Giant Bombcast 11-15-2011

Hey everyone, it's Tuesday, November the fifteenth, twenty eleven, and you're listening to the Giant Bomb Cast. I'm Ryan Davis, Vinny Caravella, and I'm also Patrick Kleppick. I'm also Jeff Gershman. I'm gonna do a lot of voices, and I've only got one more voice in my bag of tricks, and that's Bratt Shoemaker. It's amazing how I can do multiple voices at once. You're very good at it, thank you. It's just me.

It's just just one person in a room recording all these bits and then laying them over people don't know, and you can do like multiple at the same time, which I think it's really impressive. Yep, yep, three bop. Listen this it's the best. Everybody come here and do podcast acapella. But people that knows. You have puppets though, for everybody, which I think is weird because it's the podcast, But they're just sock puppets. I don't really put a lot of effort into them. Yeah, but you're working

all five of them at once. You're to figure that one asks and they're also our socks, which I think is kind of weird. Well, how am I supposed to make them true? If you know it's they're your socks. Stop taking my socks? Well, I need them for the puppets. Take care about how it's going. I don't know. This is weird. It started weird, Is it's going weirder? It was? It was weirder before we even start. We're gonna say, there's been a lot of weird

conversations going on. You have all that, Just put all that using our socks. Not the weirdest part. Yeah, no, No, weird place, absolutely not. The Internet is a weird places. Patrick Clapp keeping it weird. I'm gonna agree with you on that, and I'm not gonna elaborate. Guys, Let's talk about video games. Get off, Let's let's stop talking about not video games because it seems like that's just a bad idea for us. Talk about Skyrim. That's a video game. Hey, that's there,

we go, that's a nice safe topic. Yeah, there's a lot about a lot of different angles. We haven't talked about Skyrim. We couldn't talk about Skyrom. How do you guys feel about skyrims fucking awesome? I still haven't played any sky should play sky. I was really as he was super excited to play Skyrim. But then I just wound up watching Greg play twelve hours of Skyrim and then let me pause for a little bit. Did you watch a lot of it? Yeah? I went home to sleep and

then I just was like under the spell of Greg. Yeah. I couldn't I couldn't look away. I didn't know what it's going to happen. It's live. Ye, Seriously, I was just enjoying. I was enjoying all of the highlights, people quoting things that Greg was saying. This is the most realistic Bee I've ever seen in a video game. Yeah, we were we were kind of losing because we'd hear him from the room. Yeah, so Aslie Patrick and I would just start busting up. I'm Greg Savin.

I used to play twelve Hours of Oblivion and now I'm playing the new one. I thought it was amazing. Thanks Greg for doing it again. But yeah, I love how he could just turn it on. He just yeah, he's just he's got there was anything to turn on or off there that was just like, it's basically like he embodied everything that I want, which was why he was so engaging, because he's like I'm just exploring, figuring

this stuff out. But he's able to monologue through the entire thing and starts talking to the characters and kind of like goading them on, like do younta bring that? You got that all? You're dead? It's dead, which I was was great. It makes me wonder if he just does that when he played That's that's my question. Does he just have this dialogue going in his head or out loud? I don't know, but it was great. My wife watched the whole thing too, Did he really? My mom?

My mom watched a bunch of it. He's an enrapturing man. It's just it's it takes a certain skill set to do a monologue, a twelve hour monologue less alongside the game like that. So a lot of stuff in that game to riff on, Yeah, that game. The game is replete with things. It sounds like no one has seen everything yet. I think that's impossible. Like I'm at the point twenty five hours in like where like I kept thinking, well, I should I should just guide back the story because

I'm feeling overwhelmed, Like I'm looking at my quests. I have like fifteen normal active quests, but I don't even want to look at my miscellaneous because like that that's just terrifying. There's like forty miscellaneous quests just sitting in that

pile, and so I am kind of just refocusing on the story. I'm like, I feel like if I just get that out of the way, like this pressure will get off my shoulder, like where I can just kind of do whatever, like there's not less impetus to go forward doing things. I spent the statistic out on the quick look, but nine capital cities in the game. Yeah, I put in sixty hours. I finished the storyline,

I did all these guilds and stuff. Still haven't even gone into one of those cities to it anything in it, which one is that it's in the extreme north north. There's a museum there. So you guys are really enjoying It's fantasticism. Yeah, I thought I was. I thought I was tired of these types of games after Fall three and fought in the Vegas. But but they did it so much better. It's it's so much better Like this, This feels like the game they've been trying to make for the last

like ten years, and they finally got it right. Like in terms of just like scope or everything. Yeah, like quality of content, breadth of content, like different mechanical systems meshing together properly. Just it all just came together fuinnally like even even kind of technical polish, like it's not perfect, but it's a lot better than they've done before. Yeah, there's some some crazy things here and there. I fell through the world. Yeah you weren't

you weren't that bear? I was not? Yeah, I was actually saber the saber Cat. That's it sure looked like a bear. Hearing about this bear encounter, people going much about giants. Giants in this game when if they hit you with a direct hit, yeah, like over the head, I have to imagine maybe it's they should be jumping up for an air combo.

At the end of the time, I feel like it's had to been one of those like glitches in the game, and they were just like, this is too fucking cool, like because it totally doesn't mesh really, like as as regular as that game gets and it's got magic and stuff, to just see a saber cat spiral thousands of feet into the air spontaneously after one swing. She's on the other side of the world. That'll happen to you too. Ye. Yes, you'll see yourself shooting, but you don't survive,

right, you are dead one too. If you see yourself from the third person you air, you already go already. I wish they'd let you fall. Yeah, And I wish I wish. I wish there was a kill cam for that that saber cat, Like, I want to see where he ends. I wonder if it's just it's traveling too far too fast for them to like stream in the world. Totally possible, but something tells me a matter is going to figure that out. Well can you ever? Can

you wonder what the ceiling of that world is? It's pretty high? Yeah, yeah, those mountains. I mean the map is them rendering the terrain from like a super high distance, Okay, but I wonder to basically show the entire world At one time I realized that with with the map thing, but I wonder, like what the actual physical ceiling on the world is. I mean, it realized there's huge mountains and stuff. But so if they hit that sabercat, can you go to the map and see it, like

come near the camera as it as it is. That would be so you can never get strong enough to do that too bad guys, right, Okay, that is giant strength. That sounds like a deal. C Perk, just say, let's wait for the matters. Yeah, you need to see the run kind of does that also a couple of weird physics things where all of a sudden I was in the air my car and or their giants. No, there's no there's no magic in that game in all sorts of ways.

It sounds like magic because it sounds like there is no magic in it. Yeah, man, as much as people seem to enjoy the ridiculou stuff that happened in that quick look, yeah, I wish that we hadn't been rolling on the thing that I did on Friday. Yep, you're Brady Gedding. You're I mean, tiny spoiler about an ability you get by finishing the game. If you really don't want to hear about it, turning this off,

it's spoiled elsewhere. Okay, it's not a big shout that. In fact, you get a bunch of decent shouts by finishing the main stories, which is kind of what I've heard is finished that so that you can kind of have everything you're supposed to. I mean, it's it's great the way to handle that thing, because the main quest line just ends like no credits, no ending. I mean, events play out based on the end of

that quest, but you're you're moving around in it. You know, it's not like you're in some like Fallout esque like stitched cut scene orth And we always had the worry that maybe there wouldn't be dragons because if you haven't, if you don't have enough shouts, then you are dragon souls. You can't assign that's all the shouts. But that's not an issue. You can still

max everything out there. There are some kind of subtle ways that the world changes after after you finish the story, but like you're you're still free to roam. The dragons are still everywhere, Like it's still the same game anyway. So like you get some you get some good stuff by finishing it. But one of the shouts you get Summon's a dragon for you to fight stuff a companion, which is awesome. Yeah, so turns into a buddy Buddy

Middle Earth cop film. How to this go down? I went to I went to a giant camp and there happened to be a dragon circling nearby. So I shot the dragon with an arrow to aggro it. Now, everything that I've I've heard about this game is do not fuck with giants. Uh yeah, dragons are scarier than or the giants is scarier than the dragon. That's what I hear. I hear, I hear. The giants will end you more quickly. Dragon dragon Dragons have a rare one hit kill that kind

of sucks. Yeah, giants had Giants have a very frequent way kill, but dragons like to fly around in a circle a lot and and have their kind of set attack patterns which gives you plenty of time to heal up or or you know, kind of kind of deal with the dragon. But also like the if if you don't mess with the giants, they're pretty dossile,

right, the giants or mants? Is that right? They heard? Well, Brad, it sounds like you were setting up the tests for this because because I saw the results of what happened was basically like, let's let's test the boundaries of the sandbox. So and also could you even spawn didn't know what was gonna happen. So I attacked the dragon, like right next to this a giant camp and the dragon comes over and I'm like, all right, time to call my dragon in. So Dragon shows up and there's all

of a sudden, like a dragon dog fight going on overhead. Uh, And I think in the middute they're flying around in the air fight each other, like shooting fire at each other. And I'm having a little bit of a tough times. Look a little weird. They're trying to attract each other. There are the limits of how dragons behaved. They were doing damage because it's got like these set animation patterns, so it can only kind of do so much. But it was when it got weird that it got. Yeah,

it was like, let's fight some giants to this dragon party. So it right over and just like whacked a giant in the knee and he rolled in, and somehow they all started fighting each other. I don't dragon on dragon on giant. And then and then mammoth got involved because the mammoth was just there, uh, and he got hit with fire. They were all fighting each other basically. Yeah, Like I was just kind of at some

point, I was just stepping back and watching this stuff. And then I had another shout that you get towards the end that someone's like a spectral warrior from Sovereign Guard, right, which is like the afterlife, like the Viking afterlife or whatever. So like all of a sudden, this this like eight foot tall glowing warrior appears and he's got the shout, he's got the what's

it called unrunning force, the like for pushing. Yeah, so he appears and immediately does that on the giant and sends the giant flying like fifty feet and the dragons are still over here killing each other, and the mammoth is like bucking his tusks around all over the place, but just completely went as I remember, the giant killed the dragon, Yeah, the giant. Yeah,

the giant I think killed the bad dragon. Yeah, killed one of the dragons, and then you're my good dragon I think killed the mammoth, which actually like the corpse of the mammoth hit the corpse of the dragon and like turned into this big pile. Uh. It was intense, man, just the dragged all mess. It was so Yeah, it was so insane somebing that warrior and immediately having him shout the giant like like the length of a field. That was like that was the moment I feel like the meaningful

like dynamic random things like that happening. Is it was kind of missing from the previous Bethesda open world. Yeah, like you you would occasionally run into like I don't know, like a goblin fighting some villagers, or you know, it would just be random skirmishes in the desert or in the in the

wastelands or I didn't play bliving, but it was nothing that. It was nothing on the level of like a Red Dead Redemption where they're they had a certain number of scripted sequences that could kind of play out randomly in the world. It was just like, all right, here's some guys fighting, do you want to go fight with them? Especially with Vats, it was a lot more controlled because you were just really nice to not use VATS. I don't like that system at all anymore, and I like that it just doesn't

make sense for for Skyrim. I just it's just got bored. Yeah, the combat is just like remains. I mean, I'm twenty five, don't know how you're feeling at it. Like I've been wondering if this runs into the Bethesda problem of like you become all powerful and thus combat becomes boring. I's a little more at that point than than I would have definitely gotten easier. It'll die as much. Yeah, but there's still tough enemies out there.

I mean, and you have so many options that you know, it's not like Fault where it's it's kind of like, uh, here's different guns. You know, it's an energy weapon or a machine. Like. There's way more variety and how you can approach you situation, I think, And in Skyrim then you couldn't fall out. I think I tell a fray to dragon. I fast traveled and when I appeared, there was a dragon corpse kind of sort of inside me, sort of not And as soon as I

landed, I absorbed its soul. It was just like free dragon soul. Here you go and all the bones and scales and all that other stuff that comes with it. It's like great and awesome. Can unlock this? This? Uh disarmed dude's shout or whatever? Is there a level cap? It sounds like it's around eighty. Okay, what were you when you finish? I'm about I think I'm thirty one right now. And I think they said that like the ramp gets really steep post fifty is that what it is?

No? The thing about fifty is the enemies I think stop increasing or fifty is like where you're going to see the hardest dragons and stuff. Do you think do you think you would be able to gain enough levels to fill out a majority of the trees if you definitely not okay, like a good number of perks, Yeah, but can't you're talking about maxing, No, you can't. If you're talking about maxing out entire trees, you're not going to

be doing that many. There's enough, there's enough that you can respect your character essentially, probably kind of twice throughout the game if if you really like, they give you enough points that you can experiment down a path, realize at like I think all three of us started with heavy armor and then realize we all want to be light armor. And it's even though you can't take those points away, there's there's plenty that you're not gonna you can screw up.

And I made the switch before spending any points on heavy armor. So yeah, I'm just wondering, like if you beat it, you know, and you're kind of like a two handed or one handed guy, and then you're like, I want to try magic out you think there are enough points and just kind of tool around it. Definitely. And actually, I mean, I think it's one of the less overt triumphs of this game is that

they finally got this like hybridized class system totally working. So like you're go into the game, there's no tutorials, but like, here's how you use magic and increase your magic skills, and here's what you should do if you want to use two handed stuff, Like you just use the stuff and well, yeah, I mean it's really evident how you equip spells and like when you should use them and stuff. It's all really intuitive. But your skills

just go up as you use that stuff. You know, it's totally transparent. And then if you want to specialize, you just start putting all your perks into like two or three categories. How do you move up? Shouts? You find they're basically there are three levels for each shout, it seems like, and you get the dragon souls, you get the dragon souls, you have to find the words, and then once you find the words,

you have to spend dragon souls to unlock each individual word. Okay, so you get a soul from killing a dragon and you find the shouts, just okay, And that's hanging out in the world and all that stuff is regardless of if you're use magic. Yeah, that's totally sufferings. And that's like and it's nice because even a lot of those shouts are hidden in side quests. At a lot of them are completely non essential but like tied into the

fiction in some really cool ways. Yeah, but so you won't come across all of them unless you're engaging in the side stuff them out like that's a yeah. Yeah, the breadth of the fiction is just staggering, like the like the there are a bunch of the shouts are guarded by these eight dragon

Priests. The only reason I knew they existed is because they're in one of the loading screens and it's like, got this like little tool tip that's like telling the legend of the dragon priests that worship the dragons like three thousand years

ago or whatever. And then all of a sudden, I fought one that I just found like out of nowhere, and A they dropped really great loot, but B it's like, wow, that was part of the lore, and all of a sudden, no, it's like right here in my face and I'm actually fighting in like this so much depth, how much time you spend just wandering, uh or were you mostly on objective most of it? Yeah? Probably not. It's hard not to take a little a little like,

hey, you're near an undiscovered location. Markers like those things are so distracting, Like I can't not go after those want to see them. It's especially if there's loot inside. Yeah, but like, yeah, there's so

much good stuff to do with all those locations. It's even better than fallouts because they're just like they're accurately marked for what they are too, So you can also so instead of just being like little green arrows, like, well, something's over there, it's like you know, if that's a town or if that's what are those keystones? Those are what are those things called stones? Standing stones? It will it will tell you you can almost filter out

the things you I don't care about going to track that down. I'll go look at it later about towns or care about towns. You can care about a different cave that you can go loot like, it'll mark those. You can kind of like differentiate between what you want to go after. It sounds like it's incredibly rewarding to the player. You do stuff, you get rewarded I think I was gonna say about the skill system is that I am in

the midst of my second like class change right now. Like I started out going one handed and magic in the offhand, and then like at some point I stopped messing with magic uh and switched over to shield for offhand because there's actually some finesse involved in like blocking and shield bashing at the right time stuff like that. And I've been sneaking more lately, so like I'm starting to put points into the sneak and archery and archery man archery, archery. I've

been pretty awesome. I've been pushing that early. I was the first one to go into that. But it's it's so it's still reward. It's not the best shooting system, but man, you can you people once you get Once you get that lets you zoom when you're shooting an arrow, and like sneak attacks basically start one shotting guys, yeah, because you get twight two times damage and then with the zoom, especially if you have like I have

a bow that does like fifteen points of fire damage for every shot. It's like, so not only do they get hit for two damage, but then they are screaming and flay like a fire during the entire time. Patrick, what's your current build look like? Uh? I think we all because the game kind of starts you out as one handed magic and then uh, one hand with like a mace. They make that seem like a really good idea because because because they because that gives you a breath of options, like you

can mess with both. Rather than saying, like, you know, I mean Greg basically off the from the start. I think just ditched it and went to a two handed weapon, like he just he knew what he would bild. He one unce he was playing the Orc, which has like the Perserver rage ability. He was just completely busting skulls so objects destroy instrument of destruction. It takes so long to hit that power at tech with the double but I imagine when it connects, we would destroy. He was bowing guys

there, Yeah for sure. Yeah. Like people kept saying like, oh, he's playing on the easy difficulty, Like no, he wasn't. And he was indiscriminate there. He was killing MPCs and everybody did anything that was moving. I think he tried to kill a kid, but I'm not joking. Saw him sneaking up on a kid. I decided to go away. I didn't want to see the outcome of that. But the skill system is so well balanced that, like you can kind of dabble in everything and get

kind of pretty good at a lot of things. But if you if you really want to drill down and focus on like two or three things, you become insanely powerful in those In those two or three things. What's the horse situation? You can buy a horse and then you lose it if you get off of it, and like it'll just reappear anytime you fast travel, Like it'll just be nearby. It can die, definitely die. I read that it'll be at a stable if you if you lose it, get back to

the stable, it'll it'll be hanging out. But you can steal a horse if you want. Yeah, yeah, is it not consequential if you it's like stealing anything else, somebody sees you do it, Okay. Is it cheaper to pay the fine for stealing a horse than it is to just you lose the horse? I think if you stolen stuff, because it becomes yours, Like you know, Vinnie's horse, you really want to get just find a single guy in the wild riding horse and kill him. Yeah, and

then take the horse. The horse would see you. Yeah, did the crimes report if they if they don't see like the horses. No, I don't know if the horse capable of reporting crimes, but apparently chickens are certainly those are too. I saw someone they need the chickens thing. I choke that out, but like, yeah, so you'll you'll come across like a random group of people, and if you start attacking them, it'll say,

well, not ransoms on your head. But if you managed to kill the guy who had spotted you, then it'll just say your ransom has been clear. Nice. So as long as you as long as you track down all those witnesses, witnesses, you're cool. Or you just put pots on everyone's heads and steal all their stuff. Yeah, that could do that. Apparently, apparently I've seen YouTube videos of people just grabbing pots and line of sight. Yeah, putting it on an NPC's head, it breaks line of sight.

