Hey, everyone, it's May thirty first, twenty eleven, and you are
listening to the Giant BombCast. I didn't even say it was Tuesday, did
I take it from the top? All right? Hey everyone, it's Tuesday,
May the thirty first, twenty eleven, and you were listening to the
Giant Bodcast. Doctor host Ryan Davis joining me in the studio. I'm staring
at him and his beautiful shorn Heights. Mister Vinnie Caravella, that's right.
You look like you should walking around knocking doors in your neighborhood and telling everyone
that you just moved there. I have to tell you this. It's by
law. Hey, I just want to let you know, just by law
all the way through. I have to tell everybody. Jeff Gersman's in the
house looking as much like a serial offender as he normally does. Great,
yeah, no better, no worse? Okay, good? I ordered an
electric shaver. Uh huh, I call that given up. But that's uh,
that's where we're at on that. And Brad shoemakes hell. Waiting for
Vinny to show is his guitar string tattoos. They're on my prison his prison
tats E three do man? Just no fuss. No, no, no,
it's it's it's because you know all the to do before. There's a
lot of must. There was a lot of fuss. Yeah, but now
for you, she really should call it must and fuss. Should see my
comb? It's real small own one. No, you're anybody earned I have
a comb? Do you have a comb? I have a a comb,
comb, comb, comb. I wish I have a comb. It was
hard for me. It was hard for me to buy just one comb.
It was called like, here's five combs and different sizes. I'm like,
what do you what do you like? I barely need a homb let alone,
an assortment of combs, brad combs, brushes, nothing, nothing at
all. Uh. Probably eight eight years ago I advised the hairstyle that required
maintenance whatsoever? I kind of basically I like that you you talk about this
as though you would invent it. No, no, I just have fun
something that works for me. I've discovered something amazing. The goal. The
goal was to get out of shower and towel the hair and then never touch
it. Not gonna go into the science of it, and I'm gonna boil
you with the details. Years of research and development. Check this out allions
of dollars Lockheed Martin. Long story short, I could fly with this hair
combt haircut, but still you you are due for an E three years it
is, so let's start playing with it. In the back. Is when
I know that it has to go. It's getting brad shaggy. I wouldn't
say it's getting like relatively relatively. I'm trying to decide if I need to
go get one more haircut before you three. I think I'm gonna go get
a haircut before you three, just that I can make Matt Kessler also go
get a hair cut before you three. I want to drag him to the
hair cutter and make him get a hair Yeah. I guess I can't really
say no, no, no, he can't. Patrick can. Though.
I came in here and saw any of this morning and declared we were all
shaving our heads for E three and Patrick was just like, which would be
the best hair cut? I'd take some of that hair? You take some
Patrick's yeah, yeah, sure, it's it's good hair. Yeah, it
looks good. But he wouldn't. He would not look good with a shaved
head. You never know until you try. He would not look good with
the head. That's the thing I don't there's some folks that you just you
know. I don't think I would look very good with the shaved head.
I don't think I work I feeling it would be pointy your head. Yeah
you don't. I guess you don't really know what the shape of your own.
I shaved my head a lot in that in high school, so I
have a fairly good idea of what what my head looks like underneath all this.
I don't know, Jeff, I think he could pull it off.
Yeah, I don't know. Well, I think you'd be better like bald
ding than bald. I think if we if we gave you, like the
the accountant kind of kind of reach around thing, the little little horseshoe Lise,
Yeah, exactly, a little false. If it gets to that point,
I will shave the rest of it all a false comb over. I
don't think it'll get to that point. Do the Gallagher just long? Like?
Well? I both is what I mean. I want. I want
both the dance make this watermelon smashing motion yep, with long but also no
hair. I started with ware kind of trimming the hair, and then it
was trimming my facial hair on with a different buzzer than went up too high?
Is that is that how this started started? And then it's up Maybe
I can fade it. Nope, And then I'm walked out of the bathroom
say does this look all right? Just no? I was. So I
was in the shower yesterday and looking at my razor and I was just like,
yeah, I'm tired of this, tired of this ship I don't like
Basically, I'm at a point where my facial air grows slow enough that I
probably only have to like really do anything to it every four days. And
I have this crappy beard trimmer I've been using just kind of like stem it
back. So I'm just kind of constantly crappy stubbly. It doesn't look too
neck beardy. I think I can. I can usually get it down low
enough that it doesn't look too sloppy. But I just said, you know
what, I just need to give up on this whole real razor thing,
and just to see if electric shaver technology has advanced since the last time I
tried it. I think it's acceptable, you know, acceptable, you know,
I I think that like the quality is good. It just always seems
like using electric razor takes forever. It always seems like like you're going over
the same spot multiple time to get it to the point that you want it.
If you're gonna actually bother with a full shave, that the electric razer
seems like you always got to just cycle and cycle and cycle. I get
a lot of irritation from that too, Like it's you're just like grinding this
thing in your skin. It sounds sounds terrible over and over what you get.
I don't know. I spent like two hundred and fifty bucks on some
Norrelco thing. That's the other thing. They're so crazy expensive and hold mine.
It was, you know, I was like looking on Amazon. They
have this like line of different models. I got the second highest one because
it looked like it has some kind of auto cleaning cycle, and I said,
that looks like fun. But the other one was like it was like
three hundred bucks. I'm like, what what's going on? Isn't it isn't
there like a crazy huge jump. Isn't it like you can get him?
Yeah? Exactly three hundred and And you know, I wanted to get the
I wanted to get something good. I figured, if I'm gonna like judge,
like, has shaver technology got a new point where I can feel good
about using electric shaver instead of feeling like a total failure. Uh, then
I should probably get like a good one. So I don't know, I
bought a good one, I guess, or an expensive one. I understand
it's being advertised on television by baseball players, so it must be good,
Like that's the gold standard for this was after the fact, this was this
person. But I'm saying, like, like, as far as face shaving
technology goes for your spokesperson baseball players, they have some amazing Yeah, except
for that one guy. He doesn't shave at all. No, and his
beard's gotten crazy. I didn't realize that he wasn't trimming it, and I
saw how crazy that beard he's got. I think he should have be forced
to shave his beard until he starts pitching better. If I didn't have such
a fear of them, I just got a big straight razor, like a
nice old straight But yeah, there's a there's a there's a shop near here
where a designer Alexis gets his hair cut. That's all like forty's zoot suited
out and the dude, I think we'll teach you how to use a straight
razor. I'd loved I just I just every time I look at them,
I just think of people getting their next mistake of just yeah, cutting your
own throat. Yep, most to be the Italian and me. That's not
a that's not a personal hygiene device. That's a weapon. Yeah, you
might as well shave with a kitchen knife. Probably teach out of shade with
a kitchen knife too. Do you think about a bayonet when you're in the
trench. I think the last thing i'd work like about like a tin can
lid. Yep, busy guy outside, it'll teach how to do that shave
with a stapler with the Staples, Sure, why not? I don't know.
Wait before a three? Are you taking a Staples suitable? I'll be
right next to the Staples center. Shave with the Staples Center. That's good,
you know, I'll give that like a three out of five. Thank
you that that was Yeah, it was quick. Hey I'm not good.
I'm just you didn't quite stick the landing, but like nice provisation, got
hurt. That's right, your knees didn't bend back the other way. No
point in my saying like Hey, these is all this stuff. I'm just
saying, like I can be quick with it. Yeah, because you want
something quick and serviceable. Absolutely, I'm here. It's the job done.
Moving on, say that on your business cars, quick and serviceable. You
need someone to say something from Beverly Hill's cop or figure out some kind of
shitty segue. Man, I'm okay, you could do worse. Dah.
Yeah, we just got off of a hot three. We're actually recording this
on a Tuesday. Yeah, to actual tues, actual test breaking, extra
current. It is. It is realer than real because three day weekend here
in the States, Memorial Day weekend. Did you do anything for your Memorial
Day weekend? I did. My mother in law was in town with a
yeah, so we did like San Francisco tour, went to went to the
THEATA. The wait the t R E Theater. What's the cut off?
When's the r E Theater coming to? They're live people on a stage or
no, okay, JR. Did you go see the Blue Man Group?
Nope, so I might still be t R E. Do you think Blue
Man Group? Yeah, I mean like low end. Oh yeah, that's
still are absolutely so. I just saw that they were in town. That's
yeah, I don't think it was a Blue Man group. How many Blue
Men are there? Three? The public appearances that there's three of them,
right, but I mean there's like a million of They could be anybody,
right, Yeah, they do like regular tryouts. That's not just a made
up things. I don't even know what they do. They're the Globetrotters,
but with instead of basketball, it's all like it's all found sound PVC pipes
that make noise, like we made these percussion instruments out of weird stuff and
then we bang on it and act bizarre blue. We should go see the
Blue Man Group sometimes I've seen them, No, you've seen them? Yeah,
I want to go see it. I was a Capcom truck. Sounds
like, yeah, it sounds like we're in Vegas and hey guys, after
dinner, we're going to see the Blue Man Group. But okay, that
very specifically sounds like a a female pr rep really wanted to go see the
Blue Man Group, and so the trip became, let's go see the that's
how I saw. Oh yeah, that's that sounds about the right speed as
well. Anyway, back to the holiday, what did you see was something?
Okay, Yeah, it was pretty good. That's that's what you see
here. Yeah, you bring people from out of tens either that or beach
playing a battle. They actually bought the tickets and my wife and I just
showed up. No, no, no, that's exactly. That's the thing
that you don't know exists, but you're out of town. It's like,
you know, going climbing the quit Tower, going out to Alcatraz or whatever.
It's a good show if anybody's looking to go to the thoth Ra,
you know which which theath Ray was. It was a downtown one field.
It was near it was near the Union Square, so it was kind of
that's kind of the great districts. Uh. Then we ate and then the
next day we ate again, and then we would did like the car tour
stuff Mere Woods and Twin Peaks and kind of the city stuff, and we
went to Oakland. The oh went to Oakland and found some good Mexican food
in Oakland in the Mexican parts of Oakland, which are fun, which was
fun. So you ain't grilling, no, no. Then Monday, I
just totally video gamed it up. Okay, that was the Saturday. That
was Saturday, and Sunday and then it was done finished. The case Smile
was the book, although they today just released the two. Uh, it's
Naked City and those were pre order cases. Okay, I already played through
Naked Naked City, so my pre order case I sell them been able to
get or PlayStation three exclusive case. Yeah, you can't get that until the
stores back. Oh you you've got the PSD version, but if you can't
get any of its great No, no, no, I mean I played.
I mean it sucks because of the cases. I played both versions,
and PS three version is better. It's a it's a great game. Also,
now now that you know, when once you get to that point where
you're through the game, you want to go back and play previous cases,
I thought i'd go back and claim up even the side mission stuff. But
I think I'm kind of done. Yeah, I think. But what was
your reaction to the ending? Yeah, uh, it wasn't as I really
liked the game a lot, and at the ending I liked less. So
yeah, the ending is off the strongest part of that game. Yeah,
so I really liked it. Yeah, it's not bad. It could be
handled a little more deftly, yeah than they do, but it's actually pretty
a lot of stuff to kind of it's it's kind of like but for the
genre, there's a very genre appropriate for irony. To the way it ends,
it's more kind of perfect. It's more of the way the ending is
presented. It kind of happens a little. It's all a little faster.
