Giant Bombcast 11-29-2011

Everyone's Tuesday, November the twenty nine, twenty eleven, and you are listening to the Giant bomb Cast. I'm Ryan Davis. We are joined this lovely week by none other than screen dot COM's Alex Navarro. Alex, how you doing? I'm doing pretty good. Straight in from the East Coast, just here to do the bomb Cast New York City's own. Yes, I'm representing Queens. You're here for the for the holiday. I am. I was here for the holiday. How was your holiday? It's very nice. I

saw a family. How's the family good? I had a lot of food. Great, that's what happens. Uh. I bought some stuff, did some things. Mostly I slept. I slept a lot. I like sleeping pretty good. Did you play any video games? Not since I've been here? Oh my god? Why did we even have him on here? I was playing video games? I don't know why am I even here? I was played video games? Was supposed to be out of town for this was kind of all you did was playing video games. She's now I have to

be in this podcast with this guy? Yeah, I know, I know. Tim good scheduling you guys, good job. Patrick kleppis here, Hey and Jeff Gershman, as you've already heard Brad Shoemaker keeping it real. We actually that was like one of the one of the arguments for delaying the podcast yesterday was that I was we do it tomorrow and Jeff can be on it. That's a bad argument. It's an argument. He's on it every week,

Like, who cares that special anymore? Well, because he was the only who played Star Wars the Old Republic, so he can provide us some insight into that experience that you there are light you hit dudes. You push the one key to swing a lightsaber's key one one. I don't know what use what? Like? How do with the button that I pressed to interact with the quest giver? Right click on them? What if I what if I want to use a button instead of right clicking? I don't know.

There's never been a podcast more informative on the subject of the Old Republic than this one. Breaking new grounds. Let's start at the beginning. How much does it feel like World of Warcraft? All of it? Really much? Yeah? Really, they're in the Speeders instead of Griffins. It's yeah, yeah, to get around his own but everyone talks now, yeah, everyone talks now, well they called it. They called that their fourth pillar, right, or it was a pillar, like it was the idea emos don't

have stories, so we're gonna get emos. Yeah, real stories and real voice acting. But it kind of get the impression. It's like, here's all that's real voice acting. Now go get ten moles. So it's like this lead up to then it's bad quart six cat teeth, ten keith just cat teeth. Cat teeth can't and then and then the cat teeth don't drop one to one off, Like you can't just go kill one cat and get six teeth out of its mouth, even though the model clearly has plenty of

teeth in it. In it you have to go kill a bunch of cats and wait for them. So it's an mm, that's what you're saying. Okay, well you know it's it's it seems very well made, and if you like that sort of game and are willing to continue to play that sort of game, I think that they have made one of those games and that. But you know, the all the talking and stuff, uh is neat for a while, I think that you know, so I played a Jedi because that seemed like the right answer, and you know, early on it

put you some kind of cool stuff. They introduce you some characters, uh, and you know, you get your talk on and kind of the black the classic BioWare sense of look at these camera angles. Here's this dude stand in here. Now you have a dialogue wheel, and the dialogue is kind of like what you choose, but it's not right for work exactly. Yeah, it's and it's you know, if you if you take too long. The last thing they said pops up is a little uh, you know,

minder of what you're actually answering. Oh, that sounds very familiar. It's it's it is the BioWare dialogue system, you know. And then if you want to be a good guy, you push one. If you want to be a bad guy, you push three. And then two is you know, two is if you don't want any light side or dark side points for your choices, thus locking you out of gear in the late game. So there's no reason to not there's no light side dark side stuff for other classes,

though, isn't there? I think everyone has it. It's not every single decision you make. It'll be certain dialogue choices will be still the light side, but when you chose your your your character and class and everything. You still to choose like imperiod exactly. Yeah, but you could end up having a lot of dark side points but still on you know, in the Republic. So the loot has a moral affinity. Uh, there is lots

there that requirement. There's loot that has a social requirement. Uh. So you have to have grouped up with people and and stuff to to use some of the gear. There's gear you can only buy for commendation points that you earn in that in that zone, they've got a lot of different shops. That's not even counting the Collector's Edition shop that will be for people who bought the Collector's edition. Wait wait, I don't Yeah, that's one of the

perks of buying the I think it's not even the digital Collector's Edition. I think it's only the physical goal. That there's an end game shop. I hate what video games have become. I hate it. So the dialogue, I think that a lot of the voice acting is really great. You know, it's it's certainly better than other MMOs, and that North voice right out the gate on the smuggler question, are you running into repeat voices much at all like people I played to like level eleven. So I ended up spending

most of Sunday Planet. I just need what's the point of all this grand, grandiose voice acting and set up if the actual quest themselves and what you're doing are not elevated to the same just like a bunch of set up for Yeah, So that's where it's sort of broke for me, is you know, there's some stuff really early on, is you're kind of ascending from Padawan to Jedi at an incredibly rapid rate because you're gifted with the Force, lucky

you, and that stuff's all pretty interesting and and I thought it was well well done enough, and about two hours in I found myself just kind of not watching any of the cut scenes anymore. You know. I had my laptop sitting there, and I was just like, I'm just gonna look at

the Internet while these guys get their talk on. Then I will look over and press the one key because I've already ended up getting some light side points and I might as well keep getting them because if I don't get enough, then I can't then I might not be able to reach the top tier of light side gear. It'd be dumb to have both light Side and dark side points? Is it binary? Is it is it like the cod Tour Light dark system where it will swing or is it just like it didn't. I

think it's the point. I think it's two different buckets because it's it's when you make the choice. The light Side icon appears on screen and says how many points you just got for pushing the one key, so you could theoretically have like some of each, I think, because I don't think it necessarily will subtract. But I didn't make any dark side choices because I kept it

in the one. Yeah, I wonder if it would lock you out of something like if you if you unlock some gear at the light side and then start swinging to the dark, do you start like losing access to those things or those contingent I don't know. I didn't earn enough points to even or even get to a point where I could see what that gear even was. The fact that the like light side dark side stuff like those distinctions are separate

from the Republic Imperial like faction thing seems crazy to me. Well, that seems like potentially interesting from a story perspective, if they take advantage of it. But you know, I guess people that have people that have played a lot more of this beta than I have, have said that it's there's no noticeable change, yeah, which seems uh missed opportunity. Yeah yeah, Like, well then why do it? And you know, you you end up with with companions sort of like cotor. You know, you'll have dudes kind

of rolling with you, and they will you will earn affection points. So you'll earn or lose affection points with your companion based on what you say. And that's not something quite as simple as they are a light side person or they are a dark side person, or at least that's what the tooltip said. My robot liked it when I was nice, So you have you have a friendly robot, said a friendly robot that I liked it, that liked

it when I upheld the law and bit and was a nice jedi. So can you not just straight up skip the dialogue like as the dialogues playing out to speed it up? Yeah, yeah, you're making all of the byoware management really sad by saying things like this because they have spent so goddamn much money making this is really clear that it was kind of heading in this direction for a while, like the original pitch of Old Republic. I remember being

at those first events for the game. We're like, hey, we're gonna take an m moo base. We're gonna we're gonna evolve it, like we're gonna make this beyond World of Warcraft. It's gonna be real storagem and this is gonna be co toward three, four, five, six. That was their pitch, but demand their pitch all along is the cotar three through seven, like like that's the that's their thing to get people like Mews like I

don't I don't want to play this that much. I don't like gut most and it doesn't seems like it's actually kind of come back around to what you would have expected, which is perhaps a better it's a Star Wars m momo than there. So the part where it really broke for me on the dialogue side was, you know, there there is a quest where you you're out and kind of in the wild and you find a pile of bones with a

data pad there you're right click on it. You see a little holographic recording some guy who needs medicine for his kid, and the medicine must be made out of cat teeth. And he's just talking and talking and talking, sending this message hopefully someone will see it someday because I don't think I could make it. And then you know, you go through all this stuff and then it's like, go get six cat teeth, but they must be the cat

teeth from these specific cats in this specific area. We know they're the exact same cats in the cave, but they will not drop the teeth. Don't be a fool. So you tried to go get them from some Yeah yeah, uh, I mean you know it is an MMO like, yeah, don't as usual, Yeah, exactly, Like, don't don't think it's not going to be that game. You know, there were cases later on where you know, I was getting my talk on with a guy who said,

you gotta go fight this guy because they've kidnapped this doctor. Now, run all the way across this zone, which is pretty much empty, by the way, just huge halls, just gigantic areas with absolutely nothing in them. Here's a table keeping people. No no people in a lot of these areas too. There. That's not to say that the entire zone is devoid of people, but there are large hallways and stuff. In this senate area there

there's just nothing, and you're just doing that. Maybe that would be all players, I guess, I guess, But what would they be doing there? There's nothing. There's no vendors there unless you're like there to socialize and like I'm waiting for someone to log in so we can go play, you know, which, like you'd be doing that in the cantina because you earn, you earned rest while you're there. So they've built these huge environments and

put like nothing in them. So point being, I'm running all the way across this zone staring at the map half the time because it's it's not always the most clearly designed building. Get to the other end, kill four dudes with a lightsaber, go through some dialogue that says, man, the agent's gonna want to hear about everything you just did. You should probably go tell

him, then run all the way back. Fast travel there is. There's fast travel that you can use every thirty minutes to to move around the zone. But it's you know, it's like the Hearthstone. It's like the classic kind of MMO thing. You can't just rely on it every single time. So I had you know, if you use that recently, you definitely it's like you can't just pay someone like, hey, take me across town, and here's there are taxis that will take you around the zone, and that's

the speeder bikes that basically act as the Griffins and World Warcraft. But I didn't see any where I was. It was just sort of all right, now you gotta go over here, and yeah, it sounds like it might not be bad. I just feel like people have been misled to perhaps to

what this actually is going to end up being. Maybe I think it's it's hard for expectation management with the number of years, the amount of money that is supposedly being thrown at this thing, and perhaps how they originally pitched it and haven't changed that pitch well, the way they continue to lean into like the BioWare clout and which gives a certain expectation that on that. I also feel like all the coverage of that game pretty much over the last year has

literally just been everyone shouting as loud as they can. Hey, guys, this is an MMO. Please manage your expectations, because I think everyone figured this out a while ago. Three you know, played it and didn't really have a very good time with it and one of their flashpoint situations, and it's just like that, you know, the game is using all the same

terms that you expect from an MMO. It's you know, at level ten you get your advanced class for Jedi, and it's it's the difference between like, do you want to be melee DPS or do you want to be a tank? Uh? And it's it's very clear it uses the word tank, which that's fine, but they're not one of those things that like, yeah, they're not even disguising it at all. You know, you're you're getting lightsabers that you can only equip in your off hand. Why why what makes

those lightsabers different than the lightsaber I hold in my main hands? Shorter? Yeah? Is it it? It didn't look it didn't look shorter to me. The combat interesting at all? No, I mean the same you're hitting numbers on the hot bar on the hot bar. They've I think individual characters. At least my guy was way more powerful than the typical low level and momo character, Like I was taking out you know, five or six guys

that were above my level. There are like one level above me without really having to stop and rest, Like you know, the combat does keep moving, and I didn't find myself getting overwhelmed. I maybe died like two or three times in closer fights. And then you get a companion who's this robot who you can who shoots and also kind of pulls agro from guys. So a lot of times the robots just getting beat up and you're just lang to

everyone while the robot takes the damage. So that doesn't like the Smuggler class have like a cover system. Like I'm wondering if maybe I want to say that's true, it does? It does? I wonder if and if there are classes that maybe you're a little more interesting to play. That's why I picked the Smuggler class in part because I thought that I'd seen some of that stuff and it seemed like it could be interesting. You know. I didn't

get far enough into it too. I will say though that like maybe your experience is different on on the Jedi stuff, Jeff, But I felt like for this class, they didn't uh, they never went out of their way

to try and introduce like here is like what makes this class different? Like I just got like along the right hand side of the screen, you're a little like you know, exclamation points of hey a tool tip, there's some helpful get here, and I have like, you know, eight or nine of those, and so I say, I'm not going to look at all of these, So I'm just gonna keep trucking because I can just kind of shoot these guys with my blaster and that seems to be doing the trick.

So everyone's while. I will see this green silhouette on a piece of cover in front of me and be like, can I click on that? What do I do? So it's partially on me of like I didn't bother to go and look into the information on how to play the class correctly, but I also felt like that should be explained a little bit, maybe contextualized the doubt right click on stuff. But yeah, they're there are mad tooltips all over that game, and that's you know, yeah, I mean the Jedi

earns points and spends points. So like for for hitting with your basic slash, you end up earning two focus and then you know, the the next level force attack is is three costs three focus rogue system. Yeah, yeah, so you're kind of earning points and spending points. Yeah, with with your abilities through that stuff. It's not like a manna system or anything like that. Yeah, and then you know, the crafting system is all companion based. Like it it has kind of like almost like a torchlight thing.

You can send your companion away for sixty seconds to go sell all of your stuff. You can't specify what it sells though. It just sells all of your common loot, all your grays, your bitter trash. Yeah. So if you have gear that you know you don't want, you can't, like I don't think you can add it to its inventory and say, hey, sell this too, because I don't care. And then the crafting is all

companion based. Also, like you don't go it is not like World of Warcraft, Like you're not going to run around and right click on plants or mining stuff or or whatever. Yeah, forget it exactly. Well what instead what you do is you pay I think it was like ninety five credits, which is not a lot of money to send your companion away for three minutes

on a gathering mission. And if they're successful, which you know, as the stat for that crafting skill increases, they'll be more likely to be successful. They will come back with materials and then the craft basically, so so I ended up with artifice, which is you you constructing lightsabers and that sort

of stuff. Treasure hunting and archaeology as my three. So you know, you go treasure rounting, you find power crystals that you can use to build lightsaber parts, and then you can slot those into the four slots in your lightsaber to increase strength and entrance, and you know the other light space stats

I believe. So yeah, I think so. I'm guessing this game has the same problem as every other Star Wars game of of completely uh negating any kind of threat that the lightsaber imposes, like you know in Star Wars movie, like slightsaber touches anything, it's dead. Yeah, this is you're probably stuff. You're you're hitting stuff for sure, and you get a lot of

abilities and stuff like that. You know. The ability to leap into combat is useful mainly because it just helps get you from point A to point B slightly faster than if you had ran all the way over there. The game doesn't have auto attack, kind of have to keep hitting the one key. That's peculiar, and I don't know if that's like some deliberate thing where they're like, this way, you're gonna feel like you're engaged because you're not just

sitting there watching him swing the stuff. I mean, you know, one one is kind of shaped like a lightsaber, you know, yeah, exactly. Or you can also right click you can keep clicking to do the basic attack. But that just seems Yeah, I don't know what the point of that is. Why they especially if there's no timing based you know, like if they mainly had some sort of timing mechanics, it's like, hey, if you pay attention in our timing your attacks to go along with it,

you're going to get a more powerful swing. I can see why. Yeah, they would want to encourage you to try that out, but there's really nothing like that there. There's you know, it's stuff that's appeared in other MMOs where like if you block or perry and attack, there's an ability you can use immediately following that that only lights up after you've done that attack. But that's that's not new to to the genre or anything like that. Yeah,

I don't know. Like I said, it seems well made, and you know, they've got all the guild systems and groups up and all that sort of stuff like you would expect from a MMO, but I don't don't you know. I stopped playing World Warcraft for a reason, and I think people looking for a game that's going to like advance the genre to get people back in on that stuff. Like I didn't get that feeling from this at

all. This this seems like better presentation. Uh, you know, obviously a different setting, uh, and kind of a system in place to kind of force you to to take in their lower which I think about all the time I spent not reading Quest Dialogue and every other MMO I've played. Like, it's kind of cool that they're trying to make that stuff matter. But if at the end it is go get six cat teeth, right, Uh, they just straight up call them cat teeth. Yeah, because you're getting

cat teeth from these cats for medicine. I mean, there's called cats. They're Manca cats or something, you know, they're there's there's Star Wars cats, but space cats. The drop I think is probably make a cat teeth or tooth or whatever it is. But such house cats, you're just kid, no, no, and you're not just killing house cats. You're not just going to people's homes. The flesh eaters have trained these cats to be savages, which is why the guy couldn't get the teeth on his own.