So then the other you don't mind the pot on their head. Apparently they don't care. That doesn't that doesn't bother them. Yeah, it's cool. So it's kind of like a hat. You can also it's just line of sight. You can also like physically drag an object just around a corner and then put it in your inventory. That doesn't count ride up to the dude on his own horse after we have stolen it. That's doubtful. I think that's doubtful. Oh, it sounds like there is a lot to do,

dude. Yeah, we've barely even talked about anything that's in this game. Like if you look at that, if you just like look at Howard's map, I mean, just christ that's there's still plenty of stuff. I have plenty of Like every time I go to like any spot on the map that's kind of empty, there's still like another eight locations. I haven't discovered anything. Like two months months until the DLC starts rolling. They said it's

gonna be a little while. They started working on it. They've sketched out some ideas, but Todd Howard was telling Wired, I think that they're gonna wait till after it's out. They're gonna go through the holidays, and then they'll go into production afterwards. They kind of want to two people respond to it. Seriously, looks like you could take like two hundred hours to see

everything. Yeah, plus they bought themselves time in the main game, Like I did every crazy everything in Fall three and probably seventy five hours, but it would take you easily double that too. Is there a completion ticker? Pretty detailed stat screen. There's a lot of different quest lines. There's like, you know, there's Thieves, Gild, Dark Brotherhood, there's equivalence of like the Majors and Fighters Skills. An overall game completion there's no there's no

single statistic. It's it's all like, how many quests for each of these factions have you done? How many main story quests? I've been doing Thieves Gild stuff. It's getting real good. Yeah. Did you say you've got some really good gear out of that too? Yeah? I mean the armor is like, the armored gives you thirty points of carry. The gloves help with lock picking, the boots help with sneak. How far down to that did you have to go? Because I'm at the point whereions where I couldn't

do that right now. Even even just joining the Thieves Gild gives you a really good set. So you're a pretty sneaky dude. I've become relatively sneaky. Yeah, But I'm kind I'm kind of capable of doing whatever. I was heavy on destruction magic for a while. But but like like Brad was saying, I've been using the shield more frequently. Oh really, you're actually getting into that. Yeah, did you get the I started doing some archery

too. I killed Dragon with it and went like, all right, maybe this is did you did you get the shield perk that slows down time when the night how HiT's fucking awesome, completely changes the combat dynamics When you get that, might have might have to give that a shot because because if they're slowed down, you have time to bash them out of their attack, basically

cancel their attacks before they can hit you. The reason I liked in the light armor arouse because then you start getting enough spells like stone Flash that essentially turns your light armor into heavy armor for combat situations. Put it put your armor up sixty points for sixty seconds, and which is more than what you need to get through any sort of decent combat scenario that you would have wanted that heavy armor, and you get to keep your stam in a boost.

Plus. I mean, if you're dumping a lot of perks in the light armor, then your light armor is like thicker than heavy armor at the point anyway, Yeah, you just have to go pretty deep down there. You can get glass armory. I have a glass mace right, and have a glass helmet. I love glass armor, have a glass bow. I think, how's this stuff look good? Yeah? Good? That's PC look good?

Good? Yeah. I thought about switching here. You gotta put intoteen hours on three sixteen, and I was like, oh man, I should just get the PC version and then I could, you know, mess around some mods or something like that. But I was like, I've already gone so deep here. That's kind of how I feel. But I hear even the PC version though, that controller it's the best way to play send interfaces. Yeah. Like it's kind of kind of mixed reactions to the PC of

UI like it. I think it works pretty well, but it's very clear. I mean, it's the same UI. They didn't really change much, so it's clearly designed around a controller. But I think it works pretty good. Mods are forthcoming. I'm sure there's a bunch that are already stuff. Oh you stup now, Yeah, there's a bunch of hack mods and be as I said, like, the official stuff's coming but I think I think

we're gonna get a couple patches before we get community. Like the dartified UI guy, it's always out there, like a week after bethesta game comes out with a new UI, but I don't know what he's up to. Yeah, they community's hardcore. Whatever you're upset about, some someone will address that

in the next couple of months. Fucking response to this game, though, is insane, Like, yeah, I don't think I've ever seen such a unified, like positive reaction to the single game where everyone playing a game at once. That just doesn't happen as well because it happens, you know, you think. I think back to like Modern Warfare two, like Launch Day for that. You look at your friends list, it's just just everyone down

playing it. Uh, And it didn't happen with Modern Warfare three. Yeah, but Skyrim seems like I have more people on my friends list that have played Skyrim than have played three. Yeah. I looked last night and it was like eighty percent of the twenty something people that were online on my list, we're playing playing skyro Well know how they look at that like versus Rage and they're just like, man, what did you like? What was the

thing. The response to rage was pretty decided negative tepid to negative, depending on where you go. But like I see I see people in some of the most crotchety, stubborn, like PC oriented communities on the Internet saying stuff like this is the best game I've ever played, or I like this better than Moral Wind, like it's it's it's intense. I can't wait to get into it. You should. How's the main story. It's good. So it's definitely not just closing oupliving gates. I didn't even do that for for

reference. I didn't. I played like two quests of the Oblivion storyline and stopped and this this is varied and pretty compelling. Did they have a reference any of that stuff? Does seem to come out? Oh yeah, a little bit. Yeah, there's there's books and stuff, because a lot of times that was one of the things I had forgotten when this came out, was that like it's not like, you know, five years after or something

like, this is the fourth asically a different era of the world. Yeah, like like like empires have practically risen and fallen in the time since Oblivion. Their lizard men, Yeah, they're still there. It's also cat people not very nice. Those men are always dicks to me. It's cold, that's true, that's true. They're probably they're probably this sucks lizard man, I would say. I would say the cat people are the bigger dicks. Personally, you must say. Just feel bad for the Elves. Else don't

have some of the Elves or ship heads. But there are persic the Hiles. Well, no, the Hiles are the ones with the dominions. Yeah, there's so there's all of the film wars, like the ruling body of the Auld Married Dominion. So much fucking fiction in this game. But yeah, so there's like power struggle going on between the Nords and the high Elves. But then the Nords look down on the dark Elves. I think, yeah, they're they're can find two, Yeah, they're can find the gray

Quarters and just be like the slums of the Northeast. I forget yeah, wind how it's in the northeast, right, right, But there's also a civil war going on between the indigenous Nords and the imperials from the Southern province who are trying to subjugate them, and there is there is no clear you know, actually support this side. There are arguments to be made for why

every side sucks. But there's a whole dual quest line associated with the Civil War because you can pick aside and join it and then go through all these quests like capturing cities and fortresses and stuff. But yeah, like who do you join? Because they're all dicks, Like nobody nobody's hands are clean in that in that conflict. Gonna say dragon Age persecuted elves, Whicher persecuted elves because because the one designers love racism, they just can't stand like actual racism

with his fantasy elves. It's like, oh, it's okay to do that. How the elves have fallen? But everyone wants to take elves down a peg, That's what I'm saying themselves in this game. We're asking for it. They yeah, well, high elves are always i mean usual, usually hypes, wrong, wrong side of history, high elve types. I mean, they're really asking for it, to eat, eating in our ends and sleep sleeping with our women. That's separate but equal, that's all that's I

can't I can't believe those elves. Did you hear that Perry was hanging out with an elf? You elves breaking? If only there was a message war, but we could all talk about those like minded people. Finally there were eighty four elves live. If the racism isn't doing it for you, there's a some good old fashioned religious persecution as well, right, fantastic or the Talos stuff, Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's stuff's handled really well.

It's interesting. There is like a complicated, like weave of social dynamics going on, like this god that's been sponged from history even though because he was he is like began life as immortal. That's part of the treaty, right, Yeah, the treaty was that you expunged the white gold concord it. Yeah. Yeah, So there were eight gods, but then the emperor that

like united all the provinces like three thousand years ago, tiber Septim. Tiber Septim became deified Talos, yes, and like was renamed Talos, and it's also as worshiped as the ninth god, I guess, like a pope. So that's why they say like by the nine in a lot of cases. But then you encounter other people that say by the eight because the elves don't like it that one of the gods god Pierce. Yeah, like, the Elves really hate it that one of the gods is a human manufactured because yeah,

because the Elves consider themselves like descended from from godhood. They're the chosen people, right and humans are. So the Civil War is actually based a lot of a lot of it is based around that specific to the Nords really worship Talos hardcore, and and the Imperials don't want them to. And the imperial has signed the White Gold kind of chord it with the Elves say, it's cool that outlaw talos worship as one of the terms of the peace treaty.

Outlaws worship on the outlaws have talots exactly. Yeah, So now the Nords are fighting the Imperials over that issue. The Imperials are the US, the Elves are Israel, and the Nords are Palestine. Palestine. Yeah, exactly right. But you figured it all out one to one to one race field back that one layer. It's all right there. Read between the lines, Read between the lines. It takes a while to wrap your head around

all that fiction. It's very overwhelming it first, because you don't like, especially if you never played like really deep into an Elder Schools game before, Like all the names but like what's it's just given time, Like eventually you'll start to connect the dots because you'll spend so much time in that world that you can't help but put it all together. Like like I hope, I hope we didn't just undersell the story by like laying it all out there like

that. But after dozens of hours of absorbing, absorbing that stuff through osmosis, like you start to like feel like you really you know, I mean

complicated. I love like Mass Effect. I think has brilliant fiction in a in a sci fi setting, and they go deep in that similar way of establishing these these relationships that go so far back of like well these you know, this is an alien race that's been you know, traveling through space with this other alien race for like ten thousand years, so they have all this

backstory even if humans just recently got into the mix. You know, there are these other kind of factors at play, and the Dwarves are long gone, right the Dwarmer Yeah, yeah, I guess, I guess they were in moral wind. Yeah they had awesome arm But even even though they are just it turns out really turns out they are elves who have everyone who who's not human is just an elf? Practically? Yeah, I guess actually, yeah, yeah they are are they have an offshoot of the high Elf.

I have a side quest to collect blood samples from every type of the Elf, and and the list is like Orcs and Hiles and dark elves and all the same. Man. Yeah, they're human, you're any part elf. There's there's lots of different kinds of here that makes you now different kinds of elves, and then the cat people and the closer people. Do you have Do I have enough Elf in me that I can go live on an elf reservation? What was your great grandfather? Everything? Elf? Here's a quarter

Elf? No, then you're done? Sixty four? Yeah? Elf? Yeah, yeah, you can live there. Okay, great, Yeah, but you can't sell cigarettes? Hey, Elf, you want to hang out of these blankets for me along? Get that tax break, that Skyrim tax break if you're if you're roll an elf, you don't have to pay it. Sounds good? Yeah, I don't have to pay tax on stuff. You can open your own casinos wherever you want. Elves have it hard, huh, some of them? Yeah yeah, yeah, specific elves, especially

if you're going around killing them all. I think this game does a lot better job than mass Fact of of presenting the fiction like inline with the world, as opposed to like the mass fect just has a codex, Right, yeah, sit there in a codex, reading like menu entries. True.

Uh, this it's all. It's all contextual conversations between there's a certain amount of books, there's a certain amount that happens contextually in conversations, and you do get some of that, and then you know, there's still I think you know, like he talks a lot of you know, like deals with kind of the past history of some of the masters, but the details of that stuff you wouldn't necessarily get if you didn't go and read right, all

right, what I'm saying is that it's almost yeah, yeah, it's almost unavoidable in this game. You just can't help. But like, especially if you just end up reading a bunch of the books, you find like those things are incredibly detailed. Well, I mean whatever the delivery mechanism, Like, I can appreciate that stuff. So if it's if it's done elegantly,

then all the better. But also the as effect fiction, it's solely based around you being human interacting with all these as I mean that is this storyline, whereas this you can roll anything. Yeah, you can be whatever you want, and it just seem like people react. Yeah, there's a significant amount of unique dialogue based on what race you guys all humans for you. I think it is one of the one of the one of the active powers you get, uh, I can't remember is the I think it's a high

off because one of the elves. It's a you can get command over animals. But I didn't think that useful. Yeah, I think it was high off, which gives you, uh, sixty seconds basically like your your magic like recharges like instantly, and you can cast those you can cast those specific race spells once a day. So I picked that just because that seemed really useful because I wanted to use a bunch of magic for my character. I think me and Jeff both ended up with the Imperials. Yeah, because they

have they have I think they have better speech, is right. I think that's what it was bonus. But it was actually one of the very few things that I feel like is inferior in this is that they're not a lot of speech checks, right, I mean, it's speech goes up just from you buying and selling stuff. But yeah, there aren't a ton of like intimidated since you can't, since you can't actively don't points into speech, not

a lot of not a lot of opportunities to increase it. Trainer. You can buy a speech training if you want, but but rarely you find yourself in a conversation with someone and you can just like talk your way out of a quest legs or something like. Those things do pop up, like you'll you'll get speech options where it'll be intimidated or persuade or bribe or whatever. But it actually makes me wonder if you don't even see those options if your

speech is not at a minimum level. I don't know, because I see all three show up all the time, one of them always at least one of them always works. So yeah, I mean, but you can't fail.

Yeah, you can definitely, and that will say I'm not a big fan of like games always surfacing numbers, but it is a little frustrating when you don't get like a tangible understanding of why you Yeah, like, did I fail because it's a dice role like house written because he doesn't respond well to intimidation anytime there is like a speech chick it says intimidated at INtime.

It's one of those like a yeah, if you failed it, so is intimidated a speech check or is that just like you're stress like and fall out, except and fall out. It gave you a percentage chance that you would succeed, And in this it's just you either you see that you have the option, but you don't know how how well you'll do with it. But that's that's a mode I would really like to see, is like, expose more numbers, but that could easily be exposed. Just let you know how

much you're gaining sneak at any given moment. I have it just a bunch of bars and everywhere. Yeah, I want bars. I just want the numbers popping off. You've been playing chants call of Duty, right, I wanted one. I wanted. I wanted to output. I wanted to output everything Prestige and Skyram. I want. I wanted to log to a text file so I can look at it later, see what happened under the hood. Yeah, there you go. Haven't pop up on your second mond watch

all the bars. I want real time performance analysis. A second screen with all the bars actually would be awesome. There's your WU version. The reason I bring up the speech thing is that so this is me and you have had the same experience like giving up magic. Yeah, probably because you kind of got bored with the spells you had, right, Yeah, I didn't like the second level of fire of the like the fireballs because it's I miss a lot and then that totally sucks. So I had been sticking with the

first level, just kind of fire hose thing. Well, the thing, the thing I suspected that seems to have been confirmed is that you don't get access to those higher tiers of spells until you skill up in that. In that way, so there's like there's like three more tiers of destruction magic that like we've never even seen. Okay, so yeah, I'm up to I'm sticking to magic. I'm at the intermediate stuff and I just I just found those like some wizard was selling them and then I was able to use them.

I have forty in destruction right now. Frustration it's about where I'm around there. So then I kind of gave up on it. But like if you played a pure magic character, like you could probably get some pretty I was thinking it's about dropping shields and moving towards because they are magic sponge shields. Yeah, so it so, it's just it's just it's sort of like the base level spells. You hold the button down to put up a block, but it's a magic block, so it'll absorb spell up to a certain

point and and also you know, mitigate some damage. It raises your armor, it does sound, and also it'll it'll boost my restoration stat. So is that more anti magic though than anti physical? It is. It is more anti magic, but it raises your armor stat when it's on, so it'll kind of work for both. Huh, you're gonna read that book, Brad? What if that book is in that would be pretty good. I thought the end game books are totally worth reading though, and they're all very

short, but they're all like four or five pages long. But like, you get really into reading them early on, just as you're trying to wrap your head around the fiction. Then you hit a point where you're like, I can't. Like, you walk into a broom and there are twenty five books. They weigh anything no more than one. The quest ones don't, the random ones do, so it's not really worth holding on to all of them because they're skill books, then they're worth a little bit more. So

sometimes they'd be worth skill books more than anything in the world. I wish the game made it clearer. What was a skill book? You have to read it, right, you just you don't have to flip the pages. I love how many books and notes and stuff. There are the spawn quests too, Like, yeah, there's nothing better than cracking a book and immediately just like new quest added your log. Wow, so much stuff, Like there's there's dudes running up to you all the time, like like hey,

I'm a courier. I got a note from an anonymous so and so here you go and you read go to this cave quest right, sure, And it's hard to time. Much of that is the Radiant AI stuff, And I'll give the game credit to that. It's it's it's dynamic quest system. It feels totally I mean, maybe that'll feel different, like once you've cleared everything out, you can more clearly see what is being dynamically generated. But it does a good job of faking you into thinking this is a scripted moment

to point you in the direction of something. So at one point I was like, they must have like five hundred people working on this game to put all this stuff in there. But yeah, then you start to realize it's all just like it's a system that shaking care of it under the hood, just like connecting all these different dots together to to funnel your progress. What's the saving like, it's total the hard save like you choose standard stuff.

The biggest change is that they save three tiers of auto saves now, so you never you never get stuck in the situation where like people are chasing you through a door and you run through the door, and then that save is just fucked because you can always roll back. Can't can't save in combat? Yeah, oh you can't. You can save almost any time. I think the only time you can't save is in the middle of the conversation, and

you can. You can. There are even variables in the menu to set for how often it should make auto saves and stuff like that on the console versions and all versions. How did what does that change? The biggest one is that you'll notice it auto saves a lot when you pop up the like the main character menure. Yes, you can set the interval of how often it does that, so you can set it like every five minutes that you pop up the menu. It'll it'll make an auto save. It's deep.

You could almost go through go through the game. Never make it a hard save. But I don't. I don't think I wouldn't recommend it. You'll learn quickly because because it it doesn't auto save in the world. In the world you set that menu, you can set us super low. That's what I'm saying. Like, if you said five minutes, then every time it crosses the five minute mark and you haven't popped that thing up, the next time you do, it makes its safe, yeah, because you'll you'll be

going through a dungeon. And then if you've gotten forty five minutes and and hadn't pulled up your character menu, you'll just have lost forty five minutes. So you learn pretty quickly to do the thing you doing with as the games, which is save every five minutes, because you're gonna be pulling up the menus anyway. I'm scared, Vinnie, I'm ready. Are you ready? Your body ready? That's how I felt for a while. You just have to embrace it. Just dive in, just go, just start walking,

just go. I just I mean, I remember I bought Oblivion the day came out and did not play it for like two months. There's something we said to be part of the like you got saying I have not. I can't recall a game that has seen such universal praise as as Skyrim. People

seem to really, really really enjoy that they finally did it. They like they made Oblivion and it had its problems which were numerous and deep, and then they made like it basically took a break from the stuff to make Fallout, and like seem like they picked up a lot of lessons along the way and all that stuff just kind of came to fruition in this name. Well, if any Caravel, you've not played any Sky, what have you been playing? Man? What do you think of Uncharted? I'm enjoying it.

