism from each other. Yeah, I can't hit everybody at war, so we all spread out and we're all trying to fight him. I got a couple of good shots in and then I went down, like like out of the game.

With the one shot. I think you went and bought the one shot, bought the one shot, and I got like three shots on his backpack, on his backpack, trying to blow him up, and then I went down, and I think it was Drew had been down by that point, and Gary, I think went down pretty quickly. So it's Brad and Will. And if we're looking at the overhead map, imagine two little dots on the

overhead map. It almost like Will is basically just chasing Brad's dot around the map, but as they're they're trying to stay away from each other, but

they're also trying to keep continuously moving so the brumac doesn't kill them. So you just see this one dot following this other dot, and the dot in front, which is Brad yelling at the dot behind him to get the fuck away from men, and the dot that is Will basically yelling at the dot in front of him, being like, you gotta fucking run faster because I can't turn around. There's a brumac behind me, but I had to keep

stopping because that's the only way to shoot that, right. So it's just basically these dots like catching up and like moving moving around to map in a clockwise circle. Finally they were able to get enough shots in where it looked like everything was we're gonna take it home. And then Brad gets hit and he goes down. It was literally roady running across a little open expanse and like I didn't even see rockets coming in. I was just dead all of

a sudden. And so now it's Will left by himself at three in the morning, trying to kill this brumac. And I think that would have been it. I think I think that was been so heartbreaking. I don't think. And then Brad has enough money to buy back. That was a thing. I was sitting there watching. I was just like heading my hands. I was just like, he's gonna die. We're not gonna get this, like this is We're never gonna finish this. I'm gonna fucking cry right now.

And then I look at my money and I was like, I have like twelve thousand dollars, just like this giant like yellow ye button FROMPT staring me in the face like puss. Why to buy back in? I'm like, so he bought away. I need this money for him spend it get back into one. So he buys back in and uh and then Will is

like like suddenly hope his back line. Yeah, and they they start focusing on on the Brewmac and he's bugging out, and then just suddenly just added nowhere just explodes and like just all of a sudden, like tomic bob Eat medals and ribbons ring up on the screen and we all get achievements and and everything explodes and we're in seven hours later. Just oh man, that's good. Lord. I didn't even I just never want to play hard moting everyone.

I didn't even get up and to go to the bathroom until like the last thirty minutes. Like I didn't move from that ouch, like I was hunched over. My legs were stiff, batteries are pretty much dead in my controller, totally worth it. Don't want to play Horde Moode for a long time. Yeah, it'll probably be a little while anyway. That's the story of how we beat See You and Drew to and Drew and Will Smith from Tested and Gary Wind and Gary and everybody everybody held together. I thought,

yeah, yeah, pretty much. Yeah, I was waiting for one dude. I know I'm done guys, all right, So so pro tips on the Masters for Hord mode players on that map, I say, if you're in the cave, if you can, if you can force the environment to keep your group as tight as possible, that is a plus. Don't depend on people to stay near you make the environment keep them in a small,

tight, little group. And then when you have five guys shooting out one thing, it is goes down way faster than if you guys are taking two things out there. Do you think it's because of health regens? Do you think there's like I don't know, I'm sure I don't know what the Masters is going on. Yeah, I don't know what numbers are flying inside those

guys as you're shooting them, but continuitively multiple multiple shots at once. Yeah, I mean the lancer is so effective in this game that like five lancers focused on even the Boomers with the two point five x health, we'll go down almost immediately, and which which at that point for us, was doing much better than trying to defend two positions or trying to like, okay,

half you guys go here, half of you guys go here. It was much easier to just get them one at a time, get everybody down to not have anybody alive who can kill you in almost one shot on the map. Also, the importance of the sawt off shotgun cannot be overstated. Oh oh my god. Well, they will get incredible possible for them to stay right. Yeah, especially the maulers will come right at you with their shields

and there's nothing you can do until you flank them. But you get right up on with those guys with the sawt off, even those big guys on the later waves, like just one trigger pull and they are literally deleted, like they just vanish. It's it's amazing. I think. I think the boom shield has its advantages for like guys who are like a Cantus or a grind who would just have a fast pistol. You can almost tank with that. It didn't work so much in the later levels because they literally were just

chewing through everybody. But you can chainsaw Cantus uh and that takes him out of the game really quickly. If you try to shoot them, they roll around a lot. They're they're hard to get ranged. Uh. Yeah, shooting in the face. The armored ones, you definitely do. The armored Cantus, I don't know. That thing is just like that's like a game stopper. Yeah, campaign, I hate like scorcher first on the arms. I think the scorcher might work on the candidate that things just work on the

cantus, it might. It makes it that makes it vulnerable to the campaign. No, no, no, no, not on I don't think I'm that guy. It does really the berserkers. It does scorchers. So the berserkers. I when we were on the level fifty, we had two scorchers and dudes just dumping five hundred rounds apiece into Berserker and we never got Like you guys were wailing with the lasterers, and I put four active, reloaded sought off shotgun rounds into that thing and it just didn't still didn't go to

one of them, never went down. And there were at least two of them, were two of them at the same time that all the other big asscouts. I don't know what we were Maybe we should have stuck it with grenades or something like that. I don't know. You just don't know what the strategy is. The strategy was wait until the next round. This was all the normal. Yeah, how could you possibly beat this on hardcore and insane? I have no idea. It was fun though I'm sure, I'm

sure people will do it. It was. It was one of the most entertaining and memorable we have to experiences. Though I can't I can't see how you would do it with we were we were exploited, I know, but I'm it's on a harder difficulties that I mean, maybe that's just high level gears play is exploiting, or you must have to know so much, so much knowledge about how long it takes to Maybe it's just, yeah, a matter of finding like the cave like is finding like specific strategies. It were

a specific waves for specific boom shield as barriers. And also at this point we were barely using defenses, the static defenses right, because there was just like if you use that stuff optimal, it would help fun. Yeah, we were kind of figuring it were no masters, were just a bunch of dudes found our sales in a tough sounds It sounds like having money in later

stages is important. It is, but you gained so much money from those rounds, like every time we got dumped back in we actually had a decent amount of saving graces of the money you earn on a wipe you keep when you go back in, So they're not they're not Yeah, they're not chopping

your legs off that much. Really start over. No, No, And also I didn't know if I mentioned this, the both the cave and that other little valley the mirror side of the cave have an ammal box in it, so that, you know, response, you have to pay five hundred bucks to get your AMMO back. The little cave that's that's not far from the like the little base that's kind of out there, right, there's a little uh it's it's like around the corner from like the cargo ship stuff.

Okay, yeah, uh yeah, So there's a there's a amal box in there, which was because you chew through, yeah, an entire magazine and one guy, so that was it was a great place to be. You know what what, I'll totally do it again. You would, I totally would would you put it? Would you go up to hardcore? Would you skip right to insane? S ranked that game? Are you kidding? Yes? Have you looked at the seriously achievement? Seriously have you looked at it? You know, you tell me about it. I don't know. It's

probably the craziest single achievement I have ever seen in a game. Ever, What is it? It looks like it would take years to get, like maybe months at the number. Absolutely, it's not a number. It's not just kill X number of guys. It's do everything in the game. It's get the get every onyx medal in the game, and reach level a hundred, Like hitting level a hundred is nothing but the medals. Yeah, some of those are fucking insanity. That's just time, right, that's just well

time, it's time and skill. Yeah. So I mean there's there's medals for doing stuff like beating Horde on insane. Oh, but there's there's also stuff like, uh, the example I read of one was there's one for like a revenge getting the certain revenge ribbon and multiplayer where the same person has to kill you three times and then you kill the person. The lowest level

of that medal is doing that one hundred and seventy five times. Jesus, that very specific scenario in multiplayer that you can't like, you can't contrive or set that up like that just has to happen. I guess you could match it was it is it ranked on name? I don't think so. But that's only with seventy five for the first times, three more after that, which probably goes up to like a thousand of those. And that's just one medal. Yeah, it's I think you're right, that's gotta be months or

year. One of the medals is just simply playing. Uh, it's a number of multiplayer matches that I think is like well over ten thousand multiplayer matches. Seriously, seriously, seriously, Well this is the last Gear game. Yeah, for a couple of years. I mean it makes sense totally. Somebody, somebody will get that stuff. But it's just that was fun.

It was fun. It was fun. Yeah, I wish Joey was he had another play date, but I wish we could have done six because uh, he really wanted to do that as well, and I know none of us wanted to do that anytime soon. So Joey's off on his own. Joey's got a group though, he's got it. He's got a group of dudes that he's playing with. Yeah, that's that's fun. That's just good fun, just good clean fun. I wish it weren't as long. It's a little marathony, but I guess it makes for a better experience. It

is possible, depending on what you're there for. Like, if you're trying to get the achievement, Uh, you can do it piecemeal, right. You can start at like forty The milestones are just in sets of ten waves, so we could have started at forty one and gone to fift. You have to clear those first or yeah, you have to work your way up to it, but you can do that in multiple sittings. But there is We did get a ribbon for doing one to fifty straight in one game.

But if you if you if you just wanted to do it in if it's just getting to beating fifty was your goal, that's all you care about, you could just do it in like two hour checks. Yeah. Yeah, it was fun. We've forged a bond. Yeah. I played some single player gears. We're working through that. I beat that. What did you finished that? I finished that. I finished that. One thing we were talking about the office that I wish they had done is that I deeply regret

playing it on normal. Yeah. Too easy, way too easy. It's just I'm just walking through it, especially when I was I played through probably

three fourths of the game. Three player co op friends Normal and it's just laughable, like and the thing is that they just like, you know, I play most games on Normal just because that's yeah, that's still always I always assume that's how those But I've always played the Halo games on Heroic because the game, you know, it gives you the indication that you know,

this is how it's meant to be played. We're bounding, like the game in the description implies to you if you're if you're if you've played shooters before and you've played Halo before, this is harder, but you'll you'll you're gonna enjoy it more. And I've always enjoyed the Halo games more playing it on Heroic's. Even in the spots that are get me really frustrated, frasing in Halo is very clear. It says this is the way Halo was meant to be play, the way it's meant to be played, And you know,

if you played Halo before, played on this. Like the in Gears, they try to do something similar, but the way they put it is Gears at its finest, which is which doesn't necessarily communicate, hey, you should play it on this movie. Yeah, if you're like at all, confidence yeah, so you don't play it on normal, But but do any achievements stack, Like, if you beat it onsane, do you get the hard hardcore? Yeah? Okay, so I beat it on hardcore. I got

all dude. So my plan is to get through it on normal, which which is I guess it's just gonna take me a couple more hours because I'm not not the longest game, especially if you're playing it you're normal where you're not going to run into battles of attrition both the difficulty over right now if you want to know. But but then I'm gonna play through it, I think on four player. Once I got halfway through and I was like, you know, normal's not that fun. I was like, well, I'll

get through this. Then I'll play through it again later on a hard difficulty and I'll just because then you need the co op achievement for going through all the chapters. That's I kind of like to see it on Arcade, like with that Campaignade mode. So turn on the confetti and the laugh track? Does that turn on? Does Arcade turn off the story? Is it purely just love us? I don't think so, but I think you can skip

all that stuff. But so far it's fun. I mean, it's not blowing me away, and it's it's kind of a I feel like more of a known quantity than a lot of stuff. But it's completely I don't mean for this to sound dismissive, but it's completely competent like it is. It is what I want from third entry into Gears of World franchise. I think some of the story stuff has been overstated without well, I think all nothing, nothing, nothing happens in this game. I wouldn't say that until the

end. Okay, the beginning, stuff happens, nothing happens. In the middle of stuff happens, and nothing stuff happens, but nothing of story consequence, interesting scenarios occur. No, like everything happens at the end. Yeah, but I don't want to get too much. Want nothing that you don't see coming, you know. I regard the Gears story stuff as like, if it's any good, that's a nice bonus. That's what I was gonna

say. Any of the praise that we've heeped on this game has been relative to yeah, I would yeah, it's it's yeah, it's much better games. I will say. The thing that is is very nice about what they're doing now is that they're they're almost if this makes sense, they're almost doing that kind of half life style of basically you finished something, and by finishing

something, you have immediately set up the next part of your journey. There's no like fade the black and then a hard cut, Like there's no good resting spot, there's no place where you just want to put the controller down and be like, all right, that's a good place to take a break. I'm gonna move on. It's very much like I kind of want to see what's gonna happen next. I want to see what's gonna happen next. I don't know if that changes later on, but there's definitely not like three

days later, well they they I will say they break up. The game's nine incredibly long, but the acts are about similar length. So each act is you know, probably an hour and a half two hours, so that if you just wanted to play in chunks, you get a good all right done with this action. I'll come back to it. But yeah, mid like individual chapters, the momentum is good, like I just go want to keep moving, right, He'll just enter a new area and it says next

chapter that there wasn't really a stopping point. I just went around the corner or you know, they set something up at the end of this chapter that you want to see how it's almost like turning the next page in the book, just like I want to see what happens. There was one spot and Brad talking to you. It sounds like the same spot you took a break at, which was where I'm at where I just met iced tea. And it's like he's basically like a Marcus, like, ay, iced tea,

blah blah blah. Here's this big mission you're gonna go on. It's like, okay, thanks, I'm gonna take a break, I'm gonna come back. It seems like this is the next phase of what we're gonna do here. It's not actually very long, but it was definitely the one spot where I was like, all right, everybody gets some rest, Team Phoenix, go sleep it off. We're gonna start this iced tea stuff maybe over the

weekend or something like that. Enjoy your time and Horde mode. The Delta squad Delta squad, and I don't think they're all Delta squad though this is point yeah, there is no Delta squad. I think at this point they're just the gears. I mean that was part of my problem, is that like reading like I have a problem with the game's lack of characterization for these new characters, like I don't know who this girl is, I don't know who Jas is, Like they're just gonna dropped in, and like you're supposed

to care about these new characters. I was like, what I like different? I don't really care about Mark's to begin with, and I know I don't know so they're all like really important in the books and comics and the game. Just if you don't follow that stuff, that makes zero attempt to try and get integrate that just into the game characterization of the of like this

this these new people, I mean, they're just there. You mean he's still in Lion's Star Quarterbacks s. I didn't know what you were talking about when you sent me a message saying that he was in the game until I finally you said that, and I was like, oh God, I heard the voice come out of dude that was running along next to me, and I just thought he was gonna like start calling audibles or something. That was like, is that him? That's totally him. We should call coach Taylor

and find out how we take down this bru Max. You think you would know? Jas was definitely in two though, was he? Yeah? I remember him at all. Marcus just screaming Jas a couple of times. God damn it, Jason, I was Jeffrey. Yeah, that's the Gears of War. Yeah, the Gears of War War War. I want to hear your thoughts on the ending right now. Well, having played once, you see the end, all right, So yeah, I don't the ending. I don't. I don't. I didn't feel nearly as much closure as Jeff

seemed to leave one giant fu answer. Yeah. The one thing that you want to know the most desperately is the thing they don't answer. I would say that it's probably fair anyway, it's frustrating. Stop there, games like games leaving. It was just a dream, very happy. No, there you go. Nope, it was all in Hurley's dream. Yeah. He brings oxygen to Sarah by putting his hand on the give the people their air. Yes, that's right, maake care of Ell. What else you find

any time to to to play anything else? Recently? You know? I had a I had a actually really fantastic weekend that didn't involve too many video games. That's great. Yeah, it was. It was I had a bunch of stuff to do on Friday, so I didn't actually come into work. So it was one of those three day weekends. Yeah, quasi quasi three day weekends. Having a week day, we can go and get other stuff done. It was fantastic. Uh buy some cables, no, I

avoided. I did a lot of household repair stuff. So I clean my apartment, sharpened all my Uh. I had a bunch of cooking knives and needed the sharpened, sharpened those, uh, fixed the lamp. You know, just stuff that like I'm gonna make stuff human again. I feel like a human being again, like a craftsman with your hands. Yeah, something that's productive. So at the end of the weekend, like, yeah, I got a receipt, I got a life receipt that says, here's what

you did this week. You can look around, you can see the fruits of your labors. Yeah. I like that. Uh So, Yeah, a lot of great stuff that was. Uh, you know, I've got a lot of unreported expenses. Well, you know, one of those things where you're just like, man, I dumped I spent forty hours and gears Award and I got ship out of it. Just say so, you cashed in your weekend for yeah, and a bunch of other stuff, and you

know whatever I've spent. I've spent enough of those weekends to know the difference of feeling what it's like on the other side of it. But I did wind up playing some more Taslemania. Uh oh, you know what, I guess I can talk about it now. So I've been playing some Dark Souls and justin braceful sequel to Demon Souls Spiritual from from the makers of Demons Souls.