They're monsters, and their monsters I don't know, they're no, they're just monsters. They're just they're just monsters. They're humanoid dudes with swords and blasters. To be fair, I mean, they've shown some press demos of missions that have like more story driven, meaningful like kind of one off objectives. But isn't it is that the question, like the actual main quest stuff or

they're actual It's hard to say. I mean, who's to say how many other missions are Like I mean, they showed one where you were like you were surviving an ambush on a capital ship that you were on, and like you kind of made your way to the bridge and like track down the captain of the ship and head to decide, like you can kill this guy on the spot or take prisoner. But and some of that stuff might be the

flash points, which is designed for for repetitive kind of group play. Uh you know, it's they're not PvP arenas, but they're sort of instances that you can kind of queue up for. I guess it's kind of like I'm guessing story missions in a way. Uh yeah, but all the story missions are instance. They have areas in the game that you can't walk into unless you are of the right class in the right phase of your story. So you'll just see door You'll see like hallways that just have like a red glow

across the door, which says you can't go in here. Either it's for a different class or it's for your class, but you are either done with

that sequence or or working up to the next sequence. So the room where the guy hangs out, the agent that you're dealing with, you know, all the stuff around this time, you walk in there and it starts, it usually starts a cut scene, or at the very least, you become the owner of that area at that time, which is really only saying that if you're in a group, you're going to be the one making the decisions

because it's your story quest. Then that's that's how they prevent other players from just hitting the three key and dark siding you against your will or one of the ways that they that they combat that stuff. That's that's not really an issue. And then as soon as you walk out of that area, it changes from green to red and you can't walk back in there until you've gone

and completed the mission to trigger the next cut scene. So it's this really weird thing where you're just kind of seeing these different locked off areas as you're going through the world and there's nothing stopping you other than this like incredibly gamy thing that just says no man. So so the game opens with multiple uh pre entered cut scenes, which I guess, based on how they've been presenting

this game is not too surprising. But yeah, but one of those, uh kind of sets up a bunch of or at least seems like it's trying to introduce a bunch of very specific characters. Like it's not just the kind of the you know, the flavor like kind of combat scenario stuff that they've shown, but it is that also it is also that, but there's a lot more talking and sort of like this is a specific guy, this is

a specific situation. Uh, did you see it seems like if there's going to I talked to the Lady Jedi from the intro cut scene within within half an hour or something of me playing it. All right, yeah, what is it? Was that character from H forty seven Root yeah, my robot in some fashion, but they almost made it sound like he's like a raid boss or something weird, like I don't know, I'm on my side.

T seven sounds exactly like R TWOT two. What he makes the same beepy boopy noises, only they caption it so you know what he's saying, which is you know they go to work on it's very helpful. Same type thing, and the in thousands of years and robots make the same noises. Why what you want them to change? Don't fix what ain't broke? What's wrong

with the robot noises? What they changed? Literally everything else. I just think it's weird that humans can understand what those beeps mean and what every other language in the universe means. But I guess that's that fits with Yeah, that's it fits with. They have like a fictional reason for that. I don't know that they do, no, I'm sure. Yeah. I was to say in the was the expanded other narrative they have like a term for it, expanded universe. It's kind of it's a little like go through the

character creation stuff. There's kind of some creepy text concerning the humans, Like you know, there's four or five different races. Yeah, it's like they're the standard by which all other races are judged. Yeah, it's like by far the dominant now that storm Front type of the universe from storm Troop. Yeah, yeah, right right. So, and I also thought it was

weird that human and cyborg are separate racial classes. It's like I could play either as a human or I see that that was I don't think that was an option for me as a Jedi. Once you once you players can't have a cyborg Jedi. Once you put that stuff in your body, you are no longer pure human. Yeah, the Jedi is only like purity you know, makes sense, Purity sole your Jedi temple at that point, right, Uh, there's humans, Jedi temple whatever. The horn face guys are Darth

Maul dudes. Darth Maul dudes. I had cyborgs, do you remember any of them? No, I was just I was just fund asking me questions about that. I will never be Wie. No, you cannot be a Wookie. You cannot be a Rodians. The bummer for me, because din they add Wookie is to like his expansion pack on Galaxy. You could play as Rhodians and Wookies in uh in Star Wars Galaxy. Yeah, totally, or at least a month the rest of this two weeks. Han solos in

that one. Where's where's Han Solo in? Well, it's the Old republics NA named your character Han Solo. I did name my character Han Solo, so he's in the game. She she, that's right, blowing your mind, throwing all your expectations. Solo. No, I spelled it j A W N C O L l O U g H. You're the worst. I you You're the worst. It wouldn't let it wouldn't let me just call

her Han Solo. Why wouldn't It was not cool because there are going to be a thousand characters and that I'm gonna make Luke Skywalker, but it's gonna be Luther Campbell, Luke Skywalker, Uncle Luke sc one around the universe, tell everyone you got shit on your mind. Yes I ain't bullshit, and yeah you ain't bullshit, and start talking about ho ass kid and right us.

In the time you spent with the game, was there any freedom to roam between planets or like restuck to the planet you started on, or like can you immediately just hop in the ship and fly somewhere else. You got curious how much you can explore. You have to basically get to like up around level ten before and and get out of your starting area before you you

get kind of freer access to to the world. We kind of get though, you know what, I didn't go to the shuttle area prior to it, saying go to the Shuttle area, so you could very well just get the hell out of there. I'm not sure, but that would I don't know how that would work. Is there any kind of manual space flight at all? Or you just like there is some There is some kind of space

combat in it. I remember, I think I think it's like directed where like you're looking on the screen like it's you're not controlling the actual We talked to someone who had played in the beta and like a while ago, and they said that that thing looked like a bad flash game. So I haven't seen I haven't seen the space combat for myself, but it is apparently not a draw. Yeah, I don't know. It's it's a super weird thing that it's. It sticks very close to the conventions of the genre for the

most part. From from what I've played of it and that makes it super uninteresting to me than you stacked Star Wars on top of that, and I'm like, I'm good, thanks. So I don't know. I can't remember the last time someone will be way into like there there will be people who are crazy about that, but there are people who are way into every MMO. There is at least someone. There will be more people who are into

this one than are into people enough. Yeah, it's considering the amount of money they have sunk into this thing over the last I'd be really curious to know both, like what the numbers they need to hit for for profitability are and what their projections are for ninety days out or I feel like we don't need to be but we don't need to tell the business and all this stuff. I don't know. I feel like like we have we have conveyed our

feelings and our our suspicions about this game pretty clearly to our audience. EA needs to know this. I feel like like those people that need to know these things told these people these things, or which it does, it doesn't

matter, it's too late, like the ship is still years ago. I mean the thing in terms of profitability, like when you listen to their quarterly calls, like it's it doesn't matter necessarily what happens out of the gate, like because they're gonna have big numbers regardless, Like there's gonna be a big push. It sold, Yeah, the pre sold a bunch of a bunch of copies. It's gonna be on Christmas. People have time, so it's gonna have a big opening. What doesn't matter is the third, the first

thirty days or the sixty days. It's what happens after ninety days, basically is when you start to see the drop off that happens to every MMO, which is like it's the new flavor of the week people are interested in. They see this sort of like the first you know, two months or two months of content and then they go back to Wow. And at this point, even Wows numbers are dropping, but it still has a pretty high like ten million tamiliar user base. So it's it's sick, we're not gonna know

what happens Old probably for another six months. Like that's when you know, you know that they start talking, When they start talking free to play, that's when you start emerging servers. Yeah, those are the two early indicators that a nmo IS is having trouble sustaining itself. I have to imagine that they have some kind of plans in place to like, okay, like, obviously we need to sell this game out of the gate because we spent so much money making it, so we couldn't do free to play right now.

But theoretically they would have to have some sort of yeah, like some sort of ideas like okay, because with with with Warhammer, they did like the the rolling demo thing where you can play up to like the first tier of

PvP stuff for free. So I wonder if they do something like that, because the story is broken up into chunks like when I when I launched the game and get into my character, it says like prologue, you know, So it seems like the careers work in acts that there'd be a way for them to chop it up if they probably wanted to offer some sort of rob prologue demo. Yeah, we'll see. Yeah, what else you're playing? Track Mania two is really good telling me that it's a driving game. Still

running a server. Yeah, still running a server? Are you still? One of the most popular track Mania too. It's one of those things where there are so many empty servers that all you need to do is hang out on the server for about ten minutes and just having one person moves it far enough up the list. Because the list is sorted by a number of current players, that more people will eventually join. Ah. So if I hang out of the server for fifteen minutes, they'll be two or three people.

And if those people hang out there for another twenty minutes, they'll be all of a sudden, seven or eight people, and and then you can drive them all off with awful dub step. I added way more. I added way more dubstep. Yeah, yes, any really, any any choice pieces. That's a red Hot Chili Peppers give it Away dub step remix. He's got a heavy drop. The drop is not as heavy as I would like, but uh, you know it's it's it's pretty decent, I'll say.

But yeah, that server is still going, so I don't know. It's out there. It's called Giant Bomb Official Classic. Maybe we should just do another TNT with it or something. Maybe your end your in celebration. I've

been I've been a racing tracks from the server. Uh. Culling the list down because there's well over a hundred levels on there, and some of them just are they tired or just not not great driving experiences, so kind of been have Have there been any rumblings from the Mania people about like expanding on track Mania, Like, well, no, because shoot Mania is up next, but I've been talking about that for years. Yeah Mania, right,

quest Mania. But I thought the like the whole Canyon idea was like, yeah, then they're going to release the next part of this, which would be a whole new area. Yes they will, but first they're going to do shoot Mania and then I believe quest Mania and then they do track Mania two again, like it's it's that's that's okay, They've been the plan all along. Okay, it's not just to track Mania, which was like two years ago and three when when ub Saw gives their awkward thirty seconds to this

is track Media. I don't know why we bought this stuff. It's explain explain to me the logic in the track Mania subtitle naming conventions, because you've got you've got like United and Forever so United. Forever United took all of the well so Canyon United just took all the previous stuff. And I don't even necessarily care about what's in them? I just want to know how they

picked these words canyons named after the environment. Yeah yeah, So trak Mania Sunrise had its environments, and track Manian Nations was the free to play one, right uh, And track MANI United is the just the paid version of Nations. So all Nations is is the stadium environment, whereas United has six different environments, including like the car style that was in Sunrise and some of that other stuff. So track Mania two is just the canyon environment right now,

and they'll release track Mania two ice Island. Yeah, they've already done Island, so yeah, there's already an island government, so space it's yes, Yes, it's amusing to me this franchise is still around, and not because I don't like it, because I remember playing the first game and being blown away by how much I actually enjoyed it, and everyone thought it was crazy. Yeah you're crazy. It was like, what the fuck is this nonsense? You're out of your mind? But I not let you review games

anymore. But somehow this is endured and in fact thrived at least in some small sections of the end. Yeah, yeah, some small, very French sections of the Yeah, it's it's it's very French. Yeah, but it sounds like the drop off has hit hard. Oh it's huge, man,

No one is playing that game as far. It's it's it's sad to see there's you know, there's one or two servers that get some action on a regular basis, and that's you know, maybe that's where the pro players are going and kind of died by the time you reviewed it, Like, wasn't that like kind of the it was the week the Battlefield three came out, when is when our server went to ship and a lot of the other servers did too, And then it seems like Skyrim just kind of rolled through and

clean everybody else out, so understandably, so you know, some people are kind of coming back to it. But completely to answer your question, Canyon, it really just applies to the tile set used to make the levels and the specific car and handling model of said car. So each each different environment will have its own tile set and its own car, all right, So there is some correspondence to the name between the name and what's in. Yeah, they refer to the car as the Canyon car. Like there will not

be a TrackMania two Banana. There could be, Okay, if if all the tiles took place were set on a banana or banana land, and then and then the car was just the banana car, like they couldna two iron rand after that. Yes, okay, it's all on a train track. You have to keep laying down tracks in front of this train and self sacrifice is not allowed. Okay, track Mania, track Mania still a thing. Jeff is playing. Yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah, and that's yeah.

I don't know. I put another ten hours into Skyrim. It continues to be enjoyable. Yeah, I only just barely scratched the service of Skyroom at this point. Patch is coming out tomorrow. Come out on glad that I've only barely dealt into it yet that the patch is going to be out by the time I get home, so I can just jump in into I was watching a video on the internet of a way to get your all your

skills up to one hundred. Really. Yeah, it involves that that blood collecting quest, the item you get from that raises a bunch of stats, and there's a way to basically use that item without the item being used up, so you can kind of use the item over and over again and make the game and basically just get to a hundred on everything. So basically at that point, Yeah, yeah, sounds lame, it's not you'd be one hundred at everything. I feel that's something i'd want to like maybe exploit,

Like once I'm done, I don't want to grind anymore. Like I've got nowhere of the quest to do, not especially hard game to begin with, So I'm pretty sure that at the same time, I would really like to just have Smithing one hundred and you know all stuff, like just get that out of the way. I've pretty much decided that as soon as my character Urgan proc now uh decides to once he finished all the story stuff, he's just gonna go through and murder everyone in Skyrim as everyone. So that's I'll

wait until then to use that hundred everything you've been warned. Yeah, well I didn't notice. All is pretty good. My guy's name prisoner because that's the default name. I went, I went and looked through. I was looking at like Nordic baby names. That's goods like I want my Nord to be extra Nordy. I was. I was watching ull God was oh, I was watching the Da Vinci Code, and Urgan proc now is in that, and I was like, oh, You'regan proc. Now is a really

good name for a character. I should name my Skyrman character that. Then I actually did it. Yeah, what else have you been playing, Alex? Oh, let's see, I spent most of last week on w W twelve that was playing a lot of wrestling. For about a week. I played some of that for the Quick Look. I watched Jeff play how So, now now you've had some more time with it, how how are you feeling about it having some more hours into it. I mean, I've played

it for the Quick Look, and that's that's it. Okay, I haven't really spent too much more time with it. I know you bought it at a certain point we needed it for the Quick Look, So yeah, I ended up actually buying it twice because Amazon didn't get it here in time and it had to happen. So I have two copies too, for no good reasons. So this is great, four copies of WW It just happens.

Things happen. But that was a game that I started out really liking a lot more than I ended up liking it toward the end, because they do make some really fundamental changes to the gameplay and that one. But then you start playing stuff like Road to WrestleMania whatever, and it's like, oh, yeah, here's that, here's that bullshit that you're not maybe as fond of anymore. But the story stuff they did in All Stars was so good.

I was hoping that Road to WrestleMania would be like, would have some of that stuff or or no, wait, there wasn't even story stuff in All Stores. Really wasn't. It was all that Rady Orton ship. But yeah, they they have the storylines. I mean, whatever do they have? Oh that's right, I remember that now. Yeah, I barely remember that stuff, to be honest with you, I was so well done. I remember all the fucking I remember the Paul Bearer stuff. I remember like going

After Paul Bearer. That was really good, just just the basically like they reduced all the storytelling down to like we're going to insert promos into this. Yeah, and they're all incredibly well done, at least for the Undertaker. Randy Orton can't talk no unless he is in front of a live crowd, and sometimes even then, and even then that's kelgy. Yeah, it's the Apex Predator. But I am going to Yeah, just the stilted, just worst vocal booth sounding see that. But the thing with the All Star stuff

is that was really fun. It was really un fun in that sort of goofy old wrestling kind of way, whereas this is still trying to be you know, the current w W universe, which is not as great. And also this the Road to WrestleMania is revolves exclusively around Shamus, Triple H and somewhat like imaginary rookie character. So it's like you can't just pick and choose your storylines. It's just like one long story that just focuses on those three.

I like the idea of them doing that, because to do it in a way where you could pick any character would make it too create. Like they're able to at least write custom stuff for that storyline in sensible in a way. But at the same time, you don't care about Shamus. There's hours of you playing as Shamous and you're like, God, damn it, I'm still playing as Shamous, right, you know, And I don't know

for me. The only thing that is like the quality of the writing, like definitely better than it would have been if they had just well it's better if they then if they had just gone all, you know, just see what you know, Devil make care or whatever the fuck you know, let's just play whoever is you want, and here's a bunch of generic storylines.

It lets them have like commentary, like mid match commentary that applies to the current situation more than it normally would and stuff, you know, things that would be a lot harder to do or would sound a lot more generic, would be like he is doing this, yeah, you know. But the storyline is still kind of bad. I mean, it's still like it's SUBtv, which I mean, if you've been watching the WWW lately, that's still not that's not good. I haven't. No, I haven't been watching it.