I thought. The last scene it feels kind of rushed, Like the last
ten twenty minutes of that game feel a little rushed. It was more of
the last scene. I just wanted a little more closure those I wanted those
like title cards to come up and be like he went on to go be
judge of you know, yeah, yeah whatever kind of Thematically, it makes
sense. It's just not presented as as cleanly, and it probably speaks of
the character development throughout the game. I just want to know what happened to
the rest of those guys and what they thought about the ending. I want
to know what the characters thought about everything. You know, Noir is kind
of all about it was dark, yeah, and then keeps that and discomfort
yeah, kind of like a dissatisfaction by the way things turned out. But
but I really I don't know, I really like when when that's when that
game shifts. I became far more excited about it and far more invested.
There was definitely a whole lot of like what what the hell, that's what's
going on up Like I just knew at that point, I'm like, Okay,
yeah, this is they're really getting into. Like there there's kind of
this. There's a lot of kind of facile noir trappings throughout that game,
but like the deeper story once once that switch happens about two thirds through,
uh is uh is really really exciting. I should say that the post credit
scene was actually redeemed a lot of the ending for me. I like the
scene after the credits, but that actually tied up that filled. Yeah,
a lot of a lot of story. But uh yeah, I had a
lot of fun going through it. Long than I thought, way longer,
I don't remember, but it felt it felt like I was never running out
of like oh, this must be the end and then nope, that's longer
stuff going. Yeah it's long. Are you gonna do you have interest in
going back and playing playing cases? Maybe? I don't know. It depends
what the what they're like, how they're sold to me, like what the
description is. If it's just more climbing up drain pipes and chasing down dudes.
Probably not. How long is the Naked City. It's it's it's length.
Yeah, yeah, so that one. So since I already had that
that one cashed in beforehand, that one did just integrate into my into my
playthrough. Well, some of those cases are longer than others, It's true.
Some can be real. It's pretty the Yeah, Naked City is a
pretty significant one. It's it's substantial. That rock Star Pass is a surprisingly
good deal. I mean, it's it's four cases. It's like, you
know, I mean, the guns and costumes are kind of whatever. But
even at four full extra cases for ten bucks, that's a pretty good deal.
I never got the other I never got the achievement or the trophy for
using all the weapons, which I thought was weird because I didn't seem yeah,
I just everything, huh uh. And I just never got fist fist
weapons. I definitely didn't fisted a couple of guys. I didn't get that
one either. I don't know the weapons one. Yeah, so I don't
know if it's a maybe it's tied into some of the DLC. I'd like
to talk to some of the definitely people have it. There's there's a full
list of like what the yeah, the weapons are the weapons didn't seem like
there are that many. Seems like there are like four weapons. There's a
couple that are very similar. I think there's like two versions of Tommy going
first. Yeah, there's I think I got both of those with the round
clip in that in that straight clip. Yeah, no, you're I think
you're thinking of the bar. Maybe I don't know. I tried to make
sure I got everything. I was just running through. I think there's a
Tommy going with a magazine and then the Tommy going with the drum clip.
I'm not I'm not sure drum magazine. I'm not sure though, I don't
know. Aside from all that, Yeah, I had a lot of fun
with it. Yeah, yeah, I mean I'm all the way in for
all that delC. I feel like it's a kind of stop check out this
game in terms of the where video games are check it out. This is
an important piece of video game timeline right here. And you know, I
guess we'll see in the future how much of that's that plays forward. But
genre bending, that game is going to age horribly, you think, I
think so I think I think the technology and technology, I think the technology
in that game looks amazing right now. But I think being like kind of
first run, I have a feeling that it's just it's just like two years
from now you look back on and go, geez all these It's like it's
like you think everyone that has any kind of faces in it will eventually go
that route. So it'll just be everywhere and that'll be the first example of
it, and it'll look I don't know if it's going to be that pervasive
now. I mean, it's owned by this company that made the game right
right for one thing, So like if I rock Star buys that developer and
owns that technology, like it probably be somebody somebody will iterate on it or
that game. We can do that like oh, just like we put thirty
three camera fifteen cameras on their body too. So it's the only moments when
that stuff broke down for me is when the few cases where there were two
people that you were interacting with at once. Uh, there are a couple
of like interrogations where interviews where there was someone else sitting there next to the
person they were titled to and they were just like they were sitting there and
they're sitting right next to each other, but they were in completely different worlds
just just like that, Like it couldn't do just like the someone was saying
something that would that would be shocking, and then the person would appropriately because
they all acted about individually, right, Like, it kind of betrays the
process they went through to to you know, capture these performances of everyone is
super isolated, which isn't a problem when you're doing one on ones or even
when it's just sort of conversational, but when someone I think it's super hard
in that in that sort of a setting to background act. Sure, if
you know what I mean, yea, when it's just like okay, you're
gonna sit in the middle of this room now casual, right, you know,
like at least you need stand in so there giving your prompts and stuff.
Sure, but I think even more than a technology, uh, just
the format like is as in it, which is pretty much an adventure game.
It's you know, it's kind of the twenty eleven point and click adventure
game. I mean, this is like one possible route for that job or
two to go along. So I think we'll probably see some more of that,
like like instead of just you know, Salmon Max next season, super
realistic rabbit faces. Well, that's the thing, rabbit, that's the thing.
Like those guys are over there doing the point and click thing still right,
like that that's kind of the old way to make an adventure. And
it's weird because you did see some of that in the Salmon Max stuff where
there was one episode where you were shaking down people and you had to see
if they were lying or telling the truth. So that's not that novel.
But I felt like it was executed really well, and I thought nothing ever
seemed completely contrived with the notebook and all that stuff. I thought the whole
thing was just very well done. But but it I mean, it does
have like five tricks like that game. Yeah, it boils down to a
handful of idea conversation scenes collecting evidence yea, like you know, the first
person shooting and chases and stuff like it's a yeah, it's a small actually
a car chase, the car following, the foot chase, the fist fighting,
like actually thought those parts were part of the weakest the actually bits.
I think it's presented so well that I'm exciting to watch. Even though it's
not mechanically converse, it's it's it's whenever someone says, like does the how
can you prove that I was there? That's that's when the like FMV game
part of surface video pauses for a second and well, what do you think?
But actually, evidence do you have make my music video? I actually
did appreciate though when you hit lie, they would set up exactly what evidence
you need to uh, do you have evidence that I was the one who
made this bill to go to the thing too? Because a lot of times,
I know you proved that I was there. A lot of times I'd
hit lie, thinking I have a piece of evidence, and then they'd stayed
exactly the two sides of like, oh no, I don't have that at
all. I don't have something. Yeah, I'm not like you have the
pair of my torn panties that I stuffed it right, So like i'd have
a piece of evidence that was like, had I have this guy's testimony that
says you were totally there? And then they you'd hit lie and the guy
would be like, well, do you have a ticket that says that I
was at the theater? I don't think it gives that it doesn't get but
it at least name the item. No. But but they always at least
direct, Yeah, what we're trying? Yeah, what what the two sides
are? And I boned it up a lot of times on how many times
did you turn off your system? About four? Especially towards the end I
actually powered I hate quit. I was pause it and go to quit and
then resume. That's what I did, and it pops you straight back into
exactly where you were. Well, sometimes you have to sit there all.
You can't skip all at the beginning of that conversation, but it checkpoints every
time you get to a new way. I usually I usually did it once
I started and up repeatedly, like two wrong in a row. And then
I was like when I when I got to three, when I was just
like, I'm killing I'm just doing awful here. This is the worst.
And and it's you know, there are you just feel like because they're the
there are the interviews where it's like, all right, I'm just gonna ask
this guy like two questions. He's kind of an incidental witness or information source.
But it's when you get to like the proper suspects where there's like six
questions you're gonna ask this dude sucked up. Like half of them are like,
oh, I don't care if I with like you know, I get
zero out of two on you know, the bartender or whatever. I'm like,
all right, I'll make up the difference later. It's no big deal.
But when then you get those music cues, it's just oh, barn
Burnand but you're right, you're right. I definitely became super tuned. We're
talking about this last week, the little two notes, a little harmony that
comes up, we get it right, and like, oh thank god,
Yeah, no, that stuff is good. I burned through all my intuition
points as well. And you should kind of save those up a bit,
I think, yeah, because you can't grind them there if there's a set
number and you can get in the whole game. Yeah, And I was
down to just one and then zero of the entire time at the end there,
and they get burned through them too quickly. But when you go back
to cases, you'll have full five when you when you when you replay when
you which you know, when you get to earlier cases, you couldn't have
even had five intuition points at that point. And so I'm super excited for
more deals for that game. I'll play as many cases as they put out.
I you know, say what you will about kind of the overarching narrative,
although again I think that they capture like the namesake of La Noir.
That game is entirely totally and and some pretty and they pay homage to some
of the greats and some really specific but still very inventive ways with with kind
of the overarching plot. It's it's just terrific. Somebody's saying that. I
won't say which case even though it's not it's not critical to the main storyline,
but the there's a case where the name of the case is also the
name of a fairly well known movie of that genre, and they're both about
the exact same thing. I feel like there are a couple of yeah,
there's I mean, you know, the Big Sleep is on half the marquees
of the theaters in town, like they they are winking and nodding at you
about that stuff constantly. I feel like the longer I wait to play the
game, the better experience I'm going to have, because they keep releasing all
this stuff that integrates into the stories. Yeah, that's the part that.
Yeah, if you wait till like all four of those cases around and then
play the game, I mean, that's gonna make it that much longer.
I don't know how you feel about that, but if it's not good,
that's fine. I think more than any of the Yeah, I mean I
wish I could have those the yeah, other three integrated because having just Naked
City in there are like, oh bonus, I know that my you know,
play through here is going to be just a little bit. And that
case is great. That case is a lot of fun. It. It
pulls in you see a lot of like kind of returning characters from from past
cases. Uh. So, it's it's got some continuity to it. It's
just so I hope if, like, if that's the standard for the DALC
cases, I'm excited to see what the other ones are. Like the last
case it's called Reefer Madness. I know, I can't wait. I'll see
what that is. Uh it's a vice case. Uh. The I think
the main story throughout the whole thing, that the larger narrative. Yeah,
I thought it was really powerful. I thought it was a very mature,
very kind of well and convoluted, Like there's a lot there's a lot of
moving parts to that, but every single part ties into it. There's nothing
that you were shown in that game. Uh you know the individual cases,
a lot of them are just like that's that's an isolated case. But like
all the character development, all that, you know, all the weird flashbacks
stuff, like all the kind of side stuff that they show you like it
all happens for a reason, and it all tied. Like going back and
replaying older cases and seeing some of that stuff, I was shocked to realize
how much is time in Yeah. I just thought it was like an adult
piece of content done well. Yeah, and not not with like blood and
boobs, like like this is there's blood and boobs. There's plenty of blood
and there are plenty of boobs. There blood bloody boots. There are plenty
of bloody boots. It's the only time there are boobs. Awesome, they're
bloody. But but I think it's done. It's done tastefully, and it's
all it's all given like the appropriate gravity. Yeah. And and that story
is pretty heavy. It's a it's a pretty it's good stuff. Yeah,
it's really good. Yeah. Uh And so then I switched Scars and went
back to the Witcher One. And how's that treating? How how are the
novels? I haven't started it yet? What? Yeah, we got to
read the books before you play the game. It's not gonna make any sense.
He's in the original Polish. I mean the first the first I need
to go through and brush up on my posis Polish. Yet, well,
I'm working on. None of this is going to make any sense to you.
First, I need to go to pol I mean those books were not
written as promotional material for this game. No, it's books first. Yeah,
they existed, and so somebody, I don't think you got these are
exempts for mockery. I think because of that, So somebody, somebody I'm
mocking Ye, I'm mocking Vinny for his need to player. There are two
things that put the books on a bit of a hole. I also want
to want to clear the air here. I'm not making fun of the Witcher
One either. I understand it's a very great game and and very liked.