It's not it's not in my soul like the second one one. It's not I feel like I'm I don't feel like I feel like I'm journeying with Uncharted three, but I'm not like I'm not like a tourist with Uncharted three. I don't feel as close to Nathan this time around, Like it's not just he and I are just not buddies going through an adventure. Like too many people I think in Uncharted three, like there's a gang of dudes, there's there's Charlie, there's a that's about the same miss girl. I don't know.

I felt I felt a little more intimate and there's no tens in though, right, there's well then I felt like I feel like there is kind of a tens in surrogate at a certain point. There's some kind of tens in moment in the co op. Also, I thought he might be in there. Actually they actually bring like assets and stuff back from two for the co op. I have not been in the game. Okay, that's kind of he speaks, yeah, but speak, Yeah, that's right, spoken

like Nepolis or whatever. I don't know. Something something about it. I'm not quite sure. I can't put my finger on it. But uh, it could just be that two was it was a more uh unique at the time, But I don't know. Something does seem like the characters this time around. Maybe everybody is supporting Drake this time, right, He's got bigger supporting crew, you can, whereas in two it felt like you weren't quite

he was kind of on his own, pissing everybody off it. There's not as much ambiguity in the like you can you can take a lot of the relationships for granted in this game. Yeah, like you kind of know what established stuff nowhere. Most everybody in this game is at in their lives and stuff like that. There's there's You're not You're not guessing like you were when people were double crossing back like backstabbing like left and right in the game.

Right, I mean the last game started off right with just double cross after double cross, and and this one just seems maybe a little bit more I think I was safe. It's I mean, it's different because all of the really meaningful character stuff in three is happening in flashback Like it's it's it's not like the meaning the real meaty character stuff in in a chart of two was

happening right alongside this crazy ass adventure that they were on. Yeah. I just finished the part with the pirates, and like that part just seemed like it just came out of like it was like a weird side turn that just kind of came out of left field and like introduced that new character that the pirate guy all that stuff, and it was just like, you know, where did this come from? There's no I have no investment in this really other than to move on past this part. Uh. I mean I am

enjoying it. I mean I think it's great. It's just uh, maybe not as much like I would almost put it down and start the skyroom, which is kind of crazy to say, given that I'm probably about two thirds, which you should just finish it. But yeah, I'm enjoying it a lot. They still do fantastic things with dialogue, and then the character interactions are probably the most natural so far in any game. That the banter is great. It doesn't feel like they're trying that hard. The animations are great.

Sometimes the animations are so good. When they they're they fluff a little bit or something goes wrong, it really breaks that kind of you know, he does a lot of the wall touching and kind of like the turns are well done. His head always seems to be pointing in ther interaction, so when it doesn't work, when he gets caught in a corner or something real quick like oh a video game, right, I forgot for a second rag doll. Yeah, when he does the rag bell, Yeah, yeah,

I'm enjoying and it's moving by really quickly. I've hit a couple of harder encounters, Like there was a part on the Pirate stuff that had to do like five or six times, and it was just like, oh, yep, I don't want to do this anymore. Okay, I'll just I'll just get in a spot where I could shoot everybody with rocket launchers. So I found that hard though, Like just playing on normal, I found that hard. Yeah, because like the enemies in that game will flank you hard,

and they stream in. They just keep coming, and yeah, they they'll come in volume and they will try and flush you out. They will flank you, like they aren't just going to sit up from their cover and take pot shot, so they will as well. So they'll be they'll be guys shooting rockets at you while everybody else. Right, there's the guy with the shotgun is running up on you, while the guy with the RPG is suppressing you from afar. You can get it, can get harry, I think

if you play enough of it, you can. I mean not that most people will, but you can. You can get inside and kind of deconstruct the behavior of the others and stuff. I mean I played through it on normal on the debug, and then played on hard on on the retail and like got through it faster on Hard than I did on normal because at some point you just kind of figure out what to expect. Yeah, and that's that's actually one of the things that bugs me a little bit. And again

these are all just kind of superficial things for me. I am enjoying it, but the character the bad guys are. You know, there's a normal dude, there's a guy with armor on, and then there's the big thug guy you kind of got to do the little like almost quick time event kind of fights with. And then on the I've only seen up to the next set of guys, which are the pirate guys. There's a normal dude, there's a guy with armor on, and then they have their version of the

bay thug guys a band down on. Yeah exactly, like they just have like kind of different tears of enemies. Yeah. Yeah, but I mean at some point you're making a concession to the amount of designing and like art art art designing man hour or something. Absolutely, but it almost reminds me of like a side scrolling brawler of like that. You know, just kind of like this guy's got a different health part and here like here's a bobo and then here's a bobo with hair, and you have to fight them exactly

the same way, the same technique. So that that part was kind of like, as soon as I saw the first didn't I didn't mind the armored guy, but as soon as I saw the big thug guy come out of the pirates, I was like, oh, man, really you just have like a genetic clone of that other guy with a different texture on. I mean, at least they make them similar enough that you can recognize that,

Oh, that is that kind of guy. I'm going to need to approach them like this because if if they made them like physically different but then just had the same kind of rule sets for how they behave oh no, Yeah, it was like, oh, I have to relearn this every time. No. I think the part that just bothers me a little bit is that it is exactly the same appro what you do is like they don't have specific enemies for the you know, pirates or whatever. It's not a unique enemy

in that sense. It's like just kind of carrious, So you're kind of doing the same combat with everybody. They just look, that's all the guys there are that's in the world. You're either a dude, Yeah, a dude who got some armor should be like sort of better. And then dude who's just big. She's big, he doesn't need armor. He is the armor. It doesn't even like guns. It looks like, I don't why. I mean, you're a feat tall, you don't you got all the

guns you needed right here? Kind of I'm kind of surprised to see some of the reaction to Uncharted three out there. It seems like the people are like, there's the people that are just straight up down on it, which which seems all strange. I mean, it definitely seemed like a well made game. Yeah, but I think it's it's you know, it's it's because of the high mark that the previous one set that people are are looking at

this one and going like, the puzzles are really good. I mean, the puzzles and stuff and the things that come to you from two Uncharted for are still there. Yeah, what about Batman? Have you if you played more Batman come around on it really haven't any time. I was starting to like it a lot more. Yeah, it seems like Uncharted Batman both. I'm seeing like, yeah, some some pretty low opinions. I think that's

a lot of that feels kind of like stuff we've alluded to before. But just like this generational fatigue with franchises and mechanics and and it's just it's kind of how I felt about it, kind of feel about this game. Yeah, like twenty eleven kind of like week thirds, I feel like we've gotten a lot of just like I think we're just over. We think we're just hitting a wall. It means not not the broken record, but it's totally the Lucy k bit of everything's amazing and nobody's happy. You know, I

don't know. I think the games are really well done, but we've but we've played these games. Yeah they're not. They're not doing anything new. It's it's it's it's or not doing it enough new. I guess. So it's I don't think that they're amazing. I guess yeah, I would, I would take away from the because like they're already accomplished. Yeah, this is better. It's a generalization, but but I mean, you can't point

at things that these games are doing badly. Yeah. It wasn't until I was until I played through Assassin's Creed Revelations over the weekend that I thought like, yeah, like because we we've talked about like a you know, a new generation of systems of consoles here on the podcast a few times. Uh, and I don't know if kind of like, you know, it's three sixty stuffs looks well enough and whatever, but after playing throughout, like yeah,

we need not to say that's a bad game. But it was just sort of the realization of, yeah, like we've kind of hit this weird wall of this is as much as we can do, and like we can make minor tweaks to it and adjust it here and there, but these games are going to be these games. Like you know, I think the annualized franchise stuff is a little bit different. Like what you're asking those ubi Stoft

teams to do in you know, these twelve months cycles. Assassins Creed Is is an outlier, but it's still impressive what they do in twelve months on those games. Like that's assets. Yeah, Like they just have six there's six teams working. They work Revelation, these six teams and there at the start that are listed at the start of the game, and they just they just go down the list like just before anything happens in that game. It's just like, you know, you be soft Montreal, you be soft Massive.

But I feel like that is a game that's the tech new technology could actually really help out with make everything more expansive, better physics, look sharper, Like that's a game the same game play could be. Well, I mean, they've got bushes, now what there are flowery bushes that you can go and hide. In an extent, it was new technology that enabled assassins for read in the first place, if you couldn't do those crowd dynamics on

the old console. But but it's not something that's just and I'm not trying to be little then, but it's not something that's just a pure first person shooter where like you just get better graphics and kind of like natural looking environments. Like there's a lot of stuff going on on the driving game, the experienced, same type deal. Yeah, like the experience can be bigger. There's systems. Systems get choked by rams, systems get choked by processor speed,

like the things that are blocked. There's only so many clever things you can do for me before you just hit a wall. So what's what's the deal with Assassin's Creed it's it's good, yeah, but it's not as good as the previous ones were. I feel like we are we have hit then the diminishing returns on the year every year sequels for that, for that franchise like that. That game brings pretty much everything that Brotherhood did, and I

really like Brotherhood. I thought the the you know, the Assassin's guild stuff buying you know, businesses around town, creating this empire, this crazy assassin empire in town. That stuff was really cool. That's back. I thought the multiplayer stuff was like a pleasant surprise, and I think that they've expanded on that and some there's there's like a dozen modes in the multiplayer in that

game. It's nuts wow, which sometimes is too much, and sometimes they don't uh do a great job of explaining how it makes one different from the other. Well even just like what's going on, Like there are definitely some where I was like, Okay, I really have no idea what the rules of this mode are, and and kind of just the troll and air eventually figuring out like oh okay, this v I P that I'm trying to protect isn't an actual player. It's just an AI that I have to protect.

That's why I don't ever get to be the VIP in this mode because here vip. Yeah, that's a phrase that gets used in other multiplayer game type suits. You know, you have certain expectations about that, and that's not true in uh in Revelations. But the stuff that that they add for for

Revelations, you know, there's a new city you're going. It's it's taking place primarily in Constantinople, which just kind of feels like like half of you know, the Italian cities in Assassin's Creed two and half of the Middle Eastern cities in Assassin's Creed one. It's kind of that, you know, Constantinople is like East meets West. It's where Europe and Asia meet the exactly.

And it feels like that, like it feels like, oh, we took a little bit of the kind of you know, the the world design of this one, a little bit of the world design of that one, and it kind of throw them together. So it's like, isn't that the one that actually historically was conquered so many times that like the oh yeah, and it just became you thinking of Istanbul and yeah, and yeah, constant and they call it both, they call it constant double, they call it Istanbul.

They've got like eight other names for it. There's Byzantines, there's Ottoman. Like, yeah, there's just there's a shitload of different things going on, but none of that is really I don't know, like your your main quest that that et CEO is on in this game. Uh, Like there's opposition. There are templars fucking everywhere constantly, and they take many different forms, but there's like I feel like they had really good core villains in past

Assassin's Creed and you don't really get that focus in this. It's like et CEO starts the game with a very specific quest and like by the end of the game, he has accomplished that quest, and that's the game for the most part. Like there's some some subplots about, you know, the royal family, and there's this bookseller that you get hooked up with and have a relationship with of sorts, but mostly it's just like that's just gotta go do a thing. He does a thing, and that's that's the game. Uh

yeah, yeah, it's game. That's the thing is that that that title is misleading. I feel like there's this game is very short on revelations, because that's the thing. Like I feel like after Brotherhood, like I kind of like I want to play this, but I also feel like I could maybe skip this year, Like what what? What is the story important stuff?

This is? I mean, the thing is like it's it's not that significant to the greater So, I mean, Desmond is kind of like the core of the Assassin's Creed story, right, Like for everything else that changes, Desmond is is the constant at least so far. Not to say that there's hints that that'll change, but all of this takes place inside of his head like these obviously obviously they mostly do, but he is like one of this game is is virtualized. So there really isn't any forward movement on Desmond's

story. All you're really getting is a whole lot of et CEO and a little bit of All tiear So what happened? They don't get equal time? No, not at all. At the All Tires segments, there's five of them, they are very limited to scope. There's no open world elements to them. It's a super narrow path. It's it's almost more story related than it is like action. This feels misleading Yeah, it feels grossly misleading about

this product. I think they have kind of sold this as being like the you know, two of them together or whatever, and actually it sounds like the Catwoman of this game. It's actually it's weird. It's weirder than that, because all right, so you're trying to get these artifacts, right, there are these these discs that you're trying to find for a reason. Let's just say, but when you get them or I'm sorry, when et Ceo

gets them, et Ceo recalls an all Ti year memory. So keep in mind, Desmond is already recalling et Ceo because he is in the animus, and then inside of this animus simulation, et Ceo is going and find this thing that's allowing him to recall memories. So it's it's like two layers in and I wish they would have played with that more. They don't like that is a crazy thing that's happening. If you actually think about it. In in the fiction, you're like job placement. But yeah, they don't.

They don't really ever go into that. So yeah, the ultiyear stuff is is pretty limited, so there there is no forward movement on the events at the end of Brothers a very minor amount. So would you if they say they were making another et CEO game, would you be like, yeah, sure, there's more story. I know they ought not. It would look really bad. Basically it wouldn't, but it would look really bad based on the way this game goes. I'd say, yeah, they should move on.

But but do you get closure at least do you feel like you're done with it? I mean it's pretty old by the end of this one, right, No, I wouldn't say you get a ton of closure at the end of Brotherhood. Yeah, I totally. He could have passed the time him that era, that era, like I had no interest in any alt Ear stuff at all, And yeah I don't. I don't think I'm gonna

like the opening. The opening premise of this game is is Desmond's mind is all fucked up and he needs to go and play out the rest of the Altai Year and et CEO stories to get his mind back in order before the animus deletes him. Everything. Everything about this game just sounds like filler. It just sounds like another annual stop out, which you know, like it's

well made, which we anticipated for Brotherhood. We thought Brotherhood was going to be that, and then Brotherhood kind of brought it and brother had brought it hard even the story beats. Yeah, big significant forward movement in that game. This I don't feel it is quite as much. It feels like that the story we all want to see go forward, Like they have these like two minute chunks they're just doling out with these with these other games and the

and like new mechanical stuff I'm not a huge fan of. Like there's basically tower defense, like they've they've kind of started tying together some of the system that were a little more separate in Brotherhood, such as the tower stuff. Well, there's the tower defense stuff, but to even get to that, I have described like three other systems. First, because there's all, right,

there's templar dens all throughout town. You can go and find the captain in those, kill them, light the tower, and then that becomes an assassin's den. Had that in Brotherhood. Yeah, and you also have the whole like international uh like assassin's guild thing where you are recruiting these these assassins in Constantinople and then sending them off on missions in other parts of the world. Like all it's it's this, the Facebook games still work Mediterranean area tie

to the same Facebook game or a different things. So no, but then but then the the that meta game, the like you know, sending your assassins out of town to go do jobs. You can then send them permanently to those locations and then they will be defending assassin's dens in those play bass from templar attacks. So if you keep a presence in these other towns, and again you don't see these places, it's just like in a menu,

like all right, I say this assassin goes over there. If you're able to maintain a presence there, then you get like daily XP and daily money just from from having that. So you've got these assassins guilds or these these

assassins dens in town. Once you get one of those, one of your guild assassins up to a certain level, then he can become a master assassin, which means that then he protects that den, because if you don't have a master assassin at pretaining a den, I think this is right, and you get your templar awareness to a certain level, which is basically if you go and do too much gangster shit or recruit too many assassins, you know,

burn down too many templar bases whatever, their awareness will become high and anytime they see you, they will try and jump you. And then also they will try and retake the assassins dens that you took from them originally, and then to defend from that. It goes into this tower defense game, which is basically like one of the two or three sounds like a Facebook game. New additions, know what it is. They've added a lot of menus

to the game. That's what I kind of feel like. I feel like they're their most significant additions to this game mechanically are like menus, like more fun menus. I don't don't sound like I don't like the tarre defense thing at all. Actually, the Brotherhood stuff I fell deep into. I spent a lot of time doing that stuff, and I really enjoyed it. But

the Tire Defense stuff I really didn't like. I never cracked it. I never figured out what the right balance was because it's it's basically like there's two or three different levels that you can do this twer defense on. Like it

seems like they've made two or three different paths. Basically, it's just a single path you have two rooftops on on either side of the road, and at the end of the road is you know, your den, and you can choose to put different types of assassins on the rooftops, and you can also shoot cannon fire at the at the temple our troops that are coming in.

And you know, if a certain troops get in, then the life bar on your thing goes down, and if you don't defend, you know, through the end of the waves, then they get to retake it at a certain point. I was just letting them like retake these these these dens because it's easier for me to then afterwards just go in, use use my assassins that I have on hand, Just find the captain, murder him,

relight the tower, and take it over, and that's it. And then go in and get my and then go get my fucking master assassin, lock that den down, and then not have to worry about a lot of shaking heads around this table. None. None of that sounds cool. So yeah, that's the thing. Is like the new stuff they added and brotherhood was awesome, like almost almost you know laterally, yes, and that stuff is still here, which is good, and that stuff is still fun, but

the new system they've added I don't care for as much. You know, they've done some stuff with the You've got this hook blade now that basically just lets you climb buildings faster, which is nice because, hey, you've been playing Assassin Creed now for four games. You know what's up with climbing? You used to want to get up there more quickly. Yeah, so they let you do that, although at the same time they make some of the towers way taller, uh, to kind of make it so that you're still

climbing as much time. I guess. I don't know. Did you make some bombs? Yeah, there's bomb crafting. You forgot it, completely forgot about everything I've heard about it is like I didn't touch it. It just sounds like you think you could or you couldn't. But they had these bomb crafting spots everywhere. And also the bomb crafting spots are usually runecks to where you go and do the assassins or send assassins off on missions, so it's

convenience. Yeah. I'm over here already, so I might as well do them. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely good for distracting guards. Money bomb and us. I didn't get the money bomb that that often you make, you make a fool's gold bomb, so you're just like throw it out and it'll like it's it's it's like the more explosive, violent version of throwing coins out on the street. Would you still do? And that's the other thing is

everything literally everything from Brotherhood is still there. There's still all these shops that you can buy and then you get a discount, and then you know, you bringing in regular money from that you got to go to the bank at regular intervals to pull money out, which is still kind of weird. There's that underground network, uh, you know, like the tunnel system, so

you can fast travel from point to point pretty easily. I'm trying to think what else there's you know, mercenaries and thieves and gypsies that you can and gypsies replacing the cortisons that you can hire and then have roll around with you for limited time. Yeah, all that stuff is still there, but it's just it's yeah, diminishing returns man. Yeah, without the story, without

some some cool story stuff backing it up. I don't. Oh. Also, so the only time that you really play as Desmond is on Animus Island, which is basically like the Animus loading program from where you jump into the the you know, the real world or whatever stuff. Right. Yeah, so they're of these five challenges, these Desmond challenges that you go through or can go through. It's entirely optional. You don't have to do this, No you can. I think you can finish the game without seeing any others.