I haven't. It's been great to not watch wrestling. I came within inches of going to Survivor Series this year, like just saying, fuck it it, I want to go, And then I decided against that because tickets were like two hundred bucks each and I was like, no, I'm not gonna do that. That's a lot of money to That's a lot of money wrestling Live, which is already kind of a bad experience. Also, five matches, one of which is a diva match, so it's like, why

what I do that? Now? It's like football when you remove the commentary for from it, and it comes a lot less less interesting. There's an energy to a live wrestling show that I still like, unless you think you're gonna get s damned right. Yeah, it's kind of cool carrying those pops and like seeing you know, the rock walk out on stage or whatever, Like that's still kind of cool. But I also don't want to pay two

hundred bucks to go to do that. Yeah, that's that's not a it's not a good value for the dollar, but you know it's it's a better game overall, certainly than last year's. But they're the presentation and a lot of significant ways from what I've seen in the camera stuffs a lot better. Their headless stuff I think is interesting. I guess yea, I could get in the way any game, but playing the game anyway, so yeah, it kind of it kind of makes it difficult to tell kind of the current

status of your character. I think, how badly have you beat up this other guy? Like how close somebody earning the finisher? Like, what's what's going on here? Some visual cues somewhere would be helpful, but yeah, well, I mean they do this stuff where like, you know, your guy kind of holds himself if he's hurt, right, but you don't know if that means you're gonna get beat or if he's just he's just been working on your arm the whole time, you know, So I'm sorry. How's

the how's the animation blending shaping up from ear to year like that? Somebody who doesn't care at all about those games, like watching them from an outside perspective, like the herky jerky way, you like, transition from one stance to another. Has always been like the most off putting thing. Well, it's gotten even weirder because they've been adding new moves and new animations, and the newer stuff they keep adding is like way better animation quality, but all

the old moves are still the weird hole over animation. So it's like, here's this really stiff, awful looking suplex followed up by this kind of amazing, full of free flowing motion, you know, other move that the guy is do. It's like it alternates between like bad mannequin robots and also something

that looks vaguely human. And then they've added all this like havoc physics stuff that like still doesn't feel like completely implemented in the game yet, so I just wonder where that even applies the web mostly yeah, and it's like it sort of works, but then like you'll see a guy like bending on the bottom rope and it's like all suddenly starts jutting out of the ring. It

looks really weird. So they're just I don't know, they've made overhauls, but it is not the complete reinventing of that brand that they have made it out to be. That is. That is where ice come off on it. And other than that, I've been playing Serious Sam. I started playing Serious Sam before I came out here for the for the break B three b FE, big fucking everything. I think. Really that's I don't know, I don't know for certain, but that's that's what I assume it must mean.

Best friends everywhere. Yeah, totally, that is. I want to play Patrick's game. Yeah, totally, that's much those guys and they're like with the bombs in their hands and you're Stine, but they never get to because they've exchanged the game. Yeah. Uh, that is. I mean the few hours I've played is largely what you know, of serious sam. It is duche running at you and you are shooting them. Though, I have to say that game it takes way too long to get going, which

is to say it takes any time to get going shooting immediately. No, it takes like in upwards of fifteen minutes before you start shooting guys of dudes. What, yeah, it is even shooting anyone? Well no, yeah, because you start story setup. Well, there's there's a cut scene that sets up a story. Yeah, and then like the early going is like

hand to hand combat and like some other stuff. It's really weird finally some c yeah, well no, yeah, pretty much like it's like quick time event, like you press a button and you pull it like a dude's eye out. All right, sold me on this. You're shooting hell of dudes that just start running at you, and that kind of goes on for a

while. But I've been hearing things like there's a level in that game where you have a flashlight and you're running around with a pistol in the dark, Like that is a thing that apparently happens in that game, And I'm like Doom three was a heavy inspiration. Yeah, I guess, but what the hell is pro Team doing. That's none of the serious They put out that

trap. They put out the video that said, like, you know, they're funny little official Serious SAM Strategy Guide, and it was like running backward. Yeah, and it's like I think they get it. I think I thought that was like funny and clever, and simultaneously it made me not want to play serious SAMs, Like I don't it's such a like Serious Sam so weird. Yeah, it's always been weird, but now kind of the legacy of it. Of well, so what Serious SAM would would was created.

It was as kind of a response to the kind of sophisticating of and complication of first person shooters, yaing of developers. It was like, no, we want to we want to see that first one was published. We want to strip it back down and we want to make this, you know, just fast running gun corridors like Doom. Right. So it's it was. It was already intended as a throwback, but it's now been long enough since Serious SAM was around really that it has its own throwback quality to it.

So the layers are are getting too weird. Yeah, I don't know. The few hours I played have been fine, but I'm also just like, well, yeah, serious Sam so cool. I guess you know, if you're into serious Sam, check it out. He's been off games are cool. Here is more of that. Yeah, I actually thought enough games three double D is the side scrolling shooters. Yeah, and the one that I'm stacking, the gun stacking. The gun stacking one's pretty good. But what

was the other one? There's the turn based RPG or the yeah rpg kind of like actually has an active battle system, kind of like Corona Trigger amazing. I don't know what the third one is. I thought there was a thing. I mean, I've played some Skyrim. I've I'm still only a few hours in. You know, I've barely done much with my character at all. I've been killed by a couple of giants at least, so you know, I'm like everyone else. I snuck up behind a giant and killed

him. Nice one shot. Nice work. I've been watching a lot of videos of people doing really terrible things in Skyram more than I've actually been playing Skyrom. Like people like like basically becoming hoarders of goblin skulls, like just filling their entire house with goblin skulls in a way that is horrifying. The guy who has become a downright cottage industry of room filled with item Well, that's that in and of itself for sure, but even just the look at

this fucked up Skyrim video. Yeah, well, do you see the one yesterday about the serial killer. No, there's a guy who has been killing all his female companions, severing their heads and putting their heads in his in his house, like shelves and like like like uh kurk. Hamilton asked him, why did you do this? He was like, oh, I don't know, you know, because it's the only way to make the voices stuff.

I was lonely. I just wanted to, you know, like, once the missions were done, I wasn't really using them anymore, so I just wanted to keep them around. Oh Lydia. So it's like there are all these severed heads on shelves and their naked bodies are like strewn about his house. That's yeah. I've been seeing a lot of screenshots of the nude

mode that you can download. The really weird to me. Some of the mods are like the nude mod obviously, you know, hey, sure, fine game, but yeah, but the weirder ones are this mod cleans up the female face, clean clean female dirt from female, specifically the specifically female. Oh, it's tied to clean the dirt off Caucasian what purity lydia? Is something real, real bad about that. I don't want to play Skyrim anymore. Yeah, it's it's taken on a very dark bent over the last

week or two. Their aim is to make the game that lets you do anything you want. They have succeeded. I'm just worried about it might actually inspire for the real Like one, Skyrim is no longer good enough for them. What are they going to do in the real world? Are those official mods? Is that through the mod system? God? No, they haven't even released the official models. Yeah, so putting out well, I thinks

that make it way up your white ladies. Let me tell you, I think the have a system with which I can filthy my white ladies, because that's more what I'm looking for. Yeah, I don't like starting to sound like Saints Row. I did play a little bit more, saying I went back and restarted Saints Row. Did Yeah you finish it's you. Yeah, Saints Row is pretty good, pretty goddamn good. Yeah, I went back and restarted it because I wanted to try some of the other missions the other

way. But mostly I'm just running around blowing shit up, just like it's like athartic, you know, half hour each day of just destroying everything. It's fantastic. I think you when you and I hung out this weekend and we had people who did not know what Saints Row the Third was. I think the demo you gave was the most perfect demo anyone has ever given of

a video game. Within five minutes, you just changed yourself into the toilet, gave yourself duel loading like SMGs, and just ran around to start fucking killing cops. Toilet, toilet, toilet. You should play, I'm playing. Don't say you already? No, No, you don't even know. He told me some other stuff a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, I think several moments in that game have been diminished because I already knew. Yeah no, not not in the way I'm the way I'm describing it is not.

Can you did Daly and then you know, yeah, it will get ruined. Yeah, I need to stop doing activities. The activities are okay, like once each in the campaign, all of them, I did every activity Saints Territory does. But did you do all of the the Saints book stuff, because that's what I still have to finish. No, I'm about halfway through the Saints book stuff. Yeez, that shit is that shit is a slog I don't like. Yeah, that's just like I actually didn't seem

kind of broken when I was. It's a little broken. I didn't mind doing the triggering. It is weird sometimes, well, I would be looking for a specific car and I get in the area, and then it would just come up and say the car has been destroyed, and I had to go back in and re select the car, I mean, and then it would do these exact same things. That's that's the objective stuff. Like some

of their objectives are just broken. Like I run into situations where it's like I got into a car with the auto tune dude, and then suddenly I had beaten the mission right that that was like one of those like you know, pimp escort things, and like with just by getting into the car with him, somehow I had beaten its Yeah, it's jenky. It's totally janky across the board, but it's fun JANKI for the most part, It's just like when little things like that pop up and you're like, uh yeah,

yeah, that's no good. But more pro wrestling references. That's that's what I wanted to say, throw for just play, like I want that game to basically be the better wrestling game than than anything else. You should just have the license. They should just give it the w w E license. Yeah, God, that fight is so good. Yet, Hey, t

As, they went through my hair. I heard so you went to Nebraska for the Thanksgiving holiday yep, And and I'm going through ta going We're asking the They stopped me and like, hey, we need to go through hair. I was like, you know, that's cool TSA, you know, being being funny. Guy goes had my shoulders like no, that's what that guy comes from behind me, Wow, sticks his hands my hair like into it. I was. I was too traumatized. I don't know, hopefully

hopefully latex globes how violated versus turned on? Were you? I'm used? You know, I am. I am used at this point. It was way worse in college when people would just walk up to me to my I'm used to it, even like at the drive in Territory. But yeah, yeah, my hair used to be much much much longer. Uh yeah. And then the other way back they threw my toothpaste. I thought it was the right size, wasn't like, I said, what do you like? Guy goes, what do you want me to do with this? I was

like, what are my options? And he just looks at me and then you just throw it out? Waste it. Come on, there was that perfectly good toothing guy like in Russia who like didn't he's They told him to throw out his his like whole like thing of vodka, and so he just drank it and it gave himself alcohol poison while trying to walk through security, and he escorted out almost died. Actually you tooth based by the way,

I think that's actually real. Instead just strip down and then just rub it all over your body all of y. I'll just use it, yeah first intended purpose. Yeah, so I don't know what you guys use tingling paste for. Should have printed out my options body paint. I went through the airport yesterday and didn't have anything with me because I was just on a day trip and I had to show my ID to a bunch of more people than I normally do and had people looking at me like I was crazy. I

don't know if she just brought a suitcases. Yeah exactly, like I've got my bag. I plan on returning to this place, but on a shuttle flight to LA. You think they'd be used to that by now, Yeah exactly. Well, I mean it wasn't. It wasn't necessarily people that were attached to that flight. It was, you know, people kind of threw out the airport. This guy wearing a giant bombshit. Well, yeah, it probably it's It was just weird. It was, you know, we're

doing random I d checks you stop. Yeah, like what, you're a random? I just look too fancy free. I was too happy to be there. I was like, man, whatever, I could hang out of the airport all day. I gotta carry shit. Lets get some omelets or something. I likes a happy airport patron. No one man. Almost as if you had let go all of your material concerns. Yeah, anticipation. You guys have finally made the decision, don't. I'm switching Patrick Patrick video

game. Patrick, tell me about your football experience. Oh wow, Yeah, so I went saw the Bears and Raiders. Oh wow, what's that I've done with what they lost, so it was so it was great. Yeah. So I will say that the Raiders experience is is overstated in terms of this adding potential unless you're the type of person that talks back. I could see Alex getting stabbed. Oh yeah at the Raiders stadium. No, I've been threatened. If you you're always gonna get threatened. Like especially for

the game. It's kind of friendly. Like you're walking through like like you know, the tail game lot and they've got like like Teddy Bears strung up on you know, like rope and the residency. Yeah, it's like but it's all good fun and like it's during the game and after the game that you bring it. You bring a jacket, Yeah, a jacket covered colors.

But I wanted to h definitely give a shout out to Zach. I would leave his last name absent, but he was a giant Pomp fan that offered to let us Bears fans come by to his Raider's tailgate, and he was super nice and he anybody. He was like, yeah, well he told me where we were and I could kind of spot it, and I was like, I don't need to be weird, but like that's pretty deep,

like can you would you come get us? Like I don't want to walk through all this Raider territory colors, like I would have to like plot out like there were a couple like bears like safety hide out. You're like, I can like stop here and then like sprint to the next one. Yeah. So I made it and and he made the experience very nice,

excellent. So that was thank you, thank you to him for So you're saying the Raiders reputation is not all it's cracked up to me if you want to if if you want to yell back as I mean, the place gives a horrible like first impression when you get off the Bart and it's just this uh everyone being heard of through this tunnel that is just full of barbed wire. Oh yeah, it's just there's just like right like all of our fences along this like kind of narrow path right out of that bart. YEA.

So for like a bunch of white people from like San Francisco, like when you go out to there, you're just like, oh, this reinforces all my preconceptions about Remember the beginning of bad stereotype, beginning of X Men. When Magneto is in his family are being shuttled toward the death camps like a big barbed wire fen. That's it looks like exactly. It looks like a deer being shuttled to a death. Which is why in that you want to

do you want to have your colors? You don't. You don't want to You don't want to taunt the need to advertise, don't taunt the fans. No, uh so, yes, I was on vacation. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't play too many games. I was a lot of a lot of drinking, a lot of family stuff. Same thing. Yeah,

he was like a game, but I play. I did start playing a decent chunk of and charted three on Sunday and last night, and I played with the new patch that I wrote about for the site, and that it adds this new aiming tweaks that some of the fans gave feedback on feels way better, like like I was having. I didn't play enough till I

probably best articulated. But the one thing I could say is that I was really having trouble pulling off headshots and it charted three, where like I just kept like the auto aim was just nudging it like out of a direction, was like, I'm better at shooting than this, and with the new altered aiming like pop pop pop, like they're still soaking up too many bullets, but I feel like I'm getting what I want to aim at. How much

had you played before the patch? I had played the first night chapters so a decent amount, okay, and then I played between chapters nine through thirteen last night with the the updated aiming and got through the awful, awful Pirate section. Awful. I haven't gotten yet that well, that one section. It is Pirate section, not not the entire Pirate area, but that shooting section when you're when you're on Yeah, terrible. That's one of my least

favorites. It's what is so frustrating forward to it. There's so much like I don't mind the comment in that game too much, but I hate how slippery Nate is where he's just kind of like he's always feeling like he's wobbling around, Like I never feel like when it hits like wasted, so it's like a wavy tube man. Yeah, yeah, that's actually an app comparison.

Like I never feel like when I hit circle, like I'm going to connect down to the thing that I want to And what's really frustrating is that the way they have added flanking to this game like ruins a lot of the moment to moment stuff where I'm having like a good shootout and then just a guy comes behind me and shoots me with the shotgun and it's over and there's nothing I could have done. There's no way that I could have anticipated that.

And the game is constantly flanking you with waves and enemies where you can't just deal with a couple. That game has a pace there. That game has a very specific which is don't shoot, just just don't even bother. It's you can't be too fast, you can't be too slow, you can't sit behind cover for too long. You have to do But it doesn't message

that properly. It doesn't a horrible job of messaging the pacing. Uh. It gave us a bad first impression right off the bat, and that first seating sequence when you're you're you're it's in the dark underground cave and there's all these like fog is like obscuring all these snipers, and you've seen the red lasers come at you, and you know every time that your sequence is finished when the fog just magically disappears, and then you can keep moving forward and

does it like four times. Like, I feel like the Interarted series has like a pretty decent combat setup, but just really poor combat scenarios. Like I feel like the actual shooting isn't bad necessarily, but like the combat scenarios just aren't interesting or particularly fun. I think the melee stuff is all right, but it just feels like a bad Batman Arkham Asylum because that's kind of the setup they're going for of it definitely not as fluid hitting square to engage

and then hitting counter when when a guy comes near. It's doesn't have the same depth. Yeah. Yeah, but here's the question I have if so, if it's the pace is signaled poorly, how do you signal that pace? How how do you sort of like hand hold a player through that sort of thing when it's time to move forward. Yeah. I guess I just won't have this problem in other games, but this game is that the punishment

is so severe for having that lack of messaging. If if it's like, hey, guy comes up behind you and starts shooting and you're like, oh fuck, I should probably move but Patrick's point of you just die of just like yeah, comes with a shotgun, says howdy, and then I have to reload the chair and like I'll be mid mid melee and like I'm really enjoying it. Like there's only one guy in the ship. The camera at no point positions me so I can be aware of what's happening around me.