It's just this is Vinnie's habit of going down these crazy rabbit holes. Which
which of completionism? Which are which I like? Which are is good?
How much time do you spend with The Witch. I spend it's probably another
five or six hours this weekend with it. That cames cool. It's it's
a it's I'm playing it for the story, not really so much for the
gameplay, because I do think there are better versions of that gameplay. It's
dense. It is gameplay is dense in that game. But I'm enjoying it.
Uh, And I'll get to the books at some point. Apparently only
like two out of five have been translated, so I kind of, Yeah,
I kind of took a little wind out of my sales. Plus when
somebody told me that the books are in the same universe, same character and
stuff, but it's not like a retelling. The game isn't isn't a version
of the books made me feel like it would give me a little more time
to be like, well, I can always go back and read these I'm
not if I play the game, I'm not gonna spoil the book, or
if we read the book, I'm not gonna spoil the game. A lot
of flights and car trips coming up. I know you mean they're not retellings,
yeah, or the book or the games and retelling I want to understand.
Yeah, So yeah, it seems like that universe is fleshed out really
well, and I can't wait to really dive into it. But I know
as soon as we come back from E three, there's so many other games
that that's the only thing that worries me. Spending time playing the Witch er
one and then looking forward to playing the Witch or two when just this barrage
of games are going to come out, Well, then he don't worry because
after that barrage is a two month wasteland. Just true. Yeah of no
releases. Yeah, July and August looking pretty pretty slim like old school.
Yeah, like school. July and August. When when does Madden come out?
That ass? Yeah, that's usually that's when everyone goes back to school.
That's when people start selling games again. They announced their Hall of Fame
edition for Madden today. Does it come with a football? No? Does
it come with because of football phone? I would totally football phone. It
comes with some autographed card and foil cover. Who's the cover, who's the
cover artist the cover football iss ball artist? I don't, I don't remember.
I think it might even be a different guy on the Hall of Fame
edition. So who gets injured Finn if there's two. Well, I think
that everyone is no longer playing everyone Marshall Fall or something anyway you could they're
doing. They're doing some very interesting stuff. It's one of the things I
saw during my week out was was Madden and you know, it's like a
lot of it, chunks of it were lost on but it seems like they
really are going for it this year, even though there might not be any
real football. It seems like they're kind of using that as an excuse to
do a lot of stuff to that game that they might not do on an
annual basis. Landlines or Mutants. Yeah, so now they're they're so they're
they're redoing like camera stuff in that game pretty intensely. They actually showed that
they were motion capturing a guy on like a fifty yard field and this guy's
like an NFL Films dude with like a camera rig that's got a monitor showing
the game on it. So he's like filming guys running out of the entrance
tunnels and stuff, and he's like they're and they're just dropping his camera data
directly into the game. Weird. I thought that was pretty cool. That's
interesting. She just trying to get it to look more like NFL film stuff.
So he's got he's got a problem with that that should always look he's
got like gyrosculpture track so it's always where in the world it is and all
that stuff. So they're capping that, which I thought was really neat.
That's interesting. So it's like, you know, they said there was some
case of like him, like getting out of the way of players running at
it and stuff. That's interesting. That's exactly what you want him to do.
Yeah, it sounds like they're doing a lot of cool stuff without game
this year. No clip through, Uh do you so? So yeah,
obviously has to have separate deals then with the NFL and the Players Association.
Yeah, I think that's still separate. Those are separate deals, I think.
Well, I mean, LA imagine they have to be, because I
mean, that's where the beef is coming from, right is between owners player
you know, the deals are the deals. I don't know, I know,
I'm just wondering how, you know, how the potent, how the
the lockout is going to well, I think you know, it would probably
affect stuff like roster updates if there are no rosters to update. Sure,
you know, they would have to kind of launch with Well, I was
thinking more just like like kind of broader big picture, like you know what,
how this would affect their ability to change things or tweak things about the
the game on a larger scale. Well, yeah, I mean I think
yeah, it definitely. You know, they would have no real league to
react to, so if they wanted to go, like, Okay, this
player is suddenly having a breakout season, we need to make it better.
Like they don't have to worry about that. Like, it's probably almost better
in some weird way, more liberties for them, right because they just get
to like make it right once and then don't have to sit there and sweat
that stuff. I don't know, but you know, did to hear them
describe it. It's like, you know, they're kind of like planning for
the worst case scenario, Like if there's no football, this game is still
gonna be awesome. If there's no football. Fans, there's no football,
they charge ninety dollars a copy, Well that's from the Hall of Fame,
additions, basic edition of that game. Want football this year? Just what
Madden? That's what Arena football? Or they just do XFL's coming back one
season only they should do an alternate universe Madden like for this year if there's
no football, like imagine if robots and mutants. Yeah, they should just
do that anyway, you know it imagining. Okay, keep going one robot,
he's got tak trips. Save it for NFL blitz. Is that coming
back? Yeah? Does that? Did that have played? You mean blitz?
No? I think I mean NFL Blitz. Yeah, yeah, we'll
see MLB blitz. Yes, we couldn't get the players. You couldn't get
NFL players, so check it out. That would be that would be the
group the bestz just all hockey players that in MLB. Yeah, just all
right, we bought we put baseball players. What if baseball players had to
play football? Well, we've got all these other stats. I guess we'll
figure out how to translate those into these stats. Great FACEALC Sabathia would play
something like this, just guys like like self pitching the football and receivers.
I'd play that game. Yeah, I'll play that game. Quiet are usually
asking we should give football players based ball bats, because because I am in
no, give the baseball players baseball bats and put them in a football and
put them on the field. Well, yeah. I mean, I don't
care the guys who know how to use them. I don't care where their
players are coming from. Let's get let's get inmates and put them on a
football field and give them baseball bats. All right, now, you're onto
sometimes I'm talking about the next great American sport. Is what I'm talking about.
God damn it. Whatever team win gets parole. That's right. Oh,
thrash ball. Thrash ball right now, this is how it happens.
This is how it happens. NFL strike, NFL strike, And it's just
like you know, Sunday in the park pick up league games of thrash ball
twenty eleven due to the NFL strike. What if we put spikes on these
paths at halftime? Cars would enter the field. We need something more extreme?
Can we make this game take place in twenty xx? We might take
place in twenty xx and it happens on a mountain of burning amplifiers. I
love this game. This is what you saw. This is what they wanted
the show. No, this is T shirt guns that killed. I cannot
talk about some of the other things I saw, Jeff, what can you
talk about? Oh God, it's so what do you want to talk about.
Yeah, it's well, you know, today was the day for the
Call of Duty Elite reveal, yes, which caused a bit of a kerfuffle.
Yeah, I think we can call it a kerfuffle. Sure, I
think it's it's reached kerfuffle status. Do you think Do you think it at
any point got to Donnie Brooke. No, it hasn't quite reached Falan Donnie
Brooke yet. Waggle. Oh, it's well, yeah, I think i'd
say it's it's it's yeah, it's past boondoggle, past boondoggle. I feel
like Boondoggle is way past kurfuffle man. You think, yeah, I think
you probably. I think it probably because that boon Dooggle is only a couple
of steps away from food Bar. Yea, that's the It's not it's not
Foo Bar, because at the end of it, it's it's people kind of
freaking out about half the story or or kind of being willfully ignorant about what
Call of Duty Elite. Actually, I don't even know which part you're talking
about being freaked over, because there was the whole like Wall Street Journal and
Bargo breaking Well wasn't that wasn't even Embargo's being broken Journal had the exclusive yesterday
and and that story you know by people being written by the Wall Street Journal
sure was more focused on the business aspects of this being a subscription based service,
so it didn't necessarily put, you know, it put in the spotlight
that this actually doesn't change anything about the way you play Call of Duty today.
And that's the thing, you know, if you just want to play
that game on the internet and shoot people and then buy mat packs or not
buy map packs like that, Modern warphare three still functions exactly like that,
And then they're building this additional service around it, some of which will be
free, uh, some of which will be not. So it's like they're
building basically I mean, you know how Bungee handles stats for Halo, I
think so like they have they have a whole site full of heat maps and
game viewer and all this crazy stuff that's totally free, and it's awesome,
you know if you're in Halo, like it's it's killer, Like you go
look at it, you're like, oh man, it's all kind of comparable.
To take it back to the Battlenet stuff like as far as stat tracking
and replays and things of that nature, Yeah sort of. Yeah, I
mean, you know, neither neither service really offers like full on replay capability
from the site or anything like that. But so this, this subscription service
doesn't necessarily affect any of the gameplay. It's more of a meta layer on
top of right, It's a layer on top that you know, like,
like I said, they haven't necessarily been too clear about where they're gonna draw
the line as to what's free and what's not. What's probably compounding some of
this, you know, they don't they don't really have their shit together for
this announcement. Yeah, talking to you about it some this morning, it
sounds like they're figuring out where that line is. Yeah, so it's like
they're there. All they're saying is that it will be priced lower than comparable
services. And I look at like, well, what are what are comparable
services? And you look at like this. Okay, So this basically takes
the stat tracking stuff from what Bungee's done, which is free. It takes
kind of the group functionality from something like Steam, which is free. And
then if you are a subscriber, you will also get access to all the
map packs which are not free with your subscription. Yeah, it sounds like
it'll be at release. I think they should probably just give them to subscriber
as a week early or something like that. Like the people willing to pay
that fee, like, you know, it doesn't split the player base for
very long. You know, those people would probably be the people that would
you know, be most likely to care about that sort of stuff and go
from there. But that's a good bonus for people who are way into call
of duty. Yeah, I think that that at that point, I think
it makes this the service even it makes the service attractive because right now,
for me, if they don't, if they charge any more than what those
map packs cost on their own, they're charging too much. You figure,
they do three map packs over the life of Modern Warfare, three so that's
forty five bucks right there. But you know, anytime I say to anyone
they shouldn't charge more than that, they look at me like I'm crazy,
And they're going to charge five bucks a month, don't be stupid, which
I don't. You know, they haven't announced it, but that that seems
like a likely scenario. I guess I'm not even sure that that a monthly
makes the most sense, right Like, like idet all the money up front.