So is this the equivalent of like finding the hidden glyphs in Brotherhood and two? I guess so, So, I mean this does those aren't in this one? This does. No, there's no hidden movie. No, there's no hidden so this must but there is, Well, you are finding you are going into like Assassin's Vision, an awful lot in this game, I feel like more so than in previous games. But that's like there's story missions that demand that, and it's and it's not. It's not challenging the

way that the glyph stuff was. Okay, it doesn't have that little bonus feature. There are also no horses other than like a couple of like beginning and end scripted sequences. There are no horses around town. So that's another thing that Brotherhood added that this does not. So this is just one town. Then you're not going between different Okay, it is, it all takes

almost all takes place in Constantinope, the meaningful stuff takes place there. But anyways, the Desmond like story stuff, the stuff that happens in this on animous island. You go through these gates and then there are these weird like abstract three D you're playing from a first person perspective for one thing, and you have you're basically able to create a path directly in front of you, and you can then walk on that path, and then you can lay down

another piece. It's like these kind of like flat lego brick looking like lengths of I don't know, material blocks basically, and you then have to kind of puzzle your way through these environments, like basically navigate them, using these things to get through them. And while you're doing this, Desmond is basically you're like recounting his life and giving you all of this crazy backstory about him

that you had no idea about. But it's all just delivered kind of just in this weird, nonchalant way of all Right, I'm I don't understand necessarily the connection between like jumping around in this weird puzzle room and Desmond telling me about living on a commune with his parents, Like, it's do you do you get any sense that's falling? What happens that? Like, if we are indifferent about this one, should I be excited about the next one? Okay? I have no idea. I mean, there's one next because I

was one. There's one next November, because I already said it, because I was excited. I was excited about this one after the end of Brotherhood. Yeah, and this one really addresses doesn't moves forward nothing that happened in Brotherhood. So but they did say publicly that this is the end of the Eteo storyline. They have said this is the end of et Ceo and Altier's storyline. They have not said what happens beyond that the ends of their stories.

But there's also still massive gaps in They're like, yeah, they are leaving the like they are sort of leaving the door opened. I think to go back to that if they if they desire it, Like there are decades upon decades that you do not see in both alti Year and et CEO's lives in this game. So good I'm saying, I'm saying, if they wanted to go back and fill in those gaps they totally could or backwards whoa, whoa, whoa. But yeah, it's mechanics, you know, it's it's

weird. It's like I don't like I could just go on about how, you know, the things I don't like and the you know, how it's deficient or whatever. But it's still had fun with like most of the game, like just the basics of running around, jumping off roof rooftop, stabbing dudes, calling in your assassins, like all that stuff is still super satisfying.

Like they didn't. I don't feel like anything broke the fundamentals. It's just that the things that they added aren't as compelling as they've been years past. No, that's kind of that's Assassin's Creed. I'll play it. I'm just not in a rush. Yeah, you know what, there are other things that you can get around to it absolutely, Brad. I know you still haven't played Brotherhood. Take your time last year enjoy it. I was like I was watching you play Revelations. I was crack that Brotherhood open and

catch up like now. But I think no, I think you're okay. I was fine, like et CEO is supposed to be like in his fifties in this game, and he is every bit as spry as he ever was. The only difference is I think care of himself. I think every once in a while when you land, he lands a little harder and you can get a little more, a little more. Oh just kill me. But great if you did that for like five minutes afterwards, like sucking my hand.

You welcome back, welcome my back. Alright, alright, I'm good. Let's go. I think I look just to let me. If anything, he's performing more fantastical feats than he ever did. There's actually a point. So you know, you do like the tower dive thing, like it's the get up on your little perch and you do the scan and then you jump off into it. I love that and that will never ever get old. But like the towers have gotten so tall now it's impossible. It's like

he's falling, like he's still falling it. Actually I've actually seen it, like end the falling animation routine before he gets into the sack, so it seems like he actually bunches up into a little ball, when whence he's actually hits the haystack. But you can kind of what you can kind of see him starting to do that just before he actually like goes through the haystack. So it's like you can see the next step in the animation routine that you're

not supposed to. And you said it didn't move the story forward. What do they do when they lose those haystacks? Man? I think about bushes. I told you this bushes? Is this there there in the future, There are still bushes, so they're always be there enough. I don't know how many bushes do you see people just yeah laying on dude? What not? That many bushes? We'll seere. They've got haystacks. They've got those

flower are carts that they introduced in the I think the food trucks. You can just jump into food trucks, land on top of the food truck, bacon truck, land on a bed of burritos. Well the next one, yeah, don't. We don't know what the future looks. It's prehistoric times, right, So he's just gonna land on dinosaurs. Oh man, that done toy with my emotions. Landnosaur? Pop? But you you are actually

are a dinosaur? Oh okay, that's for it. Just yeah, first ten flower is actually a velocity that's what they're gonna find out, is you are actually of the line of your reptilian and you know, mammals went a certain way and reptiles went a different way, and so assassins became. That's where I don't know that happened in relations. I mean, I guess like they just saying that they do expand someone like the mythology and like you get

a little more of that for civilization stuff that's out there. I mean, you are saying this is all going to tie into the reptile men who haven't infiltrated Congress very possibly, I don't even know what you're talking about. Is not aware of the dude? Really, which one? Who's the reptile man? All of them? Put put the glasses on. Put the glasses on. You never actually read about this stuff, don't you. That's why we got those glasses. It's those sweety glasses. That's why I got the But

my bug got bag on the feels themselves. Wait, who's reptile man? The one percent? Everybody ever Illuminati? Like there there is like three hundred of them. There is Actually there was actually like a serious conspiracy theory like ten fold half style out there about about secret reptile people who run society. How the sky Rim is just fucking flipping them out. They're just trying to get people used to the idea of reptile man so they reveal themselves your true

leaders. They're not going to flip out. Are they cold all the time? That's a good question. Have they seen this? Is it like? Is it like King Kopa from Mario Brothers? Are they just terrible? Is it terrible? This is the world they don't want to live in. Just kill me now, you get my super scope and shoot myself in the head. But yeah, like they they they I guess you know, expand on some of that stuff, but this is not If you've not played Assassins Creed

before, don't start with this one. And if you're not up to date, also, don't start with this. Basically, play all the other Assassin's Creed games before you play this, except remember the first one. I didn't play the first one. You can catch up just fine. Two is where you should start. Well, there's some there's some stuff in this one because it goes can YouTube walkers. It is not worth whatever you can to not play through. Don't have to play it. Is it is it is now.

Oh, I didn't even collect the fight. If you if you try to go back, I tried to go back. You can't go back if you play it first. It might be okay, yes, if you if you are ignorant of the jump between one and two, I think added a lot of stuff to the combat that two didn't have. Yeah, that would be hard to go back. Yeah, the commas got faster. It did well. It became it became the thing where you could do the counter and

then you could just chain chain off of your counters. Forgot that wasn't into You've got some and you've got some enemies that in this that are a little trickier that you have to use some alternate tactics on which I did not use during the quick look, which is why some of the combat didn't look right there. But I figured out later where you have to we have to use

like counter grab moves to start taking them down. I feel like there might be some stories from revelations that no from Brotherhood that might I'm not I don't know if I'm remembering correctly. Taught speak to you uh Etio's spryness. I thought he encountered some stuff that some magics. I can't quite remember though, I mean there's I mean it's not really magic, but him it's magic whatever, whatever the I don't know what's happening in that universe. Yeah, to

me, it's magic reptiles. Yeah. And there's still like a lot of just yeah, there's there's still a lot of hinting at and in implications things are not being said. Fucking rip the curtain back. That's what I wanted from this game. I don't think you actually want the schasm. Did you see did you see the end of two? We don't know what we're doing. This curtain is the most interesting thing we have going. What the fuck happened at the end of two? Were still I finished two? What happened?

That's why you gotta play Brother so you can confuse yourself even more. See you don't. Don't act like it clears everything up or makes to you to sound anymore same as you play Saints ro That's all I'm gonna say. That actually explains a lot about the Assassin's Creed franchise. It all happens in a conversation in a car. They just they just a sublime Yes, what if we build a machine that let us go into our past cells. Fuck, I don't know, jeez, Saints Ro I should play that as well.

Yeah that's out today. Yeah, I want to play that. Any Caravella you play anything else? No, it was uncharted and uh staring at Skyrim on Steam. Oh god, we have like fucking five other big games to talk about. I just realized we do. I'm starting to get a game paralysis that this this is the week. Yeah, so just kind of looking at stuff being like I can't can't start anything. I'm just gonna go

into grabbed my bug, got bagging. I'm going you could you could maybe save Skyrim for when you take that time off in a couple of weeks here. Yeah, that is. That is a great game to have like several days of a road to play, because it's not fun to come to work and think about sky Room all day. Because once you start playing and stop playing, because it's not a game that like you reach a point where like cool, I feel I feel good turning this off. It's like, yeah,

it's two thirty. I've hit a couple of spots where it's like, all right, I think I'm good. Whether you know, it was like I would die and lose some progress or something like that. That's what got me start happen because I lost twenty minutes of conversation. Yeah, like all right, I'm not gonna run back to you. Just always have something else you could be doing this that's within two or three minutes. It's it's it's not like it's you know, to build up to this next quest, take

twenty minutes to get any things? Well, like no, no, like you want to do something three seconds from now, great, It's it's crazy that you can. You can start the game, you can pick up the initial quests, and then you can never empty your quest log out again because in the course of doing any random quests, pick up like three more like it never stops. When I when I played two nights ago, I didn't

do any combat over the course of three hours. Yeah. Yeah, it's funny, like depending on what you're doing, you could raise like three levels in two hours and then go like two nights without getting another lost, especially when you get to a new city, like it's so overwhelming to try and because you want to go into every building and try and get a sense of every quest that you could just pick up even if you're not going to do it right then. And each village, each city probably takes an hour just

to get a quest limit. Nothing I've seen. I've got a shipload any active quests for it's like main like story. Yeah yeah, if it's in the quest log, it has a name and context and like a little story behind. And how many hours have you played Left Off sixty? Yeah? Yeah, but yeah, dude, I think I think Patrick he played the game. I kind of want to jump into Next Modern War for three. Yes, tell me all about it. I beat it. I had more fun with it than probably I care to admit. Yeah, I don't know

what happened. It's how you feel guilt. Yeah, yeah, Well it's so bro and like I like and I look at it and I you know, like we talked about when when Choto about playing through it, how when you kind of step back and look at what you're doing, like there's not really that much interesting going on, but there's so much going around on around you that you're just okay with it. And it's fun. It's big, blockbuster, dumb video game. And for the four and a half hours or

whatever it took me like I had a good time. Only I don't played a couple of hours of it. But it's like there's there's a couple of genuinely breathtaking moments in that, like the air The airplane scene specifically, I think is the highlight for me in that game. Some stuff that just looks cool. That's that's kind of spectacle stuff that you don't see in games. But you shoot, you shoot a lot of dudes. You shoot so many dudes. There's just there's just there's to be shot. There's so many dudes

to get shousted like that. Yeah, One thing I will say is they don't differentiate the enemies enough. A lot of times, so much friendly fire because I don't know I'm shooting. That's just like the real thing. I had the same all right, then I had the same problem in modern warfare too. Of I feel like it's way more pronounced and put a couple of bullets in everybody and hope for the best. Yeah, and they'll say,

hey, don't you blot yourself. I don't know how the game because there will be times where it will game over you too for a friendly fire. But I committed friendly fire so many times. I don't get to like agreedious. Do I have to be in order to get that prompt. He maybe just hey, yeah, it is me. You're shooting me. There's an icon my name appeared next to me. When you put the cursor over me. That means I'm with you. Those are bullets and they'll do a little

maybe. There were so many other things happening, even just everybody to move. Honestly, I understand why they put the giant follow over Captain Price's head for most of that game. Yeah, yeah, I was talking about the other Bro game, bro Bro Games. Yeah, it's so the thing that I will say, like Skywards Snored, I did call it. I've called it Skyrim Sword at these at these once or twice we're playing those and together.

Takes place in Skyland. Yes, sky Loft, sky Loft is there, The Skylanders are there fighting with the skylt sky sky Loft is just a subset of the Skyland, right, yeah, yeah, so the upstairs there are creatures in in Skyward Sword that I could very much see in the Skylanders series three. So if you're standing on the sky rim of sky Loft, then you're looking out across the Skyland. I'm saying, yeah, okay, except the sky Rim is below everything else unless well, the sky the Skyrim

region. If you're talking about the sky rim of Skylofts, then yes, you would be looking over the skyland saying if you find it, help wanted sign and Skyrim do not answer. It is not what you think it's going to. I had a guy asked me to go find a dog that also went all kinds of bad. When the prince quest, oh, we didn't even talk about the dad was it was we saved that way a week out. The Dadrik quests. They are the fucking best here, the equivalent of

the Vaults and Fall. Oh, they're so good. It was just kind of like the the out of fiction weirdness. The dad Princes are all demigods, so like, you know, there's there's reason that they can kind of like put reality on hold because they have immense magical powers. But those are the moments of we're just we just want to do something a little weird. Yeah, yeah, it gets it gets super weird, but like plausibly weird. Okay, like yeah, it's awesome. I have I'm shifting through emails

to the Bond cast. I have seen a lot of people talking about I saw this crazy thing in Skyrim, What the hell and I think a lot of it had to do with those those quests a really good and there's a lot of them. It seems like there's at least fifteen. So what's up with octa rocks and three? I figured with the Yeah, three, Actually there's there's a couple of there's a couple of times it takes there's a couple of times it takes two. There's a couple of times it takes two.

What I feel like, I feel like just just kind of a light arrow. Is that kind of a hit? Well, there's no, there's dark different types of arrows. What game are you playing that's dark souls? Is there a boomerang? There is no boomerang. Yeah, that's there. What there's you kind of have to grab vial. You have the far away you have you have almost two equivalents to that one. You have a beetle that you shoot out and you guide with the remote you kind of ling around.

You get some up grass to speed it up, make it last longer, and then you have a whip. The whip doesn't get used very much. That's that's kind of glossed over in the game. There's only a couple of items like you get you use a couple of times and then I don't get back. But I just I think I feel like people have gotten so jaded about the Zelda games at this point that like, if people don't get excited about new Zelda game right for right and wrong reasons. I disliked Twilight Princess

immensely, Like, did not care for that game at all. But it's a great game, you guys, is it? It's great Users of game facts dot Com collectively rated at at eight point eight. Well, they would know best, as it turns out. But what I say about this is, I I think if this game had come out instead of Twilight Princess, especially to our understanding of how motion controls relate to traditional games, the entire

regeneration would have been completely different. Wow the bold words. Well that's if they have started with this, if they if this is like, yeah, I mean this is impossible because this is an evolutionary leap from what they learned to to to the conclusion of the we cycle plus stuff in this motion plus Okay, so that would have to be in place, yes, yeah, five years of experimentation. It's yeah, it's not as you're just swapping it.

But I think, in hindsight, had this been Oh, this is what motion controls can do for the games that you normally are used to playing with their regular control. We're like the comment of this game is just astounding. Like you, like, I know, you play those commercials and you and you laugh when people are like jumping up and down they feel like they're part with the sword one like this game feels like that. Like this game,

this game is all about the sword. Like the gadgets you used couch I didn't in by families swing ok with me where that strap didn't wear the strap? What thirty five hours no strap, no condom. Don't tell them tendo pr They're gonna lose their ships. They get very specifically Princess was pre condom. So every single time you go to and play their demo, they make sure that you put the strap on. It's true every single time time. Yeah, I've had a couple of times where they that I felt like

I was about to just get jumped at any moment. I actually reminded them the one time that they didn't tell me because like you go to E three, like the whoever's maiming the booths like they it has to be like the first thing that they tell these people when they're training them, it's like, you got to make sure these people put on these traps. They don't put on these straps, and chaos will rain and goddamn it. Wipe down these

controllers when they're not using and the headphones too. Wipe down the headphones because yeah, yeah, and they do it. Yeah, they keep those headphones clean because good lord, it needs it. So what it give me? The nutshell? You get a big wallet? Do you get a bigger wallet to hold more route? Yeah? I had over a thousand rupees. Oh yeah, there's nothing to spend them on, right, No plenty to spend

them on. This game. This game has a lot more. It has more customizability, not enough that you feel like you have your own unique link. It's more just going along an upgrade path that it's a lot of stuff. You felt like you were just normally gotten into Dungeon, but now you're grinding for it through You don't really grind through rubies. You you end up finding enough rupees about the game to kind of get whatever you want. But they have like metals, it's just an alternate path. Yeah, yeah,