There are no interface indicators to tell me, like I know there's grenades, but I don't know there's a guy behind me, and then the middle having this great melee combat confrontation and just shotgun to the back. I don't have a chance to recover. I have no chance to get away, like and that just happened, especially in that pirate section where I wanted to put the

game down or ratch of the difficulties like this isn't. I don't feel like I'm learning every anything anytime I die, which is I guess the frustrating part, like in Gears of War any other good shooter, I feel like I know why I died, where I messed up, or I missed the flanking from from a group of enemies and then charted. I just don't feel like I've learned anything when I die. I just feel like I just got caught

off guard and got one in it killed. Well, those those environments are like far more wide open than I feel they have been, like than they were in Uncharted two. So it just I feel like the AI has a lot more options. They didn't they didn't flank into at least nearly the degree

they do now. And I think that's what hurts it a lot, is that you can't just like in that pirate section, there's like three ships you can jump to, and so I would like go on to the first ship, like I'm gonna take out these guys and then move on to the next ship. No, It's like, why in the middle of you taking out that first ship, those guys from ship two and three are working their way over. Yeah, so in the middle of you working out the ship one

enemies, you suddenly have six dudes. And anytime you get one of those bullshit armor guys like that's they're always carrying a really powerful shotgun and you you can engage them in melee, which is the best way to take them out. But I don't know, I'm really enjoying every other part of that game. I just like I wish I could just delete the combat, but you say the new stuff makes it better. But yeah, the patch, the patch makes them. Is it a optional face? It is you're going,

You're go into the Yeah. The option says ultimate aiming, tab it on. I feel like all the description there is yes, just alternate aiming yeah, which I don't think they want to get too specific of, Like here's the aiming you like for everyone who bitch it's basically uncharted too, so like they made adjustments to my understanding time not I was like they made adjustments that were related to hopefully trying to make it easier when enemies are flanking you,

so that the auto aim would adjust to that. Like there are some other things. There's dead seat stuff, there's how it handles the analog stick. Basically, this kind of brings it back to when charted two and I just felt really comfortable, and immediately I felt a difference in my ability to essentially pull off headshots and things that I was having trouble with. The interesting thing about all of that is that it does sort of make you realize exactly how

neck deep into that stuff all those guys get. When they realized that they

don't even understand why, like how it's different to the player. Like in that article you were saying, like they just they were like pouring through code trying to figure out, like why is this so different when it's like clearly Night and Day the two games like the way the combat works, but like they've made so many changes, like little subtle changes here and there for whatever reason, they just all kind of like turned into this one big difference in

the combat. And it's just amazing how like you can make those kinds of drastic changes without even really realizing. It's weird. It's weird that, you know, if it is something that they didn't intentionally change for this game, then why put it in as an alternate aiming toggle? Why not just say

we fixed that thing. I think that because they think that there are people who like it this way, that like I've gotten used to the way on Charted three does it, And I think everyone in that office has just gotten super used to the way on Charted three plays that they don't see it as a problem. So I would imagine that's probably why. God damn, that's a gorgeous game, though, yeah, just stunning. Have any have any

impact the multiplayer of these changes, No, I believe not. I think I think this is a because those are separate teams within Naughty Dogs, and so when when those changes were coming up, they they sat down with the multiplayer and the single player leads and it sounded like that. As far as I know, it doesn't apply to the multiplayers, it's a single player change, but yeah, that patches out and does some things with like the motion

blur or something. I'm not sure the other changes are, but the aiming is feel significant. So if you've been having issues, I think this this will help you. Has anyone played that game in three D seen it in three I've seen it in three D like multiple times, but I've never seen it would be so awesome in three D. Ever, the sequences they've shown the word pretty great. It's great cut scenes in three D. And I also think I would get a horrible headache playing that game. Guys in three

DS. I've found it terrible in every game that's had it to the third person shooting dudes. And I didn't like Gears at all. Okay, yeah, okay, I have yet to enjoy a game in three D at all, three D S or you know, console or otherwise. I think some has been all right, Mario Mario's I haven't played Mario yet. I did like three D Stanchion what I played of it, but Mario Kart, I would just turn it off for like three D console games, it's not interested.

Yeah. I actually really like the three D in Marico. Yeah, it's the first first three D S game that I have pushed it all the way up and just left it there. Yeah, no headache, no cross. My initial thing is always like just nudget just above off of like like let's get the subtlest three D effect we can have usually just because of like the viewing angle, Like the deeper you go into the three D, the

more rigid you have to be with with how you're holding that thing. I should just turn all the way up and then if if it is causing a problem, all yeah, okay, part is not a good rigid playing game because like, especially we're playing a multiplayer, your hands will be shaking around a lot. But it looks good. I think the three D looks good in that game. Yeah, uh, Brett, let's Patrick. Unless there's a subscon you should play Sants. I should play Sants. Ro should I

think here, you guys right. I should have played Saints. Yeah, everybody should. Yeah what did you play instead? Uh? Played some Sants? I did. I did play some Saints like like like Patrick, familial opplications getting in the way. Sure, game playing time. It always seems like you're gonna have that time. And then like I brought Step too drunk. Yeah that's what Christmas is for me. Christmas is when I shirk all family and just play games for a week. Yeah I did. I did

play the Amazon Lightning Deal game. You did what? You helped the economy like a mother stimulated. He bought a PlayStation move. I think I completed, and he opened up the box and look at it. I opened the cardboard box that it was shipped in. Yeah, the actual like theft proof packaging is still in take I'm gonna play with it. You could send I don't know, but it was twenty five dollars. Also what, I also bought a second PlayStation three, So why not? All right, now you're

set. I think I completed four separate Amazon transactions on Friday. Stuff kept popping up, but I just always Cyber Friday. I wasn't even paying attention. Asked. I did buy a an airport express from Apple because they were having oh yeah, even Apple. See they're just count they're just barely barely count. As it was, it was like a hundred bucks off the laptop tax a little bit. I guess that's basically it. If they get rid

of the tax, it's free shipping Friday. And I want to get the iTunes in my living room, so reasonable, and get some internet out there too, So this will do that. Get that internet out suns right, need more internet. I don't have enough. I also bought a new router. I bought an SSD new PS three. Okay, caught me the dark Knut and blue Ray, pretty good spread other stuff. It's not too bad at all, man, it's the stuff I missed. They had a twenty

five dollars ukulele. Who wouldn't buy ukulele? You've been in the market for ukulele? Could you be you've been actively talking about Hey, I stopped active. We talking about you have Let's be fair. That was like a year ago. How is your ukulele training? Like? How up you Rilling Chainsaw about his ukulele and about potential ukulele purchases and if certain ukulele brands were of any value. You have access to resource like that, you avail yourself.

I'm just saying that was a couple of months ago. They had both Tron movies. They had the five disc Tron Blue Race set for thirty bucks last night. Damn it, that one was new. It's a list like eighty bucks comes into stupid disc that's supposed to light up, but my never I also know I got the one that doesn't have the stupid disc. Yeah,

I got the stupid discs. I got the stupid slightly below that, which still gives me the original Tron Neutron and Neutron and three D. Yeah I missed out on also the Shadow of the Colossus and Eco tal for like twenty bucks. Yeah, I got that yesterday. I missed that. But I did get the entire Lost Blue Ray collection for like one hundred bucks, which I figured it was worth it at that price, but I was not going to pay full price for that whole thing. I know Patrick approves of this,

this transaction. I about that about that last year, I didn't buy anything? Why do you hate the account? I didn't buy anything either. I about a book in a game for Christmas presents. I'm saying, how about it. Yeah. I bought a lot of stuff on Etsy for Christmas gifts, drinks. Some beop almost bought a fucking television yesterday. They had a lightning deal, Like what kind It was a pretty nice it was cheap sung Well yeah it matters how much like it was. It was it's thirteen

hum for it was three D Samsung. Pretty nice. But I think I let it go. That was would have been a dumb thing to do. I think I've started. I'm finding I'm beginning to troubleshoot my TV, which has been randomly powering off as as opposed to looking online at catalogs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, No, it's uh because it's fucking fifty five or sixty one inch TV that I have. It's like, I'm not it's trying to save I should try and save this thing. Uh I uh,

it's it's a it's a deal. P. So I swapped out the the lamp in it when I had first when I first bought it, the lamp was had been used and so the lamp was kind of dim and going from uh like I searing LCD where I have all of the like, you know, not the brightness, but the intensity turned all the way up to to a used DLP, Like the swing was so hard, Like I can't

deal with this. I need this TV to be brighter. So I bought a new lamp immediately swapped it out in that which is not cheap, right, So I got a new lamp, threw that in and it was okay, and then it started just like randomly powering itself off. I was like, fuck, this sucks. What can I do? This thing's clearly like long out of warranty. It's gonna cost me like one hundred twenty five bucks

just even get like a dude to come and look at it. So I called the service company and said like, hey, this is the problem. I'm like yeah, it just be like one hundred twenty five bucks for to come out to see the thing. I'm like, I know, like, well, let's see if doing some troubleshooting on your own before we you know, go and and go down that route or whatever. And and he identified that like he didn't ever do this before you switched out the lamp, and

like, well no, but I only had it. I didn't have it long enough for it to really be an issue because it we'll try the old lamp and let's see what happens and then call me. And it has not since I swapped out for the old lamp, it hasn't not given me trouble. So uh, currently I'm dealing with a slightly dim TV, but it stays on, which is that's that's really the important part. Can also I tell you playing multiplayer games where your TV randomly turns off, that's just fun.

It's just you know, it's like an extra variable. It's like that Mario Kart's squid power up. Yeah, there you go forever. No, not forever, but for like a minute while you go like fuck, like hey, wait for it to for the lights to stop flashing, and then I can hit the power button again and hopefully it'll turn on and it's delp. So the warm up period's kind of long on it. But yeah, a fifty five inch three D l ed lit LCD. Yeah looked nice, pretty nice, But I let it go. Probably the best time you let

it go. I did not go to Fresno for Thanksgiving this year for the first time in a long time, which meant that I had a lot more time to play a whole fucking bunch of games. What did you play? So I did, but all of them. Okay, I finished uh Arkham City, which I had only played, I don't know, maybe in hour or two of before that kind of had just gotten through the tutorial stuff, and that game was real good. I think I like Arkham Asylum better. Uh. And they really do say bitch a lot in that game. They

really, they really has to getting around it. They're fucking prisoners. Really so they cursed so they can't curse the way you want them to curse. Really happens a lot. I'm only three or four hours into that, especially having that woman's stuff he started playing a catwoman stuff. That stuff really starts

kicking in. It really happens a lot. And uh, And I'm not sure that I necessarily like the the edge offying of the Batman villains that that like that that serious specific take on Batman villains, I'm not sure that. I think. I think mister Freeze is awesome in this game. Yeah, I think like their rendition of mister Freeze specifically is fantastic, one of the best. I like the difference between the like the voice modulation and when he's

just talking to you. I think that's a really cool effect. Yeah, I don't like how trusting Batman is. He is on everyone people that he should clearly not be trusting, Like yeah, Bane, Yeah, you're an insane psychopath that broke my back before. But hey, let's split, split, let's pound it. He does make it clear that Batman, I mean, makes it clear in their initial exchange that he has not to be trifled with. Sure, okay, sure, Bane cares. I don't know Batman

it, I mean, it works out whatever. But there are a couple other ones where it's like, why did you say yes at all, Batman? What did you think? I think Batman can handle himself. I guess I look at it this way, and I mean Batman clearly does handle himself. Well, he just puts himself into unnecessary trouble by being so trusting. Yeah, I looked at this way and you can agree to disagree. I think that the writing is much better in Arkham Asylum. I think the storyline

was much better. I think the mechanics in the world are much more interesting in Arkham City. Yeah. I like the density of Arkham Asylum, which is something that you kind of lose in arkhamas Fair. Yeah, it's not focused enough for my taste. Still the combat's fantastic. Oh my god, it's so much fun to fight dudes. Like just like flying around the city, see a group of guys, just bomb down on them, you know,

hit the shock just ruin them. And like as you get new, Like I really focused on the combat abilities early on for my for my build, and just like the weapon disarmed stuff is super cool and like when you're busting up their guns and just it's not complicated now, like it's a couple of buttons, right, but it's timing based and you have to have a certain amount of awareness and but it's it's not impossible. Like that game does

a great job of making you feel like you're unfucking stoppable. Well, it's what's crazy. So the like Arkham Asylum, I didn't really get that far into the combat system. Like I was very surface about it. It was just like punch, punch, punch counter when I need to. That was pretty much it. Like that's all I really got into. I know that there was more to it than that, but I didn't really see too much

of it. I feel like this does there's more to it in this game obviously, but it also does a better job of again popping things up with like, hey, you've built up enough of a combo, now you can do one of these other moves. Now you know these things are are available to you. It's like, oh cool, and I can jump over this dude to do this crazy takedown move. And the more we use some of

the swirl of bats and everyone and everyone gets dizzy. Every freaks out when you bring the bats in and likes knocking all the dudes down and then just jumping up and killing them all with bad rings. Yeah, it's the first beating. Yeah, being able to like like just like quick like tap tap, and I freeze that guy so he's just standing there whaling on these other

guys Like just yeah, combats just so much, God damn funny. It's the first beat him up I've played that intelligently discourages button mashing because like you can do it and it's totally workable, but like it gives you good solid reasoning. Not there's even that that thing that gives you like krits or whatever. If you don't button mash, yea of just like no, if you hit your timing exactly, yeah, you are going to do way more damage and be far more effective, which I never really did. I still mash

like want. I just want to hit those guys. Those crit hits are awesome, though, hit those guys hard. It is a game when you when you lose your rhythm, it can be very frustrating. Like the moment you get out of like your like because you get in the zone. Yeah, but the moment you get out of that zone and then you just get your ass handed to you. And eventually figuring out how to use the gliding and dive bombing stuff correctly, which that is so crucial to learn because it

completely changes how you get around that open world. They should have introduced that earlier and maybe it's I was doing side stuff or something. So it's like it's optional, like you could go through that game and never encountered. So there's so there's the glide stuff, which is like the the AAR training yeah things, but then there's like the specifically like the dive bombing to glide mechanic which lets you go faster and further with each with each bride, which is

a separate thing that's not even part of the AAR stuff. Uh, but just blows. There's no training for that stuff. There's something where it's there's there's some mission where it's like it gives you like the outlines of like, hey, dive bomb like this through this area and then pull back up and you'll go further and go faster. I don't know if it's a story mission, but I don't even think I found that they tutorialize and contextualize. I

think that's I think that's forced though. That's got to be forced. I don't remember, because you do the initial ar training to get like the grapnel boost. Yet that's the crucial thing. It makes it able for you to get around the city. Like everything else, you can just kind of do it. Yeah, well there's the dive bomb attack, right, like you can dive bomb, yeah, you know dive bombing. Yeah that trigger.

Yeah, it's not really an attack, but you're just kind of you can't you can attack out of it. But yeah, but then that's so you do the die bomb, and then when you pull out of that and pull up, you can go higher and faster. Right, there is a mission somewhere that like there are lines in the environment of this is the path you should follow by doing dive bombs. That's not part of the r training.

Were I don't think I ever, which I thought was as critical as the grapnel boos stuff, and I was a little surprised that it didn't happen earlier. But it sounds like apparently that's not a key thing of the experience because none of you guys know what I'm talking. I have no idea you can't even do that. But that stuffs fun once you get it down. But I actually still also really enjoyed, like all of the all of the thug and henchman dialogue that you overhear is really good, like like them stay any

around, like the Joker guys talking shit about the Penguin guys. Like I thought the kind of the flavor dialogue for that stuff as you're flying around the city was really well done. I don't like that it's wall to wall though, it never stops everywhere you go every time you fly over the area, like even if it's slow, the dudes everywhere constant chatter. Yeah, but you don't, I don't know. I don't. I don't want to hear it all the time. I like that un bother me. I like that

stuff, and it's two really good lost reference. Isn't that game are there too? You know you you haven't seen all of Lost that I have. The Joker Church I don't recall, and I jammed through that game quickly. The other one is they they just one of the random like gang chairs. It's like, hey man, they ever stay where the island was from? Good Lost Refences? Okay, I thought they were talking about Arkham nought I

caught that, But you didn't. You didn't get a moment where the Joker is talking about how his whole finale is going to be in this game, and he's like, it's not gonna be like you know, like everyone, I don't want to spoil the show, but I don't think anyone here really is that worried about I'm to everyone that's listening, I don't want to know whatever. The statute of limitations isn't No. I know, I like that show too much to do that to anyone. It was an autistic kids dream.

It was all in a snow globe anyway. The island was their lost innocence, it turns out, and that's why they were lost. See it make all makes sense really just it's really just the extension of Citizen Kane. What else did you play? I just think more about Batman because that was pretty much the entire game in like two or three sittings. Yeah, the fucking shark. Yeah, punch moment's pretty amazing. Well, so I fell in, so pretty shark punch, I got this that, which is awesome.

I fell in once. Yeah, if you fall in, it's pretty great. But then also when you don't fall in that other part it's also really great. Yeah, really, and falling in made that part better for me because I'm like, yeah, fuck you shark, kind of a chick. And then I went straight from Batman into Rayman, which seemed like an a logical progression. Rayman Origins Is They Are Men is very good. I'd recommend it highly. It's a very good looking game, controls amazingly well done.