Of the big part of what they want to do with this on a
business you know, I'm sure from a business perspective, is get all that
map pack money out of you on day one while you are pumped about Call
of Duty and yeah, and locking you into buying all three map packs because
and then locking you into maybe not selling back your copy of the game used
because because you've paid for this year of stuff. Also, for every person
who gets that stuff up front, that is one hundred and five dollars per
sale instead of sixty or or or whatever car with night vision scrap to it,
especially especially with a stick of dynamite tape to it, whatever it is,
but especially it's that much extra money on the next earnings report, right,
Yes, So have they said if this would just be for that game,
like so they're going to roll this out, it'll be for Black Ops
and for Modern Warfare three. Okay, So they've actually been they've been tracking
Black Up stats since launch and that stuff will be in there. So it's
kind of like a Call of Duty subscription Okay. Yeahs it's not tied any
particular game. This is their ongoing service, evolving service they've got an iPhone
app like it's it's you know, this is this is a web page basically
where you're going and looking at all the stats and you know, and and
joining groups and doing all that stuff. The other thing is they they'll have
leagues and tournaments with real prizes, which I imagine that would be on the
other side of the paywall. Also, you know, they didn't really say
what the prizes would be, but in the placeholder stuff they had like a
jeep or a belt buckle, you know, stuff like that. It seems
like as long as they're not sucking or taking stuff that, you know,
gameplay functionality out of the core game, like like they're not charging just for
multiplayer or something like that, if there are people who want that stuff,
uh, it's hard to have a problem. It sounds it sounds like a
more robust Bungee Pro to me, right, nobody, nobody who plays Halo
but doesn't sign up for Bungee Pro is suffering or thing out on and yeah,
yeah, but at the same time, like Bungee Pro was really just
extra file share space offers clearly a lot more than that, yeah, and
probably will be priced accordingly. But it's also hard for me to tell because
I kind of have no interest in that at all. So like, yeah,
if it were for something and I was like, that would be awesome,
but I have to pay for it. I could see people kind of
getting upset. But it sounds like a it sounds like the most of this
stuff's gonna probably end up being free anyway, And it's really just the stuff
that you know, you would have to pay money to access anyway, like
Matt packs and stuff that would get you prizes, which you know, but
you know, they're just positioning in a really weird ways. They're talking about
like, well, you know, one of the reasons that this has to
be a premium service because we're building such a huge customer service organization to support
it. I'm like, no one fucking cares about that, and really,
what is your like, what are you servicing unless you're gonna like implement call
of duty gameplay counselors that I can call up and go, dude, I
just can't shoot people, right, shoot shoot them back. Yeah, if
there's someone on the like a binder that they flip through. Yeah, if
Gary Wit is on the other end, it goes, well, have you
tried getting him thanks all right. Uh, you know because because this notion
of like, oh, well, you know, if we're gonna start the
service, it's gonna be a lot of people calling up like, well,
what do you have to deal with lost my password? Yeah? Like yeah,
it's like you'll have some of that stuff. But I'm not sure how
if you're starting this paid service to support the organization that will have to support
your paid service, then maybe you've gone about it wrong. Or maybe there's
something that they're expensive to run. We need money. Maybe there's some other
thing that they just haven't announced that needs that customer support. I have no
right, or you know, maybe they just know that, like the the
kind of mainstream Call of Duty fan base is the type of people that will
just call you up to curse at you over something, and they need people
to deal with that. I don't I don't really don't know. It's just
like therapists or like Jimmy Kimmel call them up doing that ad for this game,
right. Yeah, So you know, they haven't done a great job
of really kind of positioning this stuff and saying what exactly it's going to be.
Let's I mean, like they showed it Q and they showed it to
the Wall Street Journal and yeah, and they showed it to you know,
obviously not just you, but when I see you like a bunch of enthusiast
press. Yeah. Yeah, And and there seems to be no clear consensus
of well, you know, the minute you say, hey, we're charging
money for a thing related to call of duty, everyone immediately he goes worst
case scenario and you know, just starts like, charge your money for to
play the game. And I feel bad for like Robert Bowling in this case
because he's, you know, that's still kind of the the community face for
inffinity word products. And if you look at his Twitter, it's just like
one to one responses to people saying no, we're not charging to play the
game, like in like five different ways, and it's like it's not even
a form letter. He's taking time just go no, dude, which you
know, God bless him, and that's he's he's good at doing that.
That's what they have to pay for. That's what's good, right, Yeah,
Yeah, to duplicate him twenty times, two thousand times to get and
has the technology to clone Robert Bowling. But I would pay for that.
That's I would totally make money, but wasn't there There was a quote,
if my money goes to making more Robert bowlings and making that watchwork. But
in their quote that came out of Activision about it like a year or two
ago, that was just something off the record kind of quote that was just
like, yeah, if we could charge for the multiplayer, we were totally
doing it. Was it was on the record. I mean they have not
been shy about I think that we want, we need to make money off
of people playing our game all the time. Yeah, but you know,
it's like standards being with you know, even even with the franchises, you
should call it duty. They couldn't just do that. Yeah, you know,
they would probably make more money for a little bit, but they would
turn off so many players. Yeah, somebody else would the process exactly.
Yeah, it's like you know any year where people are you know, at
least like people that are are very tapped into what's going on with upcoming games,
Like this is going to be the year that they face their most kind
of They're going to face their biggest challenge yet in Battlefield three, and it
would be a bad move for them to go full on subscription only for that
multiplayer considering no one else is really in a position to do that, and
no one else has to do that, and no one else will do that.
It's uh, you know, it would leave them out of the cold,
like they're just not going to do that. Like the basics of how
the console business works would have to change change so dramatically for us to get
to a point where people are paying to play sixteen player multiplayer games on a
subscription on a subscription basis on top of what they are already paying to do
that on an Xbox. Right, well, pretty much everybody's doing the past
thing then, right, that's like a cross that's Warner Brothers doing it,
Activision does EA does it, right, they all have to included online pass
HQ has done it, but they're just contributed through THHQ and you can buy
that through after the fact, right, everybody else you can buy it after
the fact. And you know, one of the startup messages in Black ops
like they have the stats and stuff that'll go across the bottom. Like one
of them even seemed like a swipe at that. It was just like you
know, multiplayer free in every box really like and you know it's it's that
they've They've said it time and time again. Anytime anyone will ask them,
or anytime anyone is listening, they will say, we have no intent to
charge to play the basic multiplayer basic multiplayer, which is true right uptil the
moment where they change it. But I don't think that the I don't think
the business will be there for them to make that change anytime soon. By
the time that this business has changed so much that they can charge for individual
games like that, Call of Duty will not be a factor anymore, you
know, it'll kind of already gone off into the night or something. So
did you see the game proper, like just just regular game that you can
talk about. Yeah, I saw for three. They demoted two levels of
the single player. They didn't talk about multiplayer at all except for spec ops
that will be back. Oh cool, Yeah, I like that part.
The game look pretty good. Looks okay. He looked like a Call of
Duty game, you know, like it's it's uh, you know, it's
interesting. They didn't really focus on any real kind of story stuff other than
to say it's conflict is all over the world, which is you know,
their their teasers have kind of reflected that and it's a continuation of modern Wafford
two. Yeah, but they didn't show anything related to soap or Price.
It was just like, here are some Delta Force soldiers, uh, you
know, taking Wall Street back from the Russians, and here are some British
sas guys chasing down a train. Well, if you've got a first person
shooter where you've actually managed to create characters that people give a shit about,
you save those like, I don't. I don't think you tropp those out
for the Yeah, maybe not. That's a you know, like the Price
reveal in in two, right when you finally get to him, it's it's
a it's such a great oh shit moment. But you know that let league
script claim is that this game picks up like moments after the end of the
second game. You know that it's not that they're and also that they're not
necessarily huge characters in the game, which seems kind of crazy. You know,
I don't I don't know where I don't know where this is going.
I mean I don't, I don't know like what the fate of modern Yeah,
because like arguably after Black Ops, you know, Call of Duty is
bigger than it has ever been but they're you know, I feel like we
we are in the middle of a really hard backlash from you know, a
lot of people on the enthusiast side. Yeah, I mean, that's that's
kind of the other thing. I have to imagine that Activision expects a lot
of this reaction, you know, because anytime you say, hey, we're
charging for anything that you know, we all know the Internet doesn't like that.
Yeah, but how many of those people have actually been turned off to
the point where they're not going to buy the game that they where they were
going to buy the game and now won't. And how many of them will
just or or are even aware of any of this off at all. Right,
That's that's the thing. I think so many people that play Call of
Duty don't pay any attention to any news about video games other than when when?
About when does that coming out? Did I did I learn about that
from commercials during the NBA? Right? Did I hear or like, what
were you saying? I thought I had got the impression somewhere that the game
that is being made was sort of mapped out pre kind of like Calamity,
And I don't know, I hadn't heard that because that happened like the following
spring after Modern War. Yeah, so they probably could have had like a
rough outline at that point. Yeah, I asked. I asked because I
mean, just like you see this final product coming out after there has been
such a ce change in the development staff, Like I personally won't be able
to look at this game without thinking like, is this roughly the game that
would have been made if that hadn't happened? Like, how is this different?
Yeah? It is? How this game is oddly damaged? Is it's
it's hard, It's it's hard to extract it, like knowing that there was
this huge creative change behind the scenes, Like you're left wondering like was this
game really made by like Infinity Ward as I know it. I mean the
two people on stage giving or introducing this demo were Robert Bowling from Infinity Ward
and Glenn's Scofield or of Sledge, who last made a Dead Space game.
Right, Yeah, so you know it's a PR guy and creative strategists community
guy and head of another head of another studio. Yeah, you know,
so they've divvied up the tasks accordingly and are kind of working on that game
across studios and you know it's in their outsourcing a bunch of stuff to other
people. And you know, even though it was not mentioned at all during
this presentation, apparently Raven is still working on some portion of this game as
well. They were not represented on stage though I thought Raven died. I
thought they killed Raymond. No, well, Modern Warfare two ended with everything
going to hell and Soapen Price leaving to go do their own thing because everybody
was out of there because everything everyone was after them. So maybe any award
was writing it into the game, predicting the future. Maybe that's why we
haven't seen them in anything of the new stuff, because you seeing Modern Warfare
three is a parable for the Melon, and maybe we'll see Modern Warfare three
be like some pressure dead. They're dead. We're not going to mention them.
They're doing it. One thing. It's okay, they retired. Here's
some new characters. We don't care. Yeah, we don't care. Check
these new guys out. Yeah, I don't know. It's it looked fine,
like the demo looked fine, but it looked very standard. You know.
It looked like, Okay, I'm working my way up the street,
I'm shooting these guys. Like none of it looked new. The tech didn't
necessarily look like it had advanced, and it looked nice, you know,
sixty frames a second like you expect. But basically it all looked as you
expect, which I guess. You know, maybe with all the turmoil that
has come to the studios involved and you know, kind of how this game
has come together, maybe that's like, maybe that's maybe that's all that they
can you know, hope. Yeah, they're probably stoked using new like gameplay
thing like we introduced, you know, well, they shocking shock. They
showed what would that be? Locking shock? You lock onto a guy and
then everybody rushes in. It's like shocking off. There you go. So,
is it like you're controlling like attack attack to point out a guy?
You aim at him and then you hit a button and then everybody targets him
and then you run to cover. Are you using it as like a distraction?
You're using it? It's like punch a hole either man. Do you
decide how to use That's the beauty of it. I like it. It's
up to the player what governs lock and shock use. Can you just pump
it out as often as you will? You can only do it when you
have like three to more guys. But I mean like when icon will come
up, how do I how do I charge up my locking shock? No?
No, just an icon will come up. It's like breaching the door.
Its scripted. It's scripted. Yeah, some points in the game you'll
be able to see here. It's not really it's not really up to me.
It's just at this one point, I can hit the bus safe questions
for the end. We're gonna roll a lock and shock demo right now.
This is a little bit later into the game. This is the same multiplayer.
We're gonna skip ahead a little bit. How many players we'll save questions
for the end, so as you can see now, we're gonna jump Yeah,
we're gonna jump ahead now a little bit. So kind of the one
of the new thing they showed was that in the Manhattan sequence, the guy
was holding a rifle that had a full on scope on it and he slapped
it out of the way the scope, yeah, like down to the side
of the gun, and there was a red dot site there behind it.
So you can kind of go back and forth between if you wanted good magnification
or just a red dot site on that weapon. That's interesting. Sure it's
a thing. Yeah, well that's a yeah. And and there were a
lot of like rail shooting sequences, like You've got up to this rooftop and
planted explosives on this tower, and then a helicopter came in and you were
shooting out of the door of a helicopter. You launched missiles from a reaper
drone, just like you've done in past games. There were the whole the
whole train tunnel sequence was all on rails. It was just you're in the
back of a pickup truck shooting in a train. Like it. I don't
think we're gonna fight. They've done some pretty cool on rails sequences in the
past, or even just like vehicle stuff like the snowmobile thing was was neat.
