Giant Bombcast 10-18-2011

Hey, buddy, it is Tuesday. Whoa it is Tuesday, October eighteenth, twenty eleven, and you were listening to the Giant Bomb Cast. I'm Ryan Davis joining me today clipping stuff on mister Vinnie Carroll Number one clip on how's your pop screen? Have you addressed your issues my hands? I had to scrape stuff with a hand. Pop screens got all switched around and they were unknown particles on my pop screen. And I just saw Contagion last weekend? So what do you think of that? It was great. It's it's

a very subtle disaster movie. Yeah. I like the way it moves. It was it was less about the disaster and how normal people would have to kind of do their job and deal with shit. I just I really enjoyed how Gwyneth Paltrow looked awful, Yeah, in any of her scenes. I enjoyed Larry Frish barnshe he looked pretty bad. Yeah. But also it's just like it was like not a lot of yelling and running around with heads on fire. It was more of like, fucking, how do you do your

job when the world's exploding? Like, I don't know, your job is to keep the world from exploding. Yeah, and like you know, there's just guys and real monotone voices being like you know, you're gonna have to go to court for this and be like yeah. And it was like in like six months and it's like okay, and that's the end of that. It's like very much grounded, I thought, in good procedural. Yeah, it's like it's like Outbreak but without all of the bombasts. Yeah exactly.

I kind of enjoy that. And again it was like every good horror movie, we are the real monsters. Oh. Also soundtracked by the guy who did the score for Drive, which if you know that, it makes a lot of sense. Patrick Kleppik is here. Hey, how's it going, sir? All right? How goes Horror month? For you? Speaking good? Speaking of films? Our movie podcast paranol Activity three comes out this week,

which I'm pretty ampt about. It's gotten very good reviews. Does so I still need to Yeah they've been doing haven't been reading very much, but yeah, better than the second one, and the second one's pretty good. I still need to see the second one. Anything else weird in the that you've watched thus far? Trying to think nothing too watched the Thirst, which is the that Korean director who did Old Boy and the Devil. I saw

The Devil. That one's really good. I Saw the Devil is like a revenge fantasy, but then you think you know where it's gonna go, and then they fucking dude over and then they fuck another dude over. It looks it looks good. I also love The post Yard for that. It's really good and intense. Jeff Gershman is here. Hello, how's how it goes your skylanding? It's great land in the sky. I put the I put the monsters on the power base, and then they're in my video game.

That's that's my horror story. Physical things, physical things into video games and vice versa. And I don't really know what's what anymore. It's kind of been over here, kind of frightening. And also I watched part of Bad Boys too. How do you month? Yeah? How do you watch part of Bad Boys too? I know that movie is three hours long? Yeah, yeah, I watched the second ending. Oh oh yeah yeah. Yeah.

We were talking, Yeah, we're talking about it, and I was like, yes, I just put it onto my computer for for you know, that sort of digital use. And I was like, I'm just gonna fire this up while I do something else. And then I found myself watching the end of Bad Boys too. That movie ends. Yeah, and then it's like, like, what if we had another hour here where? What do you guys think about? Let's go It's it's only like two ten to twenty. No, it's not. It's not long enough. Can you imagine

like a ninety minute My Bay movie? Can you would fathom? Like I was just thinking about that, every single one of his movies is like almost three hours long. It would just be split screen the whole time. That have to be two things happening and once at all times to fit in all of that award winning amazing story. Have any of you guys seen the third Transformers movie? Talk to you about it about how I thought it was maybe

the most terrible movie of our lifetime. It's, uh, it's it's insane, Like how like it gets to a point where it's like, okay, everything's going on in Chicago, Let's go to Chicago, and it's like an hour action scene. It's just like one hour that's just like like after just like fucking robots and buildings following over and explosions and like characters are being introduced and then killed over the course of this one like hour long action scene,

and then the movie just fucking ends. It's like killed the bad guys autobots one credits, just like like no wrap up or anything. It's just like and that's the end. That's where we decided to like we just I had to stop the movie. It's not like it ended, it's just yeah, this is that's much more. It's like two hours and forty minutes. Yeah, okay, that's probably a good place to stop. Sure, I can render some more robots. So what did you actually think of it? Did

you enjoy it? I enjoyed the part where so uh Leondard Nimoy voices one of the the robots, Sentinel, and he's straight up says the spock line needs of the many outwagh the needs of the few at one point. That's how that movie is. It's dumb. It's so dumb. Also blatantly racist. I had Asian character paying for community, but not not as Yeah, so Opening Night Baby, I'm ax and three D not as not as blatantly racist as the second one. Yea, the second one. Yeah, the

twins. The twins were way way, way worse. Although the thing that kept throwing me off was hair on robots. Yeah, a bunch of the Smart Doctor robots Like it's like like like bioluminescent hair. Also the clo he's balding, Like he doesn't have hair on the top of his head. It's just like wrap around to let you know that, Oh he is a older, more distinguished what robots and then Sentinel, the Leonard Demoy character has a fucking robot mustache. There's just there's one in the one that has a cane.

Yeah, and then why does Megatron have a cloak? Like but it did make him look kind of cool. Yeah. So I had missed two and I thought one was like fairly. I was like, Okay, it's kind of dumb, but it's an action movie. It's kind of taking itself at least a bit. Seriously. I don't know what happened in two, but three is like a vaudeville act like three and I'll tell you this.

Three reigns it in some from two like the stuff in two. Oh my gosh, is three has like little cybal kicks like two is like an atrocity two has well, Two has like extended bits with the parents like way more with the parents like hens like Pott Brownie's on a college campus, and then the parents just go off for twenty minutes being high. Yeah wait, what's what And then they go to Paris and then you like are following them in

Paris being like bad racist Americans in Paris. So it's like meet the Fokkers in like it's a movie, a movie within a movie. Yeah, it's this whole other movie that's happen run into Ben Stiller and then there's like this comedist comedy mishappen, like oh no, and then somehow they like show up at the climactic battle at the end, like they get like off camera, they get kidnapped, and then just at one point a robot like drives up

to the fight and just dumps them out. In Egypt, yeah, in eachy front of the Pyramids with the giant transform with two balls that are clinging. But I feel like in three it's like optimist prime heads are kind of funny eating the pot Brownie and goes out of the trip and that whole movie was terrible, Like there's so many dumb jokes in it and like plays for

comedy and like bits but that's that's Michael Bay. Michael Bay can't resist really awful, and no one will tell him no because his movies makes so much money. But then all the trip, all the fights. But you think some level, like you know, the general movie going public like totally wants that. I can't imagine that the election wasn't that great. It was look at much money. That movie made a billion dollars? Why because there's robots. I don't give in disguise at one point? You know what I do

like that they're in terrible disguise. If they are the worst suise, I will say this, they actually three uses the like in disguise thing better than either of the first two. Like there are actually moments where it's like, oh shit, that's a robot where it had not been led on. That's they shouldn't just name the movie. I've summed up everything that's awesome about all

the Transformers with one sentence. And I and I, you know, for as much as I don't care for the like movie designs of the Transformers, I like the sounds they make. Whoever did the sound design for for like their lasers and when they transform, I like that stuff just was digital on me and Bumblebee parsing together like movie clips to talk and see you see this? This is why I saw an opening night in imax and three D, because if I'm going to see a movie this dumb, I'm gonna see it

the dumbest way possible. D box would have been the only improvement that I could have done, and they didn't, and they didn't. It didn't come out in the box, and so and when it so when you see that, when you see that movie and I'm actually three D, the opening shot basically of that film is whatever the new model, the Megan Fox replacement.

You know, she's walking up the stairs and her ass is just in front of the camera and it's all in three D. The first shot in the goddamn movie is this model just swishing her ass around in three D. And I just like, like wearing like a dress shirt over like panties, so it's just like a little bit of butt is kind of peaking. It's not even like subtle three D. It's like popping out at your eyes three D.

And the whole audiences what it likes. The whole audience just looks around at each other like we're all seeing her Butt's gonna transform shits a robot. That's the porn versions Root and Brent Shoemaker is ever seen Transformers. I stopped after the first one. That's why I elected. Yeah, you and I

saw the first one. That was my last experience I made. I'm in an effort to not see any of them ever, because I thought they all looked real, real, terrible, And then by the time they came out on like HBO or something, I ended up in bits and pieces from having people around me watching them because I am around idiots a lot of the time. I saw the first one and the second one that way, then you just you just have to see a third one. Story I told no interest

the third one. The story, Yeah, I don't even it's like nonsensical. It might as well not even be there. Actually, it makes way more sense than the second one. I guess I should watch the second one. The second a script. Just make Tron turn into a gun in this one. I'm not gonna see. Yeah, yeah, You're not gonna see

it as far as I'm concerned. There is one Transformers movie, and it came out in nineteen me a space gun people, No, No, he's a fucking pistol luger, yeah, Walter, Yeah, with a weird stock

extender on and a scope, so all cool pistols wouldn't fix those. And then he turned into a gun, and wouldn't that would be the thing that would be like, oh these, wouldn't that be over the top in a way better way if all of a sudden he's turned into a giant like World War two era pist into a person's size pistol, and him and another robot scream shooting. Right, that's that's who fires. There is a there is uh, there's sound waves. I don't have sound waves in two. I

can't remember it. Do you have a fake sound waven this he's terrible as they like iPod or something. No, he doesn't do anything. He makes like waves, shock waves. How is the sound wave if he has a vehicle. I think it's sound wave because they Yeah, this is bullshit. Because he has the little he has the cassette. He still has like laser beak and yeah, and Laserbeak disguises. Actually, Laserbeak's disguises are probably the

probably the most significant, like a plasma TV or something. I don't know. But there's all the weirdest part was not sound Wave. The dude who guards Cybertron the telepart of the shot shot shock Wave shock Wave. Yeah, he's in it, and he's giant worm. You know, he's ridding around on the giant worm. He can turn into a space pistol. Yeah, okay, that's the only way you know it's supposed to be because people say

shock wave and then like a worm comes out of the ground. You're not You're not totally in the wrong for thinking that those were the same thing. But yeah, Disney launched the giant worms. He's hanging out on it or something. I don't know. I can't I can't believe the Headlinard Nimoy spouting star Trek lines when he has history as another Transformers character, Well, why don't they draw you know, it's the rich legacy, the whole thing.

The whole thing is you're getting caught up like the your incredulity, your incredulity is being misplaced because it's it's the whole thing. It's not these minor shis. If you want, if you want a dumb movie, imagine like how much dumber it could have been if they had been totally faithful to original series Generation one Transformers, but it had been this big budget live action movie. But where he was turning into a giant pistol and shooting stuff, I could

go for that. Probably probably just lean into just the stupidity inherent to the premise Primes trailer go. When he trans he does, he does have the trailer in the beginning, it becomes like a charging stations like it's like it's his weapon cash like he it transforms and turns his platform and he like runs up to it and grabs like like axe or something, his his melee weapons. So the cartoon, it seems like, takes itself way more seriously than

Yes, cartoon is pretty optimist, is not joking around. He doesn't crack wise, he's a rust ghost or something. It's fucked up, what's happened? And so yeah, it's weird to watch this movie, this big budget movie be like Slapstick. The whole thing is like one big bad comedy act. Like I don't well, it's I think it swings hard. Like then it's like, look at the destruction of Chicago and how serious this is and I'm gonna fight and no, we don't want you to die like it.

Yeah, and then actually Michael Bay knows nothing about consistency of tone. He's just like, all right, now it's funny, all right, now it's sexy. And I can never find there's problem with the first one. Three I can't follow the robots when they fight, like it's just gotten better at it. But you're right, it's just they really started like coloring them more because the first one just like gray versus gray, and then and shot up way too close for you to tell one robot and the shaky cam. They

move it back a little bit. They don't use the shake cam as much, and they use slow mo like nuts. It's a lot of slow mopping robots, and like the Red Shirt robots, Like I don't know where all these like the septicons are coming from, Like what Cybertron? What the cyber space bridge? Gotta get the energy on space bar the space bridge, I don't know. There were there were no Red Shirts in the cartoon, and they got a high jack to drive the car. Nobody ever done the space

bridge to bring the energy on to Cybertron. So they do mention energon I think in the movie, but they never show the cubes. That's all I loading cubes into sound wave about the matrix of leadership really yeah really yeah? But not well that's in two right, Remember that we see Transformer Heaven. Remember how not even goes to Transformer Heaven and it's told by like the transform

Elder gods to go back. Really yeah, you really need to see if you think if you are this angry about three, really need to see two Transformer Heaven Transformer Elder Gods like for how much? For how much worse? It like you'll come back and say, yeah, they cleaned it up. You'll be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, made some some notab because you're you're you're missing the dip into You're going from one really second act and being like why I don't why would they go this direction after the

first one? I remember like tearing up and the movie when the Matrix of Leadership has passed Loan when prime is given it to seven, I would cry, Right now, do you put that loaded up on YouTube because you saw when you were seven? Yeah? Well I think if a kid saw this and when he was seven, he would probably vomit. Yeah, gonna say, do you think our seven year old kids totally into New Transformers? Yeah? You think billion dollars. You know what didn't come from Kids are into

whatever you're put in front of them. SCOTL Skylanders, don't. I don't know any better. I'm into Skylanders. Shelby was saying his daughter's like into Spiro, yeah, which is like a crate reticulous concept of like, wait a minute, there are people that are into Spiro and there's no cartoon, there's no I think I'm telling them. When I signed it for the website so that I could use my Skylanders in a bunch of really bad flash mini

games. The email it's sent said that your child has signed up for an account on this website, because it didn't ask for your email, asking your parents email, which I thought about my mom's email dress in there. But she probably would have been really confused. Probably she would have said no, yeah, exactly, no, no you are too old. She would just say this is not age appropriate for ye. What we need to talk. Go look at some pornography I've sent you playing put trigger Happy onto the Power,

the Portal of power. I need to get a chop chop, that's right, where does that chop chops? I almost ordered a chop chop, uh, but I would have had to order the separate one because the adventure packs are not are not sold via Amazon Prime, and I couldn't. That means I couldn't have it tomorrow. If you can't have it tomorrow, it does not matter, right, limited time man, before the Skylanders craze passes. Okay, yeah, let's do that, all right, they'll have that.

Okay, pick me up, pick me up? Serious? Yeah, And if we're gonna do video of this, I want to. I'm gonna turn into it and we're gonna produce the best dumbest coverage that we can produce. Jeff explain Skylanders all right, So Cooks at Home through the eighties through uh, you know, for generations, people have used toys and cartoons and and yeah, like like as a means to sell products, you know, Transformers the cartoon. Like. The argument glad about it was that it was

little more than an ad for the toys. I disagree because there were such heavy stories in there, but they were also highly effective. They were highly effective advertising, So it wasn't even deeper than that. Remember that, remember that Captain Power stuff where you could actually shoot at the TV show. Yeah, yeah, you bought the toys to shoot it. At your TV, Jeff and I have watched No, no, no, that's the laser tag. Captain Power was the video tapes. Yeah, it was video taps.

There was also a daily show, but they only made like eight episodes or something like that. There were these like crazy glowing red and white spots on the enemies and you actually shoot at them, and then and the gun with the ship, which was a gun, would keep score. You would have to look away from the TV with the pistol or the space ship when bad things were on screen that we're shooting at you and have to go back time

crisis. But it was just using like you know, like zapper gun just like yeah, so you'd record it and you'd pause the tape on the thing you're supposed to shoot and just pull a trigger and over every order again until you win. But if you ran out of points, if you got hit too much, the dude would eject like there's like a motor in there, who'd pop out of the spaceship. It was awesome, fucking awesome and also

end. Yeah, and the Captain Power. The production on the on the show itself, lots of lots of uh like crazy proto cg on there well it's that and also some very primitive like blue screen stuff like real not green screen, definitely blue. That stuff we were watching yesterday, the Nightmare, the clips you were sending me of that. Similar, oh great, similar level of bad. Great. I need to have some UK friends and and some time your series series over there, not seasons gets straight so Skyland.

So it brings us to Skylanders, which is kind of the latest twist in this whole, like nefarious, like you get this, and then you need to get these, then you need to get this. So what it is is you go by the starter pack and you will gets seventy bucks available on all platforms and even its a PC version even yeah and Mac yeah yeah, yea, well no the game oh crazy, so you waste. Yeah, they sell a package that says that's called PC slash Mac. That's insane out

there. That's so you get the power the Portal of Power, which is this USB cable that leads to this this little base that you can put your dudes on close and it glows when you plug it in. So that's great. Color cycles, yes, color cycle, that's great. You get three dudes, you get Spiro, trigger Happy and gild something the fish guy with

a spirit. Yeah, get murlock looking dude. Uh. And so the idea is that you're playing if you get the same three and if three, so there's he's a fire type, magic magic, Spiro is a magic type, trigger happy, he's a tech, and the other guy's water type, and that there's already a strong Pokemon. Yeah, they're like they're like eight types. They're thirty two different figures, but you only get the three.