I wouldn't I don't think this necessarily. I think it's more final fantasy esque in the sense of like these universes don't really I thought it was the rich fiction that everyone came to Demon Souls for, and so the continuation of that story is obviously. I think they're technically different ips. Yeah, I

mean they're different publishers and stuff. It's it's very similar, yeah, close to them, Yes, it's extremely Did they make the same game there are it's a mod uh total conversion, which which is you know what, that's exactly what people who really like Demon Souls are gonna want that game has all of the things that made Demon Souls demon Souls bad, good or bad. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna say whether it's good or bad the things that

define demon Souls for me. Within minutes, you're like, oh, yeah, of that. I actually actually within a half hour, within minutes, I was like, oh, you know, maybe they kind of maybe they lighten the load a little bit on this, And then within a half hour I was like, no, they have not. Uh so, yeah, can you explain free I mean, we can't, can't guess for other people, but can you explain the attraction of demon Souls and dark souls for you?

For me, I don't know what drives people to play Horde mode one to fifty in one sitting. Well, the attract the attraction for me. The attraction for me was it was literally I want to understand why people are so attracted to this game because I had, I had jumped into it, and we should, I should say, in all honesty. When we got our copy of Demon Souls from Atlas or yeah, Demon Souls from Atlas, it came with a disk. We got a disk to Demon Souls on it.

It was like not the retail version, and they were like, here, check this out, and we were like, here's a disk, okay, and we put it in and we're like, what the F Well, that's right. It was like an unstamped disc. It didn't have trophies on it. It was like like sort of weirdly pre and it was just I

don't I don't really understand what I'm supposed to be doing here. And it wasn't like I'm just gonna go online and see what I'm supposed to be doing here, and there was that didn't exist yet, but at this point there was at least a little bit of like from Japan, buzz yeah, people, I love this game in Japan. It's getting real hot over there.

We got to check it out and then and not like the retail game came with much more explanation, but when you're saying it was a real wild West when we first got Demon Sol, yeah, and when we did that quick look, I mean I had to put about twenty hours or something, and by that point I still had no idea what that was going on. So when I when I went back to it, uh to actually understand what Demonsils

was. The game had blossomed into this uh you know, almost legendary thing on the internet that you can go on and literally just look at stat sheets, and it looked like, uh, you know, every rubric you'd want to see about, how to make a class, how to do this, had to speed run the game in thirty seconds, you know, how to take your time with it. So there was a there was a wealth of information online that made getting through that game much that did not exist. Yeah,

all the supplementary stuff that you'd want explained was explained. And now I'm kind of feel like I'm back with dark souls to that, like, gosh, I really just want to talk to somebody who's who's played through this and asked them should I go up the stairs or down the stairs? Don't go down the stairs. I went down the stairs, and I spent about an hour and a half seeing if I should go down the stairs, until I

realized I should probably not go down the stairs. What was your time to getting one shot at by something you did not see coming one shot in? Yeah, it's probably a couple of hours. Really dead, Yeah, I'm sure death was immediate. Yeah, Yeah, death was sudden and swift. Yeah, blood time to blood stain, like twenty minutes. Uh, here's here's here's what's good about coming from Demon Souls into Dark Souls. I knew and I knew this going in, So everybody who is already gonna holler at

me for the story, I kind of knew this. You do your character creation right, and it's the same thing like Demon Souls. You get to pick a bunch of different classes, but they don't really lock you in. It's just how they've distributed some of the points initially, so it's not like if you pick what you could would call maybe like a magic class, that you're gonna be locked into a magic class. This is how they kind of biased the points they give you initially, and it's not even that huge difference

anyway. In Demon Souls, the first you know, the original one that Dark Souls, there are some classes that you were easier to start out with than others. And in Dark Souls, going down ls, there's the night again, right, and he's in his armor and you're like, fucking just looks cool. And I know he was not that you should not pick him, but I picked him and I was like, he just looks he's got all his armor on everybody else is like in rags, you know, and

you're like, guys got arms. This guy's got armories the Night and I pick him, and I within five seconds of being spawned, I remembered exactly why you don't pick the Night, because if you're over fifty percent encumbrance on your character, you can no longer move quickly or dodge quickly, and you just need to die. You need to be able to do that. So immediately I was like, fuck, really again, like this is just like I looked at how much encumbrance I have. It's like, I'm totally it's

starting the game over encumbered. And it doesn't not fully over encumbered, but just over fifty percent over fifty percent, which is pretty much over encumbered. If you can't if you can't roll with enough speed, you're dead. Yeah I am. I'm dead because you take hits even when you're a Night with the armor on. This is gonna kill you in one shot. So is there a way to play that character that is not the way you play the character? I'm sure there is. Yeah, I'm sure there is, but

the way you play the way. The way I had to get through Demon Souls was roll the fuck out of the way of a guy who's going to smash you. So anyway, long story short, instead of rolling a new character, I played through the entire first level in my underwear, just took off all the equipment and was able to beat the first level in my underwear versus the equipment they start you out with because I tried putting the armor back on. Like you said, Patrick, maybe I'm not playing them right.

I couldn't do it. Anyway. That game is fantastically Demon Souls, And we'll do a quick look and we'll get in there and I'm play some more and we'll see how it goes. But everybody who wants more Demon Souls it should be very excited. I think the appeal of that game is literally getting pushed on the ground, kicked in the nuts and then getting up and beating it like it's it's a game for Massacus, like they want to be punished

and then find a way to get around it. Like I kind of want to just keep going to see they're there are just cool things to see in the in the fucking scary tooth monster awful like vertical mall. Like just so this the other thing I'll mention and we'll talk about it more as as the game opens itself up to people, uh like a mall. There are things called bonfires. Now the world is set up differently. Whereas there was a

hul point. Yeah, the check woins in the demo sells there was a hub world and you jump in and it's like, hey, do you want to go to a world? One one one two, one three, one four one five. I don't think Dark Cells has at this time. I think it's more of just kind of an open world, wander around a different sections. Heard it's much bigger. Everything I'm reading is that it's a much larger world. Stuff to tell, I don't know. Yeah, it's like there's an over like a map that says, well, I think you're a

fire dungeon. I think you're kind of traveling more in this one than like just picking the different spots or start more organic. Yeah. So they're these things called bonfires, which are almost like checkpoints fires. I like bonfires, so you rest at them. Love bonfires, and you get your health back, and you can actually refill this flask which gives you full energy when you

use it. It's fantastics, got like eight uses on it. When the downside, Uh, no downside, No downside, Well you have to there's an animation for drinking it, and you probably die while you're doing that animation drinking it. I wouldn't be surprised if one out of every like ten drinks

is just poisoning. Straight death and erasis are saved. Anyway, there's not really any downside, and that's what made me initially think like, oh wow, they really they must They threw everybody a bone, like this is amazing, And then I was like, oh, these bonfires are great because they checkpoint you, so if you die, you actually start the bonfire instead of

the beginning of the level. Incredibly useful though, When you activate a bonfire to recover your health and checkpoint yourself, it's like you are you are basically respawning every enemy on the map. So if you have cleared out, if you've cleared out of a portion of the world ahead of you, and you're like, I should go back and checkpoint that because that was really hard fight.

If you checkpoint yourself and use the bonfire again, that enemy, all those enemies will respond again, so you basically have to fight your way back through it. So use there a risk reward, Like maybe you got a big drop and you're like, I don't I don't want to lose this drop. Is there any why like why would you want to go to the checkpoint? Well, basically so you know how, you don't have to revisit the same area. You don't have to fight through previous areas to get back to

where you are. Okay, So he's not gonna be very often where like you go forward and then come back. It's like you just go forward, want to get to the next bond, Like basically, yeah, you'll just want to keep going forward. Uh. Or if you want a farm, if you just literally want to farm stuff, like you know, hey, these guys are gonna drop something. Yeah, I can just sit here. I mean there, you're all gonna drop souls, So you can basically sit

there and just farm souls over and over and over again. Uh. It's it's still tough. Game is still very very hard. And the thing I know that is intentional now is they want you to figure all this stuff out. It's not it's not from incompetence. It's not like they're leaving intentionally mysterious. It's intentionally vague, and it's intentionally obtuse, and they want you to basically learn from the players who are leaving notes on the ground and stuff like

that, they here's how much of that was intentional design? Or just what the world how the world responded to that game, you know what I mean? Like how much did they just make this game and then the world interpreted it this way and then they've they've or how much of that was? I think it's all intentional at this point in the game. I think I think they are really tapping into this market of these people who really want this game

and doing whatever they can to make it more obscure and obtuse now. But it's like they want this or they it's a response to the opposite of how every other game is made today. Like even you know, talking to the people that are involved in you know, promoting games like this, like everything about this game is even even like the way from Software talks about the game

like they don't want to. You know, that story that came out of Japan of them, I love that fucking story of them sending in high level was it phantoms? Ye, black phantoms? Black phantoms draw and putting in max level black phantoms into the world with it with the best items to kill players that managed to get copies of the game ahead of street date. Like

that's great, yeah, because that's exactly what those players wanted. Yeah, it sounds it is both like keep people from getting further into the game before, like having an unfair advantage prior to the game's release, and then also giving those people exactly what they wanted. So like that game really more than

a lot of games. And there are a lot of games that make me feel this way, but they're fewer and far between now because games are so short now that really make me long for being like fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years old, having a summer off and just playing Dark Souls, like I just on my schedule and the way my life is now, it's not It's not the one game I can give sixty seven in the hours with over the

course of like you know, a year. Yeah, over the time it would take to not want to slip my wrists and try and get through it in a week or two weeks. It's a it's a long haul game, I think, and to really enjoy it without going online and finding the shortest routes. And it's a really game about discovery and punishment and nuanced and just

and just heavy repetition and employing the schools you've learned. And that's I think it's fantastic at that And if that was the only game I had to buy for, I would totally do it and I would probably enjoy the hell out of it. But nowadays, I just the pace is so crazy here with all the games we have to play and the time I have to play games. I mean, I've got I've got knives to sharpened. So anyway,

yeah, that's it so far. That's my experience of Dark Souls. I've dumped more than more than a few hours in there, and I'm going to continue going at it. Matt Rory is actually going to try it out, so he really liked Demon Souls. He's a huge Demons, so yeah, he really really enjoyed it, so he's gonna put some time into it as

well and we'll get some different perspectives on it. So yeah, it might sound like I'm dismissive of that game, but I actually think it's It's quite fascinating and really well done for what it what it aims to do well. I describe describe when I patar the game. It's a lot like I look at ev Online, like, you know what, I can't get into that that curve is just too much for me. I see why people love it. I love hearing stories of people playing it. Like the experiences people have

playing those games are just I would rather really interesting. I would rather read a blog about Online or Demon Souls than ever play either of those games once. Well. Also, also I think, and not to talk too much about this game, but I think coming in the second time around with Dark Souls and it being so similar to the first one, I am a lot more forgiving of the design choices. Because this is now a known quantity.

Anybody who's jumping into Dark Souls should have a really good idea of what that game is game. You know what the learning curve is like and where the

demon souls. It was like, how can you? Yes, the game is rewarding and fascinating and you had to penetrate so much to get to the right the reason and it also no one knew It's not like ahead of that game's release, everyone was like communicating this is not necessarily for you just because you like action games with swords or even that, like, you know the stuff that we're not going to tell you. We're gonna expect you to just

either figure out or find out online like that. Those were the design choices in the first one that I was like, it's I'm not sure how much I can forgive here of like handing me this game and being like I'm not never gonna teach you how you use magic figure it out, Like I don't that's too much for me right now. But but but Dark shows I kind of expect that now, and it's like, all right, well, I'll steal myself for that, and like I kind of I got your number from

software. I know, I know what I'm up against here, and so I almost can look at that as more of like here's what the Souls series is like, and if you're into that, then man, run for it, go run to the need. I don't know how you pr against that. I don't know how you don't you just let it be. Well. I mean, like, so you know the first game they had that, I remember seeing that it like TGS O eight oh nine whatever the ts was that we went to wait and seeing that at the Sony booth and going back

there and it's like, oh, we hadn't seen this game before. It's from from from Software. Let's go, Sony's publishing it, let's go check it out. Doesn't have next in it, so let's check it out. So we went, and you know, I went into the Sony booth and go through the press line and get into the back and and and play the game. And it sounds like a horrible way to be introduced to that game.

And yeah, like like TGS show for like I've got headphones on or whatever, and there's this big, like lengthy opening like pan ends and I'm like, okay, like some sort of like medieval thing, got it? And I started playing, you know, like, man, this doesn't look very good like at this and at this point in you know, PlayStation Three's life, That's kind of what it was about. It was like, how

how pretty can it? P S three game B I'm like, just looks terrible And I just died and then you just respond me, what this is terrible? Like yeah, the worst possible impression that game could have made. And that's still how I remember Demon Souls so and and you know, it's it's it's kind of like it's the the MMO conundrum of how do you explain this, you know rich, you know endgame content that exists when you have

to spend one hundred hours playing the games we're demo. Yeah, it's like it's like you have fifteen minutes to experience this and have some idea of what this is about. Some games lend themselves better that to that than than others. And then you're vinding your points about the lifestyle I think are spotifying. No, not a lot of people can well have the interest like you think

of the potential audience. So okay, people who who are interested in video games, all right, that's that's the biggest possible audience you can have. That's a couple of people, all right, People who are interested in a super punishing experience, let's let's just say more than your average challenge. Some people will say that game is very easy. Some people will not. I happen to think that it's it's rather punishing and some of their choices. Some

people think you just have to play slower. My impression of it is that it's the climbing mount everest of video games. But like the reward, I'm wrong, Well just I mean, like in that category, basically the hardest thing you could do. I see, I don't think that's necessarily true. I don't. I don't think that game in itself. I think the thing is that it doesn't do a lot of carrot dangling. It's it's not really about like like all right, come on, make it on. Like it

doesn't try and goad you forward with stuff. It's just like, no, this is impenetrable. This is very hard, right, which is which is what draws a certain segments to the game, Like the challenge is so weird. It's not like any one thing is well. Some of the bosses are just stupid and like they'll I don't know the bosses aside, nothing is really that hard. Uh. The hard part comes from trying to manage your patience in going through, because as you die and have to replay each part over

and over again and you lose souls. The my nature is to try and get through it as quickly as possible, to get back to the point I was at, which could be a half hour an hour away. You can't do that. You have to take each step as meticulously as you did the first time through, because any room for any mistake you make could lead to your death really quickly. Not to say that it's super hard in that way. I don't mean that, but it requires a certain amount of patience.

Patience also the antithesis of how you can play. You can play other games. You just say, I'm just gonna run through this part. I'm done with this part. I don't want to mess with it, like I already conquered. Right. You have to treat every encounter as though it's the first time you encountered it, and then it's life threatening. Yes, there's no fodder. It's basically just like this one dude, this little guy here, if I swing too much or where's the waste myndwer, he could kill me.

And so knowing that and having it be your tenth time through that, and having knowing that you are forty five minutes out from where you died, can be very taxing on you to take that encounter very slowly, dodged and hits, hit him again, move forward. That's the challenge. I think that that's the part that's hard. Also, the part where you're like,

this guy is so fucking hard. He's killing me in three shots. It takes me a half I can beat him, but it takes me a half hour rolling around might even in the right area, like should I even be here, And then like walking two steps forward and a giant dragon blows fire on You're like, Okay, no, that's wrong. I should just go check out that league left side for a while. That's the challenging part.