But I mean so there is there is a modern warfare expectation of having
something like that. Yeah, but to have you know that percentage of your
demo taken up by that, well, I mean the trailer, like half
the things that you see, I'm like, Okay, that's gotta be on
rail's vehicles sequence. That's gotta be an on rail's vehicle sequence. Yeah,
And some of the stuff is it. Yeah, some of most of the
stuff I saw is in the trailer in some form or at least in bits
and pieces. Yeah, But like like we were talking about, with Mass
Effect three, by the time you get to the third one, you're not
reinventing anything. You know you are. You have an established audience. They
kind of know what they like. That's fine, But at the same time,
this whole thing is getting pretty tired. Yeah. Yeah, I don't.
I don't think it's the same because I don't expect a mass effect for
it to be very similar. If they go for mass effect, for to
even take place with the same characters or whatever. I suspect the that's the
narrative, Dey'll get wrapped up this. I suspect call of duty. They
would keep making the time. I think I believe this is supposed to be
the conclusion of the Modern Warfare art. Okay, but I mean, I
mean to say that modern Warfare differentiates or splits off from like Black Ops in
any gameplay meaningful way. In the gameplay, it's it's not that you're looking
for it to split off, it's that you're looking for it to make advancements
in a in a genre where those advancements are kind of expected and kind of
continually being made. You know, it's it's the it's the change over from
Call of Duty three to Call of Duty four. That's what we need right
now. Yeah. So and you know, it's like people are starting to
look to Battlefield three thinking like, well, maybe this is going to get
us on a different track and hopefully do something else. And I think battle
Field three looks awesome. I'm just not sold on it yet, like that
camp. You know, they've shown campaign stuff like that's not what I want
to see out of a Battlefield game either, And arguably the majority of people
that want to play Model war for three don't give a shit about it.
They don't even know this stuff. So it's kinda it's kind of where I
I wound up with Call of Duty now, is that's kind of become a
rental for me because I don't spend time in the multiplayer and then the campaign
stuff usually winds up being four or five hours, So I wind up with
a copy of Modern Warfare that I, you know, beaten one night and
then kind of put down and never touch again. And some would say,
you know, well that game is not for you. Whatever. But the
campaign stuff is usually all right. I usually I want to play it.
I just I don't know if I want to say fombastic, you know,
it's ridiculous. Yeah, I just wish that like more of this demo that
they showed that they showed had some element of that, Like there really wasn't
that there was a train derailing at the end of it looked okay, space
train or yeah exactly. Yeah, there was nothing where you were like,
oh fucking like, there was no moment like that and anything they showed.
So without that, you're kind of left sitting there going like, okay,
you're making another one of those great like I right, we did the war
in America thing last time, so that can't be the big like, oh,
the thing is, you know, now it's war everywhere. Now it's
war in America, it's war in London, it's it's war in Germany,
France, like like everybody's town exactly. You know, it's like they're taking
the sense of scale to a whole new level. But I think the weird
thing is everybody else has had war on their soil except for us, Right,
so the weird novel thing is, wow, war in America that's crazy
war It sucks. It's terrible, not romantic at all. We had to
hide in McDonald's. That sucked. But regardless of the you know, whatever
the quality of the game is, you will be able to play it online
for free. Right, Yeah, that's that's the key takeaway is nothing's really
changing the whole the whole thing. So far, nothing's really changing. Uh
though, Specop's mode will have like a wave based survival mode in it,
like a HORRS mode kind of thing. Zombies, No, yeah, that
they've said yet. I want to know when that gap gets crossed, Like
when it's just like, all right, this whole like Infinity word versus tree
Arch weird thing. When Modern Warfare gets infective, Okay, we we can't
have it. So every other year the fire tech is really good and there
are zombies, like, let's just merge this, let's stop being stupid.
That's where this game ends, is gets bit and then now there's zombies,
modern zombies, call of zombies. I don't even cause I don't even want
to talk about this. So anything else do you want to talk about?
Oh, let's see. I saw a brief demo of Metro Last Light,
sequel to Metro twenty three. Yeah, very brief to the point where you
know, it's it's it's really hard to get a sense for, you know,
like what they're changing in that game, other than they said that they
want to try to and this is this is not their words, but they
want to try and take some of the jack out of it. Like,
you know, that game was kind of messed up in some ways that made
it a little endearing, but we're maybe a little crazy. So it seems
like they're facing faced with a pretty impossible task of they say they want to
keep it quirky and keep the things that people liked about the previous game while
making it more accessible. And someone asks specifically about the economy system with like
you know, bullets and and and how all that works, and they kind
of would not commit to that being the same, which I think will serve
the purpose of making it more accessible because that that ship was pretty crazy.
Is that based off in existing fiction or before Boks The economy even came directly
from the Boo books. But it's one of those things that you know,
for a game where they want you to and this is how they said it.
It said, like, you know, we kind of want we create
these guns, we want you to shoot them. Like if people are just
like saving all this good Ammo to trade for dirt Ammo because they can get
a lot more of it. Like clearly, you know as a game,
as a design for a game, it's maybe not the best way to do
it. So they're they're if that is on the table for things that they're
willing to change. Then as far as i've itncerned, every single thing about
that game is on the table. And the demo they showed, you know,
had had a little bit of stealth, had a little bit of action,
but you know, it kind of looked like you know, some some
more Metro looked nice, tech look good, but it was it was strung
together, you know, it didn't really get a good sense for for what
was really going on. It just kind of looked like Metro. They're making
another Metro, And I think the changes they make are well will end up
being risky because a lot of the stuff that people liked about the game were
the things that made it kind of impenetrable for let's say the average college player.
You know what else it was too Eastern European for me, it was
yeah, absolutely but some people really like that. Yeah, I think sometimes
it's for those things you get if you can get over that hump. Is
that that that there's an unforgivingness to uh two games developed in Eastern Europe.
I find that if that, if you can get get past that, that
there's usually some really awesome shit too. Yeah. I feel like there's a
there's a depth there that sometimes but you just have to dig deep enough.
You know, it's d you know, maybe even we're guilty of it sometimes.
I just think that, you know, a lot of players don't want
depth in that way, like that style of like that's not the part they're
looking to push back against them is the like this interface is kind of weird,
necessarily bad. It's just so different and crazy that you know, it's
gonna take me a long time to get up to speed on it. Like
it's but I do appreciate something different than the first person shooter. That's just
not like, you know, yeah, well we'll add something here. The
more they try to make it more like Call of Dud, I think the
less interested I become. Yeah, I don't think they're necessarily doing that,
so I wouldn't worry too much about that. But but yeah, I don't
know. It's that'll be an interesting one to see kind of how it how
it comes out. And that's announced for consoles NPC. Yeah, yeah,
gosh, there'll be some stuff later this week that I'll be writing about that'll
be uh, you know, interesting new games for a new platform and that
sort of stuff, you know. And I saw him Aspect three, but
can't talk about that. What else. Yeah, we'll check back in with
you. We'll have saw Batman. We'll have so much more to talk about
us closer closer. The hassles that I actually wasn't intending to spend this entire
long weekend writing up all that stuff that I saw, but was sick the
entire time instead. So now I'm like three days behind on getting that ship
done. So it's just like getting sick on your Memorial Day weekend. Sex
too, it does, but it I had that moment of just like,
well, it's a good thing I'm sick now, because I want a time
to be sick any other time, but right now. Yeah, I was
free. I was freaking out last week thinking I was getting sick, and
then I just realized it was just a fever. Yeah, I feel like
you should have just called up everybody. I'll go to your house and like
cut it up next to you. Everybody gets sick, now get inoculated to
it. Yeah, keep an eye on your lymph nodes. That's the telltale
side. Yeah, well that's swallowing up. Then you got an issue.
If I go into E three clean, then what it takes like twenty four
hours forty hours at least for an incubation. So probably Thursday or Friday when
we're getting ready to leave. And that's fine. Our Thursday schedule not real
busy, bro, I just gotta make it too. I've still got some
stuff to tuck in there. But yeah, crabby parties have a plane ride
on Sunday, so that's plane rides are always terrible for getting sick. If
you pick it up on Sunday, I think you'll pretty much be clear of
the three to Wednesday. Thursday, it really kicks. I'll be a good
case zeros the vector vector of that ship right into this office. I'm just
gonna be drinking antier between now and Yeah, that was that any different from
any other week? Good alcohol continent. I'm doing it for science. Bread
shoemaker. Hello, I'm pretty good you fucking went to Blizzard, lad did,
and I had a super long winded segue set up from Call of Duty
to this and then you you had to go and mention Metro and now it's
just you still want to use it. I don't even remember all of it.
No, it was something of the effect of speaking of activision related games
with a clear split between the audience for campaign and multiplayer. Wow, that
goes on that end. Games uh uh, Games that had events at which
they showed two story related missions and refused to talk about multiplayer. Go on.
I saw the new StarCraft expansion, So is that the that the way
to address is it an expansion or straight up calling it an expansion? Okay,
So does this require the vis game in territories where there is a like
boxed ownership model, right, like, because there are parts of Asia,
not Korea. I guess I think Korea had a box but also there was
some kind of like monthly OK. Yeah, think you could. I don't
know, people that are listening to this podcast, I've got it you need
to have that. Well, it's just I mean, you know, it's
it's a testament to how big Blizzard is in those territories. That the answer
that question was not simply yes, right, people say do I need the
first one? They don't just go yep. So did they say anything?
And I'm gonna expect the big no about how they'll package this? Will they
package this in with Wings of Liberty for like a full retail bundle to be
a mini battle chest? I don't think they can do a battle chest till
they're done with Do you think they'll they'll sell these s two? I mean
the real question to me is if this is expansion an expansion, how much
does this cost? Forty bucks? Like, they haven't said anything, but
I guarantee I would put money on this costing forty dollars? Would you put
forty bucks on this costs? And forty bucks possibly more than that? Wait
till they have not given you a number? No, okay, so this
is Brad Brad. I mean, they've had three Wilds forty brad Bucks,
Brad. You don't want to know what the exchange rate is. It's terrible.
They've had three World Warcraft expansions at forty bucks, right, Like that
model is well established. They are using the term expansion all right, and
how have they handled that? I haven't kept tracking, but how have they
handled that in terms of packaging in the originals and they keep them all separate
the right you could digitally buy the expansions, but you don't get a deal
or something. Yeah, I mean traditionally going back like ten twelve years,
like the Blizzard battle Chest, you know, like you see it a best
buy in the world. But uh, it's it's always like once they reached
like the clear end of that development cycle, like there's nothing else coming out,
then we're gonna put this in the games like ten years old. Yeah.
Well it's actually it's more like, you know, once it's like a
year past everything coming out, right, Oh, I's been the original game
by the time they get to the you know, final Diablo expansion. Yeah,
it's like five years old. Yeah, the original is still coming.
Diablo two expansion still working on it. They still patch that game frequently.
Yeah. May was just playing it this weekend. Yeah, so they're I
know exactly, I know exactly where my Diablo two disc is discs So do
I actually did you? Did you bind it to your battlenet? Did?
Yeah? That thing is awesome, So tell me more about what's the name
of that heart it's all heart of the Swarm. It's the Zerk Box.