The co op stuff at a lot of variety, just the stuff with Jeff during the quick look. But I do wish it had online play, because that's, you know, my my choke point. Patrick. You said that you had been playing something with the with your lady friends and that you kind of had hit a difficulty for attle point, which that's what I keep hearing, is like, like that game becomes no fucking joke at halfway through it's like, oh, oh, all right, this is the lastformer not

playing anymore here. The good news is that once you hit that point, if you for some reason hit a level you just can't get through, yeah, uh, you can kind of go back and just you know, take some of it some time to go and catch some of those other you know,

little medallion dudes. Uh, you know, sort of build up your cash it and take a little time before you go back and try and best that, or you can go in one of the other worlds and you know, mess around with that stuff because it's kind of open at that point. It seems like it's pretty generous though, with like the checkpointing from like each chunk of the levels in that game. The only one that aren't are those

goddamn treasure hunts. I hate the treasure hunts because the one where you're chasing the treasure chest around and like, those are so much fun, so much fun, the first two, but then after that it's they become insanely hard trial and error and there's no checkpoints in those the first three. And I really enjoyed active. Yeah, by the third one, I was like I wanted to throw my controller and set fires because I again, I feel like

they they make it pretty clear sort of. They leave enough breadcrumbs that you know, like, this is the path that I need to get through. Is just matter of execution of yeah, hitting the timing right, doing your triangle jumps, you know, floating when you need to float, sliding when you need to slide, and and if you could do that stuff, then it it works out. Question is a little random. Can you play this game with the deep pad? Gosh, you know, I don't know.

I'm not sure what I was using. I was You wouldn't want to on the Xbox. It wouldn't make it any better. Well, that's faster. I guess it comes down to whether there's like analog movement or not. But playing two D games without analog movement with a stick feels weird to me. Yeah, because there's so much throw going from neutral to all the way to the right on a stick versus like this's just a click on a deep pad.

You know, I didn't notice anything because it sounds like this is like fast enough and skill based enough that you need precision to get through some of the stuff. I had no issues animation balance, I you know, it's it's you always hear about like, oh, too much animation priority here there. I don't think there's too much, but there is some like there's there's a little turnaround time. I never felt using the analect stick that I wasn't

Anything that I was doing was not a result of the analog stick. Like the animations are snappy. They don't. They don't. They're not sluggish. There's nothing like you're like waiting for something to finish for you know, a noticeable amount of time, like it it moves with you pretty well. I'd have to go and check, like, I don't know how much the analog is ties should God damn, it looks so good everywhere all the time. Yeah, that art, just that two D hand drawn. Four different art

directors worked on that game. It's it's phenomenal. It's really really good. I love them more Michelle Nswell, Yeah, more or less. They announced that they're doing that HD version of Raymand three uh ramdod, which yeah,

weird. I never I never played the three. It's okay, it's hold them HAVOCU them have two is not on XBLA or anything, right, No, it's one every single platform from the year three DS version it's just like a version of the DS version version of that game, if you have any platform from the year two thousand, the Dreamcast version was the best, right and had like improved lighting. Yeah, I think Dreamcast version was really good. They did more stuff to the PS two version, but I remember they're

being frame rate issues, So yeah, why do you see? I mean I played, I played through that game on the PC. Why do Raymond three? Mm? Hm, it was the easiest one. Everyone already has Rayman two on five platforms. You know what, I would wager that what I saw of Rayman two on the three DS, uh, it feels a little old. There are things about that game that that that don't feel particularly modern, and I could see Rayman three bridging that gap a little better.

But a good time for Rayman. So cheers. I'm happy about that. Just you know, well, provided those games are selling, which you know, freaking raymand Ah, that game is gonna sell. Yeah. Well it got made exactly, That's exactly they got made. The critical the critical I made. I got to play it. You know, that's more raymand than I've had a long time. Not my problem. What happens after that?

It was forty dollars yesterday, So it tells you anything I feel. I'm not gonna say that that game doesn't seem like it's worth sixty bucks, but gosh, it does seem like a such an easier sell if you say it's like forty bucks, like okay, yea even fifty, Like this is a really good two D game, you know, it's it's not a short game necessarily, although it's also a game that I really don't like playing in extended stretches. Like no, you know, I was playing Batman for you know,

five six hours at a time. I think any any platform or does not lind itself to but that game is like do a world, and like go do something else for a while. It's an hour, hour and a half at a time, like a day you do a world and then yeah, it's nice, especially given that, I mean there's quite a bit to that game, but like I don't want it to be over, so like I'm willing to stretch it out a little bit. Yeah, I haven't been going back in redoing anything I've done. I've done a couple of them.

The time trial stuff gets real crazy, real quick. I bet I can't see myself going maybe past the first world of doing that stuff. It's actually pretty crazy how easy the early worlds feel after you start getting deeper into the game. Like it's I mean, that game feels challenging the first time you put you boot it up. I mean, even it's you know, breezy, it still feels like, you know, that's you know, there's there's timing. It's it's kind of a challenge to it if you want. It

feels like the easiest thing in the world. If you want to get anything in the game, even if you just want to mainline it, it's it's there's still gonna be rough spotspacially in the set back half of the game. But if you want to get any of the stuff, if you want to do any of the secret stuff, that's where the timing really really comes in. Uh. Yeah, that's a game. Play it. You should go

by. You play it. I recommend it. Everyone critics agree ray Man Origins is a game continue to. Continuing to avoid a Skyrim, I also picked back up Gears of War three, which I had only played like the very first mission of UH so I picked it right back up with the like the first Coltrane mission and got through. Yeah, some of that stuff. Just try and play that co op. I found it more enjoyable. It seems like it could be like I've been wanting to do before player and saying,

run, I don't know if anybody's in. I'm just getting my normal on for the time being. Man, But the game is not hard even on God what's their terminology for one under and saying is it hardcore? Hardcore? Yet even on hardcore? I was I was reading an interview with with Blazynski where they were they asked them like, hey, your normal doesn't feel like normal anymore, and they said that was as a result of Casual not

being casual enough. So they just kind of ratcheted everything like casual is supposed to be. You can't die. They re centered in the same way that Halo did. Yeah, and it's it's just too bad they didn't one that one step down from the top is the one that you should play if you think it does say like when you look at hardcore, I think it does give some of the same text that Halo guys do, where it's like this

is the way you should play it. I just I didn't know they made that change, you know, Like I've played all the other games, Like I was challenging enough on normal, and then I go back and played a hardcore later, and I thought that was the that's not to be the bad move to the wrong move for this one. It's just too easy on normal. And I kind of broke up the big games with some Super Mario three land, which is that's a that's a delightful game, that's fun, that's

a pleasant thing. They did a good job with that here things they like yes, yes, I wish it wasn't Yes to that game, Like it's it's kind of a weird situation because the first half of that game, or you know, just under half is just kind of dumb easy. Yeah,

so it takes a lot longer to get going than it should. I just think just the layout, the way that they kind of incorporate different Mario platforming ideas, like they kind of pick and choose the stuff that they like, and like they create something that's like it is both familiar but a new arrangement of that stuff, and like that's you know, when Nintendo's add its best,

it's doing that basically. So so I really enjoyed that. And like one of the cork and seats of the game is everyone has tanuki suits. Everyone got tailed, right of just like there's just tailed, like there's a leaf explosion and now it just it seems like that they were just like people saying like you need to bring back right here's your fucking scot One. The way he was describing it to me yesterday, it reminded me of Medal gre Solid too, where plans for metal gear rex leaked to the world and now

everybody has metal gear. Yeah. Yes, it's been a prolifer. Philanthropy is an anti tanuki suit organization that is going around crawl through holes and fences and trying to save the world. I think, yeah, I think it's cool. I like it. That's that's damned fun. Did you play any Skyward Sword? You goddamn son of a bitch. We both got fucked by this, by by my accidental troll. I wish I wish I could say that, were you impacted by so Wednesday? I uh tell the whole story

just for the folks who haven't heard so Wednesday. Yeah, uh, you know, Patrick's gone, Brad's gone, just be and Jeff in the office pretty much. Yeah, of Connect games, a bunch of Connect games and at one point, right, we did that. Yeah, and we played more Words for Money, a lot of that out. Yeah. Uh. It was a good day. And I was like, oh, you know, four day weekend coming up, and there's the box first Skyward Swords sitting on Patrick's desk. I'm like, I should probably play that. You know,

it's it's important. It's they that's a that's a major game. I need to know firsthand about this. So it's like, no one else is gonna pick this up. Yeah, I'll I'll snatch this copy. That's cool, and you know, pop it open and it's the two disc things. So it's got the front disc is the soundtrack disc, and it's all golden and ship yeah. And I could just see like the edge of the disc behind it, and it's like, yeah, that's also gold Zelda's good.

Close it up, throw it in my bag. After he does that, I see Twilight Princess sitting there and go, oh, Patrick's probably done with my copy. It's Twilight Princess. I'll just grab it and throw it in my bag. Yeah. So we get back home, get dinner, get back home, tuck in for the for the weekend, and I had recovered my three sixty profile to one of the xboxes here at the office. So when I got home, I was like, oh fuck, I have to re re recover my profile here, and that takes like two hours at this

point for me. So I'm like, well, I'm not gonna play any three sixty games right now, so let's get started. Let's let's play a couple hours of Skywood Sword. This good good a time as any. So well, obviously I need to go and find the Wei remote that has the wee Motion plus dongle attached to it. Oh well, that that one needs

batteries, So let's go get the fresh batteries. All right, did that, Let's pull Galaxy two out of the wee put put Skywood Sword in, you know, hit hit the menu, and I'm sitting there and there's the opening cut scene that's playing, and there's like vistas and there's fucking link its galloping on a horse, and I'm looking at thing like this kind of looks like shit, like this isn't like everything looks real boxy, and like the

lighting effects everything's kind of grainy, and then fucking howling wolf shows up. I'm like, wait, I thought the fucking wolf thing was in the last and then title screen like in Twilight, and pretty like what the god damn it. The only thing I would have made it better is if the price is right, losing horror had played over the title screen. But it was

just such a build. It was like like thinking about it and like, oh, I gotta get yoke batteries, the controller and sitting there and like all right, like you know, making room and shit, because I like I need room to swing around and stuff, right, and I'm just like all right, I'm we remote. I plugged in the fucking nun Chuck, which I hadn't had plugged into a WE remote in probably a year in my house. It's like, all right, let's go. Zelda dazzled me.

And then the game I wanted to play at I've never played Twlight Print. I also never played Twlight Princess, so it wasn't like I had that immediate like oh, I've seen this cussing before. I know what's happening here. I realized where I've screwed up. So I'm just like trying to like drinking, and like, all right, you're opening atmosphere, you're setting the tone

in the mood here. Let's let's let's do this, Zelda. So then you take to the Internet to post about what's happened, and I go like, oh shit, I bet I bet that means it's in my bag. Fuck him. I'm gonna play some Scarwoods crack over the case empty you had nothing? Yeah, I see this all unfold and like I've had a couple drinks at that point, I'm just like hollowy with fucking laughter, and I was like, what's so funny. I was like, I can't explain it.

No one would find this at all. None of you people in Nebraska would find this at all. Patrick was the desk, it was from from the quick list take it with you. It was just no, yeah, everyone made reasonable assumptions. Yeah, yeah, no, and and yeah no malice on Patrick's behalf. Just it was just somewhere else. Uh. But of course they just get back to Twitter. It's like twenty twenty five messages like nice troll, dude. I'm just saying, Oh I wish, I

wish I could claim that it was a control Wan Twilight Princess back. Uh, it's not my problem anymore. It's on It's on Patrick's desk, all right. I swapped out the disk I now have Starwards board or do you do? Yeah? I remember we took it out of that week yesterday, I hope so God damn it now just just seated doubt in all of this. Now, all Zelder related things you have to like, triple chests can be a tiny one of those GameCube whatever they called them, uh not ROMs,

what they call those GameCube discs. They're just they're just they're fuss. It's the small small form factor DVD DVD's but less so m M thanks DVD minus yeah minus minus uh and uh Mario Kart seven, the seventh Mario Kart, which actually is the seventh Mario Car that their math checks out. The arcade games don't count the kames really because it was just like they're just updates of existing games. Yea. For the life can I figure out why this

was the time they decided that a numbering convention was required. It couldn't come up with anything, but did Mario Kart three DS is not good enough because the three it's like, it's not Mario Kart three just wouldn't work. Man, just call it Mario Kart three D. No. No, I kind of like it because it's brazen it really is just just like there are seven of these games. You've played this game already six times before, and now

you're gonna play it again. There are there are things about Mario Kart seven that are that are great. Uh, you know, it's it's you know, Mario Kart is Mario Kart. They're they're not gonna make any radical changes to it, even when they have, like people have been wildly unhappy about it, like the double dash stuff that not that not that radical, but

something that's still stuck in people's cross for whatever reason. So it's it's sort of like the you know, Nintendo's kind of like, hey, message received, We'll just keep making Mario Kart. You know, once per platform, we will make a game that says Mario Kart on it, and you'll buy it. Uh, this this seems like a well executed One of those tracks are great. I think that the ones we saw anyway, the new tracks that they've built for because so it's like sixteen new tracks, sixteen classic tracks.

I think the new tracks are solid. Are the classic tracks good? Do they pick good ones? So you know, I don't have like that that Mario Kart specific affinity. It seems like they're are they are they recognizable? And do you still enjoy them? That is? The new tracks are are always better though, and there are you recognizing them as those tracks? Are you recognizing they are? Like, oh, this is the ghost track. I can tell the difference between like the ghost track and the N sixty

four game and the one in the DS game. Yeah, you have a level of specificity. Card call because of card call too is all you need. Yeah, that's so. So I don't I mean, I don't have that that affinity. I feel like they the new tracks are more three dimensional, like you kind of look at that series, there's a progress Like you

look at the original Super Mario Kart. It's flat whirl rotation, and they you know, they get a little more three D, more hills and such as the series goes on and this one, since they introduced underwater stuff and aerial stuff, the tracks get kind of bigger and there's more open space. There's you know, kind of bigger turns, bigger hill but it doesn't become

like Diddy Kong racing or anything like that at all. It's not just like you're flying no no, no, no no. So the aerial parts are just like you're gliding down, you are you have like a you know, a hang glider or a parachute or something that that pops up over you and you kind of glide down through the section. There's like rings or there's not rings. There's a question boxes and stuff question boxes. There's coins that you can pick up. There are things that you can use to extend your your

airtime. It seems like the airtime might it seems like the airtime makes you go faster. It seems like you can't pick up lost time. If you're able to stay. We can also do things like there are some parts where you could sail over a turn and stuff you can you can get and you can get a lot of ground and if you glide intelligently, and some spots yeah yeah, and and there always you can fire weapons while you're still in

the air too. You can shoot shells and stuff, and when someone gets knocked in the air, they don't spawn where they You can do all that stuff in the new tracks, so they've they've inserted the little bits of of aerial and underwater stuff in the old tracks, but they are non interactive. It is like you're ramp and you shoot off that ramp and then you're in the air but you cannot turn. It's like you're gonna go and hit this other end of the thing and keep going like that's how it was in those

old games. Yea, they just didn't change. It's still a little strange. So it's only the new tracks really make use of of those new abilities. That Wah who wah who Island one was who Yeah? Yeah, the woo who Island is an awesome track. There's there's a couple of It's a really extended gliding sequence that goes on for like good thirty seconds and you have to dodge stuff that's in the air. Yeah, it's the longest one. It's the best one. Yeah, you guys definitely saw saw that. And

there's no laps on that track. It's a single lap. It's just like a three minute long just point point point point point straight. Uh. You know the handles well handles the way Marto cart you know, I think should handle it the way people expected. The physics change a little bit when you're underwater like there are that's kind of the nice But about when you slide around corners when you're underwater, you hop up on two wheels, Uh, you never flip, but yeah, you hop on two wheels, A nice little

touch. Be nice if you could roll your cart straight, roll your cart or you'll you will get rolled repeatedly. Let me guess, Let me guess you get screwed by blue shells all the goddamn Yeah. I mean, I still I still wish those are removed from the game, or at least there was a toggle. I still don't like the blue shell. It's Mario Kart, you know, Yeah, but I know I agree, not always had blue. There's the thing. Think it's a really cheap way. The games

already cheap enough in a lot of ways. It doesn't need that. Yeah, I actually think Mario Kart's really easy by and large. I think Mario Kart is is only cheap because of that mechanic. I think buy and like, if you know, how do you play Mario Kart? You can just bust through that shit really easily. I mean I tore through, like playing

the game single player, I tore through all the cups. Yeah, you know, most of them at one hundred, one hundred, most of them one fifty, a couple at one hundred ccs, which is like the difficulty scaling in a couple of hours. It didn't take that long, and that's like thirty two tracks. And I'm guessing you weren't getting beat a whole lot

by the add I guess I was meaning more multiplayer. Point is my point is that difficulty only really applies to the single player because like what happens, you know in a race with block opponents is you know, much more up

to the players. Yeah. Also, it's like you still have that like Mario Kart is about those hard swings, like it's it's become such a fundamental thing about it that I think if you didn't have crazy upsets in races that were you know, computer assisted like that, Uh, people would cry foul, which I don't know if as much Nintendo's fault. This is the audience that's making these demands of Nintendo as far as kind of those balance things. But there's new power ups in it, and I think some of them are

pretty cool. Yeah, throwing the fireballs off some there's one til Yeah, I mean it doesn't it's not as usefuls as it's just super useful. I was in first place with the tailor yesterday and somebody shot a red shell at me and I wapped the red shell out of the way that timing is real. The timing is is high level Mari cart strategy. I like. I like the you can also make the blue shells work for you if you're you know, I like that because they hit everybody. You just make sure everybody's

bunched up around you when it hits. There's a new power up that's called the Lucky Seven that if you get it, gives you seven power ups around your cart, just just like you just see the icons for all of them, like sort of the way you would have like green shells or red shells,

like rotating around your cart. So and then you just hit the button and I'm not sure if it's like placement for where they are at any given time or if it's random, but then you will just start busting off all of these power ups, which is a kind of a fun different way to handle that. But I don't think that game is a ton of fun single player, Like there's not it never has been. There's nothing, there's nothing

really to do. It's sort of like you not on stuff. You're looking like there's cart parts and you're locking characters, but like characters are very rigidly class based, but it's more of a foregone conclusion that you're just doing that two unlocked stuff. It's like that's the only reason a single player even Coon don't even exist in these kind of games, because like, well, they need an excuse to unlock some shot. I would argue that they could make

a compelling single player. Yeah, yeah, there's more, certainly more they could do. I argue that it's like the parts they have in place, if a range and presented in a different way could have a compeller, perhaps as the film Days of Thunder, but in Mario single player experience, but as it is like yeah, do the you know, Grand Prix races and Dylan locks some stuff, and then you'd probably go play with other people.