But no one thing really is that there are certain really big bosses that are actually really hard, but usually it's more like now I can sit here for four hours with five thousand arrows and away. But it seems like that lack of hand holding like extends to everything. Like you're saying, like, no, I'm not gonna explain to you how any of the system work. Like these systems are just they're they're they're in place, and it really really for

me, I'm missing something. Use you can figure them out eventually. I recommend every I really think everybody. Patrick you should totally play it. Brad you should totally play it. Ryan, you should everybody should try it, because like it really is something that, uh, you might really like or you might not. Like I think I wounded up in the middle of like there are parts of it I really enjoyed, but I never could get past that like frustration. Part of I just spend three hours, I have zero

progress, zero, nothing I can gain a level. I lost all my souls. I memorized where everybody, every enemy in that level was two hours ago. Like it did a matter of executing upon that knowledge. Just this time I was not sloppy enough to get hit that. That's the thing. Uh So, like that's the part I just never got past, and like, I just is it worth it? Is it worth it for that? And at some point I was like, kind of no, I don't know, I'm not. I'm not When I beat the game, I wasn't like

doing backflips, being like yeah. It was like I can't believe I put myself through all that. It's in a world where games to compliment you for just hitting the A button to jump, Like this game it's the ultimate challenge, Like it's it's it's not giving you paths on the backs every time you can put down a skeleton. In fact, the skeleton ahead of you is gonna stab you in the fucking back just because you got through the first one.

Like it's so, yeah, I do. I really do think everybody should should give it a shot, at least in terms of like I think it is something that is unique in video games at least that it's like you know it'd be a terrible or great, it's it's something that you just don't see. I think it's a lot of the reasons I like Data Sex. The reason Data Sex was fresh, it is not because it's new. It's because it's old and just it hasnt been around. It's the opposite of focus

tests of games. Like you put Demon Souls in front of a fucking mainstream focused tested group, that game wouldn't exist, but because it's you know, it exists just because from Software wanted to make this thing and it found an audience. I've also should say I've been play an offline uh well during my place. I haven't even plugged in yet, so I'll see how much better

or worse I could completely. It's kind of weird how From Software is like this really baller ass Japanese developer, Like they always seem very I don't know, a second stream kind of just like a cockroach. They keep like just surviving, like they just made like they were really known for the Tension games. Yeah, and then they were kicking around their arm recorre games, which they're still doing. They just delayed that newest one to the Spring. But

then they found like new life with the Demon Souls games. Like what were those games even for the Xbox A Togi or some of them? Yeah, yeah, I don't know as how you pronounce it. Yeah, they did the two Atogi games for the original XBO. They just haven't really had like those were like every every game from software they made Ninja Blade, which wasn't

great, but it was fucking completely insane. Yes, and the games are always really usually really pretty or at least very crazy, And I give them that, but I always figured that they were, even in Japan, kind of niche. But it turns out not not so. Dark Souls is also kind of crazy. Yeah we got that. Yeah, like just in like, what the hell is going on? Oh yeah, no, no idea,

that's I've got. Like I'm saying, I've gotten to that point with from software games where I realized, just okay, it's made by from software. There's gonna be something ridiculous and and inexplicable about this experience, whether it be from a design perspective of wait, why are there quick time events right now? Too? Had a lot of quick siping and yeah, really weirdly placed quick time events to just like stuff like structurally Chromehounds and how bizarre that

was. That's another from a joint. Yeah, I kind of liked that game. Yeah, people really liked the multiplayer in the game. That weird persistent war thing going on. Yeah, see, I should have known. Like Chromehounds, the thing I hated most about Chromehounds was responding and having to run ten minutes to a battle. Same thing. Like the action within a specific scenario, it was not great, but like the overall framework was really

intriguing. It's fascinating for sure. That's how we just saw demons. So I need to know no turns out. I at least need to understand this. Even if I'm not gonna like it, you should try. You might really really like it. I intend to give it a legitimate shot. Yeah, especially just like I think this one, I have no such intention.

I think Dark Souls actually does open realistic about this corn. I think it opens up a little bit easier than and than Demon Souls, Like it actually does ease you into things a little bit nicer than There are a bit more tutorial things that that that help you out a little bit. And coming to it from from the whole body of knowledge of demon souls that that is out there actually really helps out because you can look up. I feel like I want to buy a strategy guy and play it with a strategy gout it.

Maybe I feel like it depends what you're going into it for. I think we not want to do that. Yeah, I don't know. I have reasons to believe you might not want to do them. Okay, anyway, Dark Souls talking about this scheme is making me anxious. Yeah we have let's move on. Hey, wouldn't Legend of Zelt would be so much better if it was more like Dark Souls? Do you think next? Next Zelda? Yeah, they're gonna fold in delete your safe. Yeah, unless you eject

out of the Zelda cockpit. You wanted your hardcore Zelda here it is. Fuck you guys made us make the characters design all shitty again because they're like, oh, real Zelda. Well, then here's real Zelda kills you and with like a Windwaker art style. I beat kills on three. Oh yeah, yep, how'd that go? Hey it sounds like a win. I beat that whole game with a move controller, did you? Yeah? I say I could. I though the ending of kills one three was pretty weird.

Oh genocide is it? We passed the morritory? I guess, I don't know. Yeah, let's just say that genocide doesn't spoil anything. Let's just say that you're you're fighting this giant war to stop this terrible, terrible, terrible thing that would happen to Earth. Yeah, only to pretty much allow it to happen to the planet. So you're like, we need this,

this would be what are we fucking animals? And then it's like, I guess, so want want want want, And then there's actually the stinger at the end, which is like, also this crazy thing at the end, which I wish I won't spoil. Also the bad thing that you thought was bad, there's this other thing that's way worse. Well, it's just like this thing that was like, oh all right, kills one four, all right, all right? Anyway, Yeah, that game with that game

was fun stuff. It was fun in the future. Yeah, Rico, Rico's in that game. Patrick Kleavit, can we talk about Zelda? No, No, you guys to talk about your experience with four Swords a little bit. Having had a chance to South this week, Yeah, like ivn't said down to we're gonna do something. We're gonna play that. We played it a Nintendo and we will fucked with the Nintendo rep and just kept throwing them into holes. He wasn't very good at the game. So we will,

we will do that, will play it. That's free. That's free three DS so till the first year of the three dsniversaries February February. But that's still okay. It's dar so it plays I in your three DS, but it's technically a d s I game, but it will play on my DSi as well. And it was it was ported slash redone by the guys that did the Okraine of Time. They added some stuff I don't know, but they removed the hole and needed a console part of the equation. Yeah,

you never needed that. That all that stuff is. Yeah, well you got very confused. Yeah. So that game was originally on the well it was a game cube game. No, no, no, it was originally the multiplayer mode on the Game Boy Advanced release of Linked to the Past. Okay, so that's what they're port they're not porting over the game, not four Swords Adventure Adventures. It's the one that it's one of the game Boy Advantage, which they've added a bunch of stuff too, But that was

but that was like a shrunk down version of the Four Swords Adventures. Like the Four Swords Adventures was just a bunch of scenarios in that same basic framework, and you could play it for player if you wanted to. Maybe I'm not going to make that assumption because the last time we assume something about four Swords people corrected us a lot. But it isn't. It isn't the wind

Waker art style right there? Not No, it's it's it's like the Linked to the Past by one yes, sort of super indeos looking Yeah, okay, then I am confused. Yeah, I'm thinking of that. Then I don't know what. Let's just download it and play it out of it. That's to be better. She doesn't have that that that Windwaker art art style at all. No, I don't thinking of a different game. Was there the Crystals one? No, now you're thinking of the right one. I

am. You're thinking of the one that I'm thinking of, Okay about Crystal Chronicles. No, I'm thinking of the four players Zelda overhead. But it's all seated. It looks like linked to the past. That was a game that was a GameCube game. Yeah, yeah, that GameCube game looked like Windwaker. Yes, Okay, that's not what we're talking Okay, okay, Yeah, I don't know then, I don't know what they're talking about. I'm talking about the multiplayer mode of the Game Boy Advanced FLA. I'm just

saying I've never seen that part of it. Was only part of that, It was only part of that one thing. It was just it was the multiplayer in linked to the plat pastor remake for GBA. Yes, hence our confusion, the tap or whatever. It's fair. It's a fair. Yeah, it's crazy. Fair point of confusion. It's it's it's it's compounded by the way it's listed in our database and just yeah, yeah, and just and just what its existence has been in It seems fun. We'll download it.

Yeah. I beat That Island last night. Congratulations, get the good ending? Are their other endings? You're ready for the movie which is based on the trailer? Oh? Is that what it is? It's based it's the press release base. It says it specifically says we're on the trailer. They said that is it animated? I don't know, lions get picked it up. I'll ever come out come on. Video game movies don't come out

with asteroids and jousts. I think they ditched the asteroids. One that was going to be I mean, yea Dead Island, I would argue, starts on a pretty steve downhill slant after the first area, after the resort, Yes, the city area after that. It's kind of fun because you're running around, But the Dead Island is fun when it's all about open spaces,

crowd control and playing around with the zombies. And the game starts out as a giant open world and then gets narrower and narrower and narrower, and like you go from the uh yeah, the resort to use to this city that is like really constraint spaces. But it is a nice difference because you're actually you're used to being able to fight all the zombies having space to run around. This is run from most encounters like just don't even you just want to

get out of the way. The zombies are more powerful than you, like you're gonna get overwhelmed. So that's fun for a little while because you're at least in an open enough space that you can get away from the zombies. But then the trucks. There aren't a lot of trucks after the after the resort, there's basically there's very few, very future other trucks in in the jungle, but there's not a lot of rooms. You barely do anything in

the jungle. The jungle is like two hours long. Then you're in a hospital area, a laboratory, and then you're in a prison but it's just trucks, and then you're just in a truck. You're fighting inside a truck. Basically after the first area, I was just playing it just because I was enjoying the combat. But I don't know, I think I had I was done after that. Yeah, yeah, so and that game is long. It is. It's very very long, depending on how much stuff you

do. But yeah, how was your I was the I was the I was the stereotypical Asian woman with the sharp knives. Uh podcast gone for too long? Just peeing into a cup. N man, the coffee like it never runs out. That's rights the magical there always says it is hot. It is, I can feel it through the cup. No new game plus for you. You're well, what do you think? What do you think of your your clock time was, oh does it on the safe sen Like, my guess is twenty five? Really probably no? No, no itch

to restart with the same guy. I don't I don't think. I mean I would play with someone through the resort area again because that that that was fun. But none of the areas really got and the comments just I don't know. Eventually, you you they don't give you enough interesting mods that allow

your class to do that many thing like the sharp Weapons class. Once you get the Electrified mods for your knives, you just keep getting better versions of Electrified, and then you have no there's no incentive to try anything else, like because you're already gone down that path. Because your skill tree, especially in the experience boosters, the multipliers will be like times two, three four for cutting off limb, So it's like I'm not gonna use a sledge hammer

because I'm not gonna cut off any limbs the sledgehammer. So although you keep you actually get XP for also breaking the limbs, so you can you can break them and get XP and then you can cut them off and get more you could. I guess I did the game. I guess what I found is that even even though I was recognizing I shouldn't be doing it, I found myself falling into the whole of there's a civic way for me to attack these hordes of zombies, and I'm just going to keep doing that over and

over again because it's the most efficient way. As opposed to the beginning of

the first ten hours of the game. I was having so much fun playing around with it, and I think a large part of it is because you become very much in control of the game after a certain point, like in the first like five six hours, like your weapons are always breaking, you're you're dying a lot, or at least running a lot, like you have to run away, Like at a certain point, you become so understanding of the zombie types and the zombie taps aren't different enough to force you to do

anything that different that you just fall into very play style. And then you're just doing that for twenty hours, and then I just that last boss is just god fucking awesome. It's set up that you should have four people playing with you, and all the cut scenes certainly seem to think that you do. All the cut scenes have four people in it, And which is the final boss? Isn't anything to say. It's just like it's this big,

almost tank like character that's constantly charging you. And so the idea would be you'd have one person the other three characters take pulling it away as someone's taking him out, and instead it's just he charges at you. You hit him as many times as you can, you die, you spawn again, you hit him as many times as you can, you die, and you just keep doing that. No, no, so I just did that seven or eight times until he finally he finally went down. And yeah, that's the

comment in the game. Is so much fun though it is, it's very hard hitting, and I actually I saw that too. You can play the PC version with a game pad and like at three sixty controller, but you cannot change it to the analog controls, really did. Someone was telling me that you could maybe they patch it in. I thought you said it was the opposite. With the PC the key mouse and keyboard weren't weren't doing the analogs? Yeah, you can't. You can't do analog with the mouse keyboard.

Un Plus they added that because they passed it a couple of times. Don't know how that would work though, Yeah, I don't like, yeah, I'm not sure because that, yeah, that if I didn't have that, that I probably wouldn't stopped the game, because that's more or less what maintained my interest in the game was just screwing with the zombies at the point where like, the quests are not interesting. Uh the other it's like the characters are not interesting, the world is all right. So it's basically this

game is relying on you masturbating to numbers and the combat. The leveling of Luke Grind was a huge part of a while I like the game, and then in the field of the combat, I also just I wasn't getting enough interesting, Like I'd got three rare rep and drops throughout the entire game, really the one that gets to the achievement talking about the Orange ones, yeah,

wow, like I must have found at least ten orange weapons. Yes, I only got and so I just yeah, I just there wasn't enough for eventually, there just wasn't enough for riding the combat for for me to I would at this point like I just was just going forward because I just when I once I start a game, I want to finish it. But yeah, there was a point where I'm just like I don't want to. I don't want to cut up zombies anymore. And that makes me That makes

that bumps me out. I want to see more more crazy mods for that game. Yeah, I feel like that game has a long life on the PC. Yep for just crazy taking around and yeah you already did, especially in that resort area. There's a lot of cool things people could do in that. I want just caused three zombies. I want to be in jets dropping bombs on zombies, just still in a zombie scenario, but in a position where you're so abstracted from the zombie threat, like, yeah, I

know there's zombies down there, but I'm just carpet bombing. I'm out to fight zombies from this bloop. I don't care. Zombies do not react to shock and awe. According to World war Z. No, No they don't. That just makes up such a tough opponent. You can't. You can't. Zombie's friend didn't have him be like, man, I should not. Zombie is still just gonna come. I'm still gonna come at you. It's tough. They're making that a movie, World war Z. That could be

a good movie. Brad Pitt really, Yeah, he's a fine actor. He can't be sure. Brian Cranston is in that movie too. I believe you're right. I think he is in everything. He's currently in everything.

He's in Contagion for a minute. I will say this that I was catching up on some old modern family and when and when the actor who plays Mike from Breaking Bad pops up as ede Neil's brother, and that like, oh shit, Mike is into it's crossover universe because he almost looks and acts exactly the same, Like you could totally see like him being that exact same character, just like, wait later character, where are you season three? You're

mid season three? You've met him, You've met him already, the cleaner bald. Yeah, yeah, it's a good character. Do you have no fucking idea how good Mike is? And I have to stop reading Twitter. I'm living in fear. He's got to catch up. It's ok. People really can't. Gary. Gary tweeted something this morning that all I almost didn't want to read is it's the plot. Twist itself are not what makes that show interesting. It has a very good plot. Yeah, that's the intensity.

It's the intensity, it's the it's the acting, and it's the piling up of just horrible situations. It's it's the like bad on worse. It's it's so good, Like I like that the show never like the lives of the characters never returned to equilibrium, you know, it's never like there's never like it never rises and then falls back down to where it was, constantly in one direction, just getting worse and worse. It's constantly like, oh

you think he's gonna fix that problem? Though, that mean like eight other things way worse. The show is called breaking bad, right, It's true. Yeah, I mean every season is just about another character. Then do they're gonna do one more season? A fifth season? They signed, They signed one more seasons, but with the promise is they're probably gonna do the same thing they did loss, which is there each season usually fourteen episodes.

The next one will be The theory is it'll be sixteen and split into two seasons. That's that's fine. I'm just saying by the end of that fifth season, I want everyone to be dead. Everyone everyone dead or in jail.