And basically you take these figures they must have R F I D chips or something like that in there, and you place them on the base and then they are in your game and instantly, instantly, I mean there's an animation that takes place. It's not like totally instantly. But and it's also a unique idea. Yes, it is a unique idea because you're getting gear for your dudes. You're collecting hats that will let you crip better. So this is now Jeff's Spiro every time exactly. Yeah. Yeah, So it has

ownership, like it says you own this. You can give it a nickname if you like, honey, make sure that you write your name and your phone number on the bottom of it. Yes, basically, so you can take your dude off and put another guy on at any time. So they build puzzles in this kind of in this game based around you need to have a tech guy right here to open this gate, and that's the puzzle. It's there's a tech logo on the gate and it says you need to have

a tech guy on the gate. Right if you lose that toy your bone, Well, no, no, you're buying another one. Yeah, more of the point. You don't have one to begin with, right, what do you mean, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, so I do have a tech guy. But yes, there are eight types or something like that across all of them, so you're not gonna have all of them. You're not gonna be able to see the entire game right out of the gate. And you know, the different characters have different abilities. So Spiro and shoot

fire and does like a fire charge. Trigger Happy has guns and he also throw golden safes that appear out of nowhere, like I don't know what's happy. And then the other guy has like a water cannon that is like Mario Sunshine style, and also a harpoon like a spear gun. And then since he's a water guy, he can cross water so you'll find water, you can swim across it to get to the treasure chest on the other side more hats. You can kind of see where this goes because they have thirty two

different dudes and across eight types. So so if I was going to buy a dude on his own at the store, yeah, what's that caught? Like, what's the So the pricing seems to be somewhere between eight and ten dollars per dude. But they also have produced three packs that are three packs for twenty Okay, so you can get chop Chop, which we encountered. So we found a gear that only Chop Chop can wear. It's not even

like class specific. It is dude specific specific. Dude Pacific, which is my new beach broadcast show that I'm working on, Stabut and next four. We're gonna take take some time with this one. Yes, So when you find the chop Chop gear, it's like, hey, do you want to watch a little video of chop Chop And they produced movies for this. Chop Chop just run around of the swoord just effing guys up, and you're like, that guy looks awesome. We gotta go buy that I need some chop

chop mom. So if that's if that's locked in, if that's hard coded, which I assume it is, everybody's gonna encounter chop chop first. There's gonna be a run on chop chop. So we need to buy. So we need to get all the chop, yes, before people realize, oh shit, ain't it chop chop to get in here. Oh god, it's gonna be a terrible But so, okay, so you've got three yeah,

you'd say there's eight types. Yes, so you need to see everything in the game you're gonna regarding disregarding the gear thing, like the character specific gear. You need to buy five more of these dudes, at least at least to see like the different areas or whatever. Yeah. So like another like four's not necessarily full on areas though, Like when when when they have these gates that you can only open if you're a specific dude. It's just there's

some treasure, some coins or something over there. It's not like, oh, here's a whole level that only this guy can partake in, but by worlds, right. Yeah, So the one thing I have bought so far because I need to see how this works is they are selling something that is like the Pirate pack. It's like some adventure world and it says, unlock a whole new world in your game. It comes with a little fish creature, which imagine it's going to be another water type, which is a bummer

for us. Uh, this this Pirate I'm handling it pretty well. So this Pirate themed world, which is a boat. It's a picture of a boat on the box. I don't know what it's going to be. No, I mean, like you have to put on the magic I don't know. I don't know it. That was just the cover of the box. I don't I don't know. I don't know how it's gonna end up.

I don't know how we get this into the game. That's why I ordered it, because it's just it's you know, it's sins different code or that door, and it's already on the disc and you've just yeah, imagine it's all on the disc because it needs to be, because it's I mean on all these platforms, like not all of them are going to be internets. If you play, like with the handheld one, it's like these I'm not sure three D one and I'm not so. The figures also come with codes,

and I imagine that something yeah. Yeah. Also, and when you're playing all the three sixty, you can generate a web code that is a code that I imagine you can enter on their website to update your dude with the bright hat. If you're not playing on the internet. Hopefully it sinks automatically. If you're on the internet. It would be a real bummer if you had to exchange these codes around all the time. But the third thing in that pack ghost swords sold ghost swords. As soon as I read ghost

words, like yeah, I'll buy that, that'll be here tomorrow. How much was this World Adventure pack? Twenty twenty bucks? And I think uh Will and Norm or Norm was looking at the like total cost for everything, and it would be like four hundred bucks to get to get it all, get all of these sky stuff. Jeff, you know what you have to do. No, I can't do that. I can't come on it. It's like a Star Trek online lifetime subscription to the Skyline. Alright, let's

do this. We'll go to Toys Rest to night. We'll see what's there. If they have these three packs, I'll get them. The one packs seem a little sketchy. I actually have they gave They gave characters away background E three well before the game was out. So I think I have a spire. It might just be a Spiro if we get like a backpack generator and we just we basically the three sixty run in on a battery, get this game, bring your portal there, and just put the boxes on top

of the better idea because yeah you can. You can hold the figures like I don't know, three inches above it and it'll still read. We get all the gear and then we leave. That might that might work. But what might also work is cloning the RF ideas. Assuming it's using ideas. I can't magic in there. I mean I just don't know, Like, yeah, it doesn't pretty much the two choices. If it's not our if idea, it's probably magic. So I mean, I don't know what else

broadcasts that passively as a chip from those things. Very dust works pretty well, I don't know, it screams at it. I mean, I'm just saying, I literally don't know. So let's crack open. See it's guy. Yeah, I do want to yon as soon as I'm sure that we can do that without breaking it. We will totally break one, yeah, and figure out and look at its insides. Uh. But so what's the actual game. Yeah, there's a game actually worth playing. It's a kid's

game, but like, what what is it. It's it's sort of a top down, like fixed camera's perspective, Like you don't have camera control. It's real, real simple. You're just kind of walking around the world busting stuff up. Uh. I shot a bunch of trees and coins came out. You're fighting any dude. Yeah, you're finding some dudes, uh, and and doing some jumping. There's like jump pads that you can bounce on to get up to hire areas and stuff. And yeah, you're you're fighting

dudes. There's a battle mode so you can do two player competitive TV. Yeah, so you can put two Skylanders on the on the base. The base like the bottom of it says power like Portal of Power for Xbox three sixty like on the sticker on the bottom is. But yeah, it had like the all the breakaway cable stuff. But I wonder if that's just they had to meet Microsoft's requirements. They had to make one of those and maybe the rest are all t but then you also able to plug that into your

computer. Yes, and it worked on that Yes. So for the so I mean there's a PC version of the game. But also they have a website where you I installed the portal drivers for my Mac. Great idea. Always it's just all random drivers for total bullshit. And and when you when the installed process for these drivers finished, it pulled up a date pop the

terminal windows that process completed. Really elegant stuff. Yeah, it's not going to freak out enough once that, Once that process was done, I could totally you know, scan my Skylanders into these awful flash games without entering the code. Instead, you do. You have two options. You can enter a code or put them on the base. Of course I was like, ooh, put them on the base. The magic work. And one of the flash games is like a really badding re Birds clone, like really bad.

It's gotta be weird to be Ted Price looking at this game being like, yeah, like we what happened dudes? Iron that first game, the first game they made, the first three Yeah they created and that was bought by Vivendi. Yeah, when the crash like all the Crash bandicoot stuff, But this is like the most interesting thing that has been Spiro related in since those three games as far as I'm concerned, Yeah, totally like good or

bad. Like it's at a certain level, it's a kid's game, so yeah, like we can talk about and and like I think about like that's what guys. The kid's game is not super engaging to me. Yeah, but it seems well made for what it is, and at least from like the business pert perspective of it, it is like nefarious and awesome. It's interest. It's totally interesting. Yeah, and I bet kids would be totally into But the only cash is that none of these figures actually move or do

anything, so they're just we're not using for the game. You can't.

There's nothing cool you can do with them. Can you imagine the tears when your kid takes there because you said all the gear attaches to a specific thing, Yeah, but you take it to school, it's lost, it gets stolen, and all of a sudden, that get all your gear is just going Yeah, totally like you're leveling that dude up and unlocking additional attacks and stuff like this totally gets swiped and then the options you have when you have it on the base, you can actually reset it, right, So if

you're if you swipe one and used one. Yeah, if you steal some kids thing and it's got his nickname and his ownership on it, totally get away scot free. That's terrible. And being a kid's tough. I think I think it's weird that they don't randomize any of that. You can't buy the starter pack with different people, so like you and I, if I bought it, we have the same guys. It's not like it just over

Well, I've got a sorcerer type. You know. The early parts of the game are a tutorial like in Nature, so it makes sense for them to be able to assume that you have one of each of those three types. But like, I've got to buy an expansion pack to open up a new area. Everybody who, everybody who is in on this has to buy something. Yeah, yes, everyone has ever or like you're the rich kid and you buy them all and then you just come over my house that you

can't touch mine. I think you play two player with with Skylanders that are owned by the same person if you want also, it's not but I want this gear. Yeah, I want to happen online, right, Uh No, No. Also, all the achievements on the three sixty version are tied to primary profile only, so you wouldn't even get points if you went over to someone else's house and played have you tried? We should get all right, I should get one and was trying. What happens if you're plugging two

portals the same three sixty? What happen? It's the only one way to find out. What if you get two portals and then you put one portal onto the other portal? Or what if you put a portal in the Skylander in range of both portals? Stop there, there's five USB ports on that thing. Then a hot, going hot chick comes out of the computer and five that's insane, you're a madman. Spill coke on the portal? Yeah,

and then uh, and then weird science happens up. I made a dragon, lady, I don't know, and chick turns into a pilot. The answers to Spiro, it's kind of hot. Just half dragon got tail for days. Well, thank you for that extension. Skylanders update, Jeff, I'm glad I could help. I look. I look forward to hearing more about this, and I can't wait to get to toys, taking your credit cards away, taking taking all your cash. I'll lock you up for a week. Now, he's just gonna have to steal. Now, he's

just gonna gona you can't be trusted. It goes way further back and deducting a service. It's gonna be hanging out at the school. I got that chop chop. You like that chop chop? I got level chop much chop chop chop chop. You can be like on the other side of the channelingk fins like trying to like fit the figures through chop chop. But you look like I got eight. You look like a kid who knows quality. I get you chop chop, but give you one Aquiferians. That's right, just

give them a taste. I'm just gonna give you this one for free. I like you. You're smart kid. You're smart kids. Just come back to me when you need something or what if it really is writing back to the figures, like the data so that you know you could What if you could hack those and just hack all the gear onto one and just start selling

boot legged like level maxed out Skylanders. It's like, yo, man, this one you put it in the whole game goes upside down to be even better, though, if you could just start manufacturing your own RFID chips and putting them in Bootleg. Actually Spart Simpson put it on there and then Spiro appears. That's actually what I want to do is take other action figures, like take these chips out of these dudes and put them into other stuff. Oh yeah, I mean not that it would change what the game did on

I just like Chop Chop, that's what you're talking about. Take this marital aid and slap it on the power base trigger happy chop Chop indeed, or you just you know, take it down to just the RFIDA or whatever the whatever the chip is that's from that on there. Yeah, and you're just carrying around super incognito, slap your wallet on it. Oh it's a robot. Oh shit, it's a robot. Put him into Transformers. Yeah. Yeah, sky's the limit, because that's what Activation will probably do next if

this does well, Sure, that's actually a great idea. Yeah, Ship, we've also got I contacted mister John Vigniaki, and uh, it's gonna send us some of those cars to iPad Toys. I think Will has those did he did he get him already. I think he bought the wrong ones at first. He didn't eat he bought. He bought a bunch of cars to toys. Yeah, I just have all these cars toys. It was a lot too. Yeah, it was like like ten or twelve or something, big old pack awesome. But yeah, I think Johnny's gonna send a

couple of those. I'm curious to see because the kind of this, you know, similar idea of take a toy, place it on the iPad screen screen, so it's like the bottom of each toy has like a different it's it doesn't have as much stuff. It's not like r ida, right, that's a different pattern of conductive. So it touches the screen in a set pattern and that's how they dictate. Yeah, and the app itself is free,

so you're just buying the toys. But that stuff, I want to see what that looks like, because that seems like it could be I don't know, more weird kids stuff. Yeah, I just totally like even if this is like exploitative, like all kids toys are always exploitative, Like it's they're always designed to try and goose you for a little more for fucking you know, Castle Gray Skull or whatever. I got a thing that might not

be exploitative. Why not let me get my profile on an RFID tag that I can attach to my keychain and then let me just scan that in forneverther three sixty so I don't have to like recover a profile anytime. Yeah, okay, because I love it, I'll let you do that, all right, I think about it. Who can I call? Uh? Yeah, that'd be great. I know it would be great if you could hack the portal of power to scan my profile. Yeah. Yeah, I should just get a little bobble ahead of me, and I just don't want to put

it. That's what I carry around. Just dig out my babble ahead of me and put an RFID in it. Chop chop, Yeah, exactly. All right, we'll table this Skylanders discussion. He further Skylanders discussion for next week once we get to all this stuff. So yeah, look forward to that part two. I don't want to have inaccurate information until then. Hey, mister Vinnie Caravella, Hey man, I've been just working on my RFI D login system. What you've been playing in? Uh beat Resistance three three?

If you have any question about what number game you're playing this year, it's probably the third one. For a second, I thought you had maybe played a game called Beat Resistance, and I was just say, that sounds like a really kick out third one Beat Resistance. I can't believe I missed the first two. Damn it. It is a good This is a big year for the thirds. So get with a kill Zone three, System three, Gears of War three three, Uncharted three, Uncharted three, Batman two

three. Right, I'll take that. That's a two three mast fact three would have been, would have been, would have been, would have should have Elder Scrolls four three? Anyway, beat it. That game is pretty good, except for the parts where you had really weird, you know,

a much different experience with the game scripting than I did. Yeah, so at least five times five and maybe not three, and maybe at most five times, Uh, I had to reload uh checkpoints and saves because the scripting would get hung up and not moved me on to the next sequence, so so like, and for very obvious reasons, sometimes sometimes not so obviously, like one time I got done with this big old firefight, this this diorama esque sequence, right, like, oh my God, things are happening.

All this crazy stuff is happening. And then I finished a battle. I'm just hanging hanging out there. Nothing's happening. I'm talking to Brian, You're like we beat it, like okay, great, and then Jeff, you're hanging out. They're just standing there. And then Brad is stuck in a car, like clipped halfway through a car. I was like just just like, you know, why get out of a car, Brad. And I'm like, I bet Brad has to go walk over two feet to go trigger

the next sequence. But since Brad is stuck in the Brad's also girl, she's stuck in a car, it's not gonna happen. So I have to reload fight through that hole, you know, battle again. And then sure enough, after the battle has done, she walks over two feet and it's like let's go, and then it goes and then it saves the check one. So that happened about four or five times. Like dude to just be crouched forever and with a nicon over his head. I'm just walking around him

in the circle. Will be like, I know you're the guy who's gonna open the door. Just open the door, you're not gonna open the door. Finally reload, fight that whole battle again and he's like, great job and one that's all of them and opens the door. How do we go open the door for you? Sound like Metal of Honor. Yeah, So like that that happened about that specific style of the MPC not doing anything probably

happened about three times. And two times an enemy would clip through a wall and you have to kill all the enemies and like I had to go hunting around listening for where the enemy is in the wall and then use something that had like an area of effect to kind of blow through a walk a grenade or something, or they can technically go through it, yeah, or use the to pretty much shoot through the wall and find it. But like hunting him down by sound like listerally like see I think he's here, Okay,

I think he's he's like shooting up through the wall. I do. So that helps. That helps. So that that was annoying, But the game is actually really good. So like that technical stuff aside, The weapons I thought were fantastic. They have an upgrade path for weapons where you're actually collecting points as you use the weapon. So yeah, like ratchet style, so

like, uh, you know, not coincidentally like ratchet style. So the great thing is, though, if you die, all the progress she made on the weapon sticks with you, so you literally just like you can grind through it and the upgrades are meaningful. So it's like it's not just these these bullets are more powerful. Yeah, it's like the shotgun goes from like regular shotgun to like the bullets are incendiary, So it's like now everything's lighting

on fire, and that makes you want to use every weapon. The weapons are good on their own right, but it makes you kind of wanted, like the next upgrade for this sounds kind of awesome. I'm gonna use this until, you know, until I get it. So that was really fun. The story is much better than two because it has basically because there's a

story with two. Yeah. Uh, and it kind of more of a sequel to one, or does it just it's separate kind of like Insomny said, man, we introduced a lot of mythological elements to our story that we don't really have any way to explain. Or maybe they're leaving open questions so that when they're done with this franchise that other developers could come in and answer

them for them. But it feels like a side story, like a really good side story, like it tends does carry forward what happened in one in two and you're trying to stop the camera menace, and but it's very loose how how it connects, and it's sort of irrelevant, like you don't have to have played one and two. You can jump into three and and really enjoy it. And the new engine is great, like the lighting and looks pretty amazing. Uh. The but the story does not feel like it is

the end of anything. It answers no questions, lingering questions about the about the universe, you kind of, I mean, in a nutshell the they're they're trying to cool the planet because the camera like a cold and like you, I liked, everybody likes it at sixty five under, so like they're trying to drop the thermostat even lower. And to do that they have they're

also opening up a wormhole. Uh you know, I don't know they're bringing even though like the little journals in the game insinuate that they've been here, like war the world style for which is interesting, except it's like hidden away in a notebook that is option also, so like by the end of the game, you were basically just trying to kind of you're fighting your way to stop in New York City, this one thing that's happening there, trying to

start global warming. Yeah, yeah, it's right. So basically just buying a bunch of Aquinette and just kind of holding them the button for about eight hours, depending on if you find everything or not. You're holding down the spray cand for about eight hours. You play with the move for that. No, I didn't pull down the trigger. No spray in my hair. So like it's it's a cool game. It's really really good. I wish I didn't have those moments that yeah, with those bugs in it, but

the game is really weird. Weapons, like the Vomit weapon is probably the best. It's like this goo gun that you shoot down enemies and then it causes them to vomit and then explode and you have a The alt attack is like just this giant glob that goes and sprays in front of enemies, and it sounds like that's how you kind of broke some of the scripting, Yeah, because I was I don't know they could have been because I was like

literally it's a big area of effect attacked. That's like, if you're in this clap poison cloud, everybody's just gonna like start wretching and kind of like blowing up. So I was just like, I'd see guys and i'd fired way far before I had triggered, and he be like, oh my god, those are the bad guys. And so I'd walk up and then they'd all be throwing up on the ground, and then the guy I was with wouldn't know what to do, and you just stand there and they're like,

fuck time paradox. You weren't pretty bad way to blow up though. Yeah, it was disgusting too. It's just kind of awesome, Okay, I think I feel better. Oh, giant sist and then these these giant puss things start growing on them until they start coming at you, and then you shoot them and they just explode into another puss cloud. It's really good. I actually I thought the game was really good. Yeah. I liked it better than Kill Zone three. Uh, I don't know the direct comparison.