Right now, it's just like I'd rather pay half price than just only get a multiplayer game that I play when I'm around people and the online works like sports up to eight players. I was playing with folks, a single card stuff works. This is still before I'm recording this, still before that game is out, at least in the US. I think it might be out in Europe already because I was playing with all Europeans. Was worth the Sunday

or something it may have been. So I think it's I think it's already out in in Europe's because I was playing with Swedes and Frenches and Britishes and yeah, all sorts of Euros uh, and it worked well. I didn't have any sort of you know, lagger or you know connectivity issues. There it goes and it has uh, there's no there's no game specific friend codes,

but they have these. You can create community groups and then they have community codes, and then you can give out those community codes, which the community codes are basically like friend codes, but they are asynchronous, so you just if you enter that code, you are in that group. Yeah. And so when you pull up like online multiplayer, it's like I just want to play with anyone, yeah, or you say, or I just want to play people from a community, and you can choose one of the communities

that you're a part of. So I created the Kid Ellis Fan Club and that's my community naturally. Yeah, the best community from Mario Kart's set. I'm now gonna go get a copy of this game because I want to be a member of this community. It's just you and Kids Ellis. It's the thriving community. So you're the community manager for the kid Ellis I can confirm that kid Ellis is a member of the kid Ellis fan club. What naturally take from that? What you shall? It's a little narcissistic, don't you

think? But the absolute best people should like themselves, like at the end of the day, you know, we all beat ourselves. Should be a fan of our tear ourselves down. But I think it's okay to stay like, Hey, you know what, I like me, because if you don't like you, who else is gonna I don't know. I don't know if I I comfortable say I'm a fan of me. I like me. I'm not a fan of you. I'm not a fan of you gonna be you know what if you if you can't be in your own fan club, why

should anyone else? Yeah, I suppose you might be anyone you might be about that. But the best time that I had with Mario Kart seven one is when we were here in the office and I, you know, just the one cart so we did you know the download play stuff, which means which I think is actually pretty generous. They let you play on any of the tracks, any of the Grand Prix stuff. But anyone that is doubt loading, can only play a shy guy and has no cart customization options.

Also appears that you were able to locally send a firm more update. Yeah yeah, so that game when I when I first put that cart into my my three DS, it is like, hey, there's an update, the system update. You need to update your system, right, like okay, sure, let's do this. And then when we went to do the download play it said the same thing to them like press okay to get the update from me. So they are propagating. That seems like a very dangerous victim.

I was a very viral we put we put the three DS is almost touching. It's a real close together here. You get your bug hunting. That's it's It's okay as long as the three D and we did four like it does again like up to eight players, where we did four player games in the office because that's as many three DS as we could drum up. And it was fun where the viability of a vanilla shaw Guy was handily demonstrated. Yeah yeah, I would like to point out, yeah, I know,

Brad killing it. Brad's Brad's acuity at Mario Kart Alex prove. Just to clarify, Alex and I were part of a semester cabal Daily Daily Mario Kart players for a couple of years, clandestine organization dedicated to Mario Kart on DS, which which which was the time period that I've recognized how great that game is if there are eight people in a place that they all have the cart and are down to play. Would ocasionally walk past that and just kind

of shake my head. It was but it is the right move for you in that in that specific context, that was like some of the most fun multiplayer I've ever had, But like, that's that's the only way to really achieve that with that game. So he tried getting people to come in and play online occasionally, and we would always be less happy. Yeah, I mean, well it's just what's the point of playing online because there's nobody there to yell at them? Yeah, you can't, you can't ship talk to

each other. And I think really like the handheld for it, like DS N three DS is a great place for this, like better than the way to play it, better than a console because you don't have to deal with split screen nonsense to have a bunch of people in the same location playing the game. I think that game looks like that's yeah, that's the best looking Mario Kart game. It's that looks better than aren't we full stop? Doesn't matter the system. Marriot Carte doesn't look very good, even for a wee

game. It's like not that great. It's you know, it's super colorful. They hit the different weird themes of kind of like weirdly specific like Mario level or like location themes. Musical level is probably the standout that I saw. Yeah, that's my favorite. It's really neat. There's one where it's like the like a lot of the corner music level. No, no, no, A bunch of the corners are made out of like keyboards, and so as you're sliding along them, it's playing each note of each key as

you go across its. Yeah, it's really RAFFI drums is there he might be. You could say I could make a me that looks like Robbie drumms. No, you need to get Robbie drums as we me. Yeah, that's true. I do that. Anyways, we're the guy's up to Yeah Drummond probably mister Drummonds. What drummers do it? Phil Drummond, it's right up gangster. Uh so yeah, I think if you have people that you can play Mario Kart seven with locally, uh that's that can be a ton

of fun. But it's a much harder recommendation without that stuff. It's a just specific condition for a game that is supposed to be a kind of you know, mass market appeal. You know, it's like, no, here's the one win condition for this game, and the rest of it's kind of but you know, and in thinking about this for for review, like just starting to think more abstractly about Mario Kart, I started going a little crazy just about like the like what's the appeal and like what is a good Mario

Kart game really? Like? But have we reached this point where it has just made a full break from the other like genre upon itself as opposed to because it's comparative to the rest of it. Really, it really is at this point, Like you know it it was the first cart racing game, and then there are a bunch of imitators. They tried for years and years and they stopped, they gave up. There really hasn't been a meaningful significant cart racing game in since I would says. Car carts just came out like

three weeks Jimmy Johnson's everything with an Enginemmy Johnson last significant. How did they not just call that Mada gas carts. Yeah, that we had because someone at some point said, no, the Mada gust car name has to be on otherwise no one's gonna know what this is. Get the brand out there. Don't be a dick. It's too late. Yeah, that's kind of this Sunday Mary Carts seven. Look for it, catch it, catch it, drive it. That's all I got for for I think is that video

games? Hang on? What's up? Uh? I didn't talk about the one practical effect of all the stupid stuff I bought. That was to get a giant box of mono priced stuff. Yeah, and a wireless controller receiver for the PC turn my PC into a next generation console. What so, how is that working out for you? It's great, I have to say. I loaded up Saints for the third on my PC this morning, and a good video card. But the rest of my PC is not like I

just I did the like the detect thing. Yeah, for performance and whatever setting it it shows for throw you into d X ten mode. Yeah. It was running super SLIPT. That's a shame. I'm playing that game on my Giant teller will not giant, but it's a you know, it's forty six inch TV. It's it's your bigger than my twenty inch computer monitor. It's certainly there at ten adp uh running at a nice frame rate with a bunch of d X ten and eleven shaders and stuff. It looks pretty awesome.

Yeah. The more I hear about this, the more people that are dragging their PCs into the living room. Well, that's the thing. That's so, that's that's what I used to do. Yeah, that sucks, yeah a lot. Yeah, so getting this long cable and getting this controller receiver, now there's still some set up time. I still have to like uncoil this cable and run it down the hall. Yeah, you just have it set up all the time. No, No, that would be your

girlfriend must love. That's pretty amicable about it. But it is a tripping hazard. But I mean it's like sixty seconds of set up and then you're on the couch playing this game and it looks way better than the console. Yeah, and it's it's awesome if you if your PC is anywhere near it your TV. I recommend getting a long cable and mostly just Saints brok Uh

playing. Oh let's see, I was gonna bring that up earlier. I'm in Act two where you know how like you have one story mission at a time, and then all of a sudden you have four at a time. Yeah, and then all of a sudden you're back to one, like one at a time. I I have just I've just cleared out all the side story missions. I guess you would say I have. I have one story mission left now that I think the whole boat is the next mission. If

that rings any belt, Remember that's a good mission. That is, people need to stop talking about Decker's die because I'm tired of hearing about it until I just get to it. Yeah, it's great, it's a great mission. Well that's so yeah, Like this is the one time where I agree with Jeff's philosophy of just like plow through everything full speed ahead. The guy who's left standing there. I always I always like to just kind of like

put the story aside and go screw around for a while. But like it's not even around in that game kind of is making me burn out on it. A little bit. Yeah, the side activities are not the best thing about it, and you see enough. They're okay, but they're not good, and they'll give you they'll give you enough of a taste of all that stuff through the story stuff, like stick to that through all that. That was that was the mistake I made. I didn't realize that a bunch of

the story missions we're just gonna be the side activities. So I did a bunch of the side stuff already and then doing them again as story missions. I'm like, I already did this like three times. Trick is the chaos find its way into the storyline. So you don't need to run around and dick around two side missions or even just blow shit up wantingly until you're done with that stuff, because all that stuff is in the storyline and you will do it all. So I'm just gonna go, alright, I need to

go back and do the second. I still done the second. I've got to save it at the end of act one, just so I can even I did that that. Yeah, you don't need to worry about that for the end. Yeah that that has no lasting game impact on the story. It does, it does get you that achievement. It gets you achiev Oh but that's it. Yeah yeah, yeah, it's just it's the bonus of

money or respect. Yeah. Also worth saving all that that side stuff to the end because by the end you will have so much money flow that you'll be able to start buying some of the really unreasonable properties power, the power, the ability stuff where it's just like im, I'm at the point. Yeah my character doesn't take damage. Yeah, I've been either. I've been trying to max out my cash flow because yeah, some of those upgrades are

pretty damn appealing. I take the damage. That's disgust. I upgraded every gun because the level four guns are so fucking great, especially the little four pistols are just that's it. So I got the guns, and I got the don't have to reload ability. Yeah, I just diffinite ammo. Yeah it's on a basis, but I can infinitely dump. Just hold the trigger to something. Sounds good too, It's really good. It's really good. Not only do not run out of AMMO, but you also don't have to

reload. Yeah, it's just constant dumping. Do you like to dumpy? And yeah, pistols get real powerful. But I just hate the constant having to tug. Yeah, but at the same time you were I want to dump. You are juggling motherfuckers that are already dead with those You were juggling their corpses in the air with the bullets. I have to say that game felt a little bit annoying or kind of overwhelming early on, though, before

you get any of that stuff. If you try to take on like one of those what are they called, like the game control fast on the operation, you wait, you wait till you have all got the thing. I was trying to do that out of the gate where you have nothing epistols, and there's comes like, okay, you just get really good at headshots, so you don't. Once you get that air strike everything the world as you're

fucking oyster. It becomes inconsequence, those those things become into yeah yeah, Like I got the RPG and like took one of those out in one shot last night. You know, it's like it's nothing now, give you the VTOL yet, but the air strike is so fun. Keep playing. Come out of your garage like or your airpad or you know, I mean I have a helicop. I'm just saying it is a spawn from a crib. Yes, yeah, okay, you'll know the air I have a helicopter on.

You don't have to worry about losing that one. Yeah. The games, it's pretty fun, really really good PC version, which is yeah, two was a mess on the PC, so it's nice. This one seems like the best version. It was bad, bad bad. Uh yeah, well fantastic. Let's talk about some news. I like news. Uh, let's talk about George Miller and Brendan McNamara. This is a weird thing. Yeah, George Miller is still trying to make that Mad Max movie Fury Road.

I think it's what. It's still trying to make that game too, apparently, Yeah, which I think was in development at Avalanche is my understanding. So it is no longer it's being made. Alan's swee the Swedish Avalanche, not the Disney the Disney okay, uh yeah, it's no longer being worked on over there. It's being worked on it. It's not a team

Bony team. It isn't exist anymore. No, they're this weird company that I can't remember off the top of my head, but they've basically been bought by Miller Mitchell Interactive Basically Chrome Studios is going under in Australia, and then it kind of like all game development in Australia. It's, yeah, it's going through a tough time. They're also trying to get through there. Like looks like like they can't have like a lot of mature rate of games out

there, you have to import them from the US. But they're performing that. That's true. That's a weird place. But yeah, so yeah, George Miller is assigned to that and Horror of the Orient Orient because you have no art in your soul. That's why my soul is all art needs more words, which is supposedly is act actually a common historical nickname for Shanghai.

So like it's not yeah, okay, it's not, but that they're not going to call that game when it comes out, that game will not be called the Whrror of the Orient. When you release that game any format, it'll be called True Crime Who of the Orient. Yeah, there you go, there you go, mad Max whoors. The George Miller connection to games has always seemed really weird to me because it doesn't seem like they have any idea what they're doing. If you read any of the quotes about him,

talking about video games. He doesn't. Yeah, he has no idea what he's talking about. Yeah, but at least he's interested. And it's not even like a like a you know, Kurt Kurt Schilling thing where it's like, you know, he clearly is engaged and understands what he's talking about, despite maybe not completely understanding the game industry. But like with the George Miller stuff, it seems like no one has any idea what they're doing. Well,

George Miller seems we're just one of those guys. It's like, I know this is important. I know I need to be involved in this. I'm gonna find a way to get invested in you know, your heart hired away Corey Barlog from the God of War team. It's like, oh yeah, you're gonna go get this this serious guy who has designed a big game, and you're gonna have him work on something. Yep, it was it was a Mad Max game. It was Fury Road when that was gonna be

shot in Australia. They have, like George Miller has like one hundred and fifty vehicles already built. They're still talking just like it's going to happen. They're just sitting in Australia like Charlie's. They're on its supposed to be in it everything like Tom Hardy. At one point I think we were talking about for Bad Max that that guy made Babe two. He did. I still need in the City, still need to see. You should see that too, I know, taking to see. It's a dark, weird movie,

both the Happy Feet movies. I've heard happy Feet two is kind of weird and dark two. A'st worry about it. I didn't see it. I don't like penguins, so this is yeah, yeah, those guys, Uh puffins for life word so something like this is kind of just next for for post team bond Ie uh in Australia. Yeah, if we get now anywhere two will not be made by them. So uh, Skyrim patch coming tomorrow, look for it. Don't play any more Skyrim until that Skyrim patch.

PS three owners have it three sixty PC is damn it? All right? Do you have a PS three tentatively Wednesday? You know what it sounds like? The PS three deserve the patch first. Yea, that's as serious ship going on. There's a there's an issue where the bigger your safe file gets the worst your frame rate is yea, which is not ideal by the right spells. Don't worry about it. Shout at your PS three when when Duke

Canyan Lynch show up after a hundred head shots with shotguns. In the patch notes, one of them is, uh, character shows up dead tier wedding. Yeah, that sounds great. It was like, don't don't fix that. There was also a weekend in Bernie's reference. Yeah, what what is the skelet It's some key that's mentioned in there's a lock pick that never breaks? Okay, you did. Your lock picking points still go up each time you're using that. I think why why why would it matter at that point

because it breaks? Because if you're finishing the question, can you have it all that? If you don't, you don't have a wait, I'm not gonna be saying you have to turn it in at some point. Okay, this okay? There is a perk at the top of the lock pick tree, right. Because we we were asking about it was like whether what if you did that quest line got that, could you just hold on to that and then not worry about the lock picking perks anymore? Yeah? You could.