And Brian Kranston every evening he's like, this character cannot live, Like there he sees no way this character lives to the end of the series, and that's probably I want to see half a season where he's already where he's dead, Like, let's like the show shouldn't and no, no, the show shouldn't at that character's death, like Walter White will eventually succumb to the cancer, but like the things that he is set into motion are so in

saying and huge so that there's no way that they won't have continuing repercussions on all of these other people that he's affected. I want to see that stuff play. I want to spin off show with Mike. Hell, yes, totally watch that. Yeah, Mike the Cleaner, just call it that. There you go, Mike the Cleaner. AMC presents Mike the Cleaner in case

you forgot AMC. It's where we're showing with this. Previously on AMC's Breaking Bad, featuring Rage, which it has featured predominantly this season, bringing back into games. Yeah, yeah, rage making weird product, like inaccurate product player. So yeah, so so just if yeah, well I guess you've seen maybe because you're mostly caught up right, Yeah, I'm halfway through. They featured Rage in the show the show at least three or three times.

I would say maybe more. Sometimes it'll just be a box, like just really obviously laid out, like a copy of Rage, but the most absurd and just like maybe if you aren't the games, you wouldn't have blinked.

But because I knew what Rage was, and this is obviously just dropped in promotion, like totally to me out of It was otherwise a pretty intense scene where like one of the characters is is shooting on the screen with a light gun but they're playing Rage, which is not a light gun shooter, but they've like stripped all the interface down and it's clearly someone was playing someone or somewhere played Rage, and a record of this thing that would look like you

were playing Rage as a light gun shooter. It has no interface on top. It has it, but it has like an interface where like the character is dying and you have to shoot. It's weird and it goes out for like two minutes. Weird, but it's this this, it's the super intense scene where the characters wrestling with this previous actions and yeah, He's like both and I want to get into that, but I'm sitting there going, this

isn't a fucking Rage. Looks like, yeah, yeah, we're we're being held back from enjoying this scene because we have knowledge like, no, this is not probably probably would not have worked with a controller though, right, like if you were like getting that scene, yeah that scene like the trigger and yeah right but still right, pick a different game. Yeah, put

House to the dead End gets the getting real. But there's some there's some knowledge, like there's the writing team there clearly because there's a great like sped it up like zombie conversation that happens. Oh they get they're bringing bad especially. I think this about a couple times they've referenced games like they know what they're talking about. Like they'll talk about Call of Duty zombie mode and also Left for Dead and like, well the writers that was that was the conversation.

They're like like they're talking about best zombie video game and one guy's talking about writers do know resid Evil four is the best? And this guy's no, like going in a group with Left for Dead and there's like no zombie mode and called like they're they're references and the things that they like the because it's basically just so much of speed freaks having a conversation about video games and they capture both. That one was good. They get both parts, both

the game conversation and the talking to a speed freak part down perfectly. I just I wonder for research for that show, Like do they like, how much research do they do going to actual flop houses? Because the the inside scene too perfect. It seems like they get them just right, because you would know I wouldn't. But I'm just saying they seemed like it. It seems like that's exactly what they sure should be, Like, it's believable. We have to stop talking about the show. I just want to go watch

the show Rage comes out next week, that's all. I Yeah, we should have we should have Rage in here. Get your light gun now today? Yeah? Yeah, your gun. To be fair, they made it look like no other light gun that actually exists, like the guns when they showed it looks custom made. Don't super scope. It was not a super scope it was it was not a move controller in the little like there was

no glowy tip on it. They never showed it a console all. They all they showed this big ass TV and he's standing there with the fake Did they say the name of the game at all? Just not in that it's just there's like scenes where he's sitting in the foreground and it's just like title

screen in the background, and so you just see a giant Rage. I'm I would be curious how much that stuff like works, Like does that actually raise the profile of that game to people even though it is not representative of what that game is? Or is it just like I was watching Breaking Bad? Yeah, I saw that Rage box. Oh, Rage comes out next week. All right, Well, but how many times have you watched like

a movie with the fake video game in it? And I think anybody's ever like I really want to play that fake game they were playing in that that movie. Yeah, I don't think it's not so much that people see it and then actively seek it out. It's that when they are exposed to it again later some other context. Yeah, there's already like we've broken through the noise a little bit. Like I can't believe they made a real game of that game that I was playing and Breaking Bad that's crazy. I Yeah,

I guess that must be. The potential audience for Rage is a little more savvy than that. But it doesn't like to think I was like, Okay, and in this scene, you know, he's gonna he'll be playing a video game, or what are we gonna do? Are we gonna like production? It's like, okay, what are we gonna do? We're gonna make this video game? We don't have budget for that. We can't go and create. You don't think the scene was made around the deal. I think it was like, you know what, we can go get a deal.

We'll find something. We've got a spot here, we can can find a partner that will work with us on this. We're fucking breaking bad, you know. At this point we are kind of you know, big enough shit that that we can get whoever it is that we want. AMC in general, across their shows they do a decent amount of like in in show, like all the stuff in mad Men where they take these you know, old brands and spin them up again. Where's like they know, like in mad

Men. My understanding of it is that like they don't sound like Pepsi says, hey, put us in there somewhere. It's like they were gonna do something with Pepsi and they're like, hey, Pepsi, like we were going to do something anyway. I want it on this, you want it on this? So no arc Cola. Do you want it on it? Yes? R C Cola will take anything you've got. Yes, you digitally insert RCI Cola into old episodes of King of Queens fantastic using RC color to kill

the rats in the office. Fine, that's yes, arc Cola rat poison. It's good for that. It's good for anything. What do you want to do with it? You want to shine up a penny arc Cola, try to strip the pain off of your car. RC Cola Royal Crown ad campaign for arc Cola. Yeah, exactly, that's no, that's Mike. I'm pitching right now. Get back to me. Just let me know. King of Cola tweet Patrick. You will have any other games playing Finish Afford

to play Binding of Isaac. I have that, but I haven't played it. Something with that this week? Yeah? I started el should I but I'm not far enough. That game's weird? Is it good? Is it a game? It's very pretty? It has a very pretty art style. Right. That's the art doctor from devilm Cry if I call correctly. I can't remember his name. Well, he did commod he do both of those, definitely. The art director from ocmmy. Yeah, may also have been

the art director for Yeah, yeah, it's very pretty. It's far The gameplay itself leaves a lot to be desired. But if it's really really pretty and it's a lot of talking to God on a cell phone, that sounds about yeah, like you'll be just walking along and some guy I'll just be like chatting with God on a cell phone. Yeah, I saw. I saw enough of that. I saw Shane Bettenhausen came through when he was still associated with that organization, showed us that game. It's like, yeah,

it's pretty. Yep, it is pretty. It's pretty, not bad looking. It's not a bad looking game. We'll give it that. It's about all all. I could say. Phone, but my phone, My phone is Mango. Lists haven't been updated. I am disappointed about that. It's texting Will Smith right now here. Where the fuck is my Mango? No, I want to hear, Brad. I want to hear your opinions on the Devil. The Devil and Devil's pretty hardcore. Oh, I haven't played

enough Diablo and played really any deal. I got hit by that, that weird Comcast bug from the first night that it came out. Didge finally, but at that point we had done the quick look and I had watched you play through most of the beta with like four characters. What do you think it looks? It looks good like Diablo. You know, like I was never a huge Diablo gut back in the day, so I don't have like the the flame of nostalgia is not raging. But I definitely am into playing

it because it's got loot. I think we were talking before, and I am more excited, way more excited about Diablo El Diablo now than I was before I started playing that debateau. Yeah, like before I started playing the beta, I was like, yeah, I kind of know exactly what I'm gonna get into here. It's I can go play Diablo too. This kind of seems verse from everything I've seen. This seemed very similar. And then

you know, it's fifty seventy five clicks in. I was like, I started to get my loot and I was like, all right, man, I'm ready to get some loot. Well, it wasn't, I don't. I think it wasn't just picking up the loot, but also seeing more specifically what they've done under the hood. You know, I don't like it. Yeah, we confirmed that it is basically more Diablo. But yeah, it's

it's tough. It's definitely easy to narrow the gap in your mind between two and what's happened and then go back to two and be like, oh, yeah, no, no, that I'm forgetting the evolution of this entire chain, seeing how the how the skill stuff has changed and what they've done with the SPA like sell your loot right out of your inventory, you can drop it in the cauldron of Jordan, melted down for money. How does this

feel post Torchlight? Uh? Then he can speak to that. I didn't really get my hands on it. I think it's I think it's different. Uh. It definitely is not the same sense of style. Uh. And and that plays for me. That plays a lot. Uh. This is so much more self serious than that. Uh. I was almost gonna say Torchwood and Torchlight. Uh. Yeah, So I think Diablo compared to to torch Light very different. Also, I think we're Torchlight. We'll see what

Torchlight two is like when we're Torchlight one fell on its knees. I guess didn't fall its face. For me was the lack of different loot at some point where it's just like, all right, I'm getting different items, but they're not. They don't look any different. My character looks the same. There's like three different armored types. And right, I'm hoping Diablo. Yeah, I'm curious toime it's a Torchlight too, because they were supposed to be

out this summer. Now they're not. They push it now. You know, Diallo three is coming out before March, right, it's the early twenty twelve, so before March thirty one. But I mean that kind of that seems like that kind of screws over Torchlight, like they I'm worried maybe they're gonna miss their window. Like at this point people are playing Diablo. I mean, I guess they have a gap like they had for the end of the year. Yes, they seem confident less on now they have a real

impetus now they have released window to play against. I saw I saw some people saying that they thought the beta was looked too easy or seemed too easy or stuff like that. It doesn't have the difficulty levels and it's like when that's an hour and a half of gameplay, I don't know if they accelerated that beta or not. Also to be like are you're gonna gain like ten

levels within this beta. Well, they also they have said there's going to be more stuff to the beta, like there are further roll outs of content, so there'll be other stuff. Alright. I thought the beta was if I don't learn anything about about Blizzard over the years, it's that they actually

take their you know, beta data heart actually a beta. Yeah, there's a reason it's only this one slice because they they're probably just analyzing this one slice meticulously, you see what people do, rather than opening up a whole act. It's not it's not glorified fucking marketing driven demo. Like they're driving real information from this, and we'll probably make significant changes or wills. They always have. Like I was, I just like before I was even in

the industry. I just looked into the Warcraft three beta and like they changed stuff about that dramatically as they rolled out new patches. Just of the beta. I will say, I don't the initial character designs from your main characters didn't nothing to jumped out of me. It's like this guy looks super cool, but I think, uh, I hold that loot, I get that loot, get those cool looking helmets. Anyway, that's it. I felt

like we need to talk about. And also we are not the ones who say Diablo that is a that is a manufacturer, manufacturer, that's Texas. Yeah, that's Texas. That's Randy Pitchford and George Brossard specifically, that is that's where we get the Diablo. So we're saying it out of fun. Maybe that's the right way. No, that's the right way. It's only it's only the right way if you're from Texas. So it's only pass is wrong. Don't mess when you're in Texas. No Texas kind of world unto

itself. Yeah, so you know within the Texas video games, it's true they do produce quite a few. I don't think they make that. Texas knows a thing or two about the Diablo, about a thing or two. Yeah, they know a thing or two about the Devil. That's there's about they do. See who it comes? Schames come out of Texas. It's true, demons. Brad Shoemaker, what's going on? Played Resident Evil Code Veronica X. That's right, you did a four last Nostalgia Versus Reality are

four came out last week. We h we talked about on the podcast. I don't think. I don't think much of that made it in, but we talked about it. It was it was our extended conversation about Resident Evil writ large that got great. Went on for way to do? We had like that, We had like a three hour podcast I had to. We talked about every Resident Evil game there was had to that's right. We tried tried to try to connect the dots between Gun sur how does gun survive?

Or Lake up to listen. There is a there is a like one hundred page fact that is nothing but the like pure timeline and event lineage of the Resident Evil franchise. Would you guys? So awesome? It is so listen as someone who hasn't played a ton of Resident Evil games, it is awesome. How crazy and weird that fiction goes because it's clearly one of those things where like there's no master steward of this fiction. The fiction goes off the

rails with coded ronica. It's just like, whoever's around for this one? I guess you get to decide what happens at Resident Evil next. I don't know, Well, it's almost it seems to me it's almost like one of those like exquisite exquisite corpse things where like I listen, I'm gonna draw on the top of the page and I'm gonna fold it over. Now you draw the next part of the body and I'm gonna fold that over, and I Brad, do you draw the next part? And by the end we're up.

The resident will five Like, wait, what, they're not zombies anymore? How did we get there? I don't know, look at the shoulders. Code Ronica is the one where they left Racing City, and it was also the one that kind of ascribed the origins of Umbrella to like these crazy like statistic aristocrats that turn into butterflies or whatever. So wait, did you beat Code Vernica X again this one or for the first time? Yeah,

back in the day or now? Either Yeah, I not only did I finish it back in the day, but playing it now makes me realize how much I must have played that game, because like specific lines and cut scenes and like little stingers in the music and stuff or like burned into my memory twice, so the point that like when I hear them, I'm just like, wow, that sounds so familiar, Like, so, how is it holding up? It doesn't at all? That's what I was gonna say last

last week. You know, my assertion is that already for still holds up pretty damn well, yeah, this game is not this is all fixed camera angles. Yeah, this is this is straight up classic tank control roles, like going all going all the way back to like probably what first alone in the dark. Isn't that when those sorts of controls really came about, Like that is an ant quated way to play games like that? Is it is?

It was it like hold ax or something? To run? Like how do you actually yeah, well yeah that's I think it's always like that in all the games to Run. But well, the way it works is that you you turn, you hit right and left on the depats, you turn your character on an access and regardless of the camera angle in which way they're facing, you hit up to walk and back and they just back up like a tank or or a car. That game is still pretty though it looks

okay you're talking about for Veronica. It actually like it looks okay. It was a Dreamcast game originally, and like you know, it's an HD here, but it's it does not a braid the eyeballs when you look at it. You know, it is other than like some pretty pretty messy looking textures and stuff like it. It looks, it looks tolerable, but it's just the the game play is just not pleasant. So I just I know we talked about this last time, but I totally forgot already. Twenty dollars each.

Yeah, so yeah for four and then twenty hours for cod Ron, but it's sold together in Japan. On Japan, they came out on a disk together. It's probably seventy or eighty dollars in Japan. Here it's it's twenty bucks per piecemeal. Uh, and twenty dollars is arguably justifiable for four. I can't think of any way like this should have been. I think there should have been a ten dollar game, like for ten bucks. It's I think it's acceptable twice as much like like even this, this releasing at

all, especially alongside four, is just Japan not knowing. I don't know. I guess it feels it feels like, hey, these are the three D games we have, that those are way easier support than any work they

would have to go into two or three. They could not bring those other games back with all those without style, all those litters, two D backgrounds, They literally could not put those games on those systems and make them look except it would look like fucking garbage, which they would release that resume at one point five put out that the game, know the abandoned Resident Evil two, remember the one that it was in like an office building or whatever.

Yes, it had I can't remember the almost finished a sequel to Reson Evil. Scrapped it and then there was like the footage of it was available on the Resident one director's cut its existence. Oh yeah, yeah, it's there and there's it was in magazines like John McCarty like saw it in person.

He played it back when he went to go. Was an actual three D No, it was RI two style, like grander backgrounds, but like there, the legend goes there are discs that around, but they are in the hands of collectors that have no interest in you know, like some collectors get stuff and like they want to expose it to the world and show like suppose the discs do exist outside of Capcom's hands, but just the people that haven't

have no interest in and showing the rest of the world. But it was a holy separate game that was almost done until they scrapped it and start all over and made RI two. I would love a remake of RI two though. Yeah, well it's even like you see those the early gameplay footage of of R four where there three versions are four. Well, a Ford became Devil might Cry. Yeah, well what was going to be rid for?