It's just because they're PS three first person shooters. He didn't you can also, Rico wasn't there. Also, I made Rico throw up and kicked them out of Resistance three. Uh No, the characters are all actually pretty good and they try for a lot of gravitas and it worked mostly until the crypting would get me and be like video game crap, video game. So yeah, I recommend it. Yeah, it's it's good. You haven't played the first two. I didn't try any of the multiplayer. I assume it's in

there. You might. You might. Almost sounds like you almost might be better off if you haven't played the first time, because those didn't exactly lay like a great foundation, and they don't really reference that much. It's like they have like Nathan Hale Memorial cemetery. I think you're right. Yeah, don't read the Wikipedia like story summaries for the first two because then you're like, wow, this story is real deeps Like they don't. They just go

surface level the actual story. They have a previously previously in resistance thing that is as long as it needs to be and basically sets it up. It's like this virus entered her atmosphere in the nineteen hundred chimera taking over. They're fighting their way across the world. Stop them. That's it. Yeah, Nathan Hale tried to stop them. It didn't work out. You're the guy you were into without spoiling some major stuff into the squad member into two and

then you take him over or whatever. They spoil that In that opening thing, they say, here is everything that happened. Yeah, yeah, but but it's it's it's a pretty good game. I definitely recommend playing it. And then I tried some rage h and I guess they patched a bunch of stuff on the PC. They did put out one pretty significant patch, yeah, which would expand the PC option beyond the first that was the there is a bigger patch because the first thing was actually a driver update, not a

patch to the game. Oh yeah, yeah, I'm talking about Since then there was an actual patch to the game itself. So this adds options for like v sync and and some other like texture fixes and stuff not in there. Before the hardware level, there were zero. Their whole philosophy was figured out sixty frames a second or bust, so the engine would actually dynamically like

turn features off as it was playing to keep the frame right high. So they just didn't offer any like manual options because it's it's a noble goal. But at the same time for the PC for that not for that audience.

Uh so those those things in there, you know, if that's if that's true on the yeah so so an example, on the p S three version, which is the one I played through, you'll have instances where the resolution drops too barely above high definite seven twenty P and you'll what happens is like it'll you don't really notice it when you're playing the game, but if it occurs during a moment where, for example, you switch to a menu, all of the text and graphics are garbled, and then you'll switch out,

turn around a bit, and then the resolution will pop back to where we're supposed to be. And that's that way. And but that would happen in just like walking forward like that. It wasn't like there are eight enemies on screen like it was just the game was in real you know, yeah, dropping features and resolution gards and maintain this EXTPM or second which must be also

related to you know, how the texture popping is working. And yeah, so it random times I would just go to like create an object and it would just be garbled mess that I had to exit out, wait for the resolution to switch, and then go back in so, yeah, it's definitely doing that on the console side, is I think other people determined to a very lesser degree that happens on the Xbox. But yeah, it doesn't drop the solution as much, so you don't see it. That's kind of interesting

though. Well, they you know, they picked one thing that they were going to focus on and nail, and they did, but they did it at the expense of some other stuff. Sure, you know, kind of have to. Yeah. So the only big thing that I ran into on the PC booting it up fresh from that patch was there was horrible, horrible tearing, like maybe the worst I've ever seen. It was pretty bad on our machine here. Yeah, and it happened. It didn't happen to fix,

but it happened on every move like it just big band. But I couldn't. I couldn't get it to save the turn of vsing option on, and so I had to do some monking around and go into the graphic drivers for and video and say, okay, add rage to this. Here's a special case. And I had to say, like, let rage decide,

and I think in my global options I had let the game decide. And then once I had added that specific clause into the you know, the logic of the video cards, like the video card drivers, yeah or something, and then it would then it would stay on, and then it fixed it and it was fine. I mean, it's still got a very slight texture popping. I haven't gotten that far in the game, but it seems to be working fine now I just play in Rage. There's there's a there's a

bigger patch actually on the way for the textures right console commands too. I can't remember exactly. All I know is the Carmack's been out there talking about it, saying, like, you know, this is basically going to be the best version of the game, like something. They're I think they're like fixing all the stuff that they know is wrong. He's been out there saying crazy technical shits. Yeah, so there's a work you can also get in

there and you can protect shade. There's also rockets flight maps. See you, I can say so, Johnny, you can enable if you if you weren't to really dig in and enable some or edit some config files, you can enable the bigger textures. I don't, I'll let it go even mega megast so there's like the a K textures and it forces the high risk textures rather than doing the layered If you go on like the Steam forums, you

can find all the launch options. That makes the billion things. You kind of have to do that if you want to maintain the achievements, because the moment you go into the console disables the achievements. But you can get it to do console commands prior to the executable running, so that you can maintain

the achievements. That seas right, yes, yeah, So the biggest thing I'm running into now after the vcing fix was the one place with the controller or the one place of the mouse and keyboard, and the vehicle controls on the on the keyboard are kind of laime, but the gun play with the mouse is really good. Yeah, So it's I can kind of have both

going at the same time. Trade off there, ye little trade actually can you actually just like pick up the controller, but but all the prompts on the screen will be for the control there, she gets you should get a

wheel. I should just get That's what I was thinking. Just get foot pedals, get a racing wheel mount in the middle, so then you just like put your hands around the wheel for any of the first version controls and then just come back and grab the wheel and I just give you the wireless speed wheel and you get one of those wireless three sixty things for PC, and I bet it would just totally work. And think like I like gun yes and breaking bed. Yes, that's right then, great man. I

saw I finished season four, like what is what is it? It's at least three different episodes that that game is in, right, yes, My favorite one though, and the box will be laying about an episode. My favorite one is there's that fight. There's a tussle and like a bookshelf gets jostled and like the copy of Raids like falls very prominently in the frame.

It's crazy because it's just it's it's this natural like fight between two characters and somebody gets slamm against this bookshelf and it you have to wonder it was like was there a pa right off the frame like that, like like very carefully dropped at the copy of the games into place, as I also saw why you thought if we didn't haven't have the discussion here about the opening of that game, and like I thought there was a spaceship, I probably would have

thought there was a spaceship. And really because it's a big, spiky hunk of rock though. Yeah, but who knows that. I mean, it didn't look like a bad space. Yeah, We've seen plenty of Aliens spaceships that were just hunks of rock. I mean, you're ranted. I knew with the story going in. Uh but right because they had someone else wrote in and said I'm with you until until you had that conversation, and I

thought that you were living in space and crashed. Yeah, And they don't really they don't do a good job of saying like these are bunkers and stuff. I mean, I knew it because we had talked about it. But if they just if they just come up and said, like you know, fall out right, all right, here we go. When they call they call your they call them arcs, right, the underground things like that arc kind of yeah. And they also they say APOTHEI is on its way.

They don't say, like, you know, this killer asteroid that's gonna wipe us out. So yeah, it is. It is not set up very I don't know if it sets it up more as you go a couple hours in. Okay, understand all this stuff, but yeah, I could definitely see that. Uh yeah, games games close so far, I shot a bunch of guys. They animated really nicely and kicking some He he doesn't he's

not in it enough, like he should have been the main thread. Then I will know to shavor him when I finally it would have been great if he had come back later in the game to lead the movement. So now I guess I'm I'm doing the Rage thing and we'll see. We'll see how that goes. Trying to trying to catch up really quickly because it's happened.

There's Batman, I got data sex to finish up. Finish up Rage, which isn't all that long, right, and the side question are pretty in consequential, so you can kind of just mainline the story through it and listen to hours and uh, and then I get Skyrim. You know, that's that's gonna hits up. I'm I'm trying, and I was worried about it.

That's you know, as fixed length of time. Skyram is the one I feel like, well, if you're if we're talking in context of you know, what are we can argue about for Game of the Year, which is pretty much what we're talking about here. Well, if you can, you can play enough Skyrom to know if it rates for you without well, he's also wants to play the I'm also hoping it's really enjoyable. Yeah. And so as I put down Dark Souls for a bit, yeah, because

I reached a part. I reached a part where they're pretty much like, great, you, you are doing really good here. Uh so there's four other guys, now you need to go kill. And I was like, okay, you're gonna tell me exactly what I need to do. And I take a break out like where I'm at that they haven't give you really any direction at all. Yeah. So yes, I opened up this like I don't even call it like another act or whatever, but they're basically like,

you did all this stuff that I'm amazing. I didn't think you'd do it, but hey, here's this next objective. And so it's very clear what I need to go do. Put that down for a bit because I think it's going to be a lot more of the same. I try it all these other games that have come out. I beat the Gargoyles. That's good.

I rang the Bill. I need to get back to that. You're still playing, Yeah, off and on when I have time, I can't play it for long stretches, like people like these Matt Rory's of the world who were playing forty fifty hours. Like, I don't get it. I like to play about like an hour. Yeah, I grind and get a little for the progress save then then if I have any frustration in that hour, I haven't lost that much time. I like, if I just get one room forward, yes, go back exactly. Put that added to them

my memory of the pattern. I'm fine with that because because you have to memorize all that stuff, there's so much repetition involved that, Like it's just just really hard to do the same thing like five six times in a row and then keep playing the game and then go and memorize a new section at the same I like that game. It's treating me all right. Now recent understanding with Dark Souls, Viney, you play anything else? No, So

it was a rage and resistance resistance. I don't think there's something I not a bitter up that Xbox or something, but health I remember, I don't know play games watched Hannah, how is it? I haven't seen that yet? All right, Yeah, it's okay, Patrick lepic Hey, how's it going all right? Cool played the use of skyroom. Yes you did. Yeah, are we gonna like that game? Yeah, you're gonna like that game. Wait from the guy who doesn't like fantasy, right, that's right.

So it takes place in space. It's like an hour with a sword, and then you fight like eight dragons and then you take off. There's an arc. Okay, there's the authority fly those dragons into space. So I didn't I didn't really like I didn't dragon cherryot. I don't really like

oblivion. Why didn't you like Oblivion? I thought the combat was really boring and the area as we're not Yeah, I mean me and him had a conversation about this last night, and it's partially I think me and and then you have similar personalities and that we have to do everything that we see and like that. It was literally doing the same thing over and when when you have that mentality and you're just the completion is the attitude, but then nothing

interesting to do to problems. Attitude makes them go and see all of the kind of inconsequential site. That's why it's a case where the achievement system like actually works out pretty well because if you view that as completing the game, like they've got all the major like faction quests and all that stuff for Oblivion are are given achievements, not stuff. So by doing all that stuff, I felt like I saw everything that game had off. Yeah. I bought

Oblivion on the PC, which has no achie. That was at the dawn of the achievement of ages. Really and well that the way that I played Oblivion was thirty hours of going in every single cave and every single like elders ruin that I found, and then never playing it again. If that had been the game it was, it was awful. It was awful. The games should have been complete each faction and like you unite the factions of something. Yeah, close the OBLIVI yeah, yeah, because that was the most

interesting stuff. By the end of that game, I was like running up those stairs, like running past enemies to get their Oblivian gates. And they were like they were like three they had like, for lack of a better word, like three tile sets for every war room, like three different ones, like the goldish looking one, the bluish glowy one, and like he just there was never anything interesting at the end of them. No, and

they all looked exactly the same. The Oblivion Gate stuff was so repetitive and monotonous, and I thought the combat, the melee stuff in particular, it was was just kind of boring. It was just like swinging that sword the guys are just running into they bounced back and forth and get on top of rock and kill something. Yeah. I felt it's kind of cludgy. Yeah. So, and also there were like two voice actors, so yeah, so I don't come from good Yeah, there are two of them, all

Patrick Stewart. And again, though you like one context of the time of kind of it was that was like when you were like, god, I need something to play on my brand new Expox six. They came out four months after launch, perfectly with it. Yeah, So tell me about Skyrim now. So one, it's it's gorgeous, like a like absolutely gorgeous. Like, so, I come up from the Fallout perspective, you know, I played basically an hour of Oblivion, uh, and then I played like

an hour of Fallot three, an hour of fallow in New Vegas. The game player is really familiar if you played a Fallout one. So they've adopted like the cinematic kills from Fallout three. So that but no vats, but but it's like, you know, so when you're your last strike will sometimes trigger like a really cool animation sequence, but it's still as awkward as it wasn't fallout where it's like not quite a cool camera angle. It just kind

of like pulls out and then you're pretty sure something cool will have. Mysterious stranger shows up dumps three rounds, but the stranger I didn't get fall enough in the combat to see if the game breaks sort of the combat meme of oblivion and fallout, which is you're always running backwards for your points to recharge, but they're but do you have like stamina, your stamina you have you know, magic And the one of the things that I didn't get to is

that you know you have these dragon shouts, which is what you earn these powers. You find them in the world by looking at different like you can read dragon language or something. I'm not totally familiar on the plot, but basically you see these words that gives you a power, but then you need to kill a dragon in order to unlock that power. So like I found a dragon shout, which a lot would basically let me do a force push, and I didn't get but I kept dying to the fucking dragon, so

I never got to use that. But basically that would I can imagine that kind of making the combat a little more interesting because you could get get guys away by yourself some time. Yeah, you have a In terms of I found the I found the combat pretty interesting because the new Favorite system, which is basically how you equip things, so you have and I played on the Xbox three SIXTI, so I'm not sure how that's going to change the PC. But basically the the inventory system, when you go into it, you

can assign favorites and that's a sublist of your total inventory. And so if you like like this particular spell, shield weapon, you know, that can be your default, but you can also add others to your favorite based on like these sets, are they individuals, not set? There's all. It's just a it's a flown list and then when you're in combat, you hit up or down and then it pulls up a favorite. It stops combat and then you can hit yeah, hit left trigger, right trigger to switch over

to some other spell. So you know, I had my setup was like I had a shield and a fire spell. But then when I would run out of magic, I would switch to a shield because magic was different than stamina, so it would buy me some time while I went in for the

magic to recharge. But like, the dungeon themselves seem way more interesting, Like so I only got to the first side dungeon, but there's actual like I don't know if I believe in there were there puzzles in the actual dungeons, like or was it just your fighting through some dues collecting loot get into the puzzle. It might have been like got to find a key on a dude to get was this stuff like that? So so well, okay,

I'll just list the puzzles here. So there are two puzzles in the first major side dungeon that you can come to, and one was, uh, when you pull this lever, a bunch of arrows shoot out you and you see a guy laying on the ground who clearly pulled that lever and then died. And then you look up at the top and there are three symbols and this the missing there's a symbol missing in the middle. Then you look over the left and there are three levers where you can you can switch the symbols

around. And so then you have to look in the environment find where that stone fell down to figure out the three statues that you have to line up. Then it disables the arrow as you walk through. Another one is you. So one of the side quest is you have to go find this this golden uh through what it's called, but it say this gold yes, and it doesn't really matter. And so you come across this door and it's got a bunch of symbols and there's really no discerning way to figure out how you're

supposed to open this. The game lets you open up every object and look at it. Three models inspect it. So if you pull up the quest object, flip it around, it shows you the sequence and then you have to put that sequence in and then you move forward. There was stuff not like God, but this is also these are quest so this is a mainline

quest. So this is actually making some of the stuff that you don't have to do perhaps a little more interesting than didn't get didn't get too much into it because I mean I played three hours, Like it's really overwhelming to start a game like that, and like I have three hours? What the ship am I going to do? I guess, yeah, because like do I want to do the story stuff to want to just like go screw out in the world and figure out what I can break. Do I want to even

rush at this point? Or is it still so early that I don't know how any of the systems work because they start you forty five minutes in the game, so like I don't So you didn't even see like the opening. They were skipping over the intro and basically just starting you where you exit this cave kind of like you exit the vault and fall out, and I think this is where the game like forty five minutes must have been set up in tutorial, right you can't really Yeah, now it's just all this stuff that

you had to play the game. Here's the world. Yeah, So I like I jumped in. I figured, well, you know they're giving you know, but that's gonna be the save. I'm probably like pre equipped some spells and stuff like that, and encounter my first wolf and like, no, nothing's equipped, Like I have no armor, equipped, no shields,

Like I'm just punching this a wolf with like this. Yeah, and a certain love like kind of feel for pr that has to like present hard game, Like you know, First Dragon Age was constantly plagued by you know, here's here's the same and you've got you know, full party and like have fun. Lack of context was a demo killer for games like Yeah, so so this is kind of the best way to do is here's three hours. Make of it. What you will give, you will come over to you.