Yeah, you can do that with there would be some ques stuff you wouldn't be able to do, Like there's a there's a side quest for you, there's just about there's about you could stop and be like, I'm gonna hold on to this. Yeah, there's a side quest pret you pick up

a pretty good companion or buddy fighting dude, bro person. It's actually not a dude, but still if you if you never, if you never, if you never turned in that quest, or you never finished that quest, he would just follow you around for the entire game and like tank all your damage for you. But he's super annoying, so I don't recommend it. But for those ice trolls, those guys are nothing. I killed one frustralls they should I find you finally got back? Yeah I killed Did you go

back up? The seven thousand? Different just just ran up on me and I'm like, oh, I can't, I can't get away. This has to happen now. Towards the end of the he was making a move. I had to get it on. Towards the end of the college quest line. There's a place you go to that they're everywhere, Like I thought two of them at once and killed them both without much problem, Like they get

easier. I might need to ask you if you know of a place where I can find a specific type of elf blood, because I only need one type. I start, remember which type you want to elf blood? I can get you elf blood? Yeah, okay, you elf blood by three pm today? Why do you need to you know what I'm I'm even gonna ask you about your elf blood? Needs? I need it? Just that any like that, any kind of elf blood, it does not suit you as worrisome I need I there's the thing I'm doing. He needs it for

his life. Alex dazzled us with information about Specops the line, I will happily talk about Specops the line, what would you like to know? What is it? Is? It's a video game? Is it is actually a video game? Yeah, they're gonna put it out early? Are my quandaries? Is it Gears of Sand? Not? And that's not an entirely inaccurate statement. And of killed it's a third person shooter. I mean it's it's a military You shoot the glass to make the sand, kill the gods.

There is times when you can do that, Yes, that that can happen. That is what the fact. The first thing you do in combat Okay, So it's the same game it was when I played it, more or less. So is sad. What the fuck have they been doing. They've been adding moral systems and making it look in control way better. Okay, Yeah, at least that's what they told me. I haven't I didn't play the old version, so I don't know if it was more broken back then

or what. But the shooting handles really well seemed broken. Yeah, it seemed okay. And some of the things they were saying about what they wanted to do with the kind of the moral stuff and the story of that game sound. They apparently did a lot of rewriting, and like they've been focusing a lot on trying to make that stuff actually meaningful as opposed to just like still Nolan North. Yeah, Nolan North is still angry. Okay? And oh the what the the black guy? Yeah? Is Kid yea from Kid

play right? Chris? Yeah? Chris Kid read yes? And apparently there is some somewhere there is some really good, uh throwaway recordings of Nolan North and Kid riffing on one another in various voices, and I demanded they surfaced that somewhere. I want I will pay sixty dollars for that. Yeah, yeah, and not the game. Nolan North and Kid and Nolan North is the group they're starting. The game looks neat And the thing I was sort of impressed by was that they actually let me play it for an hour and

a half. Like they didn't. There was no steering of the demo. No one was like telling me what to do or how to handle it. Was just like, here you go, We've set up these five chapters for you to play. Go. Yeah, because I mean when when I played it, it was only as an E three judge and they were being real kind of skittish about it. Well, I think they're still being pretty selective

about who they show it too. But they're like, they had a bunch of people out to see it and they let them all play it, so which was impressive. Hio. Oh well, no, see they had the San franciscom pointment. Apparently no one we never saw any of that. Yeah, we won't get into that. So red so sand is this game's red

barrels kind of. I mean, honestly, there were only a few times where the sand really played into the gameplay that much like there was a lot of there were there were definitely, like some sequences where like you've triggered this thing to happen, and all of a sudden you were dangling off a ledge while all the sand below you starts like, you know, falling underneath. Like it's it's more visual trickery than it is like actual mechanics, but it

looks really cool when it happens regardless. I know there was one part when I played it where there was basically there were a bunch of dudes and there was glass with sand behind it because the building had been you know, covered in sand, and you can just shoot those guys or you could shoot the glass and the sand would kill them. Yeah, there's sever there's several situations. Mechanic, Yeah, that is definitely still there. But I and the

stuff I thought was interesting was more the story stuff. I mean, yeah, it's a pretty typical war game in a lot of ways, but the fact that they're looking at like Heart of Darkness and the trailer is crazy. It is It's like a weird art installation. It's very bizarre. It got me way moist in the game than anything I've seen before. There's it just has interested. It's like the Heart of Darkness thing like that they're they're going

pretty far with that stuff. Yeah, they are. I mean, like the Conrad dude that you're after is at the very top of the tallest building in fucking in Dubai. Like there is a whole sequence where you like, because of the way the sandstorm is going is the eye of God damn souron, Like the way the sand is going around this building. Like they are not subtle about their their their influences at all, And at the same time

it's cool, Like the dialogue stuff is actually pretty well written. And there's a weird side character who's like this DJ that is like on the radio all the time, and he's like narrating various things, like like sort of like the Lynn Thigpen in the Wars kind of thing, but he's like a weird gonzo journalist who has gone there to cover this and is now trapped there. So he's just on the radio playing weird like deep purple songs and like talking

about what's going on and like relaying Conrad's orders to people. And it's this bizarre side tangent of the game that I thought was really awesome. Is he taunting you as you try to get to Coney Island. I really wish there is no Coney Island in Dubai though, unfortunately. Yeah, now what studio is making this Ya Yager as in the people made game called Yager, which was a flight simulator. Yeah, they're in Germany, same my stomach. Just heard thin thing about Yeager. Yeah, but I think a lot of

a lot of the internal two K production people are working on that. But Yeager is the development house Germany. Ery gonna be any good? I think it looks neat. It's too early to tell. I don't know. They showed me the multiplayer No, that they're showing that in a couple of months, apparently because that was gonna be That was one of the things that show this game back, was they had that closed beta. Yeah, the reaction to that was poor. Yeah, they said they were going to show that

in a couple of months. They're gonna have another big session to show the multiplayer side of it off. That game must be coming out in the summer. They were saying, like Spring twenty twelve. Okay, so maybe that's the two k's May game. Yeah, that might be there. That might be their quarter Dump. I don't know. Well, the Max Pain is there is there. Well, that game is probably not a quarter dump, but that game is not in March. Yeah, all right, but no,

I enjoyed it. I enjoyed what I played it. It's a simple shooter, like it is not a super complex thing, and it's also not a million quick time events. You know. It's like the action feels pretty fluid and pretty organic in the sense that you are doing a lot of the things in the game, as opposed to the game handholding you through it,

which I appreciate. But it's a shooter. It's in the desert. Whether that moral stuff becomes meaningful or not, I can't say for certain yet, but you know, it's I think it's at least worth Yeah, Like a lot of stuff they they talked about early on was just you know, it's like as you you know, at the start of the game, you're getting to this this area and you know, they're buttoned up their soldiers, they're

dudes. But then over the course they're total dude stuff that you yeah, but at the beginning, but then by the end of the game, they've completely unraveled and they're just they're already unraveling, like fifteen minutes into that game, as soon as they start seeing bodies everywhere and like realizing that their own soldiers are shooting at them like that, all that, you know, like motherfuckery goes away. So I appreciated that. So it's not Army of two.

It's not Army of two. Okay, definitely not sat next to a god a plane with a PSP. A he had a PSP? How crazy he's at b he's playing an Army of two. So you should spend some time in the New York subway because it will blow your goddamn mind wide open. How many people still have PSPs? And you're just and I various things. Sometimes they're just watching movies like a lot of For some reason, multiple times I've seen people watching Van helsing on their PSP. I don't know why

are they? Umd's there anyway you can tell? I cannot say for certain. But other times it's been like it's been everything from like bust a move to like kill zone. Like I I can't say, Alex, and I didn't think it would get you stabbed. I'd say we need a regular feature of what are the New York subway systems playing on their PSPs? Yeah, no, believe me, they're the dudeling. Those things are not people. I want to poke on the shoulder and be like, hey, what's your

playing dude? I know, I know. The guy also switched over to a medal of Honor heroes or something. Oh man, that's like real real quickly, in such a way that I could see that he had not opened up the slot on the the PSP Yeah. Maybe, yeah, maybe he did that. At least it wasn't a PSP GO. It was not. I have never seen a PSP GO in the wild ever. I'll see we canna find mine. Never never, even in like a game industry event,

have I seen someone just own a PSP GO. I can find mine a look around, Yeah, but you never bring it anywhere, do you? I don't know where it is? Yeah, exactly talking about the Van Helsing talking about the released time frame for Spec ops. Uh, yeah, wouldn't. Wouldn't you expect me to be or or generally the release time frame for Take two stuff, wouldn't. Maybe when GTA five would come out, like they that you know in the Q two they've got they've gotten into this annual

cycle of pretty much owning may Yeah, but they're dead. And then Ellen Moore and then like you know, they'll have a game in March, right, so Max Pinnion and March. Well I guess, well, no one that there's the timing of the announcement of GTA five, Like the next spec could be a spring I know, you know they could they I'm not I'm not saying they would not launch Spec ops against their own other big game. Well mean, El Noir came out and made Duke Newken Forever came out in

June. Yeah, well specifically rock Star stuff like rock Star you know, Red Dead came out in May. Eleanore came out in the next May. So you're thinking, let's say GTA five next mate, you're saying it may come out May. Yeah? Maybe? All right? Fuck, all right, let's talk about new releases. There aren't any. There aren't a liar. I mean, it's Mario Carts comes out on Sunday. Are you two for PSP available now? Van Helsing for your PlayStation Portable now out on UMD.

I saw the Tack two is coming to the PlayStation Network. There's a Vultron game coming to Xbox Lab, Arkada and PlayStation Network this week. Okay, Vultron, you guys there's some PlayStation mini I was interested in that comes out. I think this week seeing it Movie Night available for eight hundred Microsoft points this Wednesday. Apples to Apples comes out next week. Really curious to see what that actually is. Yeah, retail? Oh okay, Laura Dough,

I'd be crazy. PlayStation network. The first three Sly Cooper games are now available as downloadables. Are those the I guess hopefully the HD I FID like new versions? It's gotta be surely. I never played the third one, all right, really like those games, as is Modern Warfare two and the Blog two. Oh. Seeing a Movie Night also available on PlayStation networks. It's not just Day three, same thing. But I don't have those

button controllers for the p S three. I don't used my buzz controllers anymore. Man, they stop? Oh man, I suckered into more shitty peripherals fucking video games. Other than them being extremely dumb, those were dumb. Those were I only half jokingly held that move controller over the Trash game yesterday when it came in the mail. I don't I don't know that I have a game I can play with it. I was thinking about, what's that? What was that PSN game that came out like the week of the move.

It's all physics based. Yeah, and what's that called. It's it's getting that because did you play probably the US a little bit. Yeah, but it's good play. I need to play the fight with Danny Trejo. That needs to happen, the fight, lights out things. Yeah, stop moving your feet. He doesn't like it when you move your feet. He was his feet. He's Danny Trejoe. He's earned it. Fair enough. All right, guys, let's take it home with a little email here,

oh right, emails. Bomb cast at jabomb dot com is the email address for you to write us in emails. You've got questions, you got things, got stuff I don't know? Write us and I got stuff, man, But get into here, write us man. Won't you create a fake Gmail account and you know you have your confessional Lord knows, don't use your real one, please don't. First team that comes in from Eric Smith in Rochester, New York. Hey, Bomb crew, You, guys often refer

to cut scenes as FMV. From what I understood, FMV, full motion video is a term that's used to describe actual video of real actress portraying characters either in game or in cut scenes. While FMV can be a cut scene, a cut scene isn't inherently FMV. Can you guys break it down for me? The V stands for video not humans video camera, I think, But I think for the clarification this guy is looking for. If we are calling a cutscene FMV, what we are specifically calling out is that it is

not rendered in real time. This is a pre rendered whether it's the engine or not, that this is something that was produced previously and is just it is a video file that is running in a full motion form actually in the game engine. Actually, I do use FMV to refer to the video of real people. I also that was what I think the easiest, the easiest way to use it. But I think it applies to both. When I think of MV, I think of you know, wavy two man chronicles.

Now, So there you go. There's the clarification. Next email comes in from Albert Peter Uh. He is writing in about gifts, right, So he's if he's gotta align on some good gifts because if you're going to BBS I used to call, isn't there anymore? S? He says, if you're going to adhere to gift based on the hard g and graphic. Then I hope you also henceforth say Jay fag, since the P and JPEG stands for photographic. I actually actually like j FAG. I actually think that's that's

that's my raft name. Jinny raft name is Jay Fake. J FAG sounds way better. I don't know. I mean, it's just I'm you know what if that's if that's a concession I have to make. I'm willing you're you're willing to butcher jpeg just so that gift can live on. Yeah, it's way more. It's way because no one's going to adopt j fag. You have a chance to adopt people into the Jeff, I say, Jeff, what about all them pangs? If you like pins? Orange, Samuel

Boise, Idaho, Captain Faloffel on the boards, Hey Bombardiers. While recently looking through my shelf of games, I came to a disturbing realization that for someone who is OCD as I am, I have no proper system for how to organize games in a franchise. My call of duties were arranged by release, my halos ordered by Timeline, and my need for speeds were in alphabetical order. So while I sit here and try to figure out how to order my games, what are you doing? You guys? Arrange yours? Thanks

guys, love the show order of release, order of release. I put them on the shelf, like hopefully the games that are in the same franchise are pretty close together. What the fun I don't even want to think about your shellow the my god. I tried that for literally a week, and I went insane. I went absolutely insane. I get rid of most of my stuff. So I have like a shelf that I am more obsessive about

order than most people. In all I have way less games even then, like probably Ryan and Jeff do on their shelves, and I still go nuts if I don't have that in some kind of like semblance of an order. I got upset because that Who Wants to Be a Millionaire game came in a green case, and I separate out my Connect games from my regular three sixty games. It's now there's gonna be a fucking green case. So what you're saying is we need to get a purple case. I need to get I

need to find a loose purple case, you know. So what you're saying is that you have a terrible disorder that is actually hindering your ability to function. I wanted to say something else about games that I'd forgotten from earlier. We have this whole podcast devoted the games. Feel free to say we played that fucking that that Who Wants to Be a Millionaire game on our our Friday,

our Wednesday Connects a Thawn. Yes, it was terrible, because terrible, but I went home and I loaded up single player and it's all voice and it's kind of awesome because it's okay. So the first part still sucks because that opening round thing that you had to do. Someone wrote me and said that they do that. Now that's the show. Now, Yeah, okay, I still love all I still don't like it, but like I realized, okay, if this, if if this game was just answer five

questions and win a million dollars, that that sounds awesome. That's not there's not enos there's not enough too that for the game. So having more questions I get, but it's it's actually kind of awesome because it's not just like a bat You read the correct answer from the four that they present you, and it seems like it actually works pretty well, and then just ask you if that's your final answer, and then you say that is my final answer,

and it takes that. I always just said yes. Occasion, I would say, see, all right, okay, I said and it got it. So there's a certain there's a certain out of flexibility and some of that stuff. But then other things there are pronunciations that it was just not I had to say things in a really wrong and awkward way for the fun because all the dialogue they recorded is wrong and awkward. I just kind of talking back to it inst native dialect. I just want to say that it

the two player stuff is still busted. Yeah, but uh like it's kind of some cool stuff in the single player thing. Uh, it's it's still is a trivia game. You know, it's still who wants to be a Millionaire? But but that stuff worked better I want to be It's kind of cool. Those questions get weird and hard quickly, so just like the real show. Okay, yep, I'll stick with Power Up heroes things. I just wanted to clear the air, as you know, say what that single

player is like? So, yeah, I guess it's a release. I guess I do. I do alphabetical its system, alphabetical order of release is just that's mine as well. But I do have to I do have to break out those kind of games. Can't I just have random purple cases on that shelf. It's crazy color coding is not. I'm not willing to go that far. When you want to play a Connect game, you want to look at all of them quickly. I don't want to play a Connect game.