Yes, became Devil might Cry. And then they made another ARI fourtot which is that one where Leon is in the mansion again or like a man. There's a bunch of footage of that out there. Yeah, there's like it's the silhouetted there's like other the like straight up ghosts, look like a ghost story, the abandoned that that got scrapped and then we got a Ford became

what we got, I guess during the anniversary of Resideval. It's kind of sad that, like they have all of this stuff they could do with the series, and what they what we get is just some HD liked of the PC version. It's just you can do a lot with that series, especially how fucked up that mythology is, and you could do a nice tribute to that series. That Capcom just doesn't seem very interested, and I wonder I wonder iful we'll hear anything about a RD six anytime soon. I mean it's

been keep going. Anything they reboot or just side story. In terms of the story, it's kind of like they wrapped up the Umbrella stuff pretty pretty tidily. Like that stuff was just they put a boat. In terms of zombies, viruses, ab alpha that ever, I mean they went back to the source five. You know, I'd like them to get back to being scary again. Five wasn't scary. I mean I played not much of five. With with the Umbrella thing being solved and Wesker being dead, they have

to do something else with the fiction. They have to well the if you can play Chris Redfield again fun, but like you need a new antagon, like we need a nineteen seventies like procedural kind of crop, right unless unless they got back in time or something, then you can. I always like tomcamy when he was talking, everybody at Umbrella was happy and psyched. We're

gonna change the world. That's what that was what mccammy when he would like talking interviews about ARE four before I four became what it eventually was, he said his original idea was that you were an Umbrella agent working for Umbrella doing stuff like that sounds Yeah, that sounds cool. That's that's the way that

you continue to incorporate Umbrella and make it okay. You just make it you were an Aga friend Brella like going out and like trying to contain these fires and Umbrella has caused and that kind of be like, do you know what's going on here? You guys? It's kind of weird, Like shut up

the case. Anyways, they could almost retcon a lot of like that series of weird mythology will also allowing you to go like investigate a bunch of different weird things, and you know that could be cool and already saying like Torchwood, but for Umbrella and you're you're you're playing as doctor who who is actually an Umbrella agent? Do it all makes sense? Somebody's all just a simulation inside of Dark Souls. I think we talked about this last time. Also,

you play it with a light gun. You can play as the team that dies in Arid one team that doesn't doesn't call back Alpha Squad and whatever. Yeah, but they die kind of quick. It's a short game, it's downloadable. Whose blood is it? Berries? Berries playing A two is the only game I've beating like seven or eight times I beat enough to get Tofu. Wow, remember Tofu? I do. If you beat the game enough times, you got to play as a giant thing at Tofu fish shot

Gun. I see, that's the story I want to play as I wanted us tofu story. That's scary. More of a hunk man myself to the pregenator to hunk though, I guess so yeah, pregenator virus. See we did. We've done it again. I'm gonna cut all this stuff out again. Don't do it. The world has to know. I'll tell them Ryan. Ryan is the umbrellas real truth. I'm sorry, guys. I'm more

curious. That's part of the podcast Scott Destroyed. I'm more curious if they make a six or when they make a six, like what it plays like, you know, like is it going to be more of that, you know, having to stop to aim and shoot kind of like it's yeah, can they do that? Like they made two games like that. Can they keep going with that? Or they have to? It's it's a shame because I just have the feeling that that Capcom just doesn't know what to do with

any of its stuff. All of the major creatives that made that series what it is are gone? Yeah, so which could which could go either way? Like the idea that like a younger staff member gets put in charge of Residevil. Like it's not a series that you know, couldn't use a you know shot in the own No, no aps. The problem is that it's it's not suddenly this fresh new management staff. It's like that's that's the problems. The power structure still in place of Like, no, we need to

ship games. Reside Evil is very popular. You guys need to make a bunch of Reside Evil games. Oh you can just you know, make the old ones again. Fine, we don't care. Just get these Resident Evil skews out there because oh god, video games. I mean, yeah, there's window for one more Resideval before the next set of consoles. So like they but they've got like five or six Resideval products in development, you know development. I forget hy that comes out. That is a straight up third

person shooters that can even have a campaign. I think it's pretty multiplayer focused, Like it's not it's not a mainline Resideval with a story. I'm not that excelled. A Revelation played that a couple of times since do not shoot water zombies. Water zombies, revelations. I don't know. They're like water creatures, a ship, yeah, some chick with hair over your face alma yeah. Crossover wrong, spooky series. Code Veronica. I don't know.

Maybe maybe you don't think games long to remember it was two discs. It's very long. It's like one and a half. Yeah, but it's long. Yeah. All those residual games are kind of go along that era for sure. Yeah, you go to like Antarctica on this on the second disc. Oh that's right, boiler, that's right, switch characters, I think, so, yeah, you know you do. I remember plays Claire and

then you play with someone else. Weird. It came out of first person mode yea from that uh so eight four Uh they did like a whole residual podcast where John McCarty and Mark McDonald and what the people talked about that and like, John McCarty owns a debug version of Code Veronica that has the first person mode still in it before they took it out, and you can play it through the entire game and first person. It's interesting, it's cool,

should probably be more fun. The tank controls first person tank controls, alright, alright, move on. We've had enough Reson evil talk. What they've had enough Resion evil talk. Who I'm talking about the movies yet? Who I can talk about the movies. I actually haven't seen the most recent one yet. Which is the most recent? I forget Patrick, you're the name of the most recent. No, Apocalypse has Nemesis in it, though, because I know you have known. But Nemesis was in like two because I

know you saw Apocalypse. Yeah, she saw three of them. I saw three, but there's a fourth one that came out. Contagion. No, I don't know, sounds sounds generic enough to be true. Rise at the Planet of the Resident Evils Afterlife resid Evil Afterlife. Yeah, you're right. Wait, it wasn't that the CG movie. No, that was something else for Yeah, there was also the CG movie. You're right enough Resident Evil talk that that's where you draw the line. I want to talk real quick

about X Men Destiny. What is X Men Destiny? Just out this week? I've only played a little bit of it, but with the term mediocre, I can enter into your and your description. I would define it by that description, which signed from what I've seen so far. What is it give us the top one summary to Human Too. You should set it up a bit because this is this is Silicon Knights. Yeah, the Silicon Knights. This game is like fluttered in and out of previously known for you know,

too Human and Eternal Darkness. And I know if he likes to talk about the legacy of Kane because the first one, the first legacy of kny Victor motherfucker. Yeah, the the first legacy. Yeah, Soryver is one of my favorite series of all times game, but they are unrelated to any of that. They did that first. I know, Like, I just wanted to say, where you're playing this people, people have long standing affection for the Amy Hennig wrote that series. Oh the Still River once, yep,

that's right, that's why so good. And then Eternal Darkness though that that's the game is fantastic. But Resident Evil really though most there reson Evil nothing. I was just trying to, okay, just say, I was like, like, did they do a remake like they did for Metal Gear Solid on the game cube. They did. They remade Reson Eval one on the game Cube. They didn't. Silicon Knights did not remember did you know

what anyway? It is Silicon Knights's kind of a known developer, you know, just Dyak, you know the name, but he has not been in front of this game, like Silicon Nights, No one has been. He has not given a sing as far as I know, a Night Angle interview about this game. Silicon Knights hasn't been in front of this game. Denis Dyak has not been in front of this game. Activision has been from definition of Marvel hasn't been in from like like, we've known that this has existed

for I don't know a year give or take. I know that they were showing h you know, behind closed doors. They were showing builds of this during dice or year this year. That was, you know, a good six months ago. There was an event in San Francisco at some point for this game. They showed this at but then the game was not addy,

but they showed this at public events. They had this at packs. You know, they've they've had this at places where people can playable, yeah, playable, uh uh yeah, yeah, they had it at Comic Con. So it's it's been around, but it's not been but they even it seems like it's very much kind of maybe a fan focus thing as opposed to we should show this game to the press and see what they think. Yeah,

they you know, just opening right out the gate. They made the cardinal fucking mistake, which is, you don't want to play as the X Men's new buddies. You want to play as the fucking X Men. So I want to play as Batman, exactly, exactly. You don't want to pay it play as Batman's new, made up, made up sidekick. But so do you. Is it like one of those situations where you can pick all the powers of the favorite X Men you want to be, you just can't

actually be that. You have three character origins to choose from, they're predetermined, and you have three different powers to choose from, which are also predetermined. Which the difference what? Anyway, Yeah, the game bottom line is that it's not a very good game. Do you pick an origin, you pick a power, pick a power. There's you know, shoot guys, punch guys. Mind guys, Is that what it's called? No, I'm just you know, I'm I'm I'm distilling here, all right? But man

talk about FMV talk about about telling about cut scenes. There are pre riddered cut scenes in that game, and Granted this is the three sixty version, so you're dealing with the DVD all the limitations, not FMV, not active I'm talking pre rendered, but just the compression on there is so brutal.

I feel like we're seeing more and more of this being a problem. But when this is kind of like one of your like first you know, best foot forward kind of moments of hey, we're opening this game, show us the best you've got, and the first thing you see is just horrible and pay compression all over the video just nasty. And then the thing that they're compressing, like, I'm pretty sure my Xbox could have rendered that in real time, You're not. Are they using bank? Nothing you're showing me.

I couldn't tell you the compression codec. Unfortunately, there's nothing you're showing me here. Seems like it's beyond the ability of this this console that I'm playing on. Gears of War does some weird stuff with that too, where some cut scenes are in engine and then it weirdly switches to CG. But I understand. I get it, Like you can't always render everything perfectly. It's not worth your time to to necessarily tweak the end resources to make that happen

are not necessarily always worth them. It's like the chance that you're gonna get a fuck up during that real time rendered scene. If like geometry is gonna mess up, well, the chances are very high because it doesn't look good when it's it's time in real time. It's just a weird game. It's just a like very narrow path, at least in the five bits fighting. No, no, right, no, I'm fighting dudes. They're like these these weird like I said, weird extremist humans that are trying to get rid

of all mutants purists knocking them out. It must be like this isn't mature or anything anything, you know, ripping heads off. No, you're you know, you knock them down. It's a brawler in a lot of senses. But how how deep is the combat? Not? Okay, it is like punch kick throw, Yeah, you know our blue blue yellow. I don't know yellow yellow. I didn't play two humans. I'm not aware.

How does it? Okay, let's say, okay, we lead to two humans and that level hit combos, So we hit combos, you know, jumps and pounds and things like that kind of you know, third person. But extrapolated out some as far as the perspective goes Diablo esque in its perspective, what's a character's name? Like I said, you have three different characters, so you're starting to choose from. No, they are like very explicitly

defined characters of this character is from Japan. Her parents brought her to the United States. Uh. And then but then we're like captured or killed or something, and she doesn't understand like why they brought here. All she has is bitterness towards them for their decision. But then or you could play as you know, this this guy, as you know, a freshman at UC

Berkeley, and he has aspirations to be on the football team there. And then there's this other guy who's the son of one of these human purists and you know, whose father was martyr and so and so he has been you know, raised to believe that this is the one true way and all this sudden and like you get these weird little internal monologues while you're making these discs, Like it's actually the opening bits of this where you're like, Okay,

there's this rally that's happening where the you know, this mutant organization, this government mutant organization, the x mender standing we're gonna work together, We're gonna make things cool here because we know there's a lot of mutants here and everything's

crazy, so we're trying to make it less. So you know, there's this weird terrorist organization out there, and there's also Magneto and we have to worry about him as well, like like kind of a good opening setup of like, Okay, we've gathered all these people here, which is why they're these kind of random faces in the crowd. So when shit starts popping off, kind of the exceptional one start start breaking. But then exactly but then that guy he shoots Griff and he says, I saw I saw the Warriors

do it. Where he's like, what the fuck? Wait? Wait point one point two? Did no one else see that guy shoot Griff? Point three? What does everyone believe that guy that it was us? Also, fuck you voice on the radio, what's your problem? This game sounds a little derivative, and then and then you get into like, you know, some some interesting concepts of how it's how it rolls out at the beginning, but then you start it's always been the promise of this game, the premise

of this game is interesting. Like the idea of you like being this new formative X Men, you know, in a world of change, is a good idea. But the problem is like every one of your decisions of like are you gonna do the good thing or the bad thing? Is like literally you run up to two characters and it's like, I'm Pyro, I'm with the Brotherhood, and I'm standing right next to the Ice Man, who's from the X Men. Are you gonna do the thing? Are you take the

mission for the Ice Man or for the Pyro? Yeah? So very very clodly blue and red. Yeah, and you know, fire and Ice like they like good and bad. It was it was like, okay, am I gonna do the good thing or the bad thing? There's no grayness for

for your decision making. So I would assume, and I'm no developer, but I would assume that having three different characters with a game with a lot of vo that you would have the same generic code name for every one of those, Like Apollo, if you interview the Japanese, they're not They're not X Men or anything yet, Like these are characters that either don't know that they have powers or they're super latent at this point, so you don't have

it's it's it's hey you because no one else knows who you are, because you just kind of popped out of the crowd. Dude or a girl. Yeah, it's just it's just come over here. Hey, we need some help at least at least at this part of the game. Maybe that, but I imagine they did they write the dialogue so that it's just very generic pronouns. Yeah, exactly, so you don't have to worry about gender or specificity of the name. It's here. We'll do a quick look at it

so we can show a little more of that. I haven't played a huge thing. Their first impressions are not they're not. I think I'm understanding why this has been getting buried. Why, you know, well's not. I mean, the same thing happened to Singularity last year. Also, an Activision game game was okay, it was not bad at all. I still need to go back. I have that not the greatest game ever made, but it's really interesting, mechanics, perfectly adequate for what it was trending to do.

That game also just sort of snuck on the show. Well, I mean, they that got a little bit more promotion than this. I think kind of a similar situation. But Singularity was well similar in that, you know, you have these name developers that was a raven game Singularity, and this is Silicon Nights. So you have developers that aren't necessarily top tier but have some rate name recognition, you know, producing a game for Activision that's

just not getting the support in this case. You know, I don't know that support is grant is warranted, and I also don't know that and and you know, maybe it was the smart bit on Activision to being like, yeah, we could give cell con Nights another six to nine months to polish this up, but what's the point. But but but we've seen Silicon Night's track record. It's so just get this done. Let's yeah, let's just put a bow on it and put it on store shelves. They'll still say

X men on it, and that'll mean something for us. This is pure conjecture, but do you think there may have been some aspect of like contractual fulfillment going on here? Like you you know how Sony Pictures has to make a Spider or Spider Man movie every so often. Oh yeah, that's asolutely to maintain the like do you think it's like a a activision wants to put out X number of Why do you think the games a year? Like?

Why do you think that Golden Eye got ported to the p S three in three sixty is like, well, they thought there was gonna be a James Bond movie for Fall, but there's not, so you have to put out something to fitfill right, Like you think there were some business reasons that may can't say that, but that is built into those contracts is that you have to put out something to support to keep that license or else you pay a penalty, which is why I like two K always complains about the MLB license

because they don't make enough money on those games, so they announced their shareholders before the games came out. We're gonna take a loss. We have to make these games until our contracts up. I remember who was it that was

making the Star Trek games. They took Paramount like they were going to sue Paramount at some point because you know, this is again a decade ago when it wasn't Simon and Schuster was when the when the Trek license was at its most languished, uh like pre enterprise, like there was, there were no TV shows on the air. The last movie they did was Nemesis, which

was a stinker and a complete bomb. So they're like, what the fuck we're you know, obligated to make these Star Trick Maybe it was Activision, I can't remember, so yeah, yeah, yeah, the contracts really the other way where if the company is like supporting the franchise, like the thing that we are supposed to be making games about is is just dying on the vine because the license holders, the people who actually control the license, aren't

doing anything good with it. So what the fuck are we supposed to do? We've got shit. They're making tech War though there much rather make oh, So that the basis of the suit was like like we were not seeing like a good faith effort from the people who make this thing. Yes, yeah, how are we How are we expected to sell, you know, games to an audience that hates this franchise because you haven't done anything to reinvigorate

fucking Star Trek license. We were like, I think at the time that they had that they started the license, they were making movies every other year. There were two shows on the airs, DS nine and Voyager at the time, you know, late late nineties, like pretty pretty good place to have a Star Trek license. And then just like almost all of a sudden, everything dries up, both shows and uh and uh and the movies go to shit and then stop being made all together, entered J. J.