If you're going to do something that you shouldn't shouldn't be doing, you're gonna break the game. Uh. But like one of the things is the weather effects are really incredible. So like when you're going up to that first side quest, which is you know, in this in this this cave area, Uh, the first time you come to it's completely nice looking, sunny

day, like totally normal. And then as you're going up this mountain starts to get snow eier and snow eier, like to the point where you can barely see anything in front of you, and like it's a really, really damn good looking blizzards perfectly fine. Yes, you're fighting through this blizzard, which makes even like normal combat scenario is kind of interesting because you're trying to

fight, but you're also trying to fight through this blizzard. And I'm not sure if it changes dynamically or not, but as soon as I went down the moutain it started raining. So the weather's changing pretty pretty often. And it's just like the attention to detail, like to the point where I went into one of the castle areas and there's a map on one of the tables and you don't have to go look at it. There's no reason for you

to go look at it. And there's a bunch of little markers on the map, and I thought, well, that's probably just something I could steal,

so it'll probably show up is red and I shouldn't steal it. But if you examine them, those are actually legitimate map markers that add markers to your map, And it's just like you don't have to go look at that, it's just there, like it's one little like I imagine there'd be tons of people that never ever come across that, But I was just kind of a testament to it does to having made these games for as long as they have to have these just crazy tiny details. Did you were you able to

check out the third person mode at all? Did you? Yeah? It is better you're not going to use it. Yeah, okay, I imagine that must only be there for people that just want to see what imagine with Oblivion, they probably got a lot of people that never would have played a game like that, right, Like the w when that came out, it

was just you wanted something for your Xbox. So I think the third person is kind of just there for like people who are more into maybe action games, and they're used to having a third person and that feels more natural. It looks better. It's way better than it wasn't Oblivion or Fallout. But like you're not gonna you're not gonna want to see you to see the armor and stuff. Yeah, they get on my guy. Yeah, I can't remember. I thought Moro Wind was third person, but was it not?

Maybe you could. I think that was another one where you could look at it that way. But gosh, I think I don't know what happened. Like I really love Moro Wind, Like I thought that game was amazing. I don't know what changed. Maybe I changed between Moro Wind and Oblivion, but I just did not dig Oblivion as much. So I'm hoping this is like that attention to detail, like you said that they put the time in to flesh out this big world because Oblivion just did not feel it was a

big world. Yeah, I just felt repetitive. Well, I mean a Fallout like fallow Out three's main story was not that great, but the all the other stuff around it, like the side quests, were way better than any of the mainline stuff and can follow Out three, So I'm hopeful that's going to be the same case here. But yeah, I mean, if you've liked other beth As the games like this, this game looks awesome.

It's do you mess around at all excited? I know, like you can equip the same spell in both hands to do like a better version of that, or like we've saw some of that, yeah a few months ago. Yeah, I think I didn't get far enough to to really see any of that sort of stuff. But the the upgrade system is a combination of I guess Oblivion and Fallout. So it's not just they've got you're not doing any You're not gonna be doing any sort of like tying a rubber band around your

analog stick in order to jump to ninety nine. So like, for example, when you're blocking or doing physical attacks or anything, you're those are going up and you're getting rewarded as you're as you're in combat. But that feeds into the perk system, which is in order to unlock certain things within the skill tree. For like blocking, you have to get blocking to a certain level, like thirty five forties. So it's not like you can just dump

a bunch of you're not dumping skill points. I think skill points are kind of intimidating. Like that's just me as a guy that hasn't played a lot of old school RPGs. So like when you get like a stat screen, it's like, here's twenty, you have twenty points, just put them somewhere. They really just a speech. I think it's I think it's just strength,

dexterity, and magic. Yes, it's those three. And then you have perk points to go across like fifteen twenty different tributes and there's a speech, there's a speech one, and like I was trying to like go through some of them and write down some of the cool attributes. You can, like like one of the perks would be like convinced the police to forget the crime you just committed, and that's like a specific perk under the speech tree, and you can like you can pay people using speech tree, so that

the middleware generated all these great dialogues really family. Yeah, I think they went with talk engine for this one. Wow, talking engine, talk engine degree. So they're they're back in supports just so much better. So does that like things are red? Don't steal this? Yep? Okay, yep, that's for stuff. I mean, are there are karma points or anything like that. I'm no, I don't think so, okay, not that

I didn't steal anything. So I guess I I guess. I don't know, but I mean, but you can you can you know that, Like one of the first quests is like a really simple like setup of like morality. Where do you run across this elf who has this he's in a competing uh this love triangle, and so he's written a letter in the words of

the other guy to try and discredit him. And so you can either go inform the other guy like, hey, this dude trying to suck you over, or you can go to the other guy and tell that guy, hey, this dude's trying to suck you over, And you can kind of play the two sides. But can you get the girl? No? Maybe later. I'm pretty sure same sex marriage is in the sky repisode. You know, wait, you can get married. Yeah really yeah, not since Fantasy

Star three has video game marriage been so progressive. But can I can I marry like a tire lady or lizard manage? In your species, marriage is defined by a union of a human and another human. Take your human elf marriages and get the hell out of here. I mean, Jeff, Jeff brings up middleware flippantly, But I mean they've made so much noise about this being like a new engine and stuff. Did it actually feel more sound like

the world, feel like it's put together better. I didn't run into any of the weird glitches, but like I there were other I've read other write ups for people you know, are walking along the line and just get stuck in a hole. But I mean, but does this come out and said like this is like this is pre alphab pre alpha bill and this from a while ago, but it was like this was a stable code that was this branch of the game as far as they figured writers would get was enough.

So the game has made you know, some approvements since then, I'm sure, But yeah, it's a but that is the game, so it's gonna be fucked up, Like I mean, that's just yeah, that's part of it the price you pay for, like the size. Yeah, but the game looks the world looks much much more polished, like it's it's come a long way, like it's it's substantially above oblivion and follow three and yeah, yeah it's it's much more a par with what you'd expect from a moor.

Again, they would have much more linear structure and more time to dedicate to assets and detail. Sky. Yeah, dragons. Only playing three hours was kind of a bummer. I tried to fight the dragon like four times, and I kept like, do you want to try more time? Tell me more about the dragon. Is he a talking dragon? Yeah? Dragon heils? Yeah, dragon killing? Really talking in dragonese? Or like, hey I'm flying, I'm a dragon. Are they like the gold hoarding kind of

dragons? A small style like a smag? I don't. I don't. There's lots of different dragons, different tributes. I love. I love dragons that aren't just beasts. I love it when a dragons like no I can talk and I have desires for things like gold. So you start in the world where people don't believe dragons exist, and then like dragons start appearing out of nowhere. I think I think you're I think your character it's called like

a dragon born. Yeah, so you have some sort of connection to that, and that's why you can read the language of the dragons probably, and so the game you're half dragon, but you're I wish I was half dragon. How do you know you've got some dragon in you? Would you like? Yeah, what are you selling? Yeah? So yeah, you reade.

You start you start talking with a bunch of different characters about rumors about dragons, and then you go to investigate the first like major quest as you go to investigate where it was a room or dragon attack and then oh shit, there's a dragon dragon confirmed shoots fire. He's powerful and he yells, I'm gonna burn you. Weird? Was it a red dragon? The dragon fight that I saw back in April, it just roared. I think it's a blue dragon, just a monster, you know what? It sounded like

the dragon. I'm just gonna say the dragon was speaking. I'm pretty sure it was speaking refined British accent. I don't think. I don't think it was Sean Connery, maybe Patrick Stewart, Eliza would it was actually Spiro? Yeah, somebody put somebody put out of the base. Yeah, it goes in the sky rim. Did you see any of the any of the shouts? The first Yeah was so the first one is is like a basically a

force push. But you have to kill you have to, you have to you have to kill the first dragon to unlocked the ability to use that. And I kept kill the dragon, kill the dragon. Maybe could have got your speech up and talk the dragon out of it. Man, that would be commitced the dragon to kill itself. That's right, and then get the heart of the dragon. Chop Chop, Yes, shouldn't it shouldn't be my charcter name, Chop Chop Chop Chop. I'm looking forward of that game at

some point. When is it? Do you remember? Love it? Yep? Should It's almost done? Still alpha? Still isn't it? Isn't it like three weeks? And then yeah, get that DLC probably a couple of weeks ago. It was as stupid as is. They should totally just put out new horse armor. Yeah, do you get a horse? I wasn't able to afford it. It was a thousand dollars or a thousand jail or whatever. Senny horse. There's a horse and you actually ride like fast travel? No, you no, you ride it. I think I think you

can attack off of it too. What do I need? Where do I need the pre order from to get the free horse? But like, shouldn't that be the pre order bonus for for all it just like we came up with like eight different body horse armor variants and you're gonna get one. Yeah, and I want them branded. I want like the target yeah, exactly,

targets. But if it's just like actually just like billboard on the horse, not like not not tongue dynamic ads for the for the company, for the place that I'm advertising, advertising upcoming films, normal activity three this weekend multiplayer stuff like you're there straight up like a subway trucker hat that you can put on Nathan Drake around and the multiplayer well no, yeah, finally it wasn't been missing. A dragon has a giant game stop billboard around his neck

to the gold chase. It just says, don't trade me in DLC coming soon, please, you don't trade anything at discount. Patrick. Last week, you me and mister Shoemaker here wheeled on over to Friday Friday Night. Friday night wheeled on over to Double Fine. That did happen? And then you came back here for the doctobercast after that. It was the best night, but also the worst. I was when I was at home after because

I took off from the Double Fine thing early. When I was at home watching the stream, and when I saw that you guys had brought a full posse with you from the Double Fun thing, was like, oh God, damn, but I wish I was there right now. Oh, it's pretty good. This looks so much. When Karen shows up, you know it's a good bad time. They brought I have sack of hairburgers. Yeah, I saw the Hamburgers showed up and everyone got real excited about that. Karen

yelling sounds about right. Yeah yeah, But that's about my recollection of Then the wave did not come, Yeah, Gary, not a big wave is a real wet blanket when it comes to waves. No Google waves and no real waves. Maybe it's a you know, British thing. Probably probably don't wave so much. The people whole Navy events. They just fight each other. Yes, the wave is soft. If you if you do a wave, you get glassed, ye, so look out for that. Anyway.

Double five they were showing off a couple of things. Six amazing products. So one of those things which count them off, which so Psychonauts for for Mac yeah, yeah, Costume Quest for PC, yeah, which which came out that night. They hit the launch button, like when the event started, did they really? Which is sending steaming? Which is sending which is sending Steam? No, all right, so their version of that is sending Steam an email saying they already worked it out with them ahead of time.

Hey, we'll send you an email when our press event starts. Yeah, and that's when you put it on. The other one is a valve actually has like a big red button that is connected to Steam that when they put their stuff out, they'll the team gathers round and they hit a big red button actual physical reel, but there's actually like a lever. They pull it like it's all yet they said, there's like actual Steam that comes out, and every time they put out a new product, they all gathered together and

all his video of this everybody. So that's that's the best part. They keep it for themselves. Yeah, I need Yeah, that's that's so awesome. This gave Newell selected ceremonial knife and slater he cuts his own tongue and the newest and most new bottle of interns cuts there. He stands before the symboled employees and a loin cloth and takes a bite of the still beating heart and then put then cleans that knife off and puts it back on the shelf,

never to be used again. I'm once per game. It's a great place to work as long as murdered. That's great, all right. So there's cost request PC, there's the Psychonauts stuff, Once upon a Monster, the Trench DLC, Iron Brigade deals still Trench right now. It will be Iron Brigade shortly, but it's only DLC for Iron Brigade. That delC does not exist for Trenched. It'll it'll be Iron Brigade before the dec the title up date turns it into Iron Brigade comes. Guys are being funny about not

remembering the previous name. Ye're really good about that. They did not say Trenched one whatever it was called before. I don't. It's funny how you can forget that Rise of the Martian Bear with actual bears with a mechanical bear bear. Russian Martian Trenches. Yes, that's the name of l I feel like I feel like they always some of this stuff. So they so let's talk about the Iron Brigade stuff some I guess that's awesome. Uh it looks

like it looks like more Iron Brigade. It looks like more trenched, all right there there, I will say it. I wanted more trench absolutely so absolutely so when they when they put out that patch, that's gonna they got no dates or prices for any of the stuff yet, but the title update is really soon, yeah, and then a DLC is soon, so that so that title update will and they were saying like probably like a month between

the two, yeah, and they want to get scheduled out. So that tile update's gonna change the name of the game from Trench Time Brigade, and it will also introduce one challenge mode level and that'll probably coincide with the launch in other territories, right, yeah, Yeah, that's that's supposed to be.

So when it comes out in Europe as Iron Bride, everybody will get everyone will get the patch that also introduces this challenge mode and changes the name and then yeah, and then they kind of were saying like it with the name, like you know, they'd like to keep a Trench to you know, but if they don't make an Iron Brigade, then everyone can't play together,

right, so otherwise you starts splitting territories. In addition to they have to just ditch the Trench name at this point if they want to do a worldwide brand, they still call it your Trench. Yeah, everything else like it, like, it's still the Trench Brigade. It's just the and even like literally the title like you saw it during the Big Live Live, like the title screen looks exactly the same, except instead where it says Trenched,

like the same font and everything is probotector is a photoshop later change. Yeah, okay, yeah pretty much. But so then they've got a new campaign's DLC campaign. Do we get another thousand points? Not a thousands? No, no, no, it's because it's because that'll changed the name on the back end to it'll it'll everything on dah for that. No no, no, no, no, I imagine they will add points for this DALC patch. I wonder if you'll be able to clear your system cash and then go

back and play Trenched. You should be able to. Yeah, it's usually all that stuff works. So this is a cosmetic change for Trench. They'll change the title screen. That's pretty much all you need to know. But they're also but they're also adding the Challenge mode, which was okay, basically you know, yeah, Horde mode, the thing that was missing from Trench before. Once you got to the end, yea and so end in that similar style, every five waves or something, you'll get some hot new piece

of loot. Cool. But then there's the the DLC Rise of the Martian Bear which is coming out, which is paid later paid deals. Yeah, that's that's proper downloadable content. A new campaign that takes place primarily on Mars four areas. I think it's exactly the size of one of the three areas from the main game. Yeah, yeah, except that you're on Mars now, and except for the first mission where you're like basically fighting in the dry

dock of the McKinley. Yeah, as it's being retrofitted to go into space. Really turn the aircraft carrier in the space. They put it so they put a bubbled dome over like the flight deck of the McKinley. They stood into space, and there's also a crow's nest on there that also has its own tiny little dome on top of it as well. Do you have to wear a space helmet when you're fighting out. Mars seems to have been like

terraform Marsan Cohgan gave the people their air. But they but they have resistant, did any and all they say they have resisted any and all total recall references as that is, and they actually actually identified Twist of pixel is having corner of the market though total recall references, so they just didn't touch it. Good on them. They're just going with Ghosts of Mars jokes now.