Yeah, then separate them all out and throw them all away. Then you don't ever have to like look at them. When you're looking at actual games that you would want to play, you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, fair, Oh there's not a lot of those on my shelves either, So what are you gonna do next? Email comes in for Matt. Hello, bomb Cast, says Matt. With Thanksgiving came the sales, and I saw that the Skylanders starter pack was on sale, and I came to

realize it probably would be again. I have a young seven year old nephew who I think would really like the game. However, with all the extra stuff for sale, I wasn't sure. Bomb Cast, but mostly everyone but Jeff should I buy? Was essentially a gateway toy drug for my nephew this Christmas. Only if you hate his parents. Yeah, only a lot.

Alex Navaro thoughts, I am one of the few people who is taking up a very firm stance against Skylanders. I think it is there staunchly anti Skylanders, appealing to the most base and awful instinct of children to just collect them all, and it is preying on our children, and I do not believe in it. Have you seen the pirate ship? It is a blight. I saw that silver Skylander ghost Sword's pretty cool. Yeah, sort, what do you what do you say to ghost sorts? Fuck it? Why not?

We've got We've got one yea, one, nay one? Fuck it? Why not? That's sort of a stain, that's yea, just say yea. No. That's that's less committaled than even fuck it. Why not? That's at least open interpretation that is refused to answer the questions, answer the questions of my history with the Skylanders. Show me on the doll where

the Skylanders touched you. Drobot got me right here. I think it's I think it's fine because it, like for all of the weird like collectible, at least you can do something more, buy more shit, at an angle to it, like that started a game that started, kid, you can still play. You could have those three characters and you could play with ghost three dudes and have a time and and have a weird angle on that game. And that seems like that still works. So I like it's it's kind

of what saves the saves it from seeming completely awful to me. Sean go for Matt, knock yourself out. Actually what comes in from anders in Denmark? DRS has to say last week you talked a bunch about alternative battlefield games and Jurassic Park games, but you somehow never thought of the game that I've been wanting for a while, Battlefield Dino Riders. What's not to like?

A future tech dinosaurs, ancient Earth and two very distinct factions. I think it's weird when they merge cybertechnology and dinosaurs and it's it's too it's too much, too far. You don't like Dinah writers, anti Dina writers, Yeah, pro skylanders, anti robot or not even robots, cyborg dinosaurs. I like Trobot and he's a cyborg dragon. That's so it's pretty different. That's magic technology. Yeah, I just want to read that Jurassic Park four script.

That is diner writers. Yeah, I really want to read it. You're still looking at other Drassic Park games on eBay? Are you looking up Jurassic Park fan fiction on the internet? Up? Heavy Drop? Does Ian Malcolm take off his shirt? Probably? Yeah, that's it seems that seems like a natural fit. Yeah. Does that happen a lot? Yeah? Wah Fiction war Bad Jeff Goldbloom, Sam Neil, slash Fiction. Laura Dern's just kind of there watching, all right, Adam Schwally in Portage, Missouri.

With sky Rim, Skyward Sword, and Skylanders all coming out in such a short periods obvious, the intellectual properties involving the word sky are hot. Right now? Does this mean that we should be expecting a new Skies of our Katie game in the near future or do you expect this just be the new trend in video? No, that's Skies, It's totally that's not the same thing, Adam, You're obviously miss the point. Perhaps if they named it sky Kadia, all right, maybe they Yeah, I would totally play

sky Kadia. I've been I've been playing that Rochard game, and you've worked for a company called sky Rig all right, that game. It's a good name. Yeah, put that, write that one down. They should have called that game rock hard. I think it's like it looks that's the implication. Well, I mean it's a name to say that, but I think that's the there's a little double meeting. I mean, yeah, yeah,

that's fine, but I mean the logo is already. She'll say it rock hard every time I've seen that game in like whether it was Once Team or you know, just like sending press releases with the name of the game like rock hard was it? Like game makes me rock hard impression? They want to give weird game. Speaking of which, Dick Miller from Kingston upon Whole, England whole? What Kingston upon Whole? Ul Oh okay, England.

I don't know. It's a place upon places. Get together with your naming convention, seriously, no whatever, they it's stokes Lee upon Trentford on something. It's great. It's it's great because it's a good shorthand, Like, oh that place isn't I didn't have to you didn't even have to write England.

I knew that when you said it was upon something. Got it together in the UK dear BombCast at the end of last week's podcast, you mentioned Christmas trolling, and I was reminded of last year when one of my friends decided to get me the box set of the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog on DVD and thus ruined my day to Tank. To thank him for this, I have purchased a video player and as many episodes of Mortal Kombat Conquest as I could find on VHS, not all of them, to hand over to

him on Christmas Day this year. What I want to know is have I gone too far or is there something extra I can add to this to make it that much better Mortal Kombat Conquest. I don't know if you guys ever watched did is that the live action one? Yeah? That's really fucking bad. It was it was it was a sci fi show. Yeah, I think I believe so. I think it would make a lot of sense if it was a sci fi show. It seems like it has all of the

quality and ear markings of When I'm From multiple seasons two. Yeah, because programming, I want to say that might have been to Conquest. I bought a pack of VHS tapes with included Space Jam for eight bucks. Space Jam would probably be a pretty good one. He might enjoy that. Yeah, that's yeah, yeah, yeah, I got that because you know, you can just toss uh, Mortal Kombat Annihilation on top there and just sort of like it's an extra little cherry on top of the fuck you. That would

probably work. That would be I'd be excited if I got Mortal Kombic Conquest VHS tapes, but we would you be excited if you got Annihilation with See you didna likes. You're a troll, so a troll can eat troll for sustenance. When when you get an aurab back, you're just like, oh, this is great. Yeah. How many episodes of a show on a VHS tape it was? He's like six hours. I mean if you're taping

it right, Yeah, But I mean the commercially released ones. That is that commercially you know what, Yeah, it's don't be the commercially released one. It needs to be like bad dubs. It have been dubbed over like you got Sledgehammer originally, wasn't it like someone dubbed No, they weren't dubs. I've actually bought those from the producer of the show and they were actual,

like they never sold them. But they were VHS tapes of the full run of the series that Alan Spencer had made, because I've bought actual dubbed VHS collections off I bought. Yeah, I got Sister Gabe before they started putting out Transformers. Transformers. Yeah, that's it. Hm, that was a mistake I had. I got. I got a Larry the Cable Guy DVD for Christmas one year from a relative who does not know me very well. That's pretty good. I wonder how I wonder how that plays in the

UK. Oh man, dude, I wonder if that was just his stand up. So I bet that would be. Now, you should get one of those, like actual movies in the UK. They might, they might love it. I don't know. I don't know. That might actually that would be the horrible backfire. Yeah, much society, But it's like bringing a bullfrog to Australia. You were ruining the environment by just you know,

Americans. So I took that TVD and I sat down with with my roommate and I said, we're gonna sit here and we're gonna watch this fucking thing. Fuck you, you're not going anywhere. And he kept trying to leave and I start hitting him you were gonna sit there and we're gonna smoke every one of those DVDs. Yeah, because I had it sick. You know, watch this fucking Larry the Cable got it. You know what? It was not very good. It was not It was not a hilarious fun time

experience. The problem when you watch those things is that the time, like if you find yourself laughing it like it's really painful, but like fuck, oh no, what's wrong? I was a lotcas that didn't happen. One time I flipped like two and a half man and like I I got chuckled, get out. Chuck started buying those shirts. I don't did the baton get passed on shirts as well? Does Ashton Kutcher now have his own I don't know Bahama shirt line to go with his tope fingers crossed. Let's find

out America's favorite sitcom? Yeah, ratings up on that show. Yeah, they went down again. They did well after he got divorced from or after the divorce thing. And he said weird stuff about John Molesters soy rape it probably shouldn't have said. Yeah, probably should have done this research on that one. He was all like, it's great what so, Dick Miller, you're doing fun, You're doing a great like the MK stuff. That's ye, that's a great quest is a good like? I respect that choice.

Yeah, yeah, because annihilation is the easy one commercial question is going you can get like the RoboCop TV show. But also that's it's bad, nearly as bad as conquest. Also the fact that he is also giving him a player. Here, here's this old thing space you'll see it in your garage forever. Here's this giant thing to get rid of it in the car boot sale. The only things that you have to use on this are awful. That's great, that's good stuff. I'd say you've you've won upped him handily

clearly. Congratulations on that, sir. Yeah, that's it for emails. Thanks everyone who wrote in, I have an email? Well, what kind of Okay, I'm just gonna I'm gonna say it out loud though. That's cool. Okay, who's it from for me? Oh? Yeah, let's what's it? What's your email saying? This one comes in from me? What? This is totally this is totally self indulgent and just probably the only

one that can even approach answering it. But I kind of actually just want to ask the listenership how to migrate p S three's because that sounds like that's awful, god, since I just bought a new one. So I bought my slim when they came out and when I went through that migration process, and so the drive has to be fat thirty two. Don't fuck that up? Okay? Oh man, yeah, that's already. That's the part that sucked the most is because I kept plugging and stuff and it was just like

you didn't see it, like what the fuck asshole piece of ship? The fuck it? Like, just got so pissed and then realize it needs to be fat thirty two. So I wouldn't, you know, I had to. I had to find a drive that I could format and then did all that stuff and then when I moved it, so you move everything to this external hard drive and then you plug the hard drive into the new PS three game and says, hey, this is a backup you want to restore this ship, and you go, fucking a wait a minute, how do you

move stuff onto the heart? Like is there as a separates there's there's a transfer tool or backup tool that you used to do it, and I had to redownload all of my PSN stuff that the thing didn't transfer any of that about is like save games, and transferred the majority of my save games,

but even not all. Like how little one didn't move and you manually moved I did, ok It wasn't like it was locked to that PS three and thus couldn't be moved, and you could theoretically you could use PlayStation Plus to move anything. Okay, because I know, like like just a random example, like the heavy Rain say file is locked to the p S three save it on, some of that stuff will move. I'm concerned about this stuff, not because I want to clean the old system completely off and just forget

about it. Yeah I believe that a chunk of that stuff will move. But yeah, it didn't move everything, and it was just no rhyme or reason to it. It was. It was a really bad experience. And then I had to go redownload everything, and my stuff was spread across two accounts, which was annoying as hell because I had to go dig up this whold account, log into that one to download a few things that I still cared about, and then I had to log into my current accounts to download

everything else it was. It was a bad process. I don't know if it's updated or changed that they've been through so many firm ware updates. Maybe they've gotten better at it, but it's donty would let you do the Xbox Live thing and then you pay to change your name? Yeah, I don't understand why it's dumb that they don't. It's probably because because I wanted to change my account for a long time. But it's like, wow, I got all this shit type, I guess I'll just ride out to the next

generation. And the really annoying thing is, uh, some of their usage rules are locked to or some of the downloads get locked to hardware and account. So I have some sing Star purchases that I downloaded to a PS three that is still here in the office somewhere and cannot access that content from any other PS three. That's why I'm worried about moving to a new system. It's it's just sing Star that does that. So if you if that,

if that's thankful, you probably have knock found down that horrible path. But the bad thing is like, even if you wanted to buy those songs again, yeah, if you can't buy them again, so there's there's no way to get that stuff without contacting them and having them go through some long, arduous process that I just looked through message boards and it's just sounded like the sing Star stuff was such a pain in the ask that I just never did it. It's like, all right, fine, I'm never gonna play sing

Star again. Yeah, it's just online systems and and and rights management systems developed by people who have no idea what any of that stuff is supposed to accomplish or something like. It's just like, at no point a human entered that process and said, here's a use case, and and oh wait, what if this happens? I guess we hire a bunch of customer support people to manually deal with each one of these cases as they come up. That's a really big Yeah. The economy fuck it. I don't know. Yeah,

it's yeah, that stuff sucks. But that's again saying Star kind of a right minority problem. So at least here the States, it all sounds like such a mess that I thought about just pulling the hard drive out of my old PS three and putting it in the new one. Don't do that, But then then I'm stuck on an old sixty years drive that's almost full. Yeah, that's ridiculous. That's don't even won't work, doesn't I don't think that word. I really don't think. And then when you pop in

it goes like here's a drive. Also thought about hooking them both up to a PC and just like running d D to move everything over, And don't know if that would work. But I don't know that there's some sort of hardware keying that happens with it. Okay, So if anybody listening knows the smoothest way to migrate to a new piece, I think, never in my life what i'd say. I have thought. I would say that Microsoft's solution for hard drive swapping was elegant in any way, shape or form, but

not naratively not but at least it moves. But I understand it. It's it is a step process that I know how to do. It's annoying because they're selling those three twenty drives now and you probably need a new transfer cable for those because it is a different type of drive, yes, and you probably need updated transfer so well, I guess the transfer software is built into the three sixty now, So if I lose my transfer cables every time I do it, so I end up buying a new one every time I do

it. Well, so they're selling these three undred twenty gig drives, now they might come, they don't come with it, no, Jesus Christ, not that I not that I saw, you know, unless it's hidden somewhere deep in there. But you know, looking at the what's in this package, it didn't say and a transfer cable because they're expecting, with four games, to be putting a hard drive into system for first time. Not idiots that go like, well, I have a two fifty, but it's too

small, all yeah, not enough for games. I've purchased too many games. This is clearly my fault. Well at least it's not like me where most of my hard drive space is dedicated to things related to rock band. Yeah, by and large. Yeah uh so yeah. If you have solutions for for Brad other than kind of the obvious direct path, uh just to buy a Vita and buy the biggest memory card you can and then transfer transfar transferans far everything to the Vita. The prices of those memory stakes, well

so what were those were those official US prices? They're bad, bad proprietary bullshit. It's it's like the biggest is a thirty two gig and it was one hundred and thirty bucks something. It's it's absurd four gig for thirty bucks

something like that. No, I mean the question is memory cards and and and and you and you need them for something like it's some games, some games require that it goes to a stick, because again I bet there's like I bet, I bet anything there are manual installs for some of those games, and I bet, I mean I are required installs. They've run off cards anyway, so it's it's not like they're spending a disk. So I

still bet that they make you install something. The whole thing was that the cards that the games come on, we're supposed to have enough room on them in a lot of cases to also store DLC for that game and saves for that game. But I imagine that some developers, I imagine every first party game will have that stuff, and a lot of third party games would be like fuck it, man, this shit's expensive. You should buy a memory

card. Well, yeah, the problem it seems like Sony in student an actual policy saying like hey, you have to allocate space to your say we're gonna do DLC. That's gonna bes and so that's got to be. Haven't we learned from the PlayStation three era that Sony hates policies. They hate telling anyone to do anything. Forcing, They really hate enforcing anything. You guys, just do whatever, Just do it's best for you. Like all this

stuff, and please stop calling us, please leave us. We'll make all this stuff and as long as you guys just agree to use it, that's enough for us. Yeah, yeah, here, God help us. I don't know anyway. Vita stuff sounds like a real yeah thing. It's a boner growner, but I mean, I don't think it comes bundled with one. There are multiple. Oh I guess it's just the three g not three.

There is one that doesn't come with any memory. And if you want to get the you can get the hardware early if you buy a bundle, right, Sure, fantastic. That's a fun new wrinkle. It comes with a little deviance, I think, uh, and that's it. I spent two hundred dollars on like a one gig, one gig or two gigs stick on the PSP first came out, So of course all three Lord of the rings films on want all these music videos here. I have to store Van

helsing on here. I have to I need Van helsing to be watching. Had you been a bundle at some point like and you get Van helsing on UMT. I don't know, probably weren't you m d's though they're probably. I have no idea what he was watching. I just know that he had Van Helsing on his PSP, and he was the first guy was joyous about it. He was like smiling the whole time. The other guy maybe not

so much. He was just sort of stoic about it. The worst maybe this is just a guy with a towel in Times Square with a bunch of memory sticks with Van helsing on it. That guy is Stephen Summers. Yeah, all right, And on that note we end this week's John bobcast Alex Navarro. It was a pleasure. Thank you for coming in from New York. Loved it. Safe travels. Thank you, sir. We'll see you again soon. Indeed, uh the rest you fuckers. I've got hold raiser

on MD. Do you no dodgeball in um D? I've got I robot probably is my HOWD raizor MD is my PSP? Is Japanese. So that sick puddle of mud disc. Oh fuck, dude, I think I still have the Snoop I the Snooped yea, the Snoop smoke Fest World Tour whatever it was, Old boy on you really weird in Japan to be kind of cool. What do you have? What do you have? Good movies on

um I don't know where they even came from. That's weird. You're supposed to have like Kate Hudson Romantic Comedy is and Van helsing Mister Woodcock on um D. They had already stopped making you. I don't know why, but that seems like the perfect UMD movie. Yeah, exactly, just like Jack and Jill. Yeah, yeah, the change Up. The changeup totally be a UMD. The new dis for movies is bitch. I watched that on um DAR. All right, So that's it for the podcast. Thanks for

this thing. We'll be back next Tuesday edition of the JAT Podcast