Abrams. A decade later, you still had to have You still had to go through the enterprise phase though before it was before Scott Bacula could truly kill the heart of Star Treks so it can be revived new like Okay, no, we've we've done the worst that we can do to it. Now we could start all over again, vibrate, yeah, got Oh my god. We'll tell you a thing or two about Quantum Leap zig as the worst show. What is the worst show? What is the worst show? Why do

you Okay? My first issue with Quantum Leap comes from the opening. Brad does not want to hear my die tribe about Quantum Leap. That show has no less every episode, no less than three openings. All right, you got your cold open, or Scott Bacula wakes up in someone else's body and it's like, whoop, I don't know what's going on over here. Go I gotta go wipe this mirror so I can see what my new fake face

looks like. And then it's the oh boy line opening one every episode opening two, female voice talks to you about doctor Scott Bacula travel back in time and jumps from one person by to another and his only buddy is is uh, this guy's Dean Stockwell it looks weird and this is your problem with Quantum leap and then the third and so they do that, and then they actually have their opening credits where they have the whole song and and you do the

It's like seven minutes out of a forty four minute fucking drama. Probably put they burn on opening from three and a half. The doogie howser music and music, I can't tell the difference. It's like Superman and Indiana Jones themes. Now all I have is is Dookie Houser. That's all I'm thinking. Maybe, No, no, you you mixed it up. Now you're going back? God Dan, it isn't Yeah, yeah, they can intertwined. Okay. Also it's fucking cheesy and boring. I like, I think I

didn't like about Quantum. I don't think they ever resolved that show. Yeah, no, they ended it with he will jump forever. It sucks is that he will continue leaping and will never get out of it, and that's the end. Ye at the end of that series is a complete bummer it down. It's like there's evil leapers out there. That revelation was fucked up. Also, so I want to bring back a Quantum Leap game. I feel like there's gonna pick up that that lucrative quantum Leap license. Finally,

Sliders could do a Tell Till Quantum. Yeah, someone would be excited. One one person would be excited if you did a Sliders license game. What Jerry O'Connell would be psyched. No, he's married to Rebecca Romaine. He doesn't have to worry about ship. You say he's already psyched about that's good. He's good whatever. He got him dick bit off and a three D. I was like Jerry O'Connell. He seemed pretty cool in the Parana movie. You know. No, Jonathan Rise Davies, That's that's who'd be stoked

about. Eight. He's been written out of Indiana Jones, so we can't come back. He can't go to that well, but yeah he might maybe he'll return in the in the Hobbit, Good Young and Ghimli no characters not. I don't think he does it. That doesn't matter, you know what I mean. I don't think so. I don't think he's been cast like I mean, they've set straight up that. You know that guy, he's the drag, he's he's Smogs, he maybe he's all. Maybe he's everyone.

We don't know that he could be inside. That's right, that's the quantum lead. But he opens with a quantum lead opening. He looks in the mirror and he finds out he's the dragon, and oh boy, then that would be Then that would be a short opening for a and then it wouldn't it would make sense for him to do the voice of Small because he did the voice of tree Beard. You see. It was like I couldn't

Scott Acula. No, I'm talking about I'm talking about Davies. Okay, we were talking about And then it ends with Smog at the computer being like, dear Diary. All this is leading up to is that I'm really sad we all learned the rumor about Leonard Nimoy doing the Small voice was not true. Wait, that would have been great, Oh that would have been great. That would be pretty good. Yeah, he could see that anyway. Peter Jackson'll find a computer to do it. Decades of hard drinking, Leonard

nimoy A grew pretty amazing. Grasp. Yeah, yeah, it's nice and gravelly. X Men, Yeah, we're talking about X Men Destiny. Talk about news? You talking about news emails? Nope, Nope, can't go that fast. That's nice, try though, Patrick, what's up with the news? News man? Patrick klepd d d d d dud uh. This coming out this year? We have a release date for Star Wars the Old

Republicists my voice to crack. That's outside twenty that's the That's the release date they give to games that are Yeah, what what is what is this the business think behind putting it out five days before Christmas? I don't know. Does it have anything to do They can say it's out this year. Does it have anything at all to do with the earlier in December end date for Galaxies? Do you think? Probably nothing? I mean it has to come after that, yeah, yeah, but I bet they have a buffer that

they require. But at the same time, I think it's a pretty smart date for that game. I do just getting ready for Christmas breaks well, here's the thing is, like that is a complete dead zone for game releases anything after Thanksgiving. Generally speaking, not a lot of stuff comes out in that time because publishers are scared of that time. And it's a game that doesn't require a retail presence, so it can go digital. Everyone's at home,

people are off work. Yeah, they haven't gotten their games for Christmas yet, so they might or are probably in between things. So you pay your fifty bucks for all the public and you get your month and maybe they hook you. And it's the only time until like spring break, that a huge bunch of people have a collective amount of time off together, which you need. You can convince a couple of friends to all downloaded. And but

who was looking up? Yeah, I was gonna see Final Fantasy ten is a famous example of a game that was released just right in that crazy window. There's been a few others that have that have just started that weird line. I was, I was looking up the release date of World of Warcraft because I made me wonder if they're trying to recreate some specific scenario there. But this, uh wow, came out on the twenty third of November,

which is still later than pretty much every normal game. But that's still but it's yeah, it's still during a high holiday personing period, right, But I specifically remember sitting at sitting at home for a week during Christmas doing nothing but laying Wow, an MMO is timed really nicely with a long holiday break.

I guess those those dates, those late December dates always really stick out to me because we're usually in some kind of like game of the year discussion, and then it's yeah, that makes it a weird outlier for us because we feel like we've wrapped everything up at that point, and then it's always like, well the ship should we wait for to do to lock this stuff down until game X, which is December twenty nine, ain't through something like that, and so we can't, uh, And then it always feels kind

of weird. Like I remember Dead or Alive four came out on like the twenty eighth of December one year. Yeah, well, but then it's always like, well, you know, end of the year is such an arbitrary day. You have to set your own cut off and you're like, all right, we didn't consider anything past the state, But I just mean in terms of like the game, like who kind of cares like if it comes

out this year or next year. Really it's such as only for us who are like, well, we have a game of the year, deadline, game of the years in the title. Yeah, I think, but yeah, I think it makes sense. I think that they have a good opportunity there to to put that game out in that window. I'm just glad they have to have a date. Yeah that they're just they if somebody has written something down, No, no, we're putting this out. Did you write it? Did you send that thing out? I did? I sent out

the press release. What did you say? It's just Ray and Gregg talking to each other. Yes, this is the conversation there. They're probably just like, do you send out a thing that game come out yet? Which one? This? The Star Trek One's one? Just some one free to playment So that's not ours or whatever? The game the game I don't know

j P online. I think all the Yeah, the Star Wars. I imagine that that game has been in development and has touched every last tendril of BioWare, that everyone at BioWare now knows far more about Star Wars than they ever wanted to. I feel like I'm My hope is that everybody at BioWare already knew so much about Star Wars, you would hope, yeah, although I mean it was developed in Austin by a large part of the Texas knows about Yeah, the people that already knew about Star Wars, the people are

making the last Star Wars. Mm. The people who made Cotor are not the ones who made this, you know, by large I think I bet, I bet Ryan Gregor like fully invested in this game. I assume this is such a big problection gooping on there. The whole, the whole of the A is hugely invested in. This game needs to be a success, as a massive success, even if it is not, has to be perceived as a success. I saw a comment somewhere the like half a million subscribers

would be considered a success for them. I don't know if. Yeah, they've talked about they've talked about the levels before. I don't remember them, so there is no But that's not I feel like that's not meaningful until you get out to like five months. I shouldn't I shouldn't say a success.

I think like that was like profitable numbers. You need to see, you know, we need to see what those numbers, what subscriber numbers are five months after launch, because you need to chew through your whatever you're three plus one, you know, an initial three months or whatever, like you gotta get past you gotta get past that buffer. Don't really know until February.

But this is still Origin exclusive digitally, and they they're claiming that they're going to cut off pre orders at some point, Well what did they not already already? Like, well, they they said they were going to I don't think it's been cut off yet. Pre orders have been relatively healthy. Yeah,

like the I guess they're super crazy special editions sold out already. I mean, if you try to take the non centical position of why they're doing that, of just they've have mathed out what the server limit is and they just want to make sure that everyone has a good first day, especially if they're long. If they knew they were launched in December twentieth, like it's

everyone's going to use it. They're pre ordered. So if I am not cynical about them just using that to generate headlines that maybe that's a smart move to hey, we can only fit this much after that, Look you can come in in January once we've you know, bought new servers and got everything to spec out. I do feel like it's a tough story to spin though, of like, let's just say and I think I think it would be

a great move to manage server load. But if they're like, yeah, it was a really clean launch day and like servers never got overloaded, and then you're just gonna have some people be like yeah, yeah, well if they can say that plus also give you a high subscription, you know, if they can say we sold a million copies and the launch day went success because they budgeted for that, but yeah, the cynical ways like wow, they're probably just trying to get you to get it now. Yeah, but

like, of course you didn't have a high server load launch day. Yeah, Like it's almost like it's almost like one of those like badges of honor, where like Nintendo it's like we sold out day one and like that's a bigger story than like, yeah, you only shipped ten fucking copies of your DS to every store. Of course you sold about because five people bought it, and like instead of like our servers crash, we had such a hard time. It's so crazy fires everywhere. We had to make We had to

put seventeen more servers online. People dead day one. That's the headline instead of like, no, it's really no, that's a great that's the headline that I want. I'm right, I'll go put it. I'll put it in the service. Just get it ready, upcoming ten people dead at On a related note, Star Wars Galaxy lunch or went down. When is that go down? I want to say, yeah, five days prior so,

So December fifteenth is the final day for Star Wars Galaxies. I have my that's I have my dude, I'll get a little bit deeper into galaxies. Star Cider. I can't remember what fucking server rhyme on stars Cider. That might be the name of it. And that's cutting off soon, right, if not already, that's the Oh the cut off date for accounts. Yeah, that's that's past gone. Yeah that was September fifteenth. I think I'm very excited about Older public. I'm curious cautiously. I hope, I hope.

I hope it's better than Star Wars Galaxies. I don't think that'll be hard. No, No, it's weird playing and it's it's kind of I guess I'm just worried it's not gonna feel like a BioWare game is, but I'm looking at it's gonna feel like an MMO with some BioWare touches on it, which is I don't want to play that. Yeah. Yeah, they're they're they're making a massively multiplayer online role playing games. I was. I was sold to three through ten. There. I don't think that's what I'm

They're not reimagining what a what an MMO can be. I don't know, but it's weird, Like it's weird playing a little bit of of somebody played maybe an hour or two of Galaxies so far, but like you don't you're not exposed to other people in that game for a while, at least in its current state. And it's one of those in its current state. Well, it's one of those. It's i'man that's one of those games that got hugely overhauled, yes, like during several times, several times over the course

of its existence. So like your starting areas stuff when you play this game now is unrecognizable from when that game first launched. Can you still be a dancer ten years ago? Yeah? You used to be entertainer is one of those what it's called. I went with smuggler because they had the coolest clothes. Smugglers can't be entertainers. I'm a I'm a grido smuggler whatever those I forget what those are called. I think that's a Yeah, Rodians, thank

you. What's your guy's name? I'm not divulging that information just yet. Okay, yeah, keeping that one close to the Vest sixteen skyhopper. Do you remember that? You don't know what I'm talking about here? All right, talk about it later anyways. Old Republic coming out December twentieth, Savior Nichols or keep on, yeah, whatever, I don't care. I don't care what you pay for it in roubles, I give a shit whatever. I guess Origin accepts one at a fistful of Korean one and my desk,

I don't know. You log into Origin, see if they'll take it, scanting an email it to somebody. Just shove it into your monitor. Here's I've got this money, put it in one of your fans and it'll just it'll spit it up and correct the doital currency. So other yeah, people saying stuff about releasing their games, including dough to two. So last week we saw this was out of Sweden or somewhere. Someone just decided to put

out a whole bunch of information from their dough to two. So yeah, so we got a hold of the beta and basically data Minded the client has been leaked, right, Yeah, the client's been leaked and it's playable in a really broken state. But uh yeah, and the people data minded for the creatures and items and everything. And then yeah, they out of nowhere Valve just announced Hey, or I guess Ice Frog, who I cannot determine his real name. It seems that doesn't actually exist. It's out there.

I don't I can't remember when I looked it up. Everyone was just saying, no, it's not actually true, So I don't know. Anyway, Ice Frog the co creator of Doda. Oh, he's just the maintainer, is it? Maintainer? Okay, that's why I was saying co creator. Uh, just give me some some arrows. Definitely some other people. Uh anyway, the guy who is now the head of Doda for all intensive purposes.

Yes, so that they're just ditching the idea of doing like this closed beta, of just iterating the game for a year and they're just gonna release it in a couple of weeks. Wait, really, he didn't say that soon, did he? Like, I think they said they said we're gonna put it out there, so in the near future, so but that would imply, you know, soon ish, within a month or two probably.

Yeah, it's just they're just gonna it's gonna be invite only for a little while while they clean up the interface and get things ready for a full on assault by But they were talking about it. This is gonna be a work in progress. It's not like, all right, we're just gonna stop work now. It's like, no, we're just gonna open it up so that everyone can play it and we'll keep tuning. And it doesn't seem like that,

like they don't have a business model yet. Is this will just be out there and you're just gonna help them make it, and then at some point you'll start paying for things. You're not buying this assum so you just download the client for free. And they haven't said that explicitly, but the wording is like, we're just gonna put this out there and you're gonna help

us make it. And then I mean, because Gabe at games Com when he was asked about a business model and he said, we won't have one, but he said, well, you think it's just like charging for heroes Whatever's like, I don't know that, yeah, I mean he was like, would you like that? I don't know. Yeah. He was his whole like philosophy was like, we'll figure it out, as would go along

when something feels right and comfortable. And this just seems to be a reaction to that of just people really liked what they've put together so far, so why put that out a year from now? Just put it out now.

My understanding is that the beta is at around forty six heroes right now out of I mean, the original Doda has over one hundred, which everything and everything that was in the international yeah, exactly, and they're they're trying to replicate all those So I mean, if they launch at forty six or whatever, like that is a huge amount of headroom to start rolling stuff out piecemeal, and who knows, like maybe charging for hero packs or I mean they

just haven't said, but you can. It kind of sounds like it's just going to be free and then it'll just figure its not even free to play, not even like launching with a quote unquote free to play business model where they sell like micro transacted little stuff. It's just like straight up free and then that would be wild. It's interesting. I mean, Valve is the only company that can pull something like that off. Ay, Valve right over

here, buddy, give us a holler. It sounds like it sounds like we'll be playing a sooner, ready to play to please please, let's get to get the team together. I can't imagine working been ready for the sort of environment though, where it's like, what's the thing we're working? I don't know, Well, wait, what's what are we going to charge for? I don't know if we're gonna wait, so how do we just I don't know, just make the game and make it cool. We got money,

I don't know, money, we got nice. I could imagine work moving on. Let's talk about we don't already talked about Job of three. So they said, yeah, it's coming out in early twelve, Journey is coming, Journey not delayed, but Journey is now Spring twenty twelve, twelve. But that never had a firm that was the first person shooter. Yep, just like it's actually like like kind of game like Rage. Yeah, exactly like Rage, it's playable only when you're on meth. Okay, well

that was everything's better on Journey. It's a blank screen. And then take the math. I need to clean up on the sand stand in my teeth. Do you want to talk about this Metacritic stories, Son Patrick? Yeah, so when we talked about this, uh last talked about We didn't talk about this last week, but you uh you ran the story about some some crazy groups of users that were basically going out and review bombing UH specific games on Metacritics. Yeah. So the origin of how I came across the story

was I was pointed towards UH Signal Studios, who makes Toy Soldiers. Uh, they're community manager Logan to melt I want to say his name is, it's definitely Logan. Was they had noticed on Metacritic that their user average like just dive bomb by like three points and they're suddenly out of nowhere overnight, and so they were trying to figure out how to address that. Because they made an appeal to Metacritic, a Medicritic said hey, we'll look into it.