But the best yes, the best part just ghost of Mars. Yeah, remember the darkness, Like you just find a TV and you can watch all of Ghosts of Mars, just the whole movies right there. That the best part about it is that's kind of poor John Carpenter breaks ice Cube out of jail. Then it's the other way around it breaking. That's hosh answered that jail. One of them breaks the other one out of jail. They're running out with shot and then credits. Yeah, fucking great Southern theater. No

Vampires was the last time I got burned by John Carpenter. Movie in the theaters was okay, the very beginning when James was like the first time they go and kill a vampire and they're like using the crazy like the lines to get vampires out Like that was cool. And the part where James Woods is just cursing like crazy as he's stabbing the ship out of this one vampire best part of the movie, like opening five minutes those two movies. Well,

Vampire is okay, Ghostmar is not okay. But there are things I liked about it sure, like the fact that it's called ghost Smar. Yeah, that's pretty much. I'll give you that. So yeah, so so rising the Martian Bear. If you left out the most important part. Uh, Lad is now a bear. Yeah, Vlad has downloaded his brain into his pet bear, Boris Boris and and now and now that his brain is in, it has the the Lad multi layer must be and it's got it's got

straight up just a TV in its head that has Vlad on it. And you can watch Ghostmrs on this evie. That's exactly that's it. More you know, more new loot, whole new Uh I only played a played like one of the mission and through there and uh do you know stuff goes back and forth. Yeah, you take your character in but like back from Mars. So yeah, you should be able to I would have I can't see

bring your stuff in from from Yeah, probably totally, totally. I know it would be too good for that, Like Cordin now, it sounds like they've they've kind of been rebalancing some stuff. They said that like by the time they got to the end talking to it to Brad muir Uh from Double Fine, he said, by the time they got to the end of development on on Trench Proper, that they had gone to some kind of outland as ship as far as the power of the weapons, So it sounds like they

might be tweaking some of that stuff and making it more reasonable. It sounds like they were also very like it was good for them to have a time when they were not working on that game and then come back to it, because by the end of this is crazy. By the end of Trench development, those guys guys are right. I was wrong. Oh my god. Those guys were like you remember how they were like, we have nod if this is good, We've been too close to it for too long, so

we know it's a video game. Fresh Eye was good for that. That's a crash. I don't know. I'm not even sure that yeah, I don't know and so so so. Yeah, the most important part I kind of don't want to say it, but I know other people will because I want people just see it for themselves organically for the first time. Okay, stop there, stop, I don't even know what you're talking to. Close the door on it. That's it. What's the next what's the next product?

They were showing. Someone else is gonna say this. Maybe they would, maybe they won't read it. Ye, don't say it. Don't be the guy media black media blackout on Iron Brigade. I don't oh man, Yeah, don't say it. Don't say it. Somebody's gonna beat you too. It's all right. Don't be that guy though. Okay, I mean

there is there is something. I keep this more to it. Having only played one, uh one scenario in that game in that DLC, I can guarantee you that if you like Trenched, this is is worth the price of admitting already our Trench team back together. We don't talk about that. It was you and Will Smith and wild Card. Ah right, I forgot I forgot me in this time because by the time you guys have played it, I had already completed the game. So I didn't have rolled with David Ellison

the fourth swap, That's right, yeah, but so uh. In addition to that campaign, that DLC will also add two more challenge levels, so you have multiple stages to go pour on. Just say it, just say it. No, we're done. Not that. This is another property, the biggest deal and so you know what, we'll cover it later. What was the other announced? The thing? Uh? Double fine Happy Action Theater hat de fact is so uh so this is a actually, Patrick, you

want to describe this one? It's a connect game? Is it a game collection? It's good minigame collection without scores or real objectives. It is very toilet fail state. Uh, it's I mean like Tim Shafer basically pitched it as we wanted to make a game for kids and drunk people. That's exactly and that's exactly what he said. And that's and I was like, we should make another one of those. He was so so I talked to it.

I talked h a little bit about this, and and he said, you know, I was sitting next to the Once Upon a Monster guys while they were you know, making that game, and uh, and just seeing how much frustration they had dealing with like with with like fail state issues with the game where if someone walked in front of someone else it would fuck this up. And he's like, I just wanted to make something that didn't have those issues like so that so that if if connect acts weird on you,

it doesn't matter. It's like it's it's the part of the fund. So the attraction is look at the weird stuff that you're doing on and also try to break it that you're trying to break Connecting, like bum rush the screen with a bunch of people to just see what it does. Here's here's the best example of how that works. When you were Patrick, you were doing uh, there's the one mini game where it's basically all seventies style like stars

constantly flying at the screen. Yeah, like you know, like stuff. Yeah. Uh. The fourth player while you were playing that got identified as the curtain behind you guys, So every fourth star that flew out was like the curtain fluttering or whatever, and it looked amazing, crazy like it didn't

break the game. And there's better and there's you know, there's one where it's like a like Space Invaders where everyone's a tiny butterfly at the bottom of the screen, and enemies are flying in from the top, and everyone's kind of shuffling back and forth to try and shoot stuff, and the shooting is all having automatically, so it's just like wherever you are standing. You know, of course, it's impossible to not try and pretend you are the bullets

right right. And there's one where it's just like the room fills with with like bouncy balls, and so you're just kicking and punching them around, and there's a breakout clone. There's a like a hot lava circus mirror. There's a hot lop. I didn't see the hot lava stuff. There was this Godzilla style. The wholest one that I saw though, was like this like

multi photo sequence thing where it which is the depth camera. Yeah yeah, it would just like layer like one picture on top of the other on top of the other, like you know, everything that's the same stage is the same, so it's only adding in like whatever you changed, so you get like dude has like eight arms, or dude is punching himself, Dude is making out with himself, right right, a natural extension of the depth camera.

Just lots of lots of weird dumb stuff like yeah, yeah, it just it just sounds like this is like almost like the ultimate connect fun Labs apt or Yeah, totally totally it would fit in with that stuff, except that it's way it seems, it seems way better than most of it does what that was trying to do, and also that it it just goes like each of these maybe lasts like a couple of minutes, so it's like or an example, like the breakout one, like it doesn't end until you like

lose. So we were doing it for like a four or five minutes still Kim came out. I was like, why are you guys still playing this? Like so we even failed yet so well, and like so you're trying to not hit the balls. See five people attempting to not get their breakout thing paddle to hit the balls, but you just keep hitting them. And so we just kept going until it supports up to you can identify up to six. I can't. Yeah, maybe maybe it was four was the most.

But so it does like it goes through one of these things and either there's a fail state or it's just like all right, that's enough time and then just loads up the next things. But not that manic. There was more time to focus on each game. But the key is that at a party, nobody's ever gonna get bored of what they're doing because the next thing it's always gonna be coming up. And because you don't have to worry about like I'm player one, I'm player two, you just jump in and just

do a thing. Like in the Space Invaders one, like the score is going up irrelevant of what's happening on the screen. So if you're all missing and not hitting any enemies, score still going up. Was there any like direct control avatar stuff, because that's always the funnes stuff for any where, just maker avatar, ripe the crowd just always you okay, No, but

that that days flour one, Yeah, unbelievable. Which one is that it's just like it's a bunch of cutouts of all the people that are dancing, like two D cutouts, like doing weird jerky animation stuff, but like it'll focus on one guy in the middle, like doing a dance solo from time to time, and just like you have to see it. We got a trailer up on the site that has looks hot. Lava one is really good. Toe's really good. Uh So yeah, that is that an unloadable game.

I don't they don't have date or price. That's all fourth times. It sounds like it's more or less done. Uh yeah, yeah, that's the impression that I got up the Action Theater. It's worth It's probably worth noting if you care that this is the first project that Tim Shafer has headed

up since Brutal Legend. Yeah, since they since they went like small game crazy and it's it's goofy and I feel like it makes really good use of the connect tech from what I've seen, and it understands that listen to this. You know this technology has significant limitations and if you try and take it too seriously, you know it's it's not gonna be a fun time. So just swinging take it as stupidly as possible, so you can just jump around

like an idiot in front of your TV and see funny stuff. And I just like the idea, uh that you like, I could just have this running like throwing a party. It's have this running on a TV in the background. It's like people could like walk up to it do something for a while. It's not like you be like, okay, everyone, we're gonna play rock band now, so we need we need you know, oh, we need at least three people to play oh jump into It's like no,

just walk up, do something stupid. And also if you're fun, yeah, and if you're the only guy that knows how to operate the system, you're the one that has to do all menus and like, let me set it up for you again. Like here, it's just it's just sign again. Yeah, it's just like yeah, just let it run and it'll cycle from one thing to the next on its own, so it doesn't even matter if you're connected. Doesn't really fit in your apartment, Like it's like it

because it's it's it's regardless. Yeah, it's really cool. Yeah, yeah it's I from what I saw, I consider that much more toy than game. It's dumb in the best way possible. I think it's kind of funny that a team there had to seriously figure out how connect all works for Once upon a Monster and then work out all the bugs and make it work with like three year old right, and like kind of figure out how this is

supposed to work. Like fuck, like you were saying, like walking over and we're like we're just having a really tough time because it keeps on doing this weird thing where five of me will flick on the screen and do whatever that's awesome, Like you think that, you think that like their bugs squishing for once pond of monsters like okay, no, we wanted we know how

to do that accidentally. Yeah, well no, I think it make that on at some point that the overlap had to happen, right, and just one team completely frustrated with like connect breaking any other team to feel like, what did you guys do? Oh we broke? It is just this look at the skeleton on that that's awesome. We need that, we should do that. Do that, and then once team just hating the other team, hate you guys. It's like this weird lamb prey. That's just the lag

is just terry. It's just like we can't get over the lag. There's lag. How do you enable the lag? Yeah? Can you get We were too much not do that. You're saying that the Happy Action Theater team was like the little bird in the crocodile's mouth picking the meat out. Yes, it's just the QA team just like going through finding bugs and turning those into minias. One team being super excited when everything was just mess up and the other team being so like, we gotta, we gotta, we have

milestone coming up. What do you what are we gonna do? We can't get this to work. And that was that all this six Then the sixth one was the iOS game and Iowa, the app that has the Psychonauts. The second of few words got commentary. Weirdly, Ron Gilbert program that. Yeah, it's the first thing, the first thing that he has done. What is this? This is the it Basically it's basically like all those like the like the movies from Psychonauts with commentary over it by Tim and Scott.

It's not actually a game, it's just no, no, no, it's just it's a free app. And yeah, Ron Gerbot does all sorts of Mac programming in his free time and was goofing around with iOS and so we just did it by himself. He's working on something else that they're not talking

about yet, but that he just did that. Guy like he's kind of on board with them now they've been actually full time double fun employees are okay, But the way it's on the stuff, wait this on this stuff came together, it's weird too, Like the the costume quests like or it's Psychonauts for so Psychonauts was ported by someone at double Fine. But then like costum Quest was like this angel investor. That's just like a fan that programmed it

and contributed the money for this to happen. And he's listened to the credits, but it's just like one dude. Wait so he actually because I got the impression that they just got money from someone to just develop it. It's a dude. And like there's like Tim Schaefer was like linking to the guy on Twitter saying like here's the guy that made this happen. Yeah, financially

financial, Yeah okay, if I'm not mistake, that's what that's. That's what I mean is that they got the money, not that he but but it wasn't it was but it was a fan like it wasn't like it was a guy who got some money. He's a little bank. They didn't go to some business man like okay, okay, I think the guy actually is in fact a business man on top of it, but yeah, probably, but yes, but he didn't. It's not like this guy said, hey, guys, here, I brought you this PC code for Costume Quest to

go ahead and put it out, okay, I think yeah. Yeah. Costume Quest is also like they're because they owned that. I P and the TCHQ worked with them on that, and I remember them saying they wanted to do PC versus A TACHQ was like, we're not gonna give you money for it, So they found their own way to do it, and that's self publishing. So that's all their money. So it's publishing Happy Action Theater too.

No, I think that's Microsoft. That's an nicest thing. Okay, but yeah, Psychonauts and Costume Quests and then the app those are three self published Double Fine things, so they're kind of we're stacking a little fall suit. That's Microsoft. I think stacking is THQ as well, was it? Yeah? Maybe? Yeah. So any date on the Happy Action stuff, that's just I think they said this year, really is that so many much

time left this year? It's true? Uh so, yeah, that was the Double Fine event, some some fun stuff that, Yeah, curious see more of the Happy Action Theater. It was really cool to just have them running their own event, like no external publisher they're calling any shots. It was just like, hey, very casual, we are going to bring in a keg of this homebred beer that we have someone here beer drink it. You're gonna hang out and play these games in our office, and it's gonna

be cool, or it's gonna be just don't walk in that direction. That don't walk in that direction. But otherwise it's cool. It was just super casual. It's really it was a lot of fun. If you go down there, it's bad. They seemed happy to be doing that over Yeah, it's for their passing endeavor. Yeah, it's been a rough couple of years, but I think there seems like they're definitely on a path that makes all

them trajectory. Yeah, Tim, apologize for calling you a child. Well, you know, it's not the first time it's happened, Patrick, What else have you been playing? My friends saw Max Pain three a couple of weeks ago, Okay, and that looks like Max Paint three. Yeah. Do you hold how many guns can you hold? Well? You can hold well, you can only hold three weapons at once now, so you can have two pistols and like a shotgun, or two pistoles and a sniper rifle.

Okay, sold a pistol and a shotgun. No, well, not not in this not at the same time. Okay, the game does have sequences in New York City. Yeah, So the demo I saw basically sounded like backing up when the game was unveiled in Game of Former what like a year and a half ago, a while ago. It was basically, you know, all right, it's Max and it's a new voice actor, Like it wasn't the original the guy originally his name is escaping me anyone, remember,

No, the voice actor Maximilian Pain. Correct, it was different voice actor. It's gonna be in Brazil like new setting, and it was a very rock star like, hey, we're taking this franchise, We're we're putting our own print imprint on it, kind of like they did with you know, Red Dead Redemption was Red Dead Revolver. They bought that off Capcom, and fans were like, no, like I don't I don't like any of

this. I want more baby screaming and pain. Yeah, and and so so this tour u this the first time they're really showing the game, basically felt like an apology tour, like maybe all this stuff was already in the game and they just decided they wanted to show this is our rock Star part and all that stuff. Don't worry, we're gonna get in there. But like the demo starts like even as I was sitting down there, So, so what do you know about this game? Because basically trying to figure out

what my misconceptions were and trying to trying to correct them. And the game like starts in New York, and he's got the leather jacket and he's got the you know, the the the winey, he's got the hair. He's drunk, he's taking pain killers. He's he's not a very happy man. He's a very very broken person. But yeah, it starts on end gangsters just show up at your apartment and start shooting at you. So a max

pain game. Yeah, it sounds like it's got the violins and so it's it's it's got the slow motion and yeah, I mean it's comic book panels. Comic panels have been it's not like the stylistic drawn stuff, and now it's like in real like the in game graphics. It just divides them up and it happens more often now, so like you'll be finished a compet is stuff like actually in motion in those things or okay, yeah, it's kind

of the natural. Like I don't think rock Stars much more what they did in Max Pain one and two now for the especially for what rock Star likes to do with their stories, Like it's just not it's much. I mean, it's I think it's going to be fantastical in some sense, but it's rock Star is a bit more grounded. But it seems less from what I've seen, And it's not that much seems less noir. It seems like it's moved past the kind of like very darkly lit and like very sparsely lit,

kind of high contrast dark noir. Tailed this didn't show. So they showed me like a first like fifteen minute in New York, which was just to say like, hey, New York is here, and there's a big chunk of it in the game, but that's not what we want. That's you know, that's not the big shifts winter. It's winter, and so you go to Brazil. But even in Brazil they were quick to be like, so we know the people when they look at the Brazil they're like, hey,

this is really bright. That's not really Max Paint. There's plenty of dark stuff. So they didn't show me any of that, but they were like very insistent there's going to be all the noir stuff. It's just I don't know why they're not showing it. I mean, the game was out

in March. Theoretically, it's I mean when we saw that trailer, when we saw that new trailer, I mean also, it just didn't look like if you took away the sound and the like, if you took away the the music and the voice actor, I was like, this doesn't Why is this a Max a Pain game? Because bullet time isn't really like a unique feature anymore. I mean I'd argue at this point, not when's the last time that the game really used strangle? Yeah, and that game wasn't just

a Max Pain clone. Yeah, you mean just like acrobatic bullet times. Yeah, like made that the focus of the gameplay. So even though it's been done and it's kind of I think the last one that it's it is unique again. Yeah. The one wrinkle they've added is that when you're close to death, you'll go into a slow motion sequence, and if you take out the guy in front of you, you'll get some sliver health back so you can keep going. But otherwise the slow motion stuff is kind of the

same as it was. I mean, you know, they've got all sorts of really interesting graphical touches. Like they got both the like the the jump as well as the just like trigger it the way that Max Pain two has. Yeah, you can just be walking and do or you can do the really awkward die over. I always jump, yeah, always. I would never use the just press the button. That's no fun. I got pretty

good at diving onto couches while holding two pistols in real life practice. Yeah, would you put on the violin music as you were No, I didn't mean so it has a dive and then kind of like swing or torsto around

yep, to shoot everybody yep, twists yep. Yeah. I mean, like I could go through the litany of like smaller details that they were focusing on, like you know, like the like they you know, done some really amazing things the animation system, like in terms of way Max moves, like even on the ground when he's like twisting around, like each joint is moving realistically, but like in broad strokes like it's it's Max Pain three, like it's got like a rock star flare to it, but more so than

any other game, Like they they don't seem to be trying to stray too far from like they're putting their stamp on it. But it's not. You know, I still I still don't totally get why, like they had to do this good have just done a new ip. It's just because the way they presented it was a very unrocked they like they don't apologize, right like this, this is what we're doing. Go screw yourself exactly, and and and this is very much like, hey, we've talked to Remedy. You

know, we showed them the game. They seemed to like it, so that's cool, right, Like it just it was just very awkward for I think it's you know, well, yeah, I mean it it's hard to say, like the father behave that way, but if you think about it, like for better for worse, like rock Star doesn't really care about its creators and its creations, so giving that respect to the creators of Max Pain maybe makes sense in that content. Yeah, I mean I guess technically that.