In keeping with the expansion like pricing and format. It is roughly two thirds
of the length of the Tearing Game, which was twenty nine missions, and
this is gonna be twenty ish. That's about was pretty long. It was
a long game. It was certainly not short, but it will not be
as long. How is the I mean, the missions I assume are the
missions. They're gonna be missions pretty much, I mean with their own slant
on it. I mean obviously too I play. Yeah, definitely, just
just like the Tearing Game, It's like each each mission has really specific,
unique stuff going on, even if it's all just down to like weird map
triggers that they scripted and stuff like that. What's what's the arcade game hidden
at the Zerk Layer? Where can I go play? That's a good question.
What would have to be Centipede, right, Yeah, I guess it
would have to be pretty much. So what's the how do you tell how
you keep telling this story, which is, you know, after the first
chapter, you know it's being told from the Terran perspective and is so focused
on the Terran characters. But let's be honest, the Terran characters are kind
of the characters, but enough of those characters. I mean, by the
end of the human campaign of StarCraft two, like the transition over to Zurich
seems to make a whole lot of subsolutely especially they have they have definitely like
that's big ten us story with the thing that happens. But I mean,
my question is the Zerg being Zerg? How do you tell that story?
Yeah, there are a lot of zer I mean, like a person who
stands up stands up as well, let me tell you what's going on,
even Karragan for that. That's why they like, yeah, you are Karragan
in this, Like she is absolutely the focal point. I mean, even
going back to like brood Warl, what did you have? And like random
cerebrates would talk, they had their lives. It was all terror and produce
like named characters doing. But theoretically, by this point it wouldn't necessarily be
totally out of character. And I guess maybe we're talking pretty specifically about the
events of StarCraft two at this point, but like a Jim Rainer could be
around for this and it wouldn't it wouldn't be too weird, So it's weird.
They showed they showed a teaser trailer that's got Rainer in it quite a
bit Nova the Ghost it was supposed to be in StarCraft Ghost. She's in
this. And there was all sorts of even like Brad said, back and
the brood War, there was all like zergon Zerg campaign stuff that you just
were like, you know, these are the good Zerg, these are the
bad Zerg. These are the bad bad zergs. I guess I just meant
more of like, you know, who do you prop up to actually tell
the story? What you're asking is what is the binding agent between the missions?
Like and yes, that that's that's partially. What I'm asking is where's
the ship? What's what's the ship? And and yeah, like what's the
dialogue? I guess I guess I don't know where this came from in the
fiction, but I guess Zerg use these things called Leviathans to get between planets,
which are basically just giant living space ships. So you'll be on one
of them. I would be on a greasy ship. Is that it's like
pulsating ship, and they'll be a jukebox there playing this kind of weird Hillbilly.
So I mean yeah, and you know, rap, everyone knows that
that would be awesome. Like honestly, functionally, that stuff not really that
different in this. I mean I can't wait the first game that first.
I mean, there's there's video of it up on the site. I want
to see, like the breeding chambers in the ship, it's all in there.
I mean, just the way upgrades work. Yeah, so that's where
the vampaign. That's where the differences are. I mean, first game,
you were on the ship, you had a research lab, you had a
garage. You know, like it was pretty obvious how the R and D
stuff went down, right, and this one like you still got the interface
where like Harrigan's in the middle, Like here's like your kind of advisor thing
coming out of the ceiling, like attached to a giant tentacle or whatever.
Of course, uh here is like the the evolution Master over here is like
this giant beetle looking thing. But they talk, they have names, like
you click on them and dialogue happens. I'm Robbie totally. You want to
make the Zurglings tougher a give fifteen more hips. You want to be able
to build them, not creep to me, all voiced by Nolan North.
So, so actually, a bunch of the dialogue in this was like temp
dialogue from Diablo recording sessions. Like they had been doing a bunch of Diablo
dialogue and these guys had like some lines written. They're like, we're gonna
get this demo together, could you just like lay these down for us,
Like stay, awhile, listen. Well, I mean you know they're in
character. It's not like yeah, I mean yeah, but yeah. The
upgrades are so every every unit evolves individually. Now it's not like so like
like in the Terran when you had a linear upgrade path where like every every
iteration like you had to pick one of two choices, but it was kind
of random effects. What yeah, you get this new unit or you change
this other arbitrary unit. But it was there was no more really connected.
There was no logical progression Like in this, each unit evolves by itself,
like totally independent of what you do with all the other units. Are you
talking like on a mission to mission basis, that's still like you out collecting
stuff. Yeah, you're like doing doing secondary objectives and missions and stuff earns
you. Like Mutagen is what they call it is just I mean, it's
it's not just like I mean like specifically a unit or you're talking like a
unit type. Uh, what do you mean. Yeah, it's not like
you're evolving. Hero units actually actually split, so you're evolving. They only
showed the Zurgling, the Baneling, and the Roach, which are like the
most basic Zerg units been in the game since the beginning. Like I didn't
see any new units, which is bummer because people really want to know if
the Lurker is going to be back in there and all this stuff. But
that's getting pretty esoteric. But Karagan is a full on like Heroes style unit
that you're gonna use in basically every mission. She's super powerful. It's not
like she can't die. Like, it's not like she dies and the missions
over she just sort of like burrows into the ground and comes back. Can
we just talk about like it's been almost a year. Yeah, yeah,
she's basically human again right now. And so she's in her full on ghost
outfit. You know, it's like out the blue like energy lines going up
and down it and stuff. She still got the tentacle hair right, So
it's not really clear like she's mostly human, but she's still commanding the Zerg
and everybody still hates her. It's hard best way over the board out,
but it's weird, like all the Zerg advisors she's talking to like kind of
don't recognize her. They're like, oh, your genetic sequence is different,
like we don't. You don't smell the same anymore, that kind of thing.
So she's supposed to be so she covers. No, she's like trying
to regain control of everything, like Dessert factions are all like sort of feral
and fighting with each other. She still hates the Terns like they're they're still
on the on the the Zerg like homeworld from the end of the first game.
They're still there, just like slaughtering every Zerg they can find. Who
knows where Rainer's at, like he's he's in that teaser trailer. But but
Demo was just this vertical slice of like two missions, like five missions into
the game, So no indication of what's going on with like the power dynamics
or anything. Did they mention any who did it with the mix now the
kind of cross like hybrid cross Zerg thing, No mentioned of any of that.
That's where I feel like this is all headed. Yeah, it seems
like it's totally faction. Yeah, it's totally going toward a like you know,
all the all the existing factions half of uniting. Right, some comment
if you're going to play as all these things seems like kind of a boiler
plate sort of conclusion to the head toward. But so, how do you
feel about a full game focused on Zerg ship. I'm way into it because
I don't play Zerg online. Uh, and this is hopefully will be a
good excuse to like finally, I mean, I understand the mechanics, but
a lot of it is just getting the high keys down and stuff like that.
I don't want to learn ZERK. I want to burn zer and you
h you said that they spoke nothing of multiplayer, but it seems like not
specific. Common assumption is that this is going to make some significant changes to
the way the multiplayer is gonna handle the crazy stuff is I mean, so
like brud War came out, Frozen Throne came out, like they have a
long history in their rts is of putting in new units, which you know,
balancing this game as it is already like a high wire act, you
know, super preca areas to begin with, so putting even more units in
there makes it that much harder. But the crazy thing that they would kind
of cop to was that they are not opposed to like taking stuff out of
the game. They would remove they've said publicly they are units in there that
they don't like that much anymore, Like they kind of change some values and
they're not working like they used to, and it's just they can't think of
a good role within the race that they belong to for them to be there,
so stuff could disappear. Do you think this would be crazy? That's
like totally insane that there are units in a shipping game that's being played for
hundreds of thousands of dollars that could change that dramatically. Do you believe that
they'll have two separate launchers or games from like they're batt on that thing.
Do you want to play bunch of Liberty? What will become like they've always
I think they've always just had you launched an executable and then you kind of
pick which one you want to go into see. But you think that'll be
they'll be matches that are wings of Liberty and matches that will be hard of
the Swarm. Yeah, I think because they'll be there will be people that
don't buy the Swarm. They don't have to be able to play. I'm
just wondering if they would go back and patch out of Liberty multiplayer to match
you know, I don't know. Yeah, it's hard. I think they
they add content. That's a I would say a tough I would say no,
because they need to sell. They need that, like that's the biggest
reason. Oh you're talking about people to buy a copy. Yeah, yeah,
you know you won't get any of that stuff buying this expansion absolutely not
interesting. What do you think, like side question, what do you think
the tournament stuff will do? They always just go to latest build or they
stick with Wings of Liberty, Especially with so much Blizzard money behind all the
big tournaments and stuff, they'll just move up there. I mean they have
an esports department, they have vested interest and keeping the stuff up to date.
Yeah, I bet everybody will. Do you think they'll they'll be giving
those guys like early access to start kind of making to say it was weird.
They had three days of press demos and Asia was the day before Hours
and they were like actual pros that I'm well aware of and have like watched
a bunch of matches of that. We're at Blizzard when we dropped the names
came for like Sin was there, Selah who's the coach of Slayers, was
Fruit Dealer there? For Dealers? For Dealer is kind of old news,
like he has been Man's been underperforming for months, Nobody fair Weather, Fruit
Dealer, fans Man all those jerseys and sucking hop on board when everything's going
great. The guy, the guy Nest that I interviewed when I was over
there, he is still a baller. He is kicking ass on the pro
scene. But yeah, I mean, nothing super surprising about the stuff that
I played. You know, if you played through the first one, it's
pretty consistent with that stuff. But you know, probably not a huge surprise.
You zer looking U I I didn't actually look at anything and stuff totally,
you know, just just look star Craft looking buttons. But but I
mean, yeah, like the environments that you're moving carrying around in between the
missions and stuff like it looks like you're inside a stomach or something. What
were you fighting? Uh? It was Protest and one mission and Zurg and
another. Okay, so I think you'll do they always make that stuff up
really well, you think you'll find weird things that let you play as protests.
Protests they said no plans for you mean, like the little protest Crystal,
they said, no plans for it's just er. I mean with a
reduced mission count. It kind of makes sense that they would focus on that.
But so that the Karagan thing, I was gonna mention, like she
is, you know, she's a hero unit. She has like kind of
disciplines in a way, there's like they only show two like that she's got
a spec Ops discipline and then like a corruption one and the spec Ops is
like a ghost thing, right, and that and obviously corruption like desert focused
stuff. But it totally determines like what set of abilities she has in the
mission, and you totally just pick before before you. Okay, So very
very different styles of play for her. She's super powerful obviously, but a
lot of a lot of control and how you want her to play and what
kind of stuff she can do. Okay, I put my saved game.
I don't want know, I mean I made a decision. Yeah, that
stuff, that stuff is in fact, you know what, In fact I
think I saw them saying somewhere that they had like picked what the decisions were
that are canon for that stuff, because some of some of that stuff will
that's too bad. It doesn't carry decisions in Yeah, I guess that might
have been. I mean, it would have been better if they had just
kind of written around those decisions necessarily. Yeah, well I don't I'm trying
to remember if any of those decisions actually made that make a difference. There
was one in particular where somebody would be dead if you picked a certain thing
or not, but I don't know. Yeah, we'll see how it goes.
They didn't seem to carry that much weight where not really it was all
kind of minor characters and stuff. But also announced during this nine dollars a
match to play StarCraft two. Shut up, wait, shut up, No,
not really, I would be so broke. Everybody's one. But if
you win, you get four of those dollars backs. It's not subscription based.
It's just your credit card, your PayPal account every time you want to
play a match. Nine dollars. It was. It was really a shame.
Yeah, so that's basically like it's us, that's us, and he's
on the dollar. There. It's a shame they had the demo they had
there was locked to normal difficulty. It's not It's not normal. It's pretty
fucking easy, just like that. I don't know what you guys played the
first one on, but I thought normal even in the first This one was
just like, yeah, I doesn't definitely cruised through a lot of it.