Nothing changed, so there's limited tools to a developer. So their idea was well, let's appeal to the community saying, hey, you know, the review score really tanked out of these. And the thing i Metacritic is you can write in a text review and submit a score with it, or just register an account and just submit a score and you don't have to submit any text with it. So they asked their community to write some reviews,

said doesn't have to positive negative, We're just looking for more reviews. And I think they just assumed that it would go up. They were like tying in like codes, they were giving away with it, really and really like so I ended up calling like their CEO and just talking to It's like, hey, you know, I see how this headline gets written. I don't

want to write that headline because I'm not an asshole. So I'm kind of curious what you're why you would choose to go this route with addressing this problem very upfront with how like they don't have a lot of tools to deal with Metacritic. And even though publishers don't use the user scores to determine royalty payouts, payouts and and bonuses, it's still very important for a small studio to have a consistent regular critics score and user score, like, so that gives

it the appearance that people are big fans of their products. So they if nothing else, they're just looking for a true score. Yes, of like this is this is honestly representative of what the fans think, of what people think, not just this weird kind of distorted view that you get from people

going in there and sucking it up just beatrolls. Yeah, and so he pointed me saying that they only looked at their user score because Super Giant had run into the same problem where the all of a sudden their think tanked by two or three points overnight with just purely score only no text reviews. So starts to Greg about that, and they kind of handled it the same way. They weren't giving away copies of the game, but just hey, guys,

we don't know what happened. If you haven't written a review, but you'd like to, you know, this would be great because it really they just you know, it's this weird gray area because it sounds like you're begging for positives, but what are they? What are they supposed to like, they don't have a lot, you know, Metacritic has kind of screwed them over through their policies to the developers don't have a lot of retaliation except for

this kind of weird gray area. So I talked to Metacritic about it, pointed out to them, and they were just like, oh, we have a policy in place, but you know, there's there's not not much Queen, we can do. So I put up a story saying all that, and then mysteriously two days later, like all the scores got corrected, and talking to Signal and to its a super giant, it's like, yeah,

I don't know, they didn't contact us. So I contacted Metacritic and they were like, yeo, oh, yeah, you know, this is normal. This is normal, Like we just we saw it and we when we fixed it. When you know, the implication being they saw that story and saw a lot of the negative comments and decided to go and address that. But the problems with Metacritic is because they don't require text that this. You know, that's the easy way to solve this is that if someone wants to

die, if someone wants to be, they don't change that. I thought they changed that, Okay, so now you because because I went in and found it. Even after that, like Russian out looked for a game, we're like, all right, what score would I give this? Like? Can I just do the give this game a score without associe any text? And you can, And so the way to solve that is having text,

but it wouldn't it wouldn't necessarily make stem the problem. You can still give a game a one and then say this game is terrible for these reasons, and they're not going to audit the number and the text right to be like, wow, the text doesn't really match ye, but that might be more effort than their typical That's what that's what they're thinking is that it would at least cut down the club, right, like you can register twenty accounts really

quickly and just spam it with scores. Yeah, I don't know. Like the running theory I saw from some people commenting on the story was like, well, if it was just those games recently, you know those are two Xbox three sixty you know up there you know PC versions for the for Bashion, but there were three sixty only games. So you could see maybe some

sort of platform site or platform communities saying we're gonna goose. I mean, you've seen this kind of like malicious group score bombing up until like the bigger, higher profile like Dragonage Too, for instance, Like that was a really big budget, you know, heavily promoted game that people felt kind of cheated on in some ways, Like it makes sense there when they bomb it. But like these guys, these are like like this is the little guy.

Yeah, like and there's no there's also these are like pretty good games around which no apparent controversy exists, Like what sport? What want to see the World burn? I guess yeah, like yeah, I mean you see it on Amazon all the time. Review bombing is not like a new concept, no, no, no, it's just it's just the target seems kind of

weird. And you know, used like that used to be a big thing on iTunes where people just go in and they didn't like the fact that something was ninety nine cents, so they would just give it a zero stars, not having purchased it. iTunes corrected that mostly by you can do whatever you want to again to an application, as long as you've bought it. You can say whatever you want, if whatever score you want, but at least you've given over the dollar or two dollars and then do what you will.

But it could a weird things. User reviews in general only useful to a point, like yes, you know you go on Yelp, and I mean it's the most added glance information that you can get, or actually you don't. New Egg is the one that was going to cite, where like people will give a product one star on new Egg because the shipping got screwed up and it went to another address or something like you never even touched the product, but you're rating the product down from New Eggs like shipping screw up.

Well, that that's why I think Patrick, what you're saying with the it is it might sound insidious on the outside, but just having more reviews and increasing the average does actually help that stuff out. Where Like you know, if a developer is like if you think your game is good, if you just infuse you with one hundred new reviews, most likely your average is going to go up. Well, even even it doesn't, you just kind of mellow out the edge cases where you know, it's just like the impact that

that they can have good or bad, right. I mean it is like on Amazon or new Egg, if you get if you have five reviews and they're all five, I would much rather have a four star review with a thousand reviews, that'd be like, wow, that really beat the chances. And that's generally how they order them is like whatever has the most the most reviews like that, that matters more than necessarily the overall score, because the

larger the sample group, the truer your score is going to be. That's how I always do YELP is that I just do most amount of views and if it's three three and a half stars, like, well, that place is probably pretty eactly right, because then you're then you're accounting for the assholes that are bombing it for one or the people that know the you know,

the people that work there and are giving it a five. Well, I guess this doesn't really come up that much on Metacritic, but you know what if you have people doing the opposite of just because they do bywur got caught for it all right over they were doing it. I want to say, I don't know if it's a Dragon Age two were Dragon Age one, but yeah they were there were byour developers caught going in and spamming in the opposite

direction. So that is that is definitely that is definitely happening on both sides I'm not a perfect system. No, and that would ultimately probably be the massive critique of Metacritic is that it's not a perfect system. But hey, Will Smith, Well Smith's sleepy making the hodd Well Smith Smith Well Smith Smith. You look terrible, you get that's so goddamn but your tales of glory? Do you know what shit I am too old for? Is it?

Staying up till three thirty in the morning, play until three thirty in the morning to play fucking Gears of War's worth it, totally worth so worth it. We're taking that, Okay, are you leaving? No? Still, we're upgrading our sight. You look all fantastic, look really bad. He was chugging red he was He was checking red Bull earlier because he said he couldn't drink any more coffee. He's been through war, man, he's through fifty. He's seeing stuff you don't even want to know about in and the

brumack flinched. That's true, man, all right? By Will Smith, Ladies and gentlemen, Will Smith Patrick. What else is newsworthy? Yeah? Yeah, it's about what I saw. It's about what I saw. But does the notch stuff is weird? Oh? The scrolls stuff are going to court. Yeah, uh yeahsta is taking mojaying as I say that company's games to court over their new new post Minecraft games, Scrolls. But I guess,

like I thought this was a joke. No, uh what the joke was not saying we will challenge you to a game of Quake three death match Quake death Match to settle this. If you guys win, then we'll rename our game. But they got served the papers saying well, no, we're just we're gonna go straight up go to court. And I guess you know they were actually they were listing out some of the things that does lawyers were siting, including that in Scrolls trailer there are mountains and in the elder Scrolls

trailer there are mountains. That's true, So that's that's that seems like copyright infringement. People will get confused two games of Scrolls in the title and mountains and their trailers. Like they're citing YouTube comments as and you've seen YouTube comments

everyone talking about slippery slope. Yeah yeah, I mean the thing is like, feel like they really talked about going after the little guy right, like really, Well, but that's did as a company has not made any public statement on this because I don't see how any way they don't come out looking like yeah, yeah, but people who make Minecraft are no longer the little guy. But but it's still small. I mean it's a stretch that I

think the argues got some money. Oh, certainly they have more money than the rock himers behind them, right, he's I think he's on the board. Plus, like along with the kel Rippon Junior, like marketplace confusion for for Elder Scrolls, Like people call that game Skyrim. Yeah, I feel like calling you calling your game Elder Scrolls where it is four Skyrim is your own marketplace confusion. Just drop that called Skyrim and yeah, you're right,

let's scroll. I mean people, people, people have gone to the extent of like calling this the new Oblivion. You know, like Oblivion almost became the brand. That's right, Oblivion calling skyrimh well, it's like modern fair. Yeah. It's like the tagline or the subhead becomes the name of the game as opposed to the franchise overhead. I mean, great, they've got, you know, fifteen years of naming convention behind this. They don't want

to lose the legacy. No, but I think, like you said, I feel like Oblivion carries more weight than the Elder Scrolls in terms of branding. I bet it totally doesn't mean I'm not trying to dismiss You're right, I'm not trying to dismiss it, but it just seems like a really frivolous loss. Yeah, kind of. I don't know Skyrom's gonna sell the jillion copies either way. I mean scrolls. I mean, I don't know.

I don't know. If I'm no lawyer, it's a weird one. I'm not a doctor nor a lawyer, so I can't come on this at all. It's just it's one of those those like copyright e Yeah, because I call him the game the Elder Scroll, I mean scrolls. I mean, that's the Notch's argument is that it is like you copy. You can't take make claim over one name, like one word one, the verb ones and down? What is a plural now? And even I mean, you can't have a mouth that scrolls. That's copied right in fringe, This page is

web page scroll. Maybe it's an issue of modifiers. Maybe by calling yourself your thing the scrolls, And then it's like, well, then the Elder Scrolls are clearly just derivative. This is just the older versions of the thing that the scroll. I think it's scrolls, the scrolls. I could see maybe an argument it's not even scrolls, it's scrolls. All right, now I have now the word scrolls doesn't mean anything anymore, sad scroll scroll scroll

talk about rolls, scrawls, scrolls quae groll. Now we're just now, we're just now we're getting sued scrolls. Well, Smith's coming back with scrolls. I can't even say it right anymore. Well Smith has a blue envelope in his hands, scrolls scroll DC No, no, not Will Smith has a bagge of blue meth? What not the not the aliens from Marvel Comics, not the scroll scrolls, not the scrolls. These are the ancient scrolls of legends told in the scrolls, the scroll scrolls. What what is Kroll

doing fights the scrolls for the scrolls. We're all being seed by so many people right now. Bring it on as sue me out of existence. He should just change me the favor. He should just he should just name change it to something completely like not scrolls. We've change that's the new name of my game is all scray. I've changed it to sky rim two words. What it's sky and Oblivion scrolls. That's the new name of my game.

Fuck you come at me. He just drops the mic and the moro of wind, the Oblivion Arena, mass effect everybody, the rage of Mora Wind Doom eight the new name of my game. Do you want to know the fallout from that? Pac Man two ZeniMax, Yeah, there you go. It's calling it ZeniMax maximum Zennis. That's right, I'm suing you class action. I can't because I signed this user agreement that says I can't. They

added that to the origin. That's gonna happen to everything now because there was a there was any Sony finally came out and said there was a there's a Supreme Court decision back in April with between AT and T where they wanted to put in no collective lawsuits in employee contracts so employees couldn't collectively suel Have you have you kept up with Supreme Court the last couple es? Yeah, well how long? Because if the last couple of years and stripping away rights.

But I don't want to get into a political discussion, but uh yeah, So they made that decision and then that now companies are slowly. I guess Sony didn't have to put in the opt out clause. They did that as a way of kind of like covering their tracks. And that's still just like write them a handwritten letter and hope that they keep that on file somewhere.

Well, yeah, like there's reason to believe that even though its Supreme Court ruled this that it wouldn't be legally enforceable if there was actual an actually less now, it's more it's more of a way of just scaring people off from taking any sort of collective action. Well, with that present precedent, does a team that maybe they could enforce that, Yes, or at least we'd spook people into thinking that they shouldn't try. So now it's an EA stuff

I would imagine most user license agreements will have. How is that that seems crazy? Yeah? Yeah, I guess would bother not even still shooting the politics of it? Is that the thing they bothering with After I ran that story and like made that template for people to send into Sony. Yeah, the amount of yeah, I've probably implicated myself in a lawsuit by creating a

template. It was more that just like it bothers me that so many people were actively whether or not you agree with whether you should have that right or not. We're just like, it's okay if they're taking away my rights, I don't I don't care, just showed up and play the game. Yeah, be a good consumer was the line that really bothered tort reform, Start dot Com, Giant tort Reform, Giant tort Reform, broad and waste dot com. They're well, they're as kind of a disturbing indifference there. Yeah.

Yeah, you should not be okay with losing your rights to things, regardless of how you fall on the whether that it should be or shouldn't be there, it's that that is a you should. Being a good consumer is also holding companies accountable. So if you agree to that, you have like two weeks left to send in your letter. So what if I haven't agreed to it, do you even agree to it? Then your thirty days hasn't started, Okay, So once you agree to it, then your thirty days

you're gonna have to take dar souls online sometime. It can take it online, so I gotta take it all. Don't match it though, right? Did you send it? Yes? I don't know. No, I need to send my name, so you printed it. I haven't sent it in Yeah, I just I have a feeling that it's just going to be like or whatever, really gonna keep my my letter somewhere on somebody's It's gonna go

into somebody's filing. Do you know, you do what you can. I'm also going to put a note in there, and it's like you guys rock pyes, yes, you guys, Rocks, a picture of my socks. Tell what you think? Yeah, you know, rock. Even even so the in the off chance that they are keeping all of these on a file, you know that it's so folder within Sony HQ. There's a picture of your socks. I hope. So that's what I'm hoping. What is this picture? I don't know. So everyone is sending in those emails to Sony,

be sure and included polaroid of your socks. Try and find a PARI good luck, my friend, good yeah, or a picture whatever straw one. Yeah, our surrendering of your socks. That works too. That's legally binding, legally binding. You have to you have to bring to bring those socks. I don't know what we're talking about. It this is y'all. Let us. Uh see those socks, those are much true. All right, Sony, Sony, you had some balls bringing this in here. Frivolous

loss, frivolous man with the argyles, socks, the truth overall. What court is this, I don't know, but he's but the But the judge is wearing one of those fancy wigs. Clearly in this court it's barristers. It's a great man. American loss sucks. He lost so much crazy yea, but some more theater. It's some good old school ship in there, like their parliament, or it's just at each other, man. Politicians are pussies compared to those guys. Yeah, or you screamed at every week,

yeah, by each other sometimes. Or you go to like Asia where there's like weird coups and people are beating each other with copies of their man, you know, like in life the parliament house on the streets, like the politicians. It's intense that goes a little far. Even even when I watched the stuff from like Parliament, where it's just like I wonder if I was actually invested and knew this, would I be like, oh man, this is tough to watch, Like like I kind of this is all to stop

just because I'm just saying. As far as our politicians being pussies, I could imagine literally any of them taking a book to the face. Because but like even when you watch something like you watch the President giving a speech and then somebody in the audience remember that it was like boot liar, and you're like, what are you doing? Like that's nothing compared to England. I think it depends what when you're just like how you feel about the socks at

the Prime Minister? Throw a picture of us? I know who are we got? Picture Sony? Open up that file. He's in bed with Sony. Big business. Any more news, no new releases? Nah? Really? Really? What about I take some stabs here? The binding of Isaac, finding of Isaac x men destiny. Uh. Tetris Party, which is tris no no in us your party? Okay, that's different than Tuchris No. What's the same thing? What are you talking about? You say the game that we that showed up, you know, to our office with the

box that said Tetris Party. It's sitting on Jeff's desk. It's Tetris Access. It say Tetris Access. Okay. I want to say I thought that that had been that it had been Oh no, you were just saying it was a Tetris party. There Tetris on on Monday when this when the game showed up at our office, you opened the box, and I think you may have just said it's a Tetris party. I thought that you were saying, oh shit. In the US, they have renamed this from Tetris Access,

which actually something fu I should in. I love mondays this is access. I'll take that deeper. Is that so I loaded that up for five minutes? Yeah, there are Tetris Party mini games in the game. Okay, so it is true on multiple levels of being Tetris party, but then also Tetris Party. Then okay, so everything is true. Yes, nothing is forbidden, nothing is true. Everything is permitted. That no, not not when it comes to Tetris. Oh, trust me. When it comes

to Tetris, anything goes. Every since they changed that one would lets you flip those goddamn pieces. Everything goes. Everybody put your tetrominos in this bowl when you show up to the party. Tetrominos or tetrominos, don't. I don't like tetrontamo. I don't like that word. Oh no, mister Tetronamo, every Tetronto, every permutation of four blocks. Apparently, I didn't know that until we did. Definitely did a quick look. I want to see

it. I want to see what tetris I mean Tetris got a Tetris games? Yeah, that stuff sounds crazed and bring him. I don't know if we have one of those cards. It doesn't come with on No, I made the one that came with the three DS. I don't know. I know where mine are. Print them out? Oh yeah, you can just print it out. Yeah, all right, you print it out. Yeah, I'm looking forward to check that out. Jefinite. I tried to print them out. They also, if you're part of Club Nintendo, you can

spend a bunch of points to get a giant sized AR card. It's big, human size card. Why would you do that? Weren't really big? Guys? How do you fit the whole thing on screen? Don't have to pull it back until it's small again? Yeah, but then like in the scale of the room, it's huge, like life size, like somebody could stand next to them, take a picture next to link. Yeah, you'd think they could do that in software somehow. What he's not really in the

card, is he? No, but you have to like but it's it's scales to the size of the car. They just like say do it five times, or they could just give you a bigger card. So what's the easier solution is do it in software or print a fucking bigger card. Actually, don't know. It's a great question. It seems like a really dumb solution, Like let's just make bigger discs and we'll call them laser discs. How much how much do people you know use their AR stuff? Really?