Like they have metals. That like, you know, increasing amount of heart containers do you find, like eventually I had two metals, which meant that like I would never I never died to begin with, really, but you just there was no way to even really get close to death because you would hit any set of like grass or pots, and it's like hard twelve hard

floating everywhere. Uh, here's the weird question grass and yeah has the story so like there's it's it's very interesting and I think in a good way, whereas like Super Mario Galaxy got kind of weird when it was like Nintendo was like all right, we're gonna we're gonna tell story, We're gonna get a little deeper, and gay just got weird. Like I don't I don't know if you guys remember that game story. Yeah, it's yeah the same is

the same way that I love MGS two and I'm just four. I love the end of Super Mario Galaxy. Ye, and you'll read like interviews afterwards from Meamode was like fucking no, what we'll read like you actually what were

we thinking? Like wipe that out of you? And so the metter am also like it's a really weird, awkward storytelling the last Nintendo was like two attempts at telling like these kind of like deeper stories I haven't really jelled with, but but this one like yeah, they don't go too deep, but they if you care about the Zelda fiction whatsoever, like play it is paramount that you play this game. It casts the entire series in a totally different

super dark light. Wow uh and yeah, like wait, so you're the bad guy. You're damn it. Thanks Jeff ruined it. That's why the Boomerangs, why we can't have it breaks the boomerang at the end. Oh man, spend the Hoomerangs will break. Spend the whole game repairing the boomerang. You are the boomerang. I got the eight pieces of the boomerang and

then I fell. The reason the reason the Combats is great is because that it It's very challenging and it forces you to change, like you can't waggle Like if you waggle it, you will you will fail outright Like the game doesn't mess around, like it will knock you to the ground. It will hit you around Like there's one of the first bosses you have to change up

your own tells. So normally you just like whip out the we remote and you're just like cold it in front of you and you're kind of moving around, and he's got a hand out and if you keep it to the left too long, he'll just grab it and throw your swords. Then you gotta

go, think, I go grab it. And so then you have to keep it to the left to wait until you see his tell and then swing it around to the right, or you keep and then you have to switch it up because the game will just keep grabbing your sword and throwing it away. So like the game is teaching you super early look like you you can't just wave it around, like you can't win, Like there's no way to

win by waving it around. And so a lot of the enemies and I think we when Brian and I were playing, like some of the early versions, like it seemed like it might kind of like it does telegraph everything where you have like skeletons that are holding swords that are like, you know, right, but and a lot of the enemies are like that, especially early

on. But even even though they're so telegraphed, they start to get faster and faster, and it requires you to remain engaged in the combat the entire time, so as opposed to where you just kind of get this tarting it down, you're like, all right, for this enemy, I flip back, I hit a move on to the next one. Like every enemy, you'll start to get down their patterns a little better. But you you have

to be paying attention to what they're doing. And there are some of the enemies where they are just switching their movements like every fraction of a second. Is it frustrating or no, It's like extremely satisfying because it doesn't the buttons can't accomplish like you you just wouldn't get you know, some buttons have you know, like sort of the uh, you know, the stronger you press

on it, the more you get out of it. But the motion here adds to it so deep because if the motion plus stuff is actually working, it's it's it's absolutely the reason to play the game, Like especially if like sort of a Zelda thing throws you off. I mean, the game sticks to the pretty traditionals all the structure, like it doesn't throw up anything there, like it doesn't, you know. It's especially when we're sitting here talking

now. I brought Skyrim, like if you're if you're looking for like a really like a lot of complex depth customization for your character or you know, complex systems working them storms out in the world. Like that's that's just not what this game and I don't. I don't the ways where it tries to pretend to not be that kind of game is kind of where it bummed me out. Like it's got an upgrade path that you can upgrade. You can't

upgrade your sword. That is all sort of story driven. The sword doesn't really fundamentally change over the course of the game, but you can all upgrade your shield, you can upgrade your arrows, but the game isn't that difficult, so there's no reason to do the upgrades, especially because you have to grind out catching butterflies and and the game. The game repeats the text menus every time you pick something up, right, Yeah, like I've picked up

fifteen fairies or fifteen butterflies. Every time it's gonna tell me what that butterfly is and he's gonna pick it up above his head. It reminds me of like skinning animals and Red Dead. Yeah, every single time you skin an animal, and it goes through the same like five to ten second animation leaning down, and like at least at least that game had the exploit where you can be on top of the horse, get on over on top of the animal, you can skip the animation and all the all the dungeons are really

creative. There's some backtracking. There's a bad stealth section, especially compared to I think Windwaker had a pretty terrific stealth section. And yeah, it's it's too bad. This is coming as most people put away their weees. I really get the sense that, like, almost nobody is gonna play this game that doesn't it wasn't already set out. They're like, I'm gonna I'm gonna

play this. But like I would really really encourage people to try it out, if only just to get a sense of like what most controls can do for sort of the games that we normally just smash on the A button because it does it's just really satisfying in a way that just buttons can't accomplish. What was your what was your run time? About thirty five hours, so

it's a long game. There's probably about ten hours of fluff about three fourth through where you can, like Annie's La game, you're like, I know this, this should be the end, but you know there's three more things I gotta gonna get. The plus side of that is that all the dungeons are almost universally great, So even though you're going to just go get some treasure at the end of some other dungeon, like the dungeon are really genuinely fun to go through. Uh, And there's they really I mean, you've

got like a desert, a volcano, and a forest one. But they do some really interesting things like time manipulation, where like you're using time orbs to switch an entire dungeon through the past and present. There's one where to slap a time orb on top of a boat, and so a desert in real time switches between an ocean and a desert as you're progressing through it. And it just does a lot. It's it really feels like this incredibly creative

team working and kind of really traditional structure. And I don't I don't know Zelda fans like I would like to see that she was changed a little bit more, if only because I think there are a lot more people out there they would enjoy this type of game. They're sort of just hey, it's a new Zelda game, you know, like it's I don't think it's as much to the point of like a call of duty where you know exactly what you're in for. And I mean the basic structure, Yeah, there's there

is a lot of time. Yeah, and and and I don't know, maybe maybe that's this is just you know, Nintenna needs to create some new character so that they can not man because because if only well because you look at it and it's like they're kind of stuck being a rock and a hard place, because if you change too much about Zelda, you're gonna get the core fans upset about what they like about the series, and the people that are sort of tired of those core mechanics or structure are kind of like,

well, you know, maybe it's just not for me anymore, and the fans gonna have what they want. And I think there would be you know, it's almost too bad this combat structure, which I really like, is stuck in a Zelda game, because I think somewhere else where people might be a little more open to I'll try this new Zelda game or new Nintendo game with a new character. I'm sitting here envisioning Skyrim or game like it with

that kind of combat, and it's, yeah, that sounds amazing. Yes, you know throw it, throw in like the Johnny Lee style headtracking while you're at it. Yes, that game would be fucking amazing. Yeah, like if the yeah, I mean because the comment's way better and Skyrim, but the Skyward Swords combat is just engaging all all time. Like engaging such a weird word, but like it is because like you can't play this game tired. Like it's just you're not gonna enjoy yourself if you're gonna be getting

put around by the enemies. And it's just so when you beat a boss and like the you know you'd swing it up and you swing it down like you feel like a jackass, but it's it's you kind of feel like a badass while you're doing it, and like that's like the biggest comment I can give to the game is that it made I think the most controls in this or as revolutionary to especially Zelda combat as Z Targeting was, Like it completely

changes everything. It's not going to change the landscape of video games like Z Targeting did and like made three D action games makes sense for law developers, but if they wanted to use most controls, like this is the game to look at because it uses them really really well. It also sucks that the game takes like four or five hours to really get going, which is also

a problem in Twilight Princess. Slow starter, it's really slow starter. It's interesting test screet kind of slow starter about the Charter three, the sky and stuff. Because the Elder Scrolls games used to have that kind of combat where you're like you swipe left to to kind of you know, sweat, you know, swipe you just you know, you push them out forward to kind of poke and stuff like that. I feel like in each Elder Scrolls game

they've kind of lost some of that. This has just hit the button right and swing pretty much, or hold the button for a power swine, but it's like you don't hold forward, and I well, there are forward and

bad power strips and stuff like that. So you'll change a little a little bit a little bit, but not like this where in Sky Resort you get up, down and left right the four diagonals and you can poke and it always seems like it's it's always I mean, it'll get a little bit mixed up, like just you know technical jank, but I never was frustrated over like yelling at the game for not doing what I wanted to do, and it held up the entire game, and all of the bosses especially are totally

developed to push you to the limit to make to make sure you're doing that. And that's why even though it wasn't a particularly difficult games, it was really challenging because you're always having to pay attention to all the tells, and in that sense, it was kind of more of a puzzle game than than

an action game in a lot of senses. And you know, there's one there's one lizard enemy that when you it's got like these like stone arms, and when you swipe it from when you start swiping, aathentic is into what looks like it'll be a week stance, but it's just faking out that you're supposed to hit it from the right when it's it's it's tell is like, oh, you should hit me from the left, And so you're constantly having to reevaluate, like which side is it faking you out on because you're supposed

to be hitting on the right. But it's everything about the visuals. It's telling you to hit on the left, and so there's constantly just like this, like forward and back with you playing with the game, trying to figure out what the enemies are trying to trick you into doing or not doing. How does it look gorgeous? Not for a single second was like, oh,

I wish this was in high definition. The game uses a yeah, I mean yeah, that's but that's you know the I played thirty five hours and you know, we sit here and complain about a little bit about like how our three sixes and PS three's are aging, you know, like this

is like a ten year old piece of hardware at this point. And because the game uses like an impressionistic art style that changes in real time, so like Jaggy's and stuff like that are just not really a problem because it's kind of it's playing with with how that is in relation to the other objects and the environment. And see just don't and the innocent Atennal Games, the art direction is just astounding and it's not it's not realistic, So there's no Uncanny

Valley, there's none of that weirdness. Like it's just really creative characters and worlds and really colorful like so, which is the opposite of a lot of games coming out this fall that I'm a huge fan of the art direction I see, you know, on the characters or at least on a link, Like there's some weird annular quality to the special takes some time, Like I don't think. I don't think it looks like an elf man. You're terrible too much time and sky because you as an imperial. I think of plenty

of the people in Sky. I don't want to play a game a guy looks like an elfmer but ugly. But that's beside the point. Yeah, I'm just saying there are many there are many varieties of link out there,

and this is not my favorite. Yeah, the art style grows on you quite a bit, especially as you see more of the especially as like you can with the camera, like play with the way that the art changes in real time because it change is based on the distance and where objects are in relation to you, so you can kind of mess around with that and it's really neat. It's just it's worth playing, you know. I had some problems with it, and I'm kind of getting tired of this old structure.

But I think fans especially are gonna flip for it's like if you're if you, if you, if you knew we were going into this, probably gonna love it. You're gonna love it like a lot, Like it's it's a really great sell the game. And then after this, pack up your Wii. Yeah, well there's still Rhythm Heaven. Yeah, Rhythm Heaven. That's that's the last last game on that. Yeah. No, damn it,

damn it never coming out here. No, no, they it's they was at it was, it was announced, keep telling herself it's gonna happen. So I still think they're going to release those RPGs eventually too, So you know Blade, Yeah, just really last minute, like okay, fine, we'll just like we'll sell them through mail order because retail doesn't want them or something like that. I see that as like when they getting a closer to announcing we you next year, they say, hey, look here's our last

good will gesture before we move into the next council. We have a copy of e bladerun her somewhere. Sam and played it. He's got one around there somewhere, So Patrick, anything else you were just in the Rayman origins the game that if you don't play, then I have less respect for you as a human being. I played a little bit, Jeff, you and I played. We did and I played some of it separately. Play a great looking game. Oh my god, a great looking game. So you

guys, guys played some co op. You Patrick, you played it. I haven't played a boy myself by yourself. Yeah, it's just as well single player game. Alex. Alex's review said co op is the way to play. It seems fun, but it doesn't seem like what we played a cop. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of things that you couldn't do on your own, right. It's not necessarily vital, but you know, you got people around them. He made it sound like it was more with

the New Super Mario Brothers style of just chaos. Yeah, because when you when you die, you blow up like a bubble, just like New Super Mario brother But it's not as antagonistic because there isn't that jump dynamic like a New Super Mario Brothers. You could jump on top of each other, so I could jump and then you would jump off of me, or I could

grab you and throw you like instead I could just punch you. Yeah, that's like more of a stunt move so you can you can still play it cooperatively like a dick if you want to, but not, I don't think to the same extremity. And if you want to get all the metals, uh, and that's what kind of need to get all the secret stuff. You know, that's gonna be tougher with with multiple people because you'll get like when you get like the red what do they call those things, elect electro

elect pearl dudes. Like anyway, like like you'll collect multiplier. Yeah, you'll collect multipliers, and with multiple people, you're not going to be able to get the multipliers probably probably is accurately. But how does it flow? Like is there a hub system that all the levels spawn off of. Yeah, it's a very traditional like the top down, hit right, go to the next one. You have like what like three three hidden secret boxes of

those dudes you have to find. There's uh two that are based on how many of the the yellow creatures you collect, and then there's one based on how fast to go through the level. Okay, time travel one. Yeah, it's it's a good it's a great playing platform, right, and it's a it's gorgeous and like dropping it. Why is this game coming out this week, like what and why? Also like like, regardless of how thank

you, you'd be soft, but fuck you. It's a It's a gorgeous looking two D game, probably one of the best looking two D games I've seen in years. But I think that's still kind of a hard sell for a sixty dollars retail game for some people. If there's a lot of content to this one. So I think if you're if if that, like if you love two D platformers, and like you're kind of worried, like I'm gonna blow through this in an afternoon, like there is from the outset what

you think is the game. There is a bunch more to it. It's not forty, it's sixty sixty. It's it's if you like these kind of games, it's you know, having played a couple of hours and it's well worth it, Like it's plus this is man, it's one of those games like I feel like you just gotta go out and support because you saw this isn't going to do anything for it, Like I'm glad. I don't know exists, I don't know what Ubisoft things of ray Man. I feel like

Yousoft is not really this game was Episodica care about ray Man? Well, they got them sakes, they got them rabbits. They did well. They that's the problem. Sound made them those rabbits and then they just said eggs. Yeah, well the team they ran the rabbits into the ground. Continue to do so, continue to run the rabbits into the ground and kicking you guys. They are fine. There are no rabbits in this game. Uh where they can't unlock rabbit I hope not. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna

try to unlock Sam Fisher can of play is et ceo. Yes, i'd actually all you play rewards. I like the rabbits. I like the rabbits, but I'm saying I'm saying they've they've run that. Yeah, they've They've gotten everything that they can out of the rabbits. All those mini games, too many mini games, too many. The rabbits are instide that we remote you guys. That was cute. That was awa again. Rabbits go home, brilliant. I'd totally play as a rabbit if it were in Raymond Origins.

I feel like Michelan's almost have like is like just disgusted with those creatures at this point, like he made this, made this giant money maker, and then he just goes back to his dark basement of a studio where he gets to make his he gets to make his vanity projects. Where Keith claiming beyond, He's like, like, what putting money away into a private offshore

account to make beyond? Good and Evil two keep saying. They keep saying, you'll get to make us some damy show someday that will have fun again. Uh yeah, I know, Raymond Origins looks looks crazy good. Yeah, it's it's fat, cannot recommended enough. M hmm. I wonder well if it's like most movie soft games, if there is one, it'll be a few weeks later and poor. Yeah, people scream. The Assassin's Creed

ports are always usually pretty good. They're just kind of aft on the DRM side, Like the ports themselves, they are usually pretty vin Revelations got pushed on the PCD. Yah, I supposedly he's gonna have not have dr him or he's gonna have the just the one time authorization. So but I expect them to go back on that exactly. So that's like they usually they usually say that to just get people to buy the game, and and then it's changed. Yeah. Poor guess, so poor all of us. It's weird.

Jeff, Hi, what's up with you to Speed the Run? Yeah, it's it's not it's not a good game. Okay, it's okay, okay, even not great. It's not not even good. It's uh, it's it's got some pretty bad things in it. Yeah, it's a really great idea, the idea of a cross country drive and designing tracks that are meant to kind of evoke different areas. You see some really cool stuff. Did you wait for the out ticks in the credits, because that's kind of the funniest part. See, I'm I'm a stage ten right now, so

I'm gonna finish. It's also the a fake what do you mean, because that takes those are so staged, all these rosary bleeds. Yeah, those fucking bleeds. It's worth it's worth highlighting that you've had the game in your hand for like maybe not even twenty four hours at this point, and you have just said that you are at the end of the game. Yeah,

it's it's The run itself is very short. It's ten stages with multiple tracks per stage, and you're driving cross country obviously not in real time, and the leaderboard time you'll have at the end of that will will fall somewhere around the two hour mark. I'm looking to clock in somewhere around two five to ten, I think, right, to guess. But you know that there are menus and cut scenes and you have to retry stuff and reset and and that's not to say it's a two hour game, but it's it's not long.

The run, the main thing that they've been selling this game as is really short. And that's, uh, well, that would be disappointing if the game itself was better, I guess, But it's it's there's a whole another Challenge series mode that you unlock, and that's another single player stuff,

and then there's there's online as well. It's it's it's got some some real problems with uh, like kind of what you can and can't hit when it will reset you automatically, and when you get to keep driving, like there'll be shortcuts in levels where you're driving off road, but if you get a little two off road by about five feet out of that shortcut, it just resets you. Uh And and that's incredibly frustrating. Like you see rubber band

Ai all over the place. The handling model is a little weird. It's a a great idea though, either like you know, it's it's funny to think, like how worried or or how like disdainful. I looked at this game with all of it's out of the car stuff that they were showing back at E three. That is the least of this game's issues. Like the out of the car stuff, It's barely any of it. It's fine.

They're just dumb quick time events like they'd probably better just to watch them because instead of watching this man jump around and beat up cops, you're instead staring at the bottom of the screen waiting for the next button prop to appear.

So I bet the animators that did all that, like some like did pretty nice work building these intense looking events are probably pretty bummed because no one's ever going to see them because instead you're staring at the bottom, going, oh, I need to hammer on a now, just just not playing to the strength of that stuff. I mean, I guess that's you could you could levy that complain at every quick time event ever, I guess, but it's it's silly to you. One is some kind of like Left for Dead style

cross country. Each map is a leg of this thing. Five six, seven dudes are Cannonball running from this map. Yeah, and sure at the end is a FMV from Cannonball right exactly, yeah, right at the game. If they had actually just goneen licensed Cannonball Run and made like we're gonna make a comedy based need for speed game, it'd be so much more interesting because the story is basically non existent. It's just like there's like two sentences

up front and says Jack crossed the mob and now they want him. He can drive good. Christina Hendricks, Yeah, and then Christina Hendricks and that's Jack's friends from the back in the old days on the block. She's got the money to get Jack into this race and solve the mob problems, but only if he wins. And they introduce you to name the characters along the way that you have to beat in kind of one off races, but they

don't speak or they aren't characters. It's just like here's a picture of a guy and this is like this lady grew up rich and her friend it was the rich family's mechanics daughter. Or these guys race as a pack and they all have el Caminos really pack Elko's out there. Yeah, yeah, they're they're they're al Caminos in this game now Ferres. Yeah. The two girls that the rich girl and the mechanics daughter are like based on sports illustrated models,

Like they put out a release of some some months ago. We got these these girls. They're in they're in it for a cut scene for about fifteen seconds. It's just that one at the gas station, unless unless theyre at the very end of the game, I don't know, wait for the credits. Yeah, and you know, so they have to gin up a lot of stuff to to make to make a game out of this concept.