Normal, not challenging, not necessarily kept. I think you need higher sculty
on that thing to to make it worthwhile. Yeah for me anyway, But
so yeah, I mean it was a lot of fun. The mission's really
unique, and some of the upgrades on the different units are totally insane,
Like Zurgling. You can you can combine enough upgrades on the Zurgling to the
point that it trains instantly out of like as soon as you build it,
it pops out. Yea. When they die, they will burst into little
broodlings, which are extra like attacking units, and that they can jump like
the last ten feet to close a distance on their targets, like all those
upgrades on that unit at the same time. Obviously, Yeah, yeah,
this would totally like fuck the balance multiplayer, but like they change in really
dramatic ways. It's it's gonna be a lot of fun to play with that
stuff, and out out said probably not this year out at Blizzard to their
words, like the words of the director specifically, probably not this year.
But I guess they're not rulling it out. I don't know. It's a
really weird things they probably I don't know. I'm sure they have an internal
target. But you know, I'm sure Activision would love it if they could
ship the second part of this game this year. Would probably be out this
year. They'll be fun. Activision will get its money eventually one way or
the other. That yeah, but that doesn't mean that Activision wouldn't still be
saying it would be really awesome if you guys would get this out for Holiday
eleven, we would really enjoy that. The next one out for next and
then and then if you could have the next one out for Holiday twelve,
that would be also awesome. Fourth one, right, if the fourth part
of the trilogy twenty thirteen really is imminent, maybe not a bad idea to
playing that stuff out, Yeah, a little bit. I don't know.
Such different, you know, obviously, I'll coming from Blifferent. I mean
I'm coming from from Blizzard, and Andy I realized that there is kind of
there's a fan base like like with a valve or something for just this this
developer. Like, I don't know, they're pretty different games. They're pretty
different, but at the same time, you know, it's it's like huge
ass PC game ards genre, Like, sure, you don't want to clutter
put those two closer. Yeah, a lot of people will just buy every
Blizzard game side unseen. But yeah, Diablo also has a lot more PvP
focused stuff in it that I could see them pushing as some sort of esport
as well. I have no awareness of that game, but I want to
play it. But I it being announced after StarCraft two, I just assumed,
like, Okay, that's that's the fucking far flung future. Yeah,
flying cars, and I think it's probably closer than you think. Yeah.
Yeah. The notion that it would even be out this year is beta?
Beta is launching? And was it September? I have no idea. I
think they s Yeah, I think it's like late September for the beta.
I bet it's out of health and manna, will there be potions? Dude,
there would be so many potions. What's the potion? Key one?
P is it potion that was f that F was for potion. No,
I think it just hop on the hoar, right, So yeah, one,
one or five, whichever was whatever your fingers, depending on how you
know your keyboard breaks. So I'm gonna get I haven't seen anything like you
said. I'm in the dark too, but I'm gonna guess one would activate
some kind of power in the new Diapbo game. Wasn't wasn't one always potion?
That's that's what I thought you could. I thought you could just drag.
I don't think you can assign them, but I think you fault like
one two, Yeah, like warrior scream is on one and two is no
no she bash locking shock yehs on four. Berserkers rage is a good one.
Yeut. That'll be in there for yeah, for someone, some kind
of rage. Let's see Preserker's rage. Yeah yeah, power of the Elven.
I think that'll be power of the elders for the wizard or something.
Yeah. I wish I knew more here with these. Of the wolf,
yes whatever it is, of the wolf, and then of the eagle,
and then of the snake, and then yeah, I was gonna say,
and then of the bear, the bear barely it was always the best loot.
Jesus isn't. I didn't know there was a hierarchy. No, it
was like specific stats, especially I remember correctly. Yeah, when when you
do it, when you do it by animal type like that, that's always
Bear gets the top. Well no, no, no, it's just bear
has a specific Eagle is reception. This whale gives you health and sings like
fish do Omega three? Fatty ass like the band? Yeah, h Bradley,
anything else that you want to talk about other than Ellen Warren. Uh.
I almost finished that Red Fashion what's it called fashion? We can't buy
a matter of hours, we still can't really up at midnight tonight, just
finished that game. I have almost finished. I was I'm not even reviewing
that game. I have languidly. It's I I was sick over the weekend
and I was so bored that I played through Red Faction Armageddon. Did that?
I don't even know if I can ask this. Stay tuned on the
site. Yeah, I'm not writing the review, but I think that you
should wait for the review on that game and maybe read some reviews before making
a purchasing decision. Actually, Red Faction Army. I actually played a ton
of Red Faction this weekend because I almost also finished Gorilla, which I was
kind of playing for research and also just because I always meant to play it.
Red Faction Gorilla that's a cool So yeah, like it was weird I
was playing. I was like literally going back and forth playing Gorilla and Armageddon,
like I had pretty much concurrently. Uh, I had a lot of
fun playing Red Faction Gorilla. Yeah, it's a good game, and that's
I guess all I can say. It's fun, fantastic. Let's take it
to news news that Yeah, No, you don't have No, you don't
have to That's where I say my world famous news catch. Everyone knows how
it's your favorite part of the show. No, we don't do my favorite
part of the show anymore. You don't do the favorite part of your show
anymore. This is all your fault. Nope. Valet Parking nineteen eighty nine
is out this week. What Valet Parking nineteen eighty nine is out this week
on DSi were really, Yes, that's the that's really the fucking game.
Well of a thing. It's a product that they're selling like it was a
game. Sure, well, it's it's an electronic interactive product theoretically. I
don't you know, it's an electronic product. It's a digital digitally digitally distributed.
You could trade money for points, and trade points for valet parking nineteen
eighty nine Spec Ops the line remember that. I feel like we were just
talking about how we hadn't heard anything about Spec three, Like, why aren't
they booking appointments? The line were last year. Yeah, it's like ocause
that game is dead. It's got to be dead, right, No,
no, it's not dead. It's not dead, but pushing it back till
some time after March thirty one, twenty twelve. Okay, so so at
this point it will have been enough time to make an entirely different game.
Yeah, since we saw it last time. There's no sand. Uh we
took out of the sand and replaced it with buildings you can break apart with
a hammer. They also said that, you know, BioShock Infinite will ship
this year, this fiscal year. Really, I'm sorry, no, no,
because uh no, no, it's definitely not this year. It is
calendar year twelve. Oh I'm sorry, that's what I mean. Calendar year
twelve. Any time next year, yeah, anytime next year, and that
colm will come out before March thirty one. Twenty twelve. So that is
your early twelve game, this coms. I would love to know what x
coms needs. Yeah, yeah, wait, so there were three games,
So which one? BioShock is the calendar year? Bioshocks coming out calendar twelve.
Okay it spec Ops got pushed pretty much. Ops is coming out after
March thirty first twelve. X Com is before March thirty one, twenty twelve.
Okay, So x Com could be out this holiday, or could be
out early next year, right, could be out tomorrow. I bet it's
out third fourth week of March next year. That sounds about right, that's
my guess. Yeah, whether whether it's done or not, what's the last
Tuesday? Last Tuesday in March. It's really odd, that's what like.
Spec Ops is a game that I thought looked pretty much like they were wrapping
up when I last time I saw it was like that bit of it looked,
yeah, you guys are pretty much on the road home here, let's
get going. X Com didn't even seem like it was a game. Yeah,
and they're like, what how's this look? X Com looked like cool
ideas, Yeah, but it was like they seem to even like I don't
know. What do you think of this stuff? Like we can make a
game out of this and to have that game be like this's coming to this
home base. Seemed to research stuff. Uh fifties monster. Yeah there's black
Goo monsters some March twenty seven. March twenty seven, Yeah, that's the
that's the date for x Com. No, No, that's that's that's our
anticipated date, not anything. It's nothing officially announced. Many how many brad
Bucks are you willing to lay down on this x Com? I'm gonna put
all the marbles out for this one? Marbles? How many marbles? Coffee
can full and nickels on this one? And do you think specops will ever
come out? God? I don't know. M No change in development right,
still gager and they're not showing it. No appointments not at D three?
Can we I mean, I guess can we talk about some of that
stuff? Can we talk about I guess there's kind of anplicit embargo on some
stuff of like if they just dripped, don't tell us like you're gonna come
have an appointment at E three and you don't get to know what that appointment
is for it. You just have to take it on faith that it will
be something you care about and then you get there. There are probably four
or five meetings on our schedule for unannounced game right secret game. But we
are totally we totally having an appointment to go see x Com. I mean,
I'm sure, and we have some appointments on our schedule for unannounced games,
but we know what the games are. Yeah, well we can't talk
about right, Yeah, Yeah, that's I mean, I think it's probably
fine to mention because if that game is not coming out till next year,
it's you know, they've said that publicly and it's probably safe to assume they're
not ready to show it. Yep. So just crazy because I totally played
that game. Yeah, would you want to be talking about crazy? Yeah?
Because they had voice working and everything. Yeah, like if they have
to to go re record stuff at all, man, I mean, you
know the waiting the Nolan North waiting list, it's like six months a long.
No, maybe that's what happened. They've had one line they needed to
get him to do. Yeah, we're not gonna make our windows scrab it.
It's probably you know, they lost their publisher, side producer and the
whole thing went no, housh. No, that can't look interesting. It'd
be the same if it never sees the light of day. Uh. Strauss
Zelnick, CEO of Take two, said that yep, yep, the one.
The one only basically popped in to say, yeah, we're still making
Max Pain three. Also, we're still making that game agent that Sony put
up during their E three press conference in two thousand nine. Good to know.
I would have pegged that game for dead Yeah. Really, but you
know what, I would have done the exact same thing to El Noir.
Going back. I went back. I look at our forums for Ellen Noir,
and there are posts going back to the inception of the entire website,
going is this game still coming right? Like? What's happening? What I
mean? Rockstar just has a very specific and very weird like kind of promotional
cycle of there is that initial announcement which I feel like they get cajoled into
by whoever they're making a deal with, like, all right, we will
help fund your thing if you make it exclusive for our platform for X amount
of time or whatever. We have to announce that because we need to get
people excited right now. Yeah, we need to talk about it now.
I don't care if you can only give us a logo, a right or
a piece of like painted art. Yeah, we need something, and I
wonder if we'll see more Agent at the sony keynote. Which one's Agent.
It's the one with the logo. Yeah, okay, got a gun in
the logo. There's like a silhouette of a gun inside you are the Agents.
It's the new rock Star PlayStation three exclusives Agents Agents. They lost exclusive
Agent Agent all right, that's not the one that definitely got canceled. That's
not the agency. Okay, that is dead. That's dead, which I
can understand. With that dying, you would assume that the game called Agent
would own kind I have no idea. Maybe that was just maybe rock Star
skunk Works. We can't have this fucking game called the Agency come out when
we're working on Agent. So half of our development because would I play a
game about an agent when I could play as a whole agency. So half
of our development cost for this game is gonna be getting getting skullduggers, motherfuckers
into the Agency organization and ruining that game's development until they shut it down.
Is the only one left? Yeah, bring down from the inside that's like
an agency thing. That's agent. That's the game. They were also secretly
behind me. They're also secretly behind crack Down too, being kind of crappy,
says agents, so much like we can't have that if they make crack
and three, this whole deals off were as crappy as as Crackdown two.
Was I reading Agent. That's all I can think of as agent. Oh,
it's been weird me out playing Gorilla because the leader of the resistance and
Gorillas is the agent if from Crackdown. Yeah, I can't not hear it.