I mean, rock Star was involved in rocks Pain one and two, like it was a take two game, but rock Star was like the production house, especially especially by Max Pain two. It was you know, just rock Star logos all over it. Yeah, so, I mean one of the Houser brothers is co wrote or wrote most of the story and this one, but they didn't really lab and they also they also were pushing that the

notion this is like one of their first like really like it. They weren't even assigning one studio to this game, like they were saying, this is all of the rock Star divisions contributing bits to this, Like it's really it sounds really spread out, weird across the studios. I wonder if that was the plan all along, or if I mean, because this game has been in development for a while, I wonder if it just went real sideways with the way they were doing it and like, okay, we had a call

in everyone on this one to get it finished. Yeah, like I I yeah, I almost. I almost wonder if, like after the weird like rejection from the fans after the first unveiling, that maybe there was a attempt to pull it back a little think or something, and that in order to make that turnaround happen in the year and a half it's been, I think since that's first unveiling, and they were very much committed to the March date. So and that's the end of the you know, fiscal for take two.

So I guess is that game is going to come out before the Internet. So I'm ready to I'm willing to give it a chance. Yeah, I don't I don't want to make Yeah, it looks like Max Pain sound like a bad thing, like you know, it's it. That's fine. I'm fine with another Max Pain. And they it should be. It's it looked fun that trailer, like seeing like just straight up shaving his head or whatever, like like going through that transition. I think makes that way cooler

than just putting out a screenshot of here's Max Pain. You don't recognize the guy in all and they and they kind of copped to like that was a bad like that the way they reveal, you know, the way they kind of showed their their hands. They thought they were being bold and instead they just hadn't explained, like you know, there's like a whole that happens hours into the game. You're gonna see why he does that, why he makes

that transition. Because when they first when they first unveiled, it just seemed like, oh, just like needless, like we wanted to make the character look different, so this is as different because he looks like a real dude who works here and they're not working on it, so like, yeah,

it almost so. But if there's like a character like plot motivation, like kind of heart of Darkness, you know, things going on, it's not like the opening cut scene like they're beening cut scene is in New York and there's a reason you go from New York to Brazil, and there's a reason that he eventually shaves his head and tell me that Max Pain feels a need to shave his head, Like shit, that can't be good. Happen.

It will continue to happen. The old character of Max Pain was kind of like a stagnant archetype at this point, like totally French co wearing war detective guy, and you're giving him like a new arc to follow and made a game that has the title already so they don't need, you know, And and two is such like they broke the fourth wall, like every twenty minutes

like that. My favorite sequence is when the game acknowledges that it's it's it's Max Paine watching himself in a video game and acknowledging the weirdness of watching a player control him. I think that game got super weird, like the best way possible. And I know you you didn't ask them this, but I just I hope there's some address unknown stuff in there, just even just a little bit, because that the stuff they didn't too with with that was so

fucking good. Yeah they did. They did tell me how much of that is remedy like, like right, if that's if that's a remedy trademark, right, So I wonder if it would it would be out of place or weird for them to do anything like that. I mean, if remedy sign it is a total like remedy touch like, that's clearly one of the things they like to do. Are there going to be entire movies I can watch? And I loved it so much? Another great opportunity for ghosts Mars.

Let me watch all of ghost Mars just walking to television. The Houses already owned the rights to it, they bought it years ago. It's true, not a lot of people know that. I wish that was true. They actually hate it. They just wanted to just get it so that nobody else can watch the whole story of g T A four is basically just a retelling of Ghosts of Mars. Yep, not a lot of people know that. Patrick anything else. Now we cover pretty much everything else. There's a cool

iPhone game that peoples to check out called Major Gauntlet. It's the game that was making the rounds of a while ago. It looks like Secret Amna Ormana Banana. Uh it comes out next week? Yeah, Mana Manyana. Secret of Manana comes out tomorrow. No, next week, Okay, doesn't come out Manyana. So you can then said that you're talking about. Uh, well cool, what do you guys think about taking a break? Yeah? Whatever, all right, we'll take a quick break and we'll come back momentarily

with more of the Giant Bodcast. And we're back. Jeff Gerstman. Hello, how's it going. It's going great. I want to talk about Batman Annie, Yeah, okay, Batman's out. Batman is out. Arkham City. People are banning a second Batman game for all intents and purposes. Batman two. Yeah, Batman two, it is better than Batman one. You should play Batman two five stars. Okay. Uh, it's it's a it's a it's a really great game. Yeah. Do you want to talk at

all about this because you've got a review of a review. Yeah, there's there's there's now three separate ways. You can hear you read me saying stuff about Batman. So, you know, maybe we'll keep it brief. But one thing I wonder, how much, uh the game was first game is amazing. Seems like it's like one is amazing too. How much is that because Rocksteady is just doing something so different than anybody else that them just kind

of doing that that similar things again is just totally fine. That is a big kind of like Assassin's Creed kind of gets away with the same thing where it doesn't have to totally change things because it's so different than everyth doesn't feel like it's getting away with anything. Okay, I'll say that much like it

is very similar, Like the game is not dramatically different. You know, they have built onto the combat system in some really smart ways, you know, more traversal stuff to to make sense of the kind of larger world that you're navigating. But you know, it's it's a very linear path through the main story. The side missions are very kind of compartmentalized off to the side. It's not it's not an open world. It's not it's not an open

world in the traditional sense. Yeah, even like the seemingly random acts of political prisoners getting beat up, like show up on your map and it's like, here's where you go for this, here's where you go for that, and that helps them avoid political prisoners. It's it's they have to. So the whole game takes place in Arkham City, which is a mega prison. They've taken a section of the city, condemned it, turned it into a gigantic prison. So in order if they're to be innocent people that you have

to help. Someone at some point had to contrive like, oh, well, what do we call these guys? Because the whole criminal scum, But why would Batman save these guys? Like well, what if the subtitles like and it's it's only says it like in the subtitles, like what if it said political prisoner? Like, yeah, okay, that could be. And there's a couple of cut scenes where you talk to these guys and they're like, I was just working on his calm system and then he threw me in

here for no good reason. Hugo strange running this whole thing, right, So it's kind of corrupt from the top down exactly, so they have to like make these distinctions so that the people you're saving are not bad people. Also, its right, so they say, I don't know, they're just political prisoners. They could exactly yeah bus or something. Yeah, who knows.

So yeah, it is similar in a lot of ways. And I think, yeah, they do kind of get by because like, no one else is making a game like this, you know, no one else has really emulated this combat system to this extent. Yeah, Captain America did try to Captain America like like a reasonably good attempt at kind of aping some of that stuff, I guess, but also probably shows how hard it is to do it as well as rock Steady does exactly. Yeah, So you know,

and it's it's a it's a great looking game like that. You know, they've increased the scope of it, uh in really cool ways. And the story is is a lot of fun like it It's it's kind of back heavy, like a not a ton of super important stuff happens at the beginning, but once it all starts all unfolding at the end here it's kind of fucked up. It's real bank bank bang, like oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, as these things happen. So that's that's pretty cool.

That's that that two hour spoiler that everybody got all insensed about, totally meaningless, totally totally the dumbest thing ever. Stuff. Yeah yeah, like that stuff is resolved literally four seconds after it happens in the games. So why which is why the guy was so quick to turn the Xbox off right when

I saw the first part of that happen. Yeah, yeah, that was the I think that's they kind of did themselves at this service aboutever, maybe not every it got everyone talking about the game, so I guess, you know, probably Mission accomplished on their part in one sense. But yeah, like the game didn't need that. The game didn't need it exactly. It

comes commis as gimmicky for a game that is just legitimately great. Kind of the gimmicky part, though, is the way they've handled their online pass stuff, And so what they've done is Catwoman is only playable if you enter the code or give them ten dollars. And the weird part about that is is not challenge room stuff. You do get that as well, but there are

actually four Catwoman chapters set in the middle of the game. You know, kind of one real early on, like like spread throughout the game basically where you are playing as Catwoman, and that stuff is kind of woven into the story, you know, you it intersects with Batman's story in kind of meaningful

ways. It's not rate if I had to pick a point of the game and say, like, this is the part they should have not put in, it actually probably would be some of that Catwoman stuff, because she's just a limited version of Batman, Like she plays almost exactly the same, but just as fewer options. I've come to play as Batman, Yeah, exactly, Yes, you're here. You're here for Batman. I'm not playing Catwoman Arkham City. And it's kind of annoying because you actually have to upgrade Catwoman

separately. So if you've put all your points into upgrading Batman as you should and getting you know, ballistic armor to reduce you know, bullet damage and reduce melee damage with the other type of armor upgrade, then by the time you get to the final Catwoman chapter, you have not spent any points on her, and you're a room full of guys you know, the same same

set of points that you're set. Yeah, so yeah, and they're and they're not there's they're cut up. They're not sequential as Catwoman like you go bounce back and forth. Right, Okay, so it's like spread out throughout the game. Yes, what would you So I actually had to a new game, but I actually had to finish the game and then go so guy to basically like do new game, plus start level up a couple of times, spend those upgrade points on Catwoman, and then go back into my other

game. Oh, the levels are persistent regardless of Yes, where you're out in the story. Can you also grind those stuff out in the challenge rooms? You get any experience in there? I don't believe so, so you basically you were grinding Batman. Yeah, I play the early parts of the story. Again. I mean there's there's a there's a finite amount of potential in the world to gain experience, right, those guys response, so yeah you can, So you could run around with can't run around and just beat

people up and get Yeah, XP, yes you could do that. Uh what do you what do you? What did you say? Like? Total run time playing with Catwoman is like, oh, with Catwoman, that's maybe an hour and a half or something like that. Okay, like throughout the full game, these four sequences, but this is the thing that you you're getting the code for new in the box with the game, where if you

don't have that, those sequences are just just missing. Which is crazy because there's you know, it's it's really only kind of one scene, and I didn't see how it plays out without Catwoman, so I can't really speak to that stuff. But there's but I can, I can kind of guess how

it would play out. But it's it's the stuff where Catwoman is basically, you know, helping Batman out of a bind, and if you're doing the stuff leading up to that and seeing the motivations there, like the story payoff is is better than than any of the gameplay stuff, and and that's that's kind of unfortunate, and it's it's weird because it actually has a download at least on three sixty uh like that it's not on the disc. It's like, so I then sit there and wait for three hundred megas of stuff to

download before I can start playing Batman, which is like lame. Yeah, that's weird, Like that would be the thing I would expect to be. You're on disc yeah thing. Yeah right, it's weird. It makes me question how that wound up all happened. It's also it's also because they just haven't communicated, like I think a lot of the backlashes because they haven't communicated

that this was going to be like an optional thing. Yeah. I think he said it was like the big reveals, like you could play as Catwoman and all that stuff, and like if they had set up front going to add a Catwoman, it's gonna be our online pass. It's gonna be like

the reason. It's the bait and switch that pisses people off. And it's not like if you if this had been part of the message with the game for a while, the putting Catwoman weaving into the story, but it's also online pass and this had been E three Yeah, no one, no one would care. But it's because a week before Catwoman's a big part of the game and then all of a sudden, all by the way, it's part of our you know, anti used game policy. People like everyone's gonna buy

the new version anyway. It's because people feel burned that this is happening a week before the game comes out, and it's just by the way, no big deal. And also apparently GameStop is just printing versions of the codes and putting them in the used copies, which is like a policy they do with some games. They must they must just have to work that out. They work that out with the publisher. But so even if you buy used copy, I don't know how long that goes on for, but it will come

with a unique code inside. That is like, that is maybe one of the most fucked up things ever because the publisher is creating this system in the first place, ostensibly to stop use game sales, then turning around and can't do that and people aren't buying it used and exactly game stop is obviously paying for it and making a sense for them, but at some point it's like,

why don't we just agree to do away with it? Is it sounds like one of the most atrocious things I've heard come out of this industry. Atrocious things come out of this industry that makes you really upset that that's the weird way of getting paying your way out of Like this is hurting our sales in this one department. Please stop doing this, Okay, let's make this

side room deal. That's basically like, but if the side room deal is game Stop kicks down money to publishers for their used game sales and leaves us out of it. That's what everyone wants to happen. It's just the GameStop says, look, we pay you, like Riley being these weird code nonsense, like just ever use game sale apportion goes to the publisher, and it does, then we don't have to deal with the bullshit like it if they

would just work it out. This is a weird way of them working it out with also having the bullecific Yeah, yeah, oh, the whole thing just yeah, it's it's backward backwards, but it's not as malevolent as you as you probably think it is. Like the whole problem is a publisher not realizing any profit from sales of use games. Understand the problem is like should they you know, I understand the symptom of the disease, but like basically

trying to backslide this stuff into use game copies seems ridiculous to me. Yeah, I don't know. Is it my problem? Your games are so expensive and you charge sixty dollars for them? Not really, like that's the nature

of the industry. Like I I just have I have trouble feeling bad from a consumer angle, but I wish they would just figure it out behind the scenes rather than making it we're jump through all these hoops or you know, just like jump to the end game and include just start, go the CD key route, go the PC game route, and just like here's your key. If you won't play the game or the key done. Well, I mean that that is currently that's not possible on the existing consoles, right,

the infrastructure is not there. Yeah, well ually is. Well, you're talking about Steam style. Just straight up, you buy this game, I have it. You know, you still on disks. I'm not saying I'm not saying do the download part. I am saying they should do the download part of it. But let's be reasonable. We're not there yet. Well, I mean, what we're talking about is divorcing a license to play the

game from the physical object that is the game. Sure, and you know, you know PC owners have gotten used to this over the years, as you know, it's it's just been an ongoing it's been the ongoing fight against piracy. You know, this is just an evolved out of code wheels and all that stuff. I mean, it's it's what is becoming the old argument about games as goods versus games as services. Yeah, I just think it

just figured it out. I think it's one of those things that it makes me so annoyed because I feel like the brick and mortar style stores are the biggest roadblock to get in all digital. I'm sure there's a lot of lobbying for them to not go all digital and distribution. They'll be lobbying when it finally happens. They'll be still pre order bonuses from specific stores that get you

into those brick and mortar stores. And to see them basically finding this backdoor to get around this coats UF just makes me feel like, fuck man, somebody's hands are in somebody's pockets, and like we just follow the money direct to consumers and let's get rid of all the pre order bonuses, these codes whatever. Let me buy this game physical establishments its own. It's basically where

they started. I mean, so like now they have become like an incentive to shop now that there are digital distribution places like Amazon or even just you know, buy it online, but it's where it's started. But they're not gonna go away even when everything goes all online. No, no, still want insteadive to buy your game from from store wide and total stores each and also and also to put the money down before the game is out right.

But but it give me the option, uh to just download the game digitally so that I can vote with my dollar of where I want to get this game. Uh, and then we'll be done. We'll dry up, we'll dry up the need for brick and mortar stores. I can go buy a guitar here or there if I want to, Uh, But I don't need to pre order because it's a digital distribution model and the game might move, the servers will be crowded, but then we'll introduce preloading on them something at

some time. I'm just all these fucking vaudeville hoops and circuses to get me into a store. Yeah, it's it's insane, and there's there is a good business reason they're still prioritizing brick and mortar sales because of holidays, because gigantic bulk of sales occur. There's still a meaningful number of consoles that aren't even connected to the internet. Yeah, I'm not saying I'm not saying that

it's a smart business decision. My personal take on it is that it's starting to turn into like a three ring circus for like trying to get absolutely people take is that a point now where just to I mean even if you're trying to just navigate and figure out, like how do I get this special thing? Because when they put out the information about it, it's like, here's here's all these extra Batmans. We may put out a guide for that. Yeah, these are the guy we have one of the highest traffic. Yeah,

one of the highest traffic stories we put on the news. Alex is right up about how where do you get all the crap for Arkham City, like the fact that that's something I have to do and from region to region and yeah, but you keep in mind you can't use any of those skins until after you've beat the game. Wait, which is another thing. Even if you have one yes Batman's skins, you your first time through the story,

you will play as Batman ass Batman. If you want to play as any other Batman, you're relegated to the challenge rooms, or you have to beat the game first and then you can pick whatever Batman you like. That explained that that makes more sense now knowing that that they're going to sell all those as DLC you have for the fact, right, Well, I'm glad that I did not pay for the one hundred dollars collectors attition, Yeah,

to get my Batman. Something about that codes it burns me out. Is there something like you tell me that you're including this code so that we could stem use sales and then to channel around That's not actually true, but they a bunch of money, so you know, well, I mean it's it's the same nets. You're right, it's absurd that we are going through this

whole process. It's absurd, but it's not offensive. It's offensive to me why because it's like you're introducing you're basically saying like I'm gonna give you a speeding ticket if you speed before you can just pay the cops to speed. This is the step towards getting rid of those codes. I would pay the cops to speed every time. This This is this is like the first step. This is towards getting rid of those things. Is the first step towards

disarmament? Is Okay, we we introduced this thing that that started, you know, devaluing the used game sales some so now game Stop has to give them a little juice put the game stop to the decision of like, are they gonna you know, pony up to make something like this happen or right, But but it may be the first step to holding game or or or a reseller accountable, or it could just be another step in inconveniencing the consumer, uh, while they figure out how to both make money. That's exactly

what's happening. They're going to incommunity the consumer because they'll the game. The consumers will buy the game's regardless, right, because they want to play the game. So yes, maybe it is a step in that direction, but it looks like to me, hey, we added another thing for the consumer to have to worry about while we figure out how to connect with each other to make it any situation, and it's gonna get worse before it gets better.