It's not just you know, you start in like two hundredth place or or thereabouts, and you have to be in first place by the time you get to the end. That's you know, that's the main goal they set for you. But then it's like Jack, we need to be in one hundred and fiftieth place by the time we get to Vegas or else we're out, which is not a rule of the race. It's just they need to give

you a goal. They need to give you some kind of goal. So we need to be in fifty fiftieth place by the time we hit Chicago, or we won't make it, like I guess like, but you know, so then each of these races you end up in in situations where it's like, there are nine people here that you have to pass before the end of the track, and you have to finish first, and if you don't,

it's not like you continue to the next stage in a worse place. It's you redo that stage or you or you redo that that section of that stage rather, so you know, they've they've got that, They've got some moments where it's like you need to make up time and there are no other racers there. It's just a checkpoint race. And then some of them cops, some of them don't. The cops. Stuff's kind of bad because they went ahead and and and it's some of the same stuff with the off road stuff,

where sometimes you wreck, sometimes you you go through stuff. It's it's just really inconsistent about that stuff, especially when you take into account the past history of need for speed where when roadblocks happened, you aimed for the back of the cop cars. No, you wreck, you have to reset. If you do that here, you have to avoid them entirely. You have to avoid them or hit them slow enough that it doesn't you know that you

have a larger problem if you're if you're going that slow. This kind of sounds like in the pre production they had this great idea and then when it came to turning this into a game, like a lot of roadblocks in in terms of stretching out making this last very long. I guess yeah. I like the wet to you know, it's yeah, and and there's some great looking stuff like through South Dakota there's some like really terrific like thunder and lightning

effects and stuff and what's right frost By right too? Yeah, I mean it looks looks pretty some pretty good. Some of the textures look awful, but yes, it seems some of the road textures, like the way they layer them, they look kind of off, like they just don't line up

some of it. Some of it looks looks really weird. And you know, the online is just kind of like this playlist based stuff of that it'll throw you into kind of set tracks with set styles of cars as you pick the different playlists and match up against players, and you know, you're kind of leveling up along the way and unlocking you know, bigger Nitris and you know, more cars and emblems and stuff like that, and you're switching cars mad race. Yes, yeah, through throughout the run there will be gas

stations you pull off the road and switch cars there. But also as a part of the storyline to unlock the next tier of faster cars, they have moments where you're just like, this car won't go anymore, so we need to have this interactive cut scene where I'm going to steal another car and they kind of go from there. It's it's a you know, just a fantastic idea though, you know, the cross country race and rendering these different areas

of the country and and you know they do well with that. You know that the cities are basically like you start in San Francisco, then you go to Vegas, then you go to Chicago, then you go to New York. And I'm just outside of New York, but I assume there'll be plenty of city sequences as you kind of get to Manhattan for the for the big

finish. But then the rest of it is just like open roads and and you know, you go through Colorado and this all these icy roads and hairpin turns, and you're driving through uh, you know, mountain ranges where they're exploding parts of the mountain to avoid avalanches. So you're kind of racing these avalanches and like some some cool dynamic stuff and they've created different types of events that kind of keep it from getting totally stale. But you know, just

like the handling just doesn't doesn't hold up. It's end of the bar again, and the inconsistency with the resets and rex and stuff is is really frustrating and kind of drags it down to what's so far. It feels like a pretty middling like just it's kind of a mediocre experience overall, Like there's there there are things that I like about it. Part of me if you said

this already, But how's the frame rate? It's okay, Yeah, it's fine, I hear it's I haven't checked it out for myself, but supposedly the PC version is locked at thirty, which is disappointing because Hot Pursuit was awesome on the PC and you're all autologued up right, Yeah, it's got autologue. So kind of as I complete these stages, it's it's keeping time along the way. There and then through the Challenge series, which is the

other single player mode. They have individual leaderboards there too, so you know they'll recommend racist to you that way if you want to do it. But I'm not feeling the pull to to want to revisit any of this stuffs as I'm going through it. It's fine, but it's not like Hot Pursuit, where you know some of those events you want to go back to, and like, you know that just the driving itself, the core of it was, was good enough to to make it worth, you know, getting into

these leaderboard challenges. I just don't think that there'll be an interest there from from as many players this time around. Jeff, anything else. I finished Saints Row. It's awesome. Should you should play Saints Row? I So here's what happened. I played through Saints Row, and then, knowing that the copy that I was playing should probably come back into the office of the rest, you could play Saints Row. I pre ordered a copy of Saints Row or the other platform. Yeah, I did. Yeah, so I

played. I finished a little p s three and then I was like, I bought a copy on on three sixty, and uh, there are things in that game that are some of the most incredible things things from a video game, like just the they first, as much as we talked about it previously about you know, some of the wild ship in that game, some of the stuff that happens a late game in there is astounding. It is, let's say, one of the best wrestling games th HQ has ever produced.

What well be fair that's yeah, that is a that is a low bar the fact that you can even yeah, I would say it's that in like WW All Stars, Yeah, exactly, exactly. All Stars is a better wrestling game than Saints Rows fairly, but that's it. But that's it. It's WW All Stars and then Saints Saints Row. Yeah, and then all that other bullshit. Yeah, you should be ashamed. Used to say they didn't just make that part of the game, right, that's true.

Yeah, No, they motion capped actual wrestlers and stuff, like there are wrestlers in the credits for that game and stuff, because as a whole there's a whole wrestler gang. The doors is just one of the gangs. You wrestle horse. There are no horses to be to do any horsemoke cap. No, no, no horsemoke cap. Thankfully, horse cap. That sounds yeah, it's uh. I mean, it's it's a shame that there don't say anything else about it. I tell you want to. I want to

keep refresh. I feel like like you are, you were dancing, you were dancing around it in such a way that I know that seeing it for myself for the first time is how I need to experience it. You guys should play Saints Bro all right, I don't play Sins. All will be revealed, okay, Saints Row revelations. I don't. I don't love the side stuff. I still don't, So you can kind of just stick the

story and get the yeah, get the fun. Yeah, and that'll you know, maybe like eight hours or something like that, if I had to guess. But it's, uh, this definitely sounds like a video fighting Yes. Yes, the third is a video game like Gleefully Yeah. Yeah, every step of the way. They're just like an embracement of what's the dumbest thing we could do here? That embraced that, That just further embraces it's video gameness and adds no true real grit to it. I'm into that.

It's I think there there's the design doc for this game was titled fuck it.

Yeah basically, yeah, yeah, that sounds about right. And and I just you know, gotta give credit to th HQ for giving them this much rope and it's and it sounds like they just are going to give them more based on comments from THHQ, already good great, Like whoever made the decision, he already said, yeah Forrest coming, it's gonna be weirder great because the weirdness that the things that are you should play sat so weird, weird. That's a weird game. It's so weird and the things that see

that that's what makes me excited to play it. Yeah, that's what it's just hearing. That's what should is the weirdness, Like you know, it's it's an overworld criminal action game. Like at a certain point there are things about it that you kind of know how it's gonna handle and how it's gonna play out. Played one of those in a while, but I don't know, I mean this the thing is like it's still it's fine, but it's

the weirdness of it that makes it special. Like that's the thing that that's so crazy about that the secret sauce m Yeah, Brad, what's what's the secret sauce in Halo Jumping? Definitely not that. Is it handguns? Yeah? I would say it's assumed pistol. Yeah, that you can hit shotguns. That pistol. Man, it's a great pistols. So glad it's back. Really torn on that game. So Halo Combat Combat Evolved Anniversary out this

week on three sixty. I'm having a lot of fun with that game, but it also feels like it's repeatedly going out of its way to prevent me from having fun with it. The power brick out of his three sixty Okay, just threw it out. I'll just start with that. Apparently this is something that has been in effect in every Halo game ever, and I've never run up against it before. Yeah, that that's my understanding. I started.

I haven't checked it on every game, but yeah I started No no, because I started bishing about it on Twitter in reference to this game, and I had people chiming in, going like, man, that totally happened to me in odst your reach and it fucking sucks. The thing about it is that the game does not make hard savable checkpoints unless you quit out, so you play and people were saying, like, dude, I played through

most of ODST and this happened. If you start a session in the campaign, play for like X number of hours, never quit out, and do like save and quit, so like a lock in that save, anything happens, the game locks up, like power goes out, whatever, Like you lose everything since you started playing there, So it's not creating like permanent auto

saves until you checkpoint until you manually quit out. Right, So if I start at the beginning of level two and play all day and finish the game, but during the final cut scene the power goes out, did you start the game again? You're safe. We'll be back at level two and you won't have access to any of those subsequent levels. So so how much progress did you happen? To me? Twice? Yesterday? I was playing on Heroic, you know, which is not certainly not impossible, but like it's

you know, it's a little more time consuming. You gotta take your time and be a little more challenge. Yeah, you know, you have to think about it. You'll die. You gotta conserve, ammo. You gotta like not just rush into the fray. So I got two thirds of the way through truth Reconciliation, which is the third level of the game. People probably remember it, but yeah, I got like an hour into that level and the game froze up on me, so I had restarted the Xbox and

then boom, I have to do that whole level over again. So I did the entire level over again, and during the cut scene at the end of the fucking level, I was like, oh man, that power brick is is in the way. I'm gonna kick it back, and the fucking table came out of the power during the cut scene. So I gotta do that level again. I'm sure you did it really great the third time. Yeah. Yeah, I pretty much breezed through it after that. But I mean, yeah, that's not unique to this Halo game. It's just the

first time I've seen it. I didn't even know that. I've never had no idea run into I have no idea. I've never had that problem before. But it sounds really shitty if you run into it. But it's also easy to see why you would just never Those people probably are not gonna see it. It's just bad when it happens, and it feels it feels antiquated in a game that has already got a lot of antiquated stuff going on.

I how does the switching work? How do you feel switching? The switching works a lot better than it Didity three, which it's still not instant anything perfect. It's dead. Game keeps going during definitely that sound definitely keeps going, but like you can't necessarily tell if the enemies and stuff keep moving, so you can't tell if you're exactly well, they're both running at the same time, right, and it's always rendering. I'll know how they're doing it.

It's I think that's what they said. Did say, it's it's rendering bo at the same time, and then you're just swapping to the other like buffer. You'll see you'll see textures draw in kind of unreal engine style when you switch back. But that's one of the that's one of the like kind of archaic things about it is that like you've got this new graphical style which looks pretty nice, but the character animation, like the npcas and stuff,

seemed to be bound to like those old animation routines. So you've got these like relatively better looking dudes still like very mechanically rotating on access and like running

in straight lines, and it just does. It doesn't look great. Geometry is still pretty much the same, right, well, no, I mean they completely remodeled and retextured everything, and really the new graphical treatment is like as far as I can tell, the movable areas and stuff like that, Like, yeah, this geometry hasn't necessarily changed in terms of like the level layouts are the same. Well, but but but the character models are every

model stuff all been redone. Yeah, I didn't realize. It's very it's very striking, and this and the stuff arounds you like has changed far more dramatically because you're not interacting with that, right, I don't realize that. I know that, I know the guns look better, but it's absolutely a fully new graphical treatment. It looks it looks like a modern Halo game with that new skin on. But like, I don't know how much of this is just like that that's how Halo was ten years ago, or if they

fucked it up this time. But like, like your AI buddies are terrible, like I had, that's pretty much the entire Yeah, yeah, obviously, but I mean pretty that was like in every Halo the entire game broke for me. In truth, and reconciliation. Like I had the same issue stuff like the game froze up there. I had. I had an AI guy run up to me while I was taking cover and throw a garade directly into the rock in front of us, and it bounced right back and killed

us both. Yeah, I had. Uh. There was a point where I was trying to fight like ten enemies at once, and I heard my guys about fifty feet back yelling shit like let's go get them, and like I'm going after them, and I look back and they're all just stuck in this like animation loop of running around in a circle, just you know, on and on, like a lot of little rough shit like that. I mean, Halo, I think I'm just gonna like insight a flame. But

like my memory of Halo, I like the Halo games. I think they're super fun. I think they'd great things for for console shooters obviously, but there was always a bit of like weird, for lack of a better word, jangs, That's what I'm wondering, because that would just like go off, like this guy dies and all those grenades fall on the ground, and like you throw a grenade and like it just chains back to you and blows

up, you know, cars flipping out and and stuff. I mean, it's all those dynamics that gave rise to the like the idea of the combat puzzle. You know, all these different things happen, so and it's for you to figure out like the best way to do and some of the best parts of Halo War where that's I mean, you look at like Halo videos,

it's people trying to line grenades over them, over stuff. So so I mean it's it's almost like I can't figure out if I'm reviewing like what the game is in a modern context or how well it recreates like what Halo was a decade ago. But I'm having a lot of fun with it because the combat is still fucking awesome. But it's all it's all Halo, right, it's all half packs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it just does feel very i don't want to say wheel day, but like very traditional

in that stuff. Have you got stuff where they've supposedly trimmed some content. I'm right now, I'm right before the library. So that's that's the thing that they said, because the library was playing that on Heroic Yeah, not be just turning the game out Halo ends when you meet that. But yeah,

that's actually the last level is kind of awesome. I'm curious. I'm almost curious to see if they just like trimmed the section out of the library, because if you ask me, how would you make the library better, I would say make it shorter. Half. Yeah, just cut half of the levels that you go to the same fucking rooms and corridors waiting. You just have to wait for the dude has to open the doors, right,

I think so. Yeah, But watching them float across the screen, it's actually like playing this now, I mean, it makes me realize it's not just the library that was like that, like right, Like significant portions of this game are just the same hallway or core. Yeah, Like like a lot of the indoor stuff is is just kinretty much. All the indoor stuff is like super boring. Yeah, I mean, well, the combat is good, but the level boring. To look at it, it looks that's

the thing. It's very featureless. Like they've you know, they put new textures and lights and stuff on it, but it's it's still just way after whole way. Definitely more than a few times I remember getting turned around and running and then all of a sudden hitting a checkpoint that was a ways ago, like an old checkpoint because it would still checkpoint. Yeah, I did that very thing right before this podcast, because there's still no no way points,

you know, and everything looks the same in both directions. Occasionally you're sing, so it's very much you go until you hit a guy again. You're gonna enemies pretty much pretty much, but the outdoor stuff looks great, you know, like driving around on the beach and like Silent Cartographer, that opening, like the you know, the music swells and everything and you land on the beach like that. That ship's still pretty awesome. Trying to hijack

some are they the wraiths? What are the ones that have fly? Yeah, you can't do that. Like the list of things that you just take for granted as part of Halo now that you can't do in this game is fucking freeze like stuff they didn't come up with until Halo too. You can't do wheel hijack enemies. That was the big one for me was the first time sword the first time and you go on the ship and you kill the invisible elites with the swords, like I killed one, I ran over.

I was like, where's the sword. I can't I pick this up. Wait a minute, that's not in this. You gotta shoot the guys out of the banshees as well. The flying fighters have to shoot. You have to blow up the Benchie's basically, I thought. I remember there's a way too. There's the pyramid in Halo one, right, you can, you can fly down, but you got you gotta get the guy out with that blow. Don't know quick time to jump on and kick the guy out. I don't think you can ever get in their tanks, right, Oh,

I can't remember. I think that you can get in tanks, not only your tanks. If they can never get in there, I can't remember what the wraith I think it is. Yeah, I remember not being able to just get in there. There are they did add a lot of stuff. Yeah, well that's the thing. This makes you realize how much the mechanics have evolved. I don't remember a lot about original Hanlah here I played. I played through it once when it was Newish. Yeah, yeah, exactly,

I played through it. Those are a religious experience in high school, like a playing like legendary co op and then trying each of us trying to see how far we get doing Legendary by ourselves. I never got past truth and reconciliation. That's like imagining that playing that by yourself on Legendary was just too much for him. But I too, my good friends made it through

the entire game Legendary co op like this before achievements. It is just so the achievement design is really good in this because the way they split the multiplayer out. When you're playing multiplayer in this, you're playing Halo Reach right, Like it's just a map pack for Haley Reach, which has its own set of issues. But so that lets them put all the multiplayer achievements in Halo Reach as far as like dashboard is concerned or whatever, which gives them a

thousand points to work with for just Halo just for campaign stuff. So so it's it's more than a thousand ultimately. Yeah, like what you're getting in

the package, Yeah, but you get it. You get there's a thousand potential just for I mean, then they come up with some really pretty decent objectives for campaign stuff, like every level has at least one or two like kind of one off challenge kind of things like like the one for truth recaciliation is like you start that level with the sniper rifle, but it's a really long level and there are a lot of cases where you could make a better

use of weapons than are a sniper rifle. But if you if you finish the level with the sniper rifle with at least four rounds left is see maysically use it till you have four rounds left. Yeah, there's a lot of cool stuff like that, like Silent Cartographer. There's one for like get through the beach landing without any of the NPC marines dying. Just a lot of cool stuff like that's like the professional stuff that people who are big Halo fans

will probably appreciate. There's skulls and stuff. Yeah, yeah, there are skulls to find their terminals. Right. I was gonna ask have you found any of those in It's like I found two. It looks like there's one per level from what I can tell ye, and they're really well produced. It's uh, it's like a motion graphic like concept moving concept art kind of style to it, and it's it's all voice over by the guilty spark the robot. Dude, are you getting any sense of man? Not yet?

But like I said, I've only found two of them at the first four levels. It seems like it could maybe be going in that direction. It's all it's all like Halo one backstory stuff from what I can tell so far, but maybe not until the end. I bet they kind of said that it was going to pull in stuff from other parts of the Halo fiction as well as kind of allude to some Halo four definitely, like there's one there's a scene of Guilty Spart talking to one of the other monitors, like before

they all went off to their respective Halos and stuff like that. It's it's neat. I've seen that they released a couple of them. Yeah, they put a lot of footage of that stuff out there. It's it's neat stuff for like Halo superfans. I just want to know if the frame rate holds up at the very end of the game with the co op on that that ward hog change through the end and they would drop into the single digits just going off a jump of it. It's been totally fun so far, no

problem. Flipping back into the old style is just many new style. It's

weird. Actually, me and Drew were playing co op last night, which I was getting like a whole new level of depth out of that because he remembers like such a ma new show that like, like, for instance, in this one, the plasma pistol, you can run around with it fully charged now and it just hold the charge forever, like in all the other Halo games that change that, so it like blows up or whatever, or you just you know, you just keep walking around with it until you encountered

like an elite or an elite that you could just take out. It's crazy all the stuff that's back in this just because they made it like Halo one, you know, stuff like that and the pistol and whatever. But but anyway, like there are some sections of the game that are way easier to play with the old graphics, Like the stealth camot elites are a lot easier to see in the old graph almost visible with the new stuff, but really

they stand out really well with the old the old style. A lot of the outdoor stuff there's a ton more foliage now, so it's harder to like snipe through that because you can't just can't see what you're looking at. So they're definitely cases where it's like a boobs you can actually switch back, which is kind of weird, but uh, it's weird. It's a lot of fun. The combat still hits really hard, it still feels awesome. You know, it's still a lot of dynamic stuff going on. Uh some bunny

hopping everywhere. Yeah, kind of you know, still not running anywhere. Yeah, must sprint anet of this stuff. Uh, Drew's really bummed out, and he's not the only one. People seem kind of bummed that they didn't just straight up recreate the multiplayer from from the original. Like it's I mean, if you're playing multiplayer in this you're playing Halo Reach. You're just on some some classic maps and they've got some playlists that disable their abilities from

REACHT so they have those two. Yeah. I got to play just a couple of small matches with that stuff, and you know, it does feel kind of Halo esque, but you know that the physics are a little different. But they have versions right there, so there's like the classic version. Yeah, but like it it's not the same. There was something very unique

and different about it. Seems really weird to put out like this tenth anniversary edition of this game without blood gulch in there somewhere like some form of it, you know, that seems like the thing everybody would want in the think that was one of those. I think it's one of those. Maybe the design to sand Creek or whatever. Yeah, they changed everything, they changed the names Timberland. Yeah. I still I haven't gotten a dig into the

multiplayer much. But so the reason it was only the PC right that had online, and there were maps that were specific to the PC position, and one of those maps is one of the ones that made it into and then the PC Verse is actually the one I played. That's that's how I played through Halo to begin with. And then they're letting people who own Reach buy a map pack. If you just want those maps so you don't care about the campaign, you can just go online and buy the the I think it's

called the Anniversary mat pack. Okay, you just buy that so everybody can play together, yep. And also the disc, the Anniversary disc comes with the code to download those maps, so if you want to use your Reach disc and have access to all the Reach stuff instead of just the six maps

that you get on the Anniversary disc, you can do that too. Also, it was really nice having having lost my Reach saves since last year, like popping over the multiplayer and just having like my custom Noble six coming in, Yeah, unlocked. It was all stored on the servers, like it was totally sor. I think even the campaign progress is like chapter progress might be server side. If the game too, that's great, I'm not sure.