I don't know. Well, I lost my cards, so you would need to be you would need to be a crazy club Nintendo fan to think, Hey, a really big AR card. That's what I want to spend my bonus points. We should play those the tetris AAR games with the giant AR card. Yeah, there's that stuff. There's uh, we talked about some other shit. You said, Binding of Isaac already stuff's coming out, not this week, next week, stops come next week. Dark Souls and Rage

are both out. Yeah, that'll be cool. Want to say that game it's Rage about some emails Sky. Yeah, remember this, that's that's the ends. That is when my life comes to a screeching hot. That is a cod So I mapped it out. I looked at UH. I spent some time yesterday trying to figure out where we're at with this fourth quarter rush

and what we need to get in here and stuff. And they've they've spread the big games out pretty evenly through this games have gotten delayed enough enough stuff got delayed that it's like up until the Mass Effect, Yeah, up until that last week before Thanksgiving, it's pretty much one big game that matters a week, and that's it. It's uh ex up next week. Next week is Rage and Dark Souls As are both pretty big. The week after that is no The week after that's a little dry. The biggest thing I saw

was Dead Rising two off the record, we gotter that's Batman. Week after that is Battlefield three. Week after that is Uncharted. Three after that is Modern Warfare, and then I think the week after that is the Rush, Super Mario three D lands Assassins Creed, and I think one other thing. I'm sure, I'm sure there's something somebody's there's there's other stuff here and there, like the Mario KR just coming out and stuff in terms of like the

big like time sink. Those are your big, multimillion dollars blockbuster games. I don't have enough money for this. That's nope, that's the rest of your game of the year deliberation right there. Probably I don't know already behind throwing a couple of dark Horse candidates here and there, but dark Horse, uh yeah, and ditches the stuff we mentioned for this week. There's also the Code Veronica X for PlayStation Network and Xbox Lab Arcade. Uh and the

HD collection of splinter Cell is out on p S three this week. I believe that it is just the first three splinter Cell games upraised for current consoles, like the Prince of Persia stuff, it's the PC versions. I wouldn't be surprised if it's like Differnce of Persia stuff, which oh that's also the Echo and Shadow of Classus is out this week already. We already kind of covered the hell out of that. Uh, go go get that, I

guess. Also, I'm sorry, I was gonna say, I was just gonna talk about spending money on video games when I look at my budget and then I have to literally have to readjust my budget when it comes time like November about how much money I spend. It's ridiculous, takes sh well, No, I just do it myself. And I'm like, I suddenly I get to that point where like, how am I overdressed? Oh? Like I just bought like five games on sixty bucks up pop five games once you

can't play all of those. It's it's a disease, man. But there's no reason to that's true. Contrary to popular belief, there's not. There's not a big box that comes and then free games for everybody. There are still game purchases going on. Oh yeah uh, and too much money is being spent on games constantly in this office. For as much stuff that comes in for free, there are still volumes of which that everyone needs to go pony up for. So damn you Steam that I already bought Rage, I

should go buy Skyrim. Those are those are not pre order musts for me, but they Steam Steam does. It's just like Batman and Uncharted are the only I went through. I did my list, and I'm like, those are the only two that I know absolutely, like day one, I'm gonna want to play like like Rage and sky Rim and Zelda and all these others.

You know, Battlefield Modern Warfare even I'm like, you know, I could see a time where I will will maybe want to check this out, but I kind of want other people to take the run at at first. Have zero interests in Battlefield. I'm totally checked out on those games. I'm curious, but again, I want to I want and it's not for the multiplayers, so it'll it'll rest on the strength of whatever single player experiences those

games offer, because I'm not good enough. Uh I want to run right into Skyrim, and I know I'll be reviewing Assassin's Creed, so I'm not worried about that. I'm like, I'll play that for review purposes and that'll be that. Uh see, I'm just not sure. I just don't know. Like I've seen everything. I've seen the sky and I'm like, yeah,

that kind of looks looks like a better version of Oblivion. But whenever I talk to anyone about like is it still like kind of like walk up to dude and like shuffling your sword around a bit, and then like, dude, and they're like, yeah, I guess ours of shitty Fallout combat we played, Yeah, But I just I just you know, I want, I want Dead Island combat in Skyron put the melee combat from Dead Island

in the sky Streams control game of the Year, I think. I also, I just I pit boyd my way through all of the combat and fall out and by the time yeah, yeah, I've added my way through all that. By the time I got to New Vegas, I had like eight companions, each of which had all the best game weapons in the world. So I that game, I barely fought anyone, I think. But Rage, I think Rage and Skyron for me are the biggest unknowns sure for those

games. Age especially, Man, do I not know a goddamn thing about that game for as for as long as it's been covered for as many years, Yeah, for as many iterations and as like, But they've been so piecemealing out the information and like the experienced stuff of like here's a little part where you drive around a buggy. He's a little part where you're in this

cave and an iPad game. I'm like, I don't really know. We're like, you can't when you have it that isolated, when you're just kind of cutting off the parts and showing them to you piecemeal, you can't get any sort of sense of like what what is this overall package? What does this actually mean? Mega textures? You say that, but I still don't know what that means mega. I mean, wait, but you were gonna say something about really big release stuff. And there's another game that's out which

this week is that Rochard game is out on PlayStation. I was like, come on, this week, fantastic. That game is the pretty cool it's neat little puzzle platformer. Mmhm uh yeah, Sky alright, Skyrom I'm with you. Even though I didn't really like Oblivion, I didn't play it. I'm just hold on. He didn't play Oblivion and you're still super so I don't like Fantasy all right? No no no, no no no no no no no no. We've been here for four I think he might be confused

with scrolls. See brand confusion coming to bite him in the ass again. Bomb cat a giant bomb dot com is the email address Nick in Detroit, Michigan rides in. Hey guys, just completed Gears of War three over the weekend and was wondering what happened to the krill in Gears of War. Remember in the original the bats that killed you when you were in the dark and

you had to use light to get around and kill them. Maybe it was explained somewhere else in the fiction, but it seems odd that they have never been seen since. I was wondering if you had, guys knew what was up love the website and the podcast. Is that the gaping hole of you guys were talking about the story of the krill. Don't don't It doesn't get dark anymore, right, it's very bright and gears a war three. Yeah, that's true. Actually it is, you know, I don't know,

but something that may have been explained in fiction elsewhere. But I was just wondering if not, if they get if that gets touched on. No, there aren't bats everywhere in the United States. Sometimes you're in the cave and they got bats. Sometimes you're not. That's airtight. Just stepped to me right. Sometimes you eat the burmac oh, let's see here decks in Mississippi. Hey, bomb casters. I know there's a study out there that states

that the average gamer is in his or her early to mid thirties. Even with that being the case, a huge portion of the user base consists of kids and teenagers. Most of the time, when people, journalists or dev's talk about gamers, it seems as if they're referring to a homogeneous group instead of the disparate group we are, especially when it comes to age. I'm twenty nine with a decent job, which means I have the income to buy

games when I want to have significantly less time to play them. When I was fifteen, I couldn't buy all the games I wanted, but had more free time to play the ones that I had. Even you, guys whose job it is to play and right about games, don't have enough time to play everything you want. Do you think developers consider that their consumer group is split by resource slash time during development? Could take this into consideration have any

significant impact on the final product? Love the podcast Decks from Mississippi Thoughts guaranteed you think they are absolutely thinking about That's absolutely no question in my mind, because it definitely seems like there is that split of games that are either about like you know, I mean, I guess that's why you see these single player multiplayer and something like years three, or it's like, okay, a single player polished experience over in like six hours, something you can do over

a weekend or you know, in a sitting or two. So if you are the time limited gamer, then you can have that experience. But if you want to spend the dozens and dozens of hours, you know, however long you want getting to be the best at Years three multiplayer, that option is there for you as well. But you know you're having a media enough experience with the single player that if you don't feel compelled to do that, you're not and also feel ripped off. And look at them, look at

them. Just exploring pricing models now where it ranges from two dollars ninety nine cent micro transaction up until collectors editions that cost one hundred and twenty dollars, like they are servicing the range of incomes and this is free to play. You can get if you don't have a lot of money, you know,

two dollars whatever, you still get a bunch of time in there. And or you have too much money to spend by this giant statue of Marcus Phoenix, and we know you really like Years of War even though regardless of how much are you're gonna play. I had a really good email, I don't I seem to have lost here in the shuffle, someone asking about where the money goes for those special editions whether there's whether we've seen anything. I mean,

why it costs as much as it does. No, No, like who gets the profits, like a publisher or yeah, like if there is language in a publisher developer deal on this kind of thing where a publisher would would say we get x percent of retail and x more percent of these additions, or if it's just if it's just across the board for all retail editions. Yeah, it probably depends. I mean, someone was basically asking, like, I want to I want to make sure the money that I buy

a special edition it's going to a developer. That's the idea. That's probably not true. I wonder if who even comes up with those ideas for those skews, if they're like and that's my guess. You know, when you sign a contract to do a project four years, five years in advance, that's special editions aren't written into that. I mean, there might be there might be clauses in there, but the most that royalty payout stuff is based on, you know, you sell X number of copies, then you start

getting bonus and royalty payments. So I mean it's hard to say if that stuff kicks in during the launch of a game. You know, you might not get those kick those those bonuses kicking in until months later when you hit your numbers, and publishers may know, you know, they may have the

the you know, historical data to back up that. Oh, you know, we are going to sell all of our special editions in the you know, first month of sales, so if any of our royalty stuff doesn't kick in until after that first month, we will reap all of the rewards of having these big bulky special editions, and then we can just pay out the developers. So's it kind of like an advance. You just have to like pay back your advance until you start making money like band, like band contracts.

I can't say I'm not I'm not totally because they probably could be a bunch of you sent us a bunch of game tracks right anonymously. Just send us game contract dot pdf. Yeah, we want to know. We want

to know because otherwise it's it's yeah, I can't really say. I mean, you have companies like uh, you know, like ea, you know, ditching the idea of doing giant special editions and just calling the first run of it a special edition meddle of honor, Like yeah, like Meddle of Honor, Like you you got the Battlefield three code last year as long as you bought the first run of the game. Turns out basically like every version of that game was still the first run even months afterwards. But that's you

know, they found. I remember seeing a presentation from Dar was one of the research groups. We're just changing the title to special Edition. Even if nothing specials inside, it increases your pre orders by like a notable, especially if you're going away for the same price. Yes. Interesting, like just it's just the psychology behind making you're getting something special by calling it special. Yeah, it's that easy. Yes. Got another email here from Michael and

Aberdeen in Scotland. Hey, bomb casters, I just recently bought Enslaved and Vanquished for very cheap compared to the full retail amount they went for when new. Uh. We also recently in news learned that there will be no Enslaved sequel, So hopefully you got all the Enslaved Fanny that you wanted out the I didn't want but yeah, the pig pigay uh whatever. Never say never, man, they said never never. Never. Email them back and say

I never say never. Pretty unlikely never. I thought they'd never be another beyond Good and Evil. Well so far, Yeah, that's true. Your prediction rings true. The Vegas bet continues to go out. Never say never A thought of Kurts. What if publishers and retailers came up with a new IP price. So these games, along with off the top of my head Mandation, Racers of Protocol, Singularity, Mirror's Edge, a Blur, et cetera, et cetera, we're all priced lower than the blockbuster titles that people

will always pay full price for because they are established brands. Maybe, just maybe this would sell a few more copies at this lower price than if popular. Uh that than if popular. The sequel is automatically established brand with loyal supporters, it could be sold at full price instead, as is the case at present, dev's chance to the dev's get shut down and the IP dies. What do you think coming coming out the gate at ten bucks cheaper?

No, you don't think that helps. I don't think it would work. I have vanquished from game player right now. I'm excited. I don't I don't think it's short. Yeah, I don't think ten dollars is enough to tip the boat. But it's kind of what need for speed dude? Right for for when they when they rebrand Hopper Suit, when they were like immediately went on sale for like thirty nine, where wasn't it. Those are retailers

doing that though, That's not you don't think Amazon. You don't think because it was across the board on that's that's Amazon or Walmart will do that too. Just they're just trying to bring in customers based on what they think is

a hot products. Any part of that that's not an EA buying because you'll see the developers, you know, like on Twitter like pushing back on like oh because the initial response from users is like, oh bomba like you know, the game's bomb if it's going to forty and it's first week, and then you know that's those are not said that can exist. But that is traditionally not how that works. That's just a retailer trying to draw you in, thinking, hey, you'll buy this forty dollar Hopper suit, and oh

you're here, maybe you're gonna buy some other stuff too. I thought I thought in that case it was EA putting out that was just like absolutely not. In fact, they usually they like that irritates them. Is I would assume because it makes it sense. The one because the consumer perception is that, oh, well, let's I guess it's you know, maybe it's not

very good. It's forty dollars and its first week. That's why. That's why you see like the the gap is so why it's sixty dollars or down to like one, five, fifteen, twenty, because that in between range just makes your products seem cheap. Sure, either you either are launching at a lower price and kind of a staption in yourself in that category, or you're going for the full price game category. Yeah, anything above that. This should go the opposite. This should make it a premium on new ips

and be like this game's worth eighty dollars. Should use that. I've always wondered and I only had recently clarified on me why some games in Japan are so expensive, Like you'll get like a like a really because a really small targeted product that's like eighty ninety one hundred dollars. That's because there's no press

regulation. Well, it's also I guess it's like what consoles where it's like whatever the market will carry, right, So it's like you know that ten thousand people will buy this, So why would you charge sixty bucks for it when those same ten thousand people will pay one hundred dollars for it? And so that, but that, but that The argument for the publishers is like, well, we can't survive making these products for ten thousand people at sixty

dollars, so we have to charge one hundred. I mean, you don't it's hard enough. That's true or not. But I see the argument of well, if we charge ten thousand people at one hundred dollars, well then we can keep making this for just those ten thousand people not worry about expanding the audience. Yeah, but you see that with like Child of Eden. That game shouldn't have been sixty buck. It wasn't it was fifty Well, it shouldn't have been fifty bucks. It went down to ten, like,

you know, fifteen bucks like two weeks later. Yeah, yeah, and just came out on p S three. Yeah, and it was I think it was gonna be so fun, like twenty bucks in Europe. Yeah, that's that's about right. It's about where that game should have been. About twenty bucks. I would have I would have been happy with that price point. We've run out of time for emails. Thanks everyone else who wrote in once again, BombCast at GiantBomb dot com is the address. We're playing track

Mania two on TNT this week. We're gonna I will have the ship out of the fun of that fun after love. Yes, yes, there will be plenty of life love believing were plenty of unlicensed broadcasting of copyrighted music, because that's how track Mania two rolls. Maybe we will be confounded by interface

and we will drive super duper fast, So look forward to that. There's a giant Bomb server should jot bombs server for track Mania too put into Jeff for at least a time, was the most popular server, and I believe it. I believe it remains, at least in the US, in all of the Mania Planet in the US, in the California US region of Mania Planet is definitely because there's not a lot of those much more European. And that games are twenty bucks, right, I do sure it's bucks, it's

moneys, I don't I don't know. Five but that's in planet dollars. I don't know what that converts to in Buffalo non non Mania. Yeah, whatever that costs in Buffalo nickels. But also only available through uh TrackMania dot whatever. That's probably the best way. Yeah, go go to go to Mania planet and go get it there, get it somewhere else. Yeah, go to go to Mania Planet, check it out, google it. Yeah. No, keep safe search on planet for sure. Uh Patrick, Thanks

for sitting in for for Jeff this week. It was a pleasure. You go back to whispering Skyrim to yourself and I and Brad. Thank you guys as always, thank you for the podcast. Thanks for thank you guys at home for listening. We'll back next Tuesday with another edition of the Giant Podcast.