Absolutely, games you already So it's like what no, I just like, like I understand, like philosophically, but like practically, you're gonna go buy sixty dollars, Batman, You're always going to buy sixty dollars Batman.

Yeah for me, Yeah, yeah, I mean whatever and used and used guys, we're going to get a cheaper price on the game because they're buying used anyway, but only not as cheap now, because I'm sure that whatever money game Stop is paying to Warner to take this reality ends up necessarily because the margins on use sales are so enormous, they might be willing to take a small hitter the game. The games end up being about for the first

couple like month or so, like it's like five bucks. Alos they're taking the game at about forty dollars for the first month. Then they're selling it at fifty five. You can imagine whatever they're paying off to Warner, they're still making a pretty crazy margin those games. And here's what happens when I

buy a new Batman. So I buy a new Matman, I gotta figure out where I'm gonna buy a new Batman from because there're seven different pre orders I was always gonna buy because they just sent it to you and they and then also Amazon gives me like my twenty bucks for buying games from it. Like you know what, twenty bucks way fucking better than any Batman Skip.

I don't care what pre order bucks you've got lined up, but from my point, you have all these different options if you're gonna buy a new Batman where you're gonna get with it. Then I've got to open up Batman. I have to enter a code in to get content because I'm a new owner that I have to put it a stupid code in almost like a game, and then the content almost but not anymore because and then it downloads and then

it downloads. Whereas if this system weren't in place, I would buy the same Batman that everybody else is buying for sixty dollars, put the game in on day one, and just be ready to play. So that is an inconvenience for the users, and I do think it's only gonna get worse before it gets better, as they kind of split up and figure out how to transact these things that are slowly becoming less of an on disc and just kind of like hey, we are including in the game and more of a like

you know, hey, we're gonna sell you this piece. We're gonna sell you the game piece meal from seven different stories. You put the puzzle together and someday you'll have the full Batman experience. It's just weird. It sounds like Skylanders, Yeah, sounds like micro transact, sounds like we're gone.

And then Chop Chop comes with a code I don't know, but then if it's that part doesn't even bother me as much as somebody then being like, well, we're just gonna put the codes in the use games, right, And it's like what you introduced, this was supposed to stop you specifically from doing this, Well were you are the single No, it doesn't apply to it. But that's them, just like that's game stopped blinking to me.

That's them going like, oh shit, this is actually cutting into our sales, like we have to do something too, But at the time they're staving off the inevitable. But I have to imagine that they make a bulk deal with with whoever's giving them the codes, you know, whatever publisher it is to be like, it is worth more to us to buy these codes print amount, insert it than to reduce the price or of the game by x amount or to or tow include a gift card for Xbox five or whatever.

I'm there. So they obviously are not making the full money off of they're getting a bulk rate on some codes. I have to imagine, so it's not like the ten dollars or whatever you'd have to pay to do it, but on that on the published on the business side, everybody wins. Maybe I don't know what the deal is. Who knows assumingly, who knows? Who knows a bit. They have pretty good projections on how many, like what percentage of use sales they would actually get someone to buy the code to

get with the code. But I'm saying, like what the conversion rate is on use sales to who goes and gives them the ten bucks? Like I mean, and I bet that's probably low enough. Or maybe they're just buying those codes. They're putting them in the use box sales and they're saying, this is as good as new. We're gonna charge you the full price for it. Well, they don't do that, but they're not. They could become close. Yeah, they're pretty close. Five dollars is basically like you're

buying. But I don't I've seen them, especially the rate that game prices crash these days, like off of sixty bucks? Are they going to give me the full price for that game if I include the code when I sell back to the music? Come on? Why not? Could be could be a child that a child on that on that point of like you know how this works I do, and I think they take advantage of people. I

think this is them continuing to take advantage of consumers. I think I think video is a point in that you see this playout over and over again, where because because gamers just want to play games, they are willing to put up with a lot of bullshit because at the end of the day, they do just want to play the games. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't be incensed over how you're treated as a result of just wanting to play some games.

I think they take they take advantage of a disenfranchised population, which is a bunch of kids and a bunch of people who, just like Patrick said, just want to get their hands on games that don't really feel like they have a voice. And then I think they exploit that. And I think this just seems like a really weird work around or a really weird wrench to throw into the whole thing. Fat It just feels Yes, it feels like back room. Yes, it's jerrymandering, some kind of move of the districts

around, tax loopholes, around against the codes. Yeah, follow the money. I don't like it. Prohibition against online passes anyway, do you run the Batmobile. No, forget it, cancel my Well that that is one of the pre runners. The batmobile has the Batmobile, Yeah, my Batmobile. Skin. I just want to point out that if this calculator, if this inflation calculator is to be believed, you know what, actually, hang on, I pushed in fifty bucks, considering that the price of games has

only gone up ten bucks in the last twenty five years. Well, I don't know about that. I played like eighty bucks for a lot of Strider, except excepting a few outliers. Yeah, okay, Star four was one hundred bucks. But whatever, Uh, sixty dollars now in nineteen eighty six dollars twenty nine dollars and fifty seven cents, So I don't really I'm still confused. There's a little perspective for sixty dollars might as well be zero dollars.

I'm not saying that all games are free. I'm just saying that every as much as development costs have ballooned from one generation of the next, like I'm shocked, the prices on games I have not gone up more. Well, that's a different conversation. I mean, whatever, I'll pay eighty dollars for the game. I will not pay you know, I don't want to

give that money directly to a game stop. Suh. I mean I think I think you're not because the margins on new games or ship so so even if you bought them from them, there they're making what keeps them they're making next business? Yeah, I mean what I In fact, it's super Nintendo cartridge cleaning kits really the business. I really want to take the game stop buy all your games new from them and just draining. No, I mean I'm sure they make go in there and say no, I don't want the

disk protection. No, I don't want the guide. No, I don't want to pre order anything. But I'm gonna but I'm gonna take up a lot of time online. They do they do that, I use up your employees time so that you can't make sales. While I'm there, you're saying we should occupy game stops, right, be there? All right, let's move on out of this, batman. Oh actually, so I guess when the question I had was yes, it's very good, thanks for asking. Uh, yeah, it's any good. Great? Uh but okay, that's

fine, let's move on. No good, No, if you have a question asked the questions. Oh no, I was gonna say, like the impact this has on like trophies or achievements. Yeah, they're a Catwoman specific trophies. Uh, Riddler trophies, I should say, not not PlayStation trophies, but collect trophies, trophies associated with collecting all of the trophies. I'm

not sure how it works if you haven't redeemed the trophies. If I think the Riddler trophies, I mean, because they count the Batman trophies and Catwoman trophies separately, So it could very well be that the achievements you get are tied to the Batman. You have not yet collected all of the riddlers. I have not yet and will not. Yeah, there's a lot. There

are four hundred Batman like Riddler challenges to complete Batman alone. Uh. And there's a much easier way to get all that stuff filled in on your map, which kind of makes the riddles themselves a little less potent, a little less less cool than they were the last time around, because it's less about you figuring out like what does he mean when he says this, and more

like this is the spot of the map. I'm gonna go here until I see something that looks like it's a little out of place and then take a picture of it. So uh, yeah, it's it's a lot of collecting trophies and doing kind of skillful things to get access to the trophies. They change the bad vision detective mode stuff a little bit. Yeah, goes away, you know. But but basically by not having the riddler stuff be as prevalent and the riddles specifically, there's less of a reason, the less of

a need to to go around and use it. Some of the side missions, and even in the main story mode a couple of times you go into like the forensic version of it where you're like scanning an area and looking for evidence. Yeah, and that's cool, following blood trails and such. My copy comes tomorrow. Batman All right, Jeff, anything else you want to talk about? Covered the most important games of Skylanders and Batman. So yeah, that's it. Oh, Hogan's main events. I haven't tried it yet.

We did track down a copy and pick it up, so we will do some video that and uh track Mania two can't move on? Move on? Bank, how's it going? Which been playing a couple three hours uncharted three that I can't. Okay, well don't don't. Let's just move on power through that. Are you wearing a subway hat? Are you doing not yet? I haven't unlocked it. I'm kind of getting there kind of wear

like kind of wear like a thick J talbot. That's true. I did play some of the multiplayer, uh near as I could tell, that subway hat is the hardest to get accessory in that multiplayer. I'm still clear if that is all of the multiplayer. Is the competitive multiplayer it is to be the full that it is? Sure if it caps prematurely, because I've seen I've seen enough people at level thirty five and that thing too soon. It might be the thirty five is the cap, so I haven't seen anybody above

that. Yeah, but I would have to imagine the retail goes higher than that. That seems like a pretty low level cap for for for a retail game. It's supposed to last for some time. Anyway, We'll talk about that next week review coming soon. That might be it. That's it beats Beat Gargoyles. How do you feel about that game? How are how are your emotions about Dark Souls? I mean, I'm still enjoying it. I just like I said, I can't play it at long stretches. Just have

to have to inch my way through it. I just got through the undid Parish. Okay, yeah, that's what I'm still there. It's a rough game play. Dance Central two, yes, my girlfriend, that's pretty fun. Dance Central two is pretty good. How so, I haven't had a chance to do any of the two player other than when I play with John Drake when he was here. He hardly counts as a person. He might as well be a set of curtains pretty much for a dance I like,

is that? Has that been a good experience with the two past stuff? It was good, except that it's almost that weird guitar hero issue of like the better you are at the real thing, like the worst you might be in the game. I'm not sure. I mean, it's a sample size of one so far. But she's a way better dancer than I am, and yet I beat her consistently. Don't say because yeah, go figure, But I don't know, because maybe I know more like what the connector is

looking for. I was able to kind of a game she wanted to like do with the real moves and stuff like when alimb is going a ready, you're like, okay, I need to exactly elbow out more or whatever exactly, just you know, just like a guitar player, Like actual guitar players had issues with Guitar Hero. I think that it is pretty good. I don't think Just Dance three is particularly good, though they've been doing head to head dance offs. I've been comparing the two. Yeah, trying to at

least a boy, that's barely a game. Just Dance three. It's just silhouettes. It's barely tracking anything, right, And that's the thing is like, is it's it's just it's a connect game and it's never been about precise movements like Dance Central. The thing is like the dancers are are always doing far more challenging and complicated dance routines in Just Dance because they're not animating people

or they're not animating like polygonal figures. It's just like we pointed a camera this dancer dressed all ridiculously and then made them look all neon and glowy, and you have to, you know, kind of mimic their moves and they have like you know, they'll do like a little kind of like the flash cards and Dance Central. Uh they'll have you know, like little figures kind of scroll across the screen at the bottom be like here's what your next move

kind of looks like. But it doesn't have like the level of granularity that that Dance Central has, where it's like, here is like the left hand move version of this, and then the next car is gonna be okay, and here's the right hand move. So you know you're gonna shuffle, shuffle to the right, shuffle shuffle to the left. It's like, oh, okay, when when that thing comes up, I now know what that means.

Like they don't give you that much direction. Uh, not that you need it though, So it's it's kind of this weird thing where the dancing looks far more chance, like it's way harder to pull off the proper dancing, but the game doesn't really give a shit, Like there's it's just like as long as you're flailing around sort of maybe rhythmically, you're okay. I

got like three stars on a song sitting on my couch. Granted, now there's an easy mode where you're sitting on your couch Rhythmically, No, I was I was like literally not moving like I'm not I wasn't seeing on my couch and like trying to mimic it. I was just sitting on my couch watching it, and I was getting points for it. You can like,

couch, it's mine now. So you're saying like, if you just if you don't care about really what's going on and you just want to do just dance, or if you want the full experience of dancing, you want to go to Dance Central. I don't know if if so. So for me, as someone who is not a great dancer, I find the Dance Central experience far more satisfying because I feel like it is the moves, at least on kind of the easier levels, you feel like you're actually you're like,

okay, I'm actually doing this move. I can actually I can read that card and I know how to do that little side step move, and you feel kind of involved in it. You're doing enough of it that you feel like you're doing approximating a move, like if you feel like I'm kind of dancing here, I'm actually kind of doing a thing here, whereas in just dance like not enough direction and it's it's motion tracking is so haphazard. That's

like I don't I can't. I don't know how to do that move, but I have no motivation to learn how to do that move because I'm still scoring decently. Just kind of There's another time where I was just like just kind of like fuck these routines. I'm just gonna jump around and shake my arms and did okay. So yeah, I've thought that because there's there's both. There's both. The there's an easy mode in a normal mode, and the easy mode literally is just detecting your waist up like it's It's where I

do my best dance. It's like no, no feet, you just you can just lock your feet into place. And even on normal I for the most part would have my feet locked into place and be like I just shift my shoulders kind of the sides and it's kind of how I dance anyway. It takes it. So there's some other cool stuff actually happening in Just Dance

three uh. With with like a you can record your own choreographies as they call them, and it's able to cut your silhouette out and make you look like a just Dance dude, and it uploads it and then other people can danced like multiplayer choreographies, you know what. I haven't dug into that part of it, maybe because it supports up to four but supports to four players at once. But it's again it as fast and loose as it is with one. I can only imagine, uh, just record, just record a

couple of people boning and then uploading the silhouettes of it. It's like, here's my dance. That would be pretty amazing. Uh, But it seemed like the idea of and I'm not sure how like if it's if it's then like monitoring your movement and then like scoring people they're downloading and playing it based on that movement. But the idea of beings like here's a song and here's my dance routine for it, and people can see that and play along to

it, like that seems like a neat idea. It's just that it's in a game that's not good. And again and also like soundtrack, I really like the song selection in Just Dance three. Uh, it's just it needs to be in a better game. But Dance Central two, Dance Central aer seems pretty good. Yeah, I like it, well, it looks better. The the like the crew challenge stuff is cool, kind of giving a little more structure because that's the story. Yeah, Yeah, Dance Central.

The first one was just like dance and then it was like a Tar Hero one. Yeah, it was very feature stripped. This slightly more. I feel like that's like the two players simultaneous, which obviously is a big addition, and the crew challenge stuff seemed like kind of the biggest. Oh, and there's Connect support so you can yell at your voice voice support. Yeah, voice support for obviously there's wait a minute, there's always been Connect support,

but yes, Connect voice support. And when you when you first loaded up, there's just a little note on the menu screen that says, you know, just shout dance at Connect and you can just say Connect dance and it loads stuff up. I'm gonna I'm gonna give the Fitness Mode a run. I've heard it's because they had something that in the Yeah, it was like the first one I've seen it so far. It's just got like ten

or maybe a dozen playlists. I don't even know if the songs vary because they've got down to the second how long each one is, Like this one is ten minutes twenty one seconds long. So it's probably the same songs. Yeah, but I mean the tracks you know, burn like chained playlist like that's good. Yeah, Like some of them are up to like an hour long, and they're they're even listed out for like you know, this one's an interval, this one, this one is like Max Cardio, you know,

like it's right. Yeah, I've fallen out, as I do every six months. I've fallen off my effort to get back in shape, and so I'm gonteresting. But it's it's into this, Yeah, it's it still has that and you know there's good goofy songs in in Dance Central two as well, Like it's a good mix of I guess you know current dance music as well as you know the Humpty Dance and Ultimate Dance music. I think there's some Bell lived vote in there. I believe you're Bobby Brown. Well

yeah, my prerogative is in there. Definitely can import to Dance Central one stuff eventually. Can you not do it yet? Yeah, yeah, because the game's not out yet, so the store stuff still isn't up. The same thing be paid I think maybe five ten. It also comes with a points card, all right. It comes with two hundred and forty a code for two hundred and forty points on I guess to encourage you to go buy a song. I was. I was looking at the original game actually because

how's how's the soundtrack? And first one because you need the first one, like a new copy of the first one to import. So I was figuring, I'll just go buy the first one, uh and pull it in. It's good. It's good, it's good. It's good, good stuff in there. I was considering how much a new probably was going through some some Dance Central one also just to kind of compare and contrasts those two. And uh, I honestly I like a lot of the d LC songs more than

the stuff that was necessarily on the disc. There's some there's some good delC for that game. Well, that's what I was gonna make light of. Was it on Amazon? Like the first game by itself is thirty five bucks and the first game with a two hundred and forty point card is forty five bucks. Pay us ten extra bucks to get this three dollars voucher done. So I think the first Dance Central I don't I get the feeling. I

remember really liking the soundtrack for that. In terms of like it made for good gameplay, even if they weren't always your favorite songs, It's true they were. The routines were good. It was a you know, they were good songs to dance too. Oh and there's some there's some good stuff in two. They did some of this in one, but like songs, the dance routines incorporating stuff from like the videos or oh right, in the case of Hadaway is what is love? Okay? That at the Roxbury? Yeah

stuff, Oh it's got. It's got a little good little head snap parts of the routine. It's a small part, but it's one of those like if you know, it's like, it's a funny little thing. I can't the name is Escaping Me, the Internet meme song. It's like the second song in the game. Uh Romanian pop song. God, is it actually that song or is it the TI song that sam? It totally is that song. And it's got it's got the the dude, the YouTube guy,

it's got his motions and stuff. Residuals. Yeah, kids getting paid, So the kid gets paid. So the one issue I had with the dance battles, which is not the fault of the game is that, like there were elbows getting knocked into heads and stuff. You know, It's like basically, we're standing as far from the connector as the living room and allow, and we still couldn't move far enough apart and both be in the frame.