Yeah, I mean it seems like a pretty nicely done package for Bucks and the price, the price really offsets and the music is all rescored right behind. Yeah, like I can't tell a whole lot of difference. That's probably a good thing. Yeah, Like that means they've sounds like Drew Drew Drew said it was subtle, but he could he could tell the difference. But it's definitely like the melodies are still there. You know, who is it, Marty O'donald's. Yeah, those those beats like that stuffs all in

there. You can talk on the music, so you can. You can talk on the music and venue. But now with like the button right now, not distantaneously, and I don't think it changes until it starts the next song, so you can't because pick up in the middle of a can't really compare side by side. It'd be weird. It's tougher therapist. Still, I mean, at least to give you the option. You know, it's a it's a it's a great like fan service project, like or package.

You know, there's a lot of stuff in there. If you if you're fund fund memories of Xbox ten years old now yeah today, yep, yep, that's crazy. Yeah, ten years of being released. Yeah, blood wake Azerik. Where's AZAAC Anniversary Fusion Frenzy. Yeah, he's Fusion Friends. You got a sequel. It's true. AAAC was gonna get to see it was then it was Ana like that Nightcaster, well, Nightcaster too, I think eventually came out, but Microsoft didn't publish it. Who made AzaC?

I don't like Legend of A and all those old games, like they had no idea what the romance to look for it. Hey, someone was saying software, Someone was saying that this on Twitter, and it's yeah, it's it's it's amazing that the Xbox kind of survived it's early years. Whatever. Do you remember the PS two by itself? Yeah, Madden Tech and Surfing H two O Time Splitters, Fan of Vision, Smugglers run Fan of Vision.

I'm talking and talking Launch in the US and the US, there were like nine games Fan of Vision. What was that horrible Activision action RPG? Do you remember what I'm talking about? Yeah, yeah, yeah I can't. No, that's that was the Cooey Strategy game. It was. It was the game that they did the Magic Missile video for, like the Summer So that was the t h Q game. There was another solition, Yeah, I remember liking something. Yeah, Summer and sum two whatever. PSPs

two had a lot of brand momentum to ride on her. Xbox had nothing. Yeah, except for Halo. I love to be quite popular and has yielded this, uh, this nice little retread the original Halo is why I bought an Xbox. I didn't have an Xbox. I had launched, and then I was at some Halo event where they're giving out like Game of the Year edition of Halo. Well, now I have the game that I would have an Xbox for. Might as well go get an Xbox. I mean it's kind of as a watershed game in a lot of ways. Yeah,

it's crazy to watch. There's a Macworld video where Steve Jobs brings out Jason Jones from Bungee when Halo. You know, Bunje was a premier Mac developer and the first time they're showing Halo and it's got the music, it's got all the enemies, it's goot master Chief. But it was an RTS at

the time. But you can see like the I think, like I've watched that documentaries where like a lot of the maps even were still the same or at least very similar to their RTS count of parts, especially Silent Cartographer. Like a lot of that was with exception of the inside stuff like just straight up pulled from the RTS version and then just modified. I guess they were

coming off a myth at that point. Yet there were two I think I think I remember them like they were definitely on a G three or three G four and I was like, man, yeah, that's the computer. I'm gonna get getting stuff the nice G four tower because look at that. They're gonna make games for these computers. Fantastic. I think it's a photo shop too, right, didn't go from an RTS to being like almost a tribes

or battlefield style like big multiplayer game. It's like les, Yeah, that was the there was at least yeah, that was definitely one iteration of it, and then it's held on I think just become a shooter and it became a Microsoft property. I think it was after Microsoft bought Bungee that, you know, it became an Xbox only thing and they had to find a way to adapt it to a controller. For better or worse, it's a very good shooter on the console everything for the industry, that was definitely kind of

like a minor inflection point in the design. I mean, there hadsole video games, there had been first person shooters on consoles before, but that was the one that's like, no, this is this is really buy and you can trace it to you know. It's like there's Golden Eye and then there's Halo, like more or less yeah, yeah, but and Halo is like, okay, we still see pretty much all of those standards set by Halo

in game. Yeah, its rules are still there. Yeah. Like when Golden I came out, I think that the people that were playing on the PC were already playing shooters already were probably not impressed. But with Halo, I think that's when the console shooters started. I get some legitimate respect, and then there was a lot of money there, and then everybody's like, let's put our console and then here we are so Halo. Halo killed the

PC. Basically, basically, Halo got all It got all the PC developers to go like, oh dude, I think that argument could be totally made. I mean it's it's almost inarguable. Yeah, like that, that is That's just how it is. Thanks though, Thanks Microsoft. Yeah, Microsoft killed the PC first. It was brought it in. They could take it out. That's their m O. All right, let's let's talk a lot about a little bit of news here, you guys, how do you feel

about that? Sharon? Microsoft called the PC. That means we're just gonna talk about Skyroom from the forty five minutes to a sky Room news. We don't have another. We don't have another forty five minutes talking. There is news. We can talk about it quickly, but that's your Then we can just oh, I mean, I guess the three sixty texture thing is the biggest piece. Yeah, there's there's a bunch of issues. They're all working into an all platform patch that the game is bug yet launch not that,

but it's not as bunky as I expected. Sound, but this is a weird bug. Well, this one, this one is unique, and then it affects everybody like everybody else has got their issues of like oh my face disappeared, or I can't turn in this quest whatever, or the frame rate in this dungeon is bad. Yes, get me started, but this one is reproducible and affects everybody essentially who does it so sixty, So it's basically on the three sixty. If you install the disk for Skyrim to the hard

drive to the hard drive, it never loads like the high version. That never It's just the way it surfaces them is not. There are some assistant There are quite a few textures that I picked out personally that never loaded the high res versions because I played through the whole game. I played like until I reviewed it off the hard drive, not knowing about this bug, and there were like two or three places where I was like, yeah, something,

especially the signs signs get fixed, totally fixed. So that's the thing. I don't want to look at any shots because I'm totally fine with how it looks right now. The loading times are so good, I can't like, I am waiting until that patch comes out before I play went forward. I'm happy staying in the back. Ignorance is bliss. What's the impact on onloading times from installed is not installed sizable, So it's weird. It's weird

because yeah, they're way worse off the disk. Yeah, well, but it uses the built in cashing on the three sixty and they claim that, you know, once you've played it for a few hours and it's fully cashed and the load times are almost as good as and they do get better over time, but they're never going to be as good as as off the hard drive. Yeah, it's just if you don't know the difference, you can't. But it was that if I'm gonna start playing, I need to just

install, install it and not worry about it. A point when they were all the patch it'll look better, and you'd be like, oh, hey, yeah, I've already seen it now, so like I know how much like it is. It is a striking difference, Like there are points where you go back, fuck, this looks really like it's a really good looking game. Once that issue was taking care of, it was a pretty good

looking game before. That was one of the factors that got me also thinking like I should just play pieces so that we should talk out for this. But but my solution is to play the PC version until the three sixty version is fixed. Man, so now I'm just gonna probably do a totally different character. So what kind of characters should I do? Should do all magic? I thought that, yeah, it goes goes alternative, like what other

there are? There are very few all total arts in it passed. Then what you've already done the words like yeah, like if you want to be a thief, like isn't trying to be yeah, because the backstab perks, the thief perks fifteen and dual daggers. And then we'll switch to somebody's magic. Somebody was playing there was a way to like get that up to thirty X, but I'm not sure. Well, like you can basically one hit like one shot anything that you sneak up on my point, great, uh,

but what about a giant maybe. So they're gonna patch this, they don't have a time table for it's not it's not coming like tomorrow though, like I mean, it's gonna be a little bit of a weight. So it sounds like they're taking the tack of rolling that into the first like major title update because there are there are no game breaking issues. It seems real lyst like you know, it's it's a lot of there's nothing, nothing consistent.

It's totally playable. Yeah, yeah, there's nothing where it's like, oh shit, all these people are gonna go turn these games, go look at the Beth doesn't support forums. It's pretty crazy. I'm not saying there's so many variability, but I don't think it's enough that there's. Like, also, the game is just so good that it's I don't think you could go to any video game support forum and find a real happy, lucky crowd, because you're going to the support forum, you're already in a fucked up

place. The range, the range of problems people are reporting it is pretty magnificent that I buy that. But yeah, I would say it's gonna be But but the thing is that it's all different people funding different problems. Like, right, no one person is going to experience every one of the three hundred bugs that are on the front page. It's not I can't finish this story quest because this one thing that a lot of people are gonna end up

doing by accident is breaking the game. Right, It's like everybody's gonna run into two or three things. They're pretty minor, but like, no, nobody's gonna have the game completely break on them. I don't think so. So, Patrick, what can you tell us about this UMD trade in program that Sony is ramping up for PSP UMD Passport program I think is what it's called. Yeah, this thing is super weird, so it's interest it's just

a pan right now. But basically that you download a program to your p to your Vita and then it verifies that disc with your PSN account to download it to your PSP because the Vita won't be able to read the disc right down to your PSP. Then it verifies it to your PSN account. Yeah, and then you download that program under Vita, which then allows you to transfer that to your Vita as a digital download. But it's not free and the price is set by the publisher, and that varies between five and fifteen

dollars. They could also be there's one there was one anime game that was like forty bucks. Basically you were just buying the game over again. But you have to remember the games in Japan are on average like seventy eighty ninety dollars, so like they they're paying more than we are per game, and yeah, that might be yeah, so that might be discounted. Over what they would just sell it in the PlayStation store at you were a new owner

or something. So yeah, yeah, like it's Sony gives publishers a little more leeway in terms of their pricing then, say like a Microsoft open pricing, yes, which also means that you can get screwed over. It's it's weird, like it's very easy to not get screwed over though, just don't, just don't, just don't. Yeah, I mean. They also claim that somehow they're going to be able to stop like the UMD fraud, which would be like, you know, you just have one UMD and just pass

around all your friends. But like I don't know how they, I mean, how they would read the uniqueness of an individual umb stop it by forcing them to pay some amount like that. Yeah, you know, it's it's the throttle. If you have to pay ten bucks anyway, well you get ten bucks that everybody has used U m D s and yeah exactly. It's like, hey, if you want to pay us money for PSP games that no one's playing, great, awesome, right because on the store they're fifteen

bucks anyway, so just buy yeah great, We're sales are up. Yeah yeah, I can't imagine that. It's I don't know, it's shitty psition you guys. Yeah, that thing's gonna come out, man, I know you can do about it. Yeah, I'm real interested to see how that thing does. It's yep, I don't know, Yeah, I don't Yeah, when is that coming out? That's pretty fucking soon. I kind of thought comes out in a couple of weeks in Japan. Yeah, yeah, it does, that's true. I kind of thought the three DS, like,

Oh, that's gonna be that'll be a total swish for Nintendo. Well it's and it sounds like it's doing better than pception. It's ahead of the DS in terms of the same lifetime sales, but that doesn't say a whole lot because the DS didn't do that right out of the gate. It was Win the Ten Dogs, Brain Training and those games dropped that got it down

like Ellen, yeah, and then ended up up there. Yeah. So it's probably gonna sell older the holidays, and I think Sony probably made a pretty grave mistake and not being out in time for the holidays this year to make it a ya and then Super Mario three D Land kind of gives people like a pretty good reason to use three days. You know. It's it's like I said in the review, I don't know that I would go so far as to say you should run out and buy a three DS for this

game. But if you already bought a three DS, you should probably have this. You already, you already are in for for the bulk of the amount you made the mistake. Get the cool game that you can play on that thing or other Ambassador games should be coming out soon, So we still we're still do another Yes, do another tenny S games that I will tell myself I'm going to play and then they'll not even download. And then the NBA games. It's twenty and twenty. I thought it was ten and ten.

I don't know. Is there a Vita anyway? We're doing for some more an S games, and then we'll also do for some GVA games. Is there a Vita launch lineup? No, there's nothing now. Wipe Out they've they've been saying for a long time now that wipe Outs a launch game uncharted as a launch game in Japan, so I imagine it will be ready for us. This is supposed to be launched. I mean, those are games that you've played before. On other portable systems. Never, I mean

those are those are at least strong brands. I'm very excited to see what rid Racer ends up being. Man, hey, man, as long as it's long as it's got du step needs more dub step tech and Tag Tournament too totally has a bunch of dub step on the soundtrack. So it's just it's a Namco initiative to wobble up their games. Their combined universe its powered by dubsteps. Exactly what do you think Dick Doug is pumping into Pucas and five gars dub step. Yeah, that dub Step guns video on YouTube is

just that. That's actually a like a theoretical rendering of what they would like the next dig Dug game to be. No, that's just a handicam of what dig Dug actually is. That's someone. Yeah, it was able to actually film dig Dug, and that's what he looks like. You you see it from a different angle. So if you're actually there, if you're not doing any through this weird video game simulation, that's what dig Doug looks like.

Yeah, he's not. Turns out, real real life dig Dug not so into dropping rocks because into dropping base, bad week for PC services, Steam getting a bunch of password attacked, and Call of Duty Elite not working so great during launch week for for Modern Warfare three. Yeah, I mean that's kind of cross platform, the Call Duty Elite stuff. Sure, yeah,

it's so. I was all set to write an article about, you know, should you subscribe to Call of Duty Elite, and I've been unable to write the article because it doesn't work yet, So I don't know. So the current answer, the current answer is yeah, no, probably it still has peak times where it's totally down. They stand on email to to all their subscribers so far as saying they're getting a free thirty days. But it has worked at some point. No, not not really. I mean

I was able to join groups. I don't know if anyone's been able to start a clan yet. Match history has not been working. It seems like they just kind of took it offline. They're in that mode where, you know how websites have like dynamic things on them that now that now that we work that much closer to building a website, we know things like the things that like this is gonna be like a heavy database call. That's going to

be the first thing to break under the load. Like the thing in the upper right right corner of the site that used to say your profile name, now it just says my profile Like okay, fewer dynamic calls. Just just flatten as much as you can, just make it work, you know, So that that's the sort of thing that they're going through to try and address

load. And yeah, I don't know, Like I was able to create custom classes and send it into the game, and you know that that seems to be working, and you know, it's kind of it's getting there. It's working more hours of the day than it was on launch day, but but it's all week out and it's still things that they said it was going to do, Like when they're saying things like we're working on getting the service better at carrying more users simultaneously, Like, guys, all you're doing is

stat tracking, Like like, what's I mean? I know there's more going on to it, but like at the end of the day, not that much more. You knew how many copies of this you were selling? Yeah, I don't understand. It sounds like an MML launch. This is what huge loggins crashes. Once you're in like the when Call of Duty four launched like that, that Christmas Xbox Live was on its knees for most of it the time because no one had anticipated or had seen that kind of traffic to

it before. It's like, this is kind of unprecedented, and I imagine on you know, Activision doesn't run a lot of stat heavy websites. No, never, not like you know, Wow, active Vision. I didn't say Blizzard, Blizzard knows what they're Blizzard was running. This be entirely different than dude, shut the door and you're just laughing behind it. I don't

think you guys help us. We got a lot of load on. I mean, there is the Skylanders website that's keeping track of all the toys that people are sickened with the power of the portals are laughing, and you know that seems to be holding up just fine with three people. Dude, there are bus ads for Skyland City. Oh yeah, there are three new Skylanders that came out last week. I've got him. I haven't tried him yet. Dinah Rang was pretty sick. He's got he's got boomerangs, he's a

dinosaur, and you don't have him, not have him. Yes, that's where Yeah, that's where the ultimaterang went back in times, was thrown back in time. What do you get for the Skylander fan who has everything? How's your carrying case full he needs? Like I had to take the the there's like a cardboard center thing in there that you're supposed to put like eight Skylanders that thing. I ripped that thing out and threw it away and just packing it full of Skylanders. A case bulges. When when do you have

like the castle grace call for Skylander they have a castle carrying case? Yeah, Also that is larger and I don't it's too much on the portal. But the thing is, it doesn't doesn't it doesn't do anything. It doesn't cover all of his Skylander transporting needs. Forty bucks doesn't get him all of the Skylanders. I feel like the way we're phrasing that like it doesn't get it doesn't cover all of his needs. Well, it's because he has needs,

his extreme Skylanders needs just in the room. And then kind of no one has like I feel like not a lot of flipping out over the steam data breach thing. There hasn't been much fallout. I was, I was kind of confused. Was the message, the message board different. So so when you create a Steam account of the message board you that's created, you know, spun off from your Steam account, but you can have separate passwords

for it. But I don't know if it faults, but I think commonly a lot of people on Internet used the same password for things, So whether it defaults or not, a lot of people just use the same one for consistency. I'm using steam Guard. Yeah, so if your mess the mess word got hacked, which also allowed them to get to another database, is how Valve put it. They didn't provide a lot of clarity and what that means that there's multiple databases, but they said there was no evidence of fraud.