Yeah you need Yeah, so that's not the fault of the game. But so I immediately it was just like, all right, fucking I'm buying that thing. I was so I wanted went on Amazon to buy it. It's the Niko Zoom yeah, And I was like, I mean, it's optics. Why wouldn't that work? You know, just whatever. So I get on there Amazon and out of one hundred user reviews, sixty of them are

one star. And it's just ranging from like from like it completely fucks up hand tracking too, it only works with some games to this is fucking snake oil. Like people were angry about that thing. So I was just curious. I mean, sixty those people Microsoft, I mean, who knows, who knows, But I mean, if any of you guys use that thing, I've been waiting to hear from other people. I was from Harmonix's John Drake, and it sounded like he liked it, so yeah, consider the

source. Truly, I feel like they would want that thing to work. That would make me buy more Connected, because right now it just don't work. You're you're right. But at the same time, if it did, wor own, it would be Microsoft having to admit that we could have made this thing. But like I said, a lot of the people were saying that it does anything that requires finer tracking of the hands and stuff. That

makes sense because it's just distorting the image. I mean, I mean, Microsoft doesn't have to admit that San Francisco apartments are really tiny and you probably shouldn't have Connect, but they would have to admit that they made a thing that doesn't work in San Francisco apartments. They already do. They were really like eight feet, don't have a coffee table and like you know, mount it on the wall. They kind of already admit that. I kind of

knew going into this whole thing. How else are they going to force you to buy a second one? I just ordered it. I just ordered a like another sit on top of your TV stand clip thing because I bought the one that everyone recommended at launched, which I had this thing that would go down the back of the TV and you could bolt to it and stuff. But it didn't fit my TV at all, so it was useless. So I bought another one that seems like it might be a slight more precariously positioned

thing. But I at least look look at it and see how it would work to keep that stupid thing on top of my TV. So maybe I'll get some dancing in. I still have to, yeah, I don't know. I still have to rearrange my living room if I want to, if I want to do it properly. So there doesn't know. It's a shame there is. There is another company bringing out an attachment the same concept as the Niko, but maybe that thing works better. But I can't imagine they

don't have to work rarely. It's all very I don't know if the Niko Won is baddly designed or if it's just an inherent limitation of concept. But yeah, I was curious for anybody listening to this has had a good experience with that thing, even if it actually works well, because we will find out by next week. I can guarantee you that probably now that you've said that, I'll get a million emails, uh anything else, Brad, you want to touch on. That's it we have we have burned through this podcast.

Uh, Patrick, is there any uh any news of particular note that you want to to bring up here or any stories you want to plug? The NFL Blitz Yeah, oh yeah, yeah and announced today with zombies. Yeah. Well, I mean they had they had weird guest teams before, so it's it's not that's not the crux of it. Yeah, what is

that? Was the crux of the article? Says to me that someone who didn't play a whole up that's maybe oh okay, the hand the hands on article, you think you did not have a lot of hands on in it. You think that that's more of not EA making the folks, but the

writer making that the thing. Maybe maybe hard to say, but uh, you know, there's some footage out there that the EGM has in their their story and I pretty much muted it and and kind of went to look through the footage and it looks a lot like NFL Blitz, Like it's it's uh similar animations. Uh you know, a lot of the same plays are in there, though whoever was playing it no jump passing in there. And I'm worried that if if they've taken out jump passing, then that game is being

made by someone who doesn't understand what makes NFL Blitz great. I'm just hoping that whoever was playing it just to it didn't know that that's how you play that game. So are they bringing Blitz back? This is a new game, sort of like a how NBA Jam was a new game like this is this is no Tibron's developing it. This is NFL Blitz like no number, no nothing. And it's gonna be a retail game. It's gonna be apparently be a retail game out January third, which I don't think they would have

learned from NBAJAM last time. So are running through was dead? Well? People that are fans by twice anyway, So why not just squeeze him out? Well? Yeah, why not get forty bucks out of him the first time instead of fifteen? Uh, you know, because you could sell a disc the first time out and you're in. You called this one as far as release window of you knew that once once they once they announced it officially that it was gonna come real quick. Uh, syndicate style. Well I

called that because I knew that. But but yeah, super perceptive. No, no, the you know, I mean, we we ran a story on this in November at twenty ten, yes, saying that, hey, guess what he is working on our new NFL Blitz. They of course would not confirm it until today. Yeah, but yeah, yeah, it's uh so real quick turn around from announcement to ship for whatever reason, the ship

January third. So do you feel like you just I mean, do you know enough about the game to think that the contents not there for a full retail game. It depends on what they add. I mean, you know, they've they've added like something called the Blitz Gauntlet mode or something like that. Like they're they're looking to expand in ways that are probably similar to what

they did in NBA JAM. Sounds exactly like the remix Tour. Yeah yeah, but so so wait so retail but not sixty, no idea, but probably I will come out and say that they will probably know better than to try to charge sixty for this game, because they you know, with NBA Jam they did charge forty, So they're not trying to do the league or anything like that. No, it doesn't look like it in this game.

You know, it looks like a visually upgraded version of the old NFL Blitz like old four player, like turbo bars at the bottom and you know, versus screen codes and and all that sort of stuff. So you know, it looks like whoever's making it is like similar to what they did with the NBA Jam, Like they're looking to hit the same notes and kind of do

the right thing. A lot of the plays come right out of Bliss ninety nine, but you know, and then looking at it being played and looking at you see the receiver's flashing, so you can tell it's probably the same style of point and shoot passing that they would use in that original in the original games. But he doesn't jump. I don't know, he doesn't jump. It's gonna have to reformulate your entire blitztress if you can't jump, they

can't jump. There's something how many how many dudes are on the field, you know what, seven on seven jump jump passes their pre order bonus. Fuck. But they're putting those codes inbody, so it's fine, but only at target. Yeah, So this is kind of you know, like I think some people thought that this game was dead because, like the the story that I wrote came out when when it did come out, like Mark Turmel was still working at Tiberon and he has since left and gone to Zinga,

I believe so. I think some people thought that the game died when he left because he is the NFL Blitz and NBA Jam dude, and that he has basically just been burying these properties their unearthing as they come out. Did you know the new NBA jame came out. I wouldn't be. I wouldn't blame you if you didn't know that, because that game just kind of yeah, and just to like kind of yeah, you know what is it's it's

we're mid October now, right, games come out in January. Like I kind of liked the idea of announcing a game and turning around this quickly. But you know, they're not going to spend any real time promoted that game. Well, I don't know if they're putting it on disc. Maybe they will, who knows. It's it's just such a weird thing like that, just to say it will even be fully functional like that NBA Jam, it's

kind of kind of broken. Yeah, it is kind of broken in some spots for sure, I don't know, but it looks enough like NFL Blitz that I'm very excited. It seems like DA's attentions are elsewhere right now. They got that MMO, between that MMO and that first person shooter. Yeah, yeah, obviously this is the sports group, so that's a slightly different thing. But i EA seems kind of like it's not just like, oh, obviously these are big things for them. In a lot of writing,

they seemed distracted. They're waiting to give like the amount of attention that I feel like I've seen for EA properties that are not those uh, doesn't seem that focused. Well. Yeah, it was interesting going to the thing that they had in Vegas where I mean, Battlefield was there, but it was

the stuff from Games Calm mostly. They didn't really dwell on that game very much there at all, and it was about the kind of other stuff they had coming up, and it was weird, like it felt like Crazy Worlds like I'm at this EA event and Battlefield's not really the focus and Old Republic isn't here at all. This is great. I'm gonna go play Need for Speed. I'm gonna go play Syndicate like like Syndicate. You know again, I think Syndicate looks like it. It's got a real shot like it looks

pretty awesome. Mass Fact three played that multiplayer stuff. I think what's the date eighteen? Still can't talk about that, okay, but all those details are out there, so go, yeah, do something. Go read the internet. Go read the internet. I guess about that, and then come back on the twenty seventh and I'll give you a thumbs up for a thumbs down. What do you think? Thanks, scary Larry. Yeah, they'll

come back because some cheek cold po tips. You want big head, if you want to show field goal percentage, hit the pass button once and then pressed down. How do I get to the minus? There are cheat there is there's cheat codes in the what we saw on the footage, which yeah, yeah, so imagine that I'll be you know, that's traditionally that's where you would turn off computer assistance or turn on field goal percentage or big heads or any of that stuff. Then be turbo two on two or you think

they'll they'll ratchet it up to three, three, four and four. But the way the hut, the way that you guys is drawn, it looks like there's room for four turbo meters. So I measure system. Yeah, so two on two, okay, so you know think it'll be like four

four. Uh? In fact, I mean if they are, if they're sticking to Bliss the way Bliss has been made, you want to play a one on one you don't even you don't even want to play that games, Yeah, because the loose player without the ball on offense, you know, you can kind of play receiver, but you're mostly just kind of pushing other dudes down, and it changes a lot of really weird stuff about the game

that makes it like a little less skillful in a sense. I would say the games that game is not enough of a football game to really support multiple live players. You want to be passing to yourself and having two defenders out there, like if you know what the plays are, it's it's easy enough to bust up plays when when you're one person, uh, just kind of being able to pick out what's being called and know what the formations look like.

If you have two players, you're just fucking breaking every single play as it starts. Uh, when you did that tournament, was that one on one? Yeah? Okay, because when I did that tournament, it was before Blitz was a four player game. The first Blitz was a two player game, and then for Blitz ninety nine they added four player, So which

which which cabinet did you get ninety nine? So it was the four player So technically, by winning the tournament, I want a Blitz machine, which would have been the old one, but then they said, like, hey, would you be willing to wait two months and get the new one instead? Yeah? Okay, I guess. And that's the one that has the N sixty four memory slight on it. Yeah, so I can plays on the N sixty four and on the control pack. Wow, I forgot about

that. I think it's got a door that opens up mechanized thing because they want to keep it closed most of the times when people can't jam gum in it. But apparently those things got gum jammed in them all the time, and you know what's say and gum and that's that's like the ultra rare version of like the neo geo set up with the memory the memory, because those are slightly more common. So are you gonna this inspired? Do you feel

an itch to power that thing back up? Start playing some Blitz and even if maybe I mean it's it's you know, it's one of those things that I played so much of it that getting it to come back is not the hard part. So not that just for it's finny people that are just like, yeah, it's really as good as the people you have around on the internet, you know, just plugging the internet to it, play somebody else with the blitz and okay, I'll do that. Just link it up to

that grid machine, right, and then it'll all works. Trying to get me to bring the Blitz machine in. That thing's gonna be That screen is real big, Yeah, it's it's it's the NBAHM cabinet basically, you know, but probably a little yeah, but just with the you know, the moistness of that backbar area and all that time. I'm not I'm not gonna bring it in to kill it all beat up. That's bringing your what's make make make him come to your house. I spent a long time look about

arcade syrts this weekend. It's a dying it's a dying dying. Yeah, it's it's a gardener still makes Nope, it's a real sad state of affairs. They're just there. You can't manufacture CRTs anymore because it is lead in the coating on the senior T to prevent the radiation from the number of CRTs are available that you purpose, they're only going to be less CRTs from here

on out. A couple of people still make them, but apparently they're ship like some like the Chinese manufacturers still will actually produce new ones, but apparently they're really no good. And is there a way to convert him and hook up an LCD. Uh, you can hook up an LCD, but the resolution on it is so different that for older games, they just don't look they don't get the blur that a CRT would give you. So everything is real sharp. Fine with that, actually it's sharp edges. I mean,

yeah, it's a taste name. It's definitely like an analog versus digital kind of. It's just one of those like if you're at the point of having an arcade cabinet, like you want, right, are you gonna you weren't want to drop an LCD in't your Defender machine. You're you're you're chasing, You're chasing the authentic experience. So like, yeah, it's totally you know, usable and livable with a digital PA, but but to me, it's

it's not too far off from putting those led lights into pinball machines. Well, yeah, it's a little less cosmetic, I think because the actual hard part, and not to spend too much time on this, itet to blow up to the full screen. No, it's it's try and find a four by three LCD screen to chopping there. So some people are actually turning buying big enough ones where you can turn it vertically so that the width of the screen is the four by three point. It's just really weird, uh finding

that stuff. So they actually do sell some arcade LCD screens that are four by three that'll run in E GA and CGA and stuff like that. But I don't really know, and they're like four hundred bucks, so I don't I don't really understand what's happening. It's just sad to look at it. Be like once these go, that's right, that's you will no longer find those Patrick any other news highlights you want to bring up here? All right, good, because we are out of time. Uh, games out this

week, Batman's out this week. You should probably play Batman. Layton games out this week, lad He's out this week. Also Day pay Day pay Back payback past Ratching, Ratchen Clink, All for one, Rock Smith SIMS three, Pets, Professor Layton and The Last Specter, Power Up Heroes, Family Feud twenty twelve, Minute to Win It, Bigfoot, King of Crush, Prices Right the Decades, Tropico four for three, sixty uh, Skylanders

Jane's Advanced Strike Fighter. On Xbox Live Arcade, there's Dungeon Defenders and Bejeweled three, as well as the Days X Missing Link DLC campaign. On PSN there's Ocabu, Rocket Birds, Hard Boiled Chicken, pay Day, The Heist, Dungeon Defenders, Real Steel, Beat Hazard Ultra and Salmon Max Beyond Time and Space Beat Hazards p S three. Uh. Yeah, Beat Hazard Ultra. Interesting, that's serious, Sam, Did you say that? Yeah? I didn't, Oh, but yeah, serious Sam. Random Encounters on Steam

that's next week. That's next week. I thought it was this week. I think it's next week. Okay, And that's the which which one of the based based rpg of course I did. Sorry, it's next week. I didn't look. I didn't look up seeing Steam stuff, so I didn't know either way, I did, I didn't know. H I got I gotta cut emails, no time for emails. There's no time for emails. One email. It's the best email. I see, we don't have time. Crazy, this is the best email? Well whatever, whatever, how

would be those email? Okay, it's gonna be about Batman? Uh? Kurt Myers in Island, New Jersey? Am I saying that? Right? I don't know how I spell it? I S E L I N. Yes, sure Island. I thought maybe you was. Hey, guys, just wondering, do you think Batman would have sold better if they timed along with the new Batman movie next summer? Not saying it won't sound well now, but it would be in a dead spot, probably out of the super

competitive holiday season, and everyone would be swept up in Batman fever. Not that there should ever be a time where there isn't. Batman Fever does do the movie was really create a palpable sense of Batmania? That's I think it would. Maybe would it sell one more copy than it's currently going to sell? Maybe? Maybe? At this point, the Arkham brand is is done blockbuster status. Like Warner Brothers putting it out in mid October is them saying

this can stand with the other big games. It's such a different take on Batman than what Christopher Nolan's doing with it. I mean, this is comic book Batman. Yeah. And also if you put it on your the you know you start, you're gonna assume it's a movie license game, which people have a bad taste for, like they've people have been burned in the past of those they thing they had to actively work against that perception with the last game, right, and when it comes to Batman, like, I don't

really want an abundance of Batman related stuff, but this game. Every couple of years, want a bat Vacuum perfect, Like that's enough Batman. Batman shows up. It is. It is probably the best form of Batman that is available. I haven't seen any of those movies. It's not about it's not about volume, it's about quality. Yeah, I'll take a high quality Batman game any day of the year. But I don't really care about what they tied into. Isn't Isn't there some there's like some Batman blu ray out

though. Oh yeah, it's a there's an animated Dark Knight for Night or something. I don't know. Yeah, there's a yeah, yeah, there's some there's some other Batman stuff out. But the Batman. Thing you care about is on a video game console and then three weeks on a PC. There's always some kind of Batman out there. Yeah, I Will's phone calls him Batman. Now. I like seeing him get really excited about that. Yeah, he's not Batman corn in Sirie. He is Batman stupid. All

right, that's it for emails. Thanks everyone who wrote in mostly about Batman, so all right, and we actually covered a good majority of those questions. It's talking about Batman, so we're pretty good. BombCast at time bomb quinn dot com. That wasn't one of the questions. Spoiler can shit. Uh. That's it for this week's episode. Thank you guys for talking in this hot room, and thank you guys for listening. We'll be back next Tuesday with another edition of The Giant Podcast.