That credit card information was taken, but it was encrypted and they've also hashed insulted your passwords. So basically, in terms of your information getting stolen, they seem to have done all they can do to protect it when it's

been taken. So also, like if you compare this to the Sony thing, like their turn around time on this, like they said that it was last having it started on Sunday, Sunday, and then I think on Thursdays when they shoot a state yea, So it's like four days between their discovery and making a public announcement about it, which they laid it all out and Gabe you know, signed it, and it was it was pitched by Valve as an I am from that I am from Gabe. It didn't show up

as a message when you started Steam. It was like a news right, because I'm not sure why they didn't force I know, I'm sure they don't want to spam people like I feel like they're going to use like your default email account, but that should be really a situation where whatever your default emails and your Steam account, like that should be a message. Did you.

Yeah, I heard from some people that they didn't go as well. Maybe they went out later and then and then I guess I don't walk into the I am stuff on Steam, so maybe maybe I would have gotten a I AM had I done that. But so they shut down the forums but not Steam proper. Right. Yeah, they've just said probably change a password, even though we're not saying you have to. Uh, and that Monteer credit

card stuff, but no evidence that there's a problem. I mean, so many stuff was way worse and there didn't appear to be any credit card fraud. You know, they took all stuff. So I mean if you couldn't play or Steam games, people would be freaking out. Yes, especially with skyrone like that would be fortunate, unfortunate timing, It would be no good. But you know, thankfully Battlefields and Origin so strom scyrom stuff some kind

of like crazy record for concurrent players on Steam a single player game. Yeah, it was like in the three hundred thousands or something. So how long until we see see what Half Life three is? That must have gotten out right, it's all part of so that the whole thing was really was, and Half Live three and type nice. I have all two days. It seems like I think it's all right. So watch your stuff logging his gabe end and his password is end gabe. Shit, I would, And it's

salted and it's hashed. Yeah it's delicious, Yeah, fantastic. What does that mean? I saw that? I saw that in the communicate. I don't know what I'm back in until they get the passwords chopped and screwed. Does anyone know what's salted? That's what is it? That's I don't it's it's in addition to yeah, it's cryptography stuff that goes on top of the

hashing, and it's you're salting up with like a random seed. See it's salted with salt salty seed about for news hackers don't They don't want the salty seeds. That's why they can't get into it. Penetrated my past stop comes to hacking. I'm all internal new new releases Minecraft? Is that actually coming out? Its final? But it's not mine? Con is uh this week? Wow? Some some big DJ's playing there. Two. I forget it's a cascade. I don't know. It's is a dead Yes, Halo Combat

of All the Anniversary for Xbox three sixty. This is gonna take a while. Assassins Creed Revelations Frexbox three sixty and play Station three, Saints Row the Third f Xbox three sixty PlayStation three, and they see Super Mario three d Land for Nintendo three DS, Ultimate Marhold Versus dot Com three for PlayStation three and Xbox three sixty, Need for Speed the Run for PC WE three DS three sixty and p S three remand Origins for p S three WE and three

sixty. Connect Disneyland Adventures for Xbox three sixty, Jurassic Park for Xbox three sixty and PC. Oh my cheap jeep dot com is actually a place. Bejeweled three for Xbox three sixty, PlayStation three and Nintendo DS. Yes, why yeah, they're putting that in like pegle out on a disk. I don't know media, Yeah, those are different products. Medieval Move well, it's also twenty bucks for for Bejewel three, so same as they have been

charging for Jewel three elsewhere. Medieval Moves, Deadman's Quest for PlayStation three. Great job, great job. Uh. And this Sunday Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword from Nintendo we on PlayStation Network. You're gonna get Jurassic Park of the game, so it's a download. Yep. They're also Burger Time Wild Tour coming on on PlayStation network. Isn't Alex trying to defend that game? Yeah? I don't know what's I don't know what's out on I don't know.

I don't know what's out on x BLA. I don't know what's out on XPLA this week? Didn't you play some games? That's last week? Game sounds cool, it's it seems kind of like Armada for the Dreamcast, but fully realized. I've heard I've heard from Dreamcast in a long ass time. It seemed a little bit like Privateer, a little bit I had tonnage of Or, like you mind tons to or and then fly it to a dev cargo port and sell it. Huh yeah, I thought. And it's a

dual joyst Excus. There's a Windows Phone seven thing that where you can level up your AI buddy, and I really want to try that, but I don't have a Windows phone. And now you guys are using all the Windows phones. There's another one. There's another one, Yeah, all right, Will, I think it's Will has another one. Okay, if that's not new, I'm gonna steal it back and get some phone points because I'm an idiot, tread me in that Android. I'll give you back this Windows phone.

Yeah, I could probably do that, all right. Otomandius come out last week, Odous have been out for a couple of weeks. Okay, Yeah, well that was a clock on the site. Omdis excellent. I mean that was a weird release. Go go ahead and give that a look. Really, it is a weird release in so many ways. It's Canamy right, it's a great release. It's knomy right, yes it can Yeah,

it's inspired inspired by Yeah, it says it on the box. I don't know if you sell the boxes inspired by grads familiar with odomanius Uh, but I feel like they've just Canami has just been kind of like farting some games out. I feel like they are really like letting people know middle Gear kind of yeah, middle Gear. They didn't really it was like it was that big deal back at TGS or whatever voted to it, right right, big deal E three and then like came out as fun. Well they're supposed

to have Downpour and that's just that's coming out next year. Yeah. I could see them backing away from really slowly just to avoid this is not their first media. Yeah, there's Automadius g before autos accents gorgeous? Could you click the girls boobs? Probably you're creepy like gall shooters Like it's yeah, it's weird. So way, yeah, what else is going on? All right, let's radius. Let's take it home with a couple of emails. I do mean a couple of emails. Uh, let's see your first email.

First email comes in from Bradley Fitzgerald, with the prices of hard drives now spinning out of Gerald Bradley, Am I right, I can't. I can't read it if you're talking over me, I just gonna take us forever with the with the price of this room is unbearable, With the price of hard drives now spinning out of control, how do you think this will affect

the planning for next generation consoles? Uh? Microsoft, Nintendo will, Microsoft Sony will pay more than they have to, and then they've had to in the past if they want to secure contract to manufacture cut rate feature those five hundred gig laptop hard drives. When there's a massive amount of mind to be made something the two terror by disk desktop drives that power all back end Internet

services. The industry recovery and subsequent price normalization could be a year off given the number of drive component manufacturers that all got flooded, So thoughts on that. I hope it recovers faster than that. If if we're a year off from prices kind of getting back to normal, it's probably that's manufacturing is still It's still gonna be longer before that ramps up. It's probably an issue,

but less of an issue. I thing. I guess Nintendo is the only one that might be looking at a machine with any sort of decent internal storage. But Nintenda's not a company that really goes balls out in storage hard drive, and that they are not into internals. So what That's where Nintendo and we differ. Mm hmm. I hope it, man, it'll probably I don't know. I mean, there was a rumor this week that the next Xbox will be out next holiday, and I'm by it. That's I don't

really is out next holiday. I don't. I don't. I don't really either buy it, don't buy it. I don't. I don't think I did they ever say the tailor force for the three six Yes, yes they did. They said that all three of those games are gonna be for the three six years. We got on stage and then very very quickly Frankie was like, no, this is another six years. Yeah. I don't think any of those guys could raise the consumer to the retail price and say it's

because of you know, higher hard drive. Meant. I feel like by the time the stuff is actually gonna be coming out, and by the time it's actually rolling off into they'll be back to Yeah, that's probably be back to it's probably like eighteen months away. If they're coming out in twenty thirteen. It's so crazy what happened. I mean, not just the disaster, but the centralization of all that stuff. Right, it's bananas, it's man, Yeah, terrible. Wait, they're using bananas to make hard drives.

All they have left flooded so much chassis and platters that probably work. Gosh, yeah, he just didn't start making alternative hard drives. I still have him. I still need to buy some more storage, even if it's imaginary storage. Yeah, I don't know what the storage? Man, you can put, John Felipe, so much stuff in there, Sean Fillip from Quebec. I'll go straight to the point. Is it true that from Software won't release any DLC for that awesome game that is Dark Souls? If so,

what the fuck with them? What do you do? You want the DEALC? Or do you not want the DLC? God, people, I'm gonna lump all people together here, ye are people? DLC is the worst thing to happen in video games. Remember when you just get a disc and put it in? Why guess what you can still do that? This guy's all, where's the DLC? Make up your mind? Imaginary man? I just

thought the argument about DLC is so tired. Yeah, I mean I ended up so I ended up recording one of those subscriber only videos from my house last night, and it's like one in the morning where I was just like just going for it DLC stuff. So look for that, I guess as DLC. Yeah, exactly, what does your position sound anything like? If you don't like it, don't buy it. Yeah, that's what it sounds like. Okay, if you don't like it, don't buy it. Get

back to us. When you buy a game that seems like it's somehow less than it should be because there's DALC, and don't bitch about stuff that you're just gonna buy anyway, which just help services the problem even more. I think it is a great area. It's done well, it's done poorly. Sometimes there's a great DLC that seems appropriate, and sometimes there's terrible DC.

Yeah, yeah, I think so. I mean I'm waiting. I'm I'm waiting for the the first example of a game that feels like they cut huge amounts of content out of it so they could sell it as DLC without then cutting the price. Because the mx TV Alive was sold at a lower price, specifically, because it was their experiment to try and sell more DLC. So you're saying you have not felt like DLC has been stripped from the game. I mean this stuff is generally produced on a separate budget, you know,

or after after the game has gone Yeah, you haven't. Team's rolling off of the project and now they're just rolling on it. Basically they develop

argument. It's like, well, those guys would just sit around for three months not doing anything because their role in the game is complete, or while we're still doing the finishing QA and polish, those guys start on What if the development time were longer and you put the DLC in the actual then you get your game in the spring, and they always run into the same thing because then they would just make DLC for a like you just it's it can't

be longer because at some point you have to lock what's in the game so you can test it thoroughly before you ship it. I feel like there's been stuff that I has previously been unlocked that have been DLC, like dead rising costs, stumes and stuff like the blocks and stuff like that. Costumes. Yeah, that's that's stuff that is what codes. Yeah, Like you mean they're still charge if it were in the game. What I'm saying is it's

absence from the game is not detracting from your enjoyment of the game. I think in Dead Rising it did for me. I mean a lot of that game for me. The first one was like unlocking back the megabus still stuff that stuff. You know, there's still like armor sets and like weird costume things to find and put together in that game. But it's stuff that I feel like, it's not the things that is now you have to you have

to pay. So yeah, no DALC for Dark Souls. I think they came out and said they're not doing ye They're like, it's not it's not their thing. They're putting a big patch out for it. Though the same was that the one that Ardy came out in Japan that has not made it fame one or if it's a different one. But it's supposed to help the frame right and blight talent. I know that supposedly. I never had that.

I guess the PS three wasn't as bad. I heard terrible things, but yeah, those the two versions I guess have performance issues in different areas well. We played the three sixty one, we were playing with Ryan Right.

Never went to black Town, I know, but I could even tell when in the first area that there were the frame rate was chugging when nothing was going on, and never experienced it in the Digital Digital Foundry did a really exhaustive breakdown as they don't want to do really Yeah, I mean they do it for like every big game. It's I should go check it out like a huge graphics nerd, Like it's so awesome. I like paging through them. But they both have issues. They both have the frame rates balanced

out to about the same, just in different ways. Nate writes in do y'all want some moonpies? I know a guy? No, wait, we could they have moonpies here? You want some moon pies? I mean I'll take some them. Yeah, but you know they have him in the store. We can we can just go get them, because, yeah, what makes his moonpies different? It's not chocolate vanilla moonpies. I've had. They have. They have all kinds of moon pies, banana, banana moonpies.

I had my first moonpie, let's say, relatively recently. Flavor was it? I don't know, Okay, the flavor. I do not think that they were all that I don't I don't get that. It was just a stack of craft singles. They're a little dry something by cheese. Moon's made of cheese. I was just cheese and mayonnaise, all right, Brad brad grens uh So, I'm actually pretty supportive of things like Project ten Dollars and other similar online play passes and vouchers intended to incentivize buying a game new or

allowing publishers away to monetize you sales after the fact. But as they become but as they are becoming ubiquitous in the industry, I'm wondering if their existence actually has the unintended consequence of undermining the value of an Xbox Live Gold membership. Actually think it's pretty interesting. It's basibly one of the more important premium benefits of Gold is access to online multiplayer, but increasingly online is being graded,

being gated behind these packed in or ten dollar codes. When publishers are telling us they need the money support the game online, the question becomes, isn't that why I'm paying Microsoft sixty dollars a year? Microsoft obviously has invested interest in maintaining the illusion that what everyone pays is necessary to support the features of Live. But are they at risk of losing the revenue stream as time goes on or is the average game buyer just not savvy enough to connect the

dots that one. Yeah, he's correct, like that, Yeah, that this is it's kind of a fuse. Microsoft doesn't share any of that money with publishers, right, No, like's that's all their money for our infrastructure and what and whatever. They but they have whatever else we need that money for this thing. It's their servers. Most that's onlikel Yeah, like publishers with the exception of like when they want to like EA and and you know

activation with the hooks for Call of Duty. Elite has to run a lot of services on their own and they go out and contract with you know, demon Ware or whoever else to to do that stuff. But yeah, if you just want to put your game on the internet and have dudes fight each other, like Microsoft does all the matching stuff. And that's also why I you see sometimes demos and stuff will disappear from PSN because so many charges, you like they have to pay for those X amount of downloads, like if

they buy a bulk and then they'll just pull it down. The double dipping going on here multiplayer. I don't I don't. I don't know that. I call it double dipping. Different, it's two different people single dipping. Yeah, i'd say it's it's that's almost a grosser because there's nothing you can

do about it. I mean, the issue is like it's kind of how it's being presented by the publishers, Like it's they are throttling the multiplayer because that's something that you need to have, or most commonly, they're throwing the mult player because that's something you need to have an Internet connection to use, and that's something that they can more easily get access to than some you know,

single player feature. Yeah, or at least it makes more sense because like, well, I already have to have an Internet connection to make use of this. Therefore, you know you're already there. I hadn't heard the ten dollar stuff as a supplement to the budget of the game for multiplayer. I thought it was just use sales stuff. I hadn't heard any device there

are. There are multiple arguments, but it's it's it's more about you sales, but that they'll they'll like EA has used the other one for that before, well, using their own servers. Maybe there's more literally there to the biggest games is here a Mono War for three and Skyrom both didn't have bullshit pre order stuff and both had did not have an online pass. Tell you what people want to make money? Yep, it's online pass in Assassin's Creator

revelations. Yeah, because like you know, everyone that isn't those games. Yeah, they got to figure out what they can do to get every dollar

they can. I'll admit to being like continually bothered by the like those sort of falsehood that MacSoft presents over the Gold service and where your money is going and what you're paying for, Like I like really like they're going to position that like I have to pay Gold to get a Xbox exclusive you know, theme for Facebook, Like so I can access those like any other device I have. I just I don't have to pay for the application or the access

the application. And they that's where they wrap a lot of the goals stuff around now, is like these additional services you use Netflix got to have goal. Well, I don't need that for anything else, and your goal, your your interface isn't any better than anyone else is. In fact, the PS three one is actually a little bit better Yeah, it is. Uh, I disagree either way. I don't. That's all I have to say about that. Yeah, but they have people, they have people hooked into

it and it's fine. Yeah, I'm not saying it's bad. But it's also like, if if that was the one thing that I needed to have goal for, it's like wold, and why would I you would involve exactly, there's enough other devices that have that shit on it. Yeah, and and the fact that there's you know, it's always bothered me the level of advertising that you get on on the Xbox considering it's like, I feel like I'm paying you guys money to kind of like protect me from some of this

stuff. It seems a lot in the new dashboard. Yeah, you guys went I am. I am not willing to commit to being better about that until that thing launches and we see where all the spots and it looks, it looks, it looks you know, we're hearing that it looks improved,

and what we saw it looked improved. The thing that is more about what Microsoft's approach to it is that like they throttle what content providers even want to do, Like the BBC has their one player or Player one Eye Player, which is available on other devices for free because part of what the way the BBC or like Europe subsidizes that stuff as it has to be accessible for free

for everyone where when it goes on to a platform. So they wanted to put on the three sixty and they talked about this publicly, saying we want to get on the Xbox because it's this big, big platform. And Microsoft said, nope, it's got to be on Gold and they said that's legally we can't do that, and like, well, then you can't be on our service and I think that's shitty, but they do because they want to maintain the illusion the gold is getting you access to services, even if those

service providers don't care if they're on Silver Gold. Yeah. Yeah, you know, they psist presenting this illusion that is at the same time, you know, they do like compare what like it's it's the age will thing compare with the Xbox interface looked like when it launched versus what it looks like now, and then do the same on the on the PS three. At PS three pretty much the same ship. They put some sparkles behind it. I agree, and that's and that's about it. And they added some ad units.

That's pretty much the improvements that have been made to the PS three interface. I think the competition has done a poor job discrediting Microsoft's reason to charge for Xbox Live. Yeah. That's ultimately what it comes down to. How I rationalize having to pay for it is that there's nothing better. Yeah, and that they Sony and Nintendo have both done no reason for my stoff to the have to say, Yep, this doesn't make any sense to charge for

it, because they can say how far have they are? Even if even if there's some definitely some faces will say that. You know, running a service that is tiered by people who pay you and people don't like they're you have to think long and hard about what you put behind a wall, what you don't, and you have to make changes kind of as as you go and and kind of see how people react and do that. But you know, it's it's it's only when when people kind of rise up in mass that

you have that reason to do that stuff. And with Microsoft, no one's

really doing that to them. People seem happy to pay their feet. At least now with the new dashboard, you can turn off the auto pay, which was kind of an issue for which it's probably for It's probably good even if you want to stay gold, because there's still so many cases of them selling prepaid cards and stuff at a disc Amazon deals right like a couple years like this whole notion, like like they say, like, oh, we had to raise the price to sixty dollars, which is insane that they're like,

yeah, you got who does that? Who? Like, yeah, we're making this ten dollars more last time, at last time by dot com had like thirty five dollars cards banked, like three years of gold time. Yeah, I have another one in my drawer exactly. I always find one, right, yeah, one terms like oh geez, oh man, I should Wow, it's probably gonna lose again and yeah. So yeah, being able to turn off auto pay and and and being able to look out for

those deals because they'll they'll happen again. They happen every year. Everybody wants to make money the end of the day. Everybody just wants to make a dollar. How do I make money? Talk to me later? How do you feel about hashing ten dollar codes? For Patrick Levick? So we've got to figure out we could if we could get away with that feel a double dipping. Uh. Well, that's all the time we have for emails. Thanks everyone who wrote in bomb Cast at giant bomb dot com is the address,

and with that we close another episode of the Giant bomb Cast. Thanks everyone for listening, thank you guys for talking and later, and we'll be back next week with another addition of the Giant Podcast.