I played some other game. I don't remember what it was. I
played some other game with that dude. He's got a real awesome authoritative radio
guy voice. Infamous does he do any viomember I remember hearing somewhere else too.
Anyway, Anyway, Hotheads doing some stuff. They've got the Hitchhiker's Guy
to the Galaxy license, which if you look at the title to that page,
it's called the New Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, like the page title,
which makes me wonder if they're making some kind of like continuation, antinuation
or some new things on like the Hothead site. No, like the Yeah,
their official site for it, that's got the little oh the flash animation
crap on it. Like the page title for that, I'm pretty sure it
says the New Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which the end of those books
was about a new addition of Hikers'd be way more into that than I'm trying
to like retail and like mind the old series for jokes and stuff like that,
Like that would be the kind of the word. But can they,
I mean, can anybody come along and recreate well, like the last I
think the last you have a better chance at that. The last half of
the Last Hitchhiker's Book is not even dug at Douglas Adams written like that.
I don't I don't even I thought it would. I thought the whole thing
wasn't even him. The sixth book. I thought like the core idea was
his, But maybe he didn't actually write that's right, any of it,
or something that's right. And that was only because the one before that ended
so bliquely. Uh, but I did. Yeah, they definitely have a
never siook better shot at just doing something newer than trying to like recreate you
know, it's every other than the infocom text adventure. Right, every single
thing that's related to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that is not the book
the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or the Restaurant at the End of the Universe
is garbage. Oh that's not true at all. You're saying every other book
in the series. I'm not even not even the books. But like the
BBC uh miniseries is hard to watch, but so is a lot of stuff
from that era of BBC sci fi. The modern the modern movie that they
made with most Death is hard to watch. The radio play is great,
well, the radio play predates the books the Radio Players where it actually started
that that that was originally a radio play. Yeah, well I've got the
like the complete thing, and like the foreword on that talks about the genesis
of the whole thing. Yeah, so that stuffs great. Sure, I'm
just saying, like people trying to mind the Douglas Adams stuff just they can't.
I've never seen anyone successfully do it, like truly, like like you
see like little shadows of like, oh, here's the things that he said
that we're funny, and we've managed to get those on the screen or on
the page or in the game somehow, But it's never as good. It's
always just like I thought, even the text adventure really like it got away
from the books in some weird ways. Yeah, like and and now I
mix the two up in my mind a lot, because you know the puzzles
in the game. I'm just like, Okay, put the satchel over the
grate and then put the buttons like the town's gonna go here. I really
do think that they should if it's a smart move to do. It's just
a new one, new characters, just new writers. Don't try and like
Arthur Dad's daughter, like that's that's how they kind of wrap up some extent
as long as it's in that direction, Yeah, I guess it. I
just I don't have I don't know who you who? You have? Righte?
That material that does I can do that style. Yeah, I can
do that southing? Can do you know? The original material Justice Like,
it's that stuff is so good, so well written. It's it's like,
go back and read those first few Hitchhiker's books even still it's nuts how good
they are. Can I do that now? Because I never read it?
Absolutely fucking blew your mind. No, no, no, not at all.
Pretty good as far as like he's doing a better job of selling it
than New York. Maybe maybe it just they got me at the right age.
Well, when I re read them fairly recently and they're still pretty funny,
it's because we're reading it for the second time. Yeah, but I
think I don't know, they're goofy as hell. They're goofy, But there's
the asides, the just the absurdity of it. They're absurd as hell as
well, so good and and and descriptions of like the descriptions of the absurd
things go to such absurd detail in that very kind of dry red way.
It's uh, I think, yeah, I think when I read him the
first time, as I just never read anything like it, and it was
like some whacked out like this my school school is making me read all this
trash, welly can we're not reading this? And then going back it's entertaining
and propulsive and bizarre, and anyone you told you were reading that looked at
you like you were not to be talked too. And then all those kids
are just carrying around towels. I don't want to be that kid. Oh,
you know what, Brad, I will lend you my thick ass Hitchhiker's
guide Book. Do you have like the complete Yeah, wow, I'll take
you. Will you will chew through the first book because it's really short though,
Yeah, but you also just it's a it's an easy it's a page
turner. It's a single reader. You sit down and you will just burn
through it. All right. I can't remember the names of them. There's
restaurant, there's so long things for all the fish? Yeah, when does
it? When's the what's the bad one? The sixth one? I thought
the fourth one was where it kind of I think the third is when I
stopped. I feel like if I read all this stuff, I'm instantly gonna
get about thirty thousand jokes from the last like ten or fifteen other things.
That is, I mean, you're not not being familiar with Hitchhiker's Guy is
tantamount to never seeing my python, like Hitchhiker's joke with the well comment before,
so you're already make good jokes about it. I mean even hearing you
guys talk about like just the titles of the books and stuff like, it's
it's also like blended into sort of the cultural fabric of the last Like how
old are these books? Twenty years thirty, he's like thirty years. There's
a lot of stuff like even reference, yeah, even not having read them,
unfamiliar with a lot of the stuff, but like, you know,
forty two and a lot of stuff. But he does a great job and
there's no way you can even explain what goes on, but he does a
great job of making the spectacular mundane, Like every rights, the whole of
the series is about like they're these fantastical places, but it's all still run
by the same shit. You know, even if they're aliens, they're still
they still have the bad characteristics that you expect from people. It's a and
there's just there's just like just at this drying this way of just rolling with
it. Everybody just rolls with everything. There's there's very little conflict because everybody's
okay, I guess that's what happens, okay, and then the world blew
ups. Most things end with indifference, yeah, shrugging up shoulders, like
here we are now. I guess I thought that movie was all right.
I mean it's it's it by necessity. It had to be a very different
thing. I guess just the departures that they that they made. It's hard
to do two heads. They hated the way they didn't have, but like
I thought, the ship looked good, like there was a lot of fantastic
looking stuff there. I guess for me, it was just like the stuff
that they added. I'm like, why did you add this? Like why
did you why? Why was it? Were certain parts cut? And then
why did you add this? They needed some because because I mean that book
and like the early parts of that series, like nothing really happens. There's
no good natural stopping point for a movie. But I mean the best parts
of that movie are when they go into the The Hitchhiker's Guide itself, like
that's yeah, that's that's really when that movie shines the most. They do
they do that stuff well, yeah, like narrator, when they do when
they do the or like when they do the whale scene, like like that's
you know, one of the better parts of that movie. And all those
books they cover a lot of ground like in that movie, they yeah that
that's that's a really shitty task to be saddled with. Oh yeah, I'm
not saying it's I'm not saying it's an easy thing to do. But but
and I think that's to me that like that speaks to why I'm I'm hesitant
about this hothead deal is because that stuff is so hard to adapt to anything
you don't wants guide. I don't mind, you know what what the thing,
the thing that pissed me off in that movie was the scene on the
planet where there are those the underground like whatever, the like the spatulate paddle
like creatures that would come up from the sand and whack them right like just
the slapsixth scene out of nowhere. I like, I'm just like, why
is this, Why is this happening? Why is this here? Like?
How is this worthwhile? Connective tissue for whatever the two scenes were that it
was between like it to me, it kind of spoke to what was wrong
with that. It was priorities, for sure, But it's yeah, and
and you know that's that's the danger, and that's the risk when you try
and tack something that is so beloved like that is expectations are freaking high.
Yeah, And and I guess it's just you know, between the later books,
at least the one thing, like I said, I didn't read the
sixth one, but you know it's like the later books being kind of bad
or you know, I definitely didn't like them very much outside of the original
three. Uh, you know, like I don't have I really like it,
but there's not a reverence or super attachment to it, like I'm willing
to go along with people that want to try to do something new with that
stuff. So I think that, you know, I was more accepting of
the movie. Yeah, it was. I guess the thing for me is
that I'm less interested in that universe and more interested in like Douglas Adams writing.
Yeah, like it's it's not like, oh, I love Zafod People
of Rock, He's my favorite in you know, Marvin the Paranoid Android is
so great. It's like, no, the way Douglas Adams wrote those characters
or wrote about those characters on my head is exploding just weearing phrases like paranoid
Android come out. He's a great character that should have just read all this
stuff, all everything else in the world would have made sense. I can't
wait till like E three comes in. Brad's mind is just completely blows.
Not even going to the show. I'm just gonna sit in the house,
layers just melting away in all those books. It's like he can now see
through the universe now, just kind of like, oh my god, it
all clicked in his mind. It's my god, it's full of stars.
Wait from no, that is not that is that's a two thousand and one.
I'm exhausted already. Sorry about that. Hot here thinking about this stuff.
To give you just some some context though. Along the same time that
they announced that Hothead announced that they're making a Hitchhiker's Guy game, they also
announced that they're making another Death Say It. So that is maybe part of
where my concerns about this game come from. Hmm, yeah, that that
in parallel with Hitchhiker's Guide comes the Hothead name comes. Yeah. Well you
know there's already one death Spank too many. Yeah, yeah, they didn't
need another one. This one's not even called death Spank, right, and
it's it's called the Bacon Ing. It's really Bacon's really funny. Bacon goes
with everything. Guys. Imagine if these guys hilarious got a hold of The
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, well, Wron Gilbert still attached to it.
Ron Gilbert has been attached to Hothead stuff. Yeah he's yeah, he's not.
He's not in there, so uh well sure like that Peny Arcade game.
I like both of those pay Arcade chapters very much. Fucking still,
I'm still bitter about not finishing that series. Get those guys and talk to
Steve Reski is like one of the hot head guys, right, he's the
guy that did the Infocom game, right, is he? I don't know
what the hothead makeup is like things. I think that's I think that's the
thing that makes you kind of go like, oh, my vibe was that
the Penny Arcade guys were pretty much happy to take a break from all that
stuff. Yeah, that's like, you know what we're done. Expose are
real cool. I just wish they would have finished. I just somewhere there's
a script pages of the story, like continuing story. Really did like a
comic or maybe even a motion comic that kept that stuff going. Yeah,
comic seems all right. I like the game. I also like Uncharted do
Yeah, yes, that's pretty good. I also like that David O.
Russell is no longer attached to make the Uncharted movie. I'm not familiar with
his work. Yes, you are Three Kings, Okay, I like Three
Kings. It's a good movie. Yeah, what else has he done?
Didn't he do? Hi? I heard he did. I heeart hockey piece.
He's fairly director. I like him. I don't like what he was
saying about what he was going to make Uncharted into. The whole thing was
like it's a family story. Yeah, yeah, and family of treasure hunters
or something like a family of treasure hunters Mark Wahlberg and Robert de Niro,
Joe Pesci, Like, oh my god, that's not no. That sounds
like, well, you know what, that would probably be an okay movie,
act like that movie whatever that movie that was that was right around,
and his brain probably would have been fine. Uncharted. I mean it sounds
like they're jettisoning, jettisoning like even every like character arch type it was.
Mark Wahlberg is no longer attached to this either. Yeah, like that's great
confirmed, So yes, yeah, well, I mean Mark Wahlberg only came
in because of David David O Russell because and the same with with de Niro
is that they're all buddies. So that like this whole thing was just a
project with David or Russell pulling all the people that he likes to make this
movie. But he's out, so now everyone else is out. Cool,
sobody getting Old North into a gym, get some abs on that guy and
get him into this movie or whatever. Those bio digital jazz his face,
make it, make it look like Drake or Nathan Phillion. I don't even
care Nathan Phillian. Have him do it as a flashback. I don't you
know, I don't even care if it's David Phillian, Like I like him,
He's whatever. He's cheesy, but kind of deliberately so is fucking watch
it. I mean, I would just see Nathan Phillion because he would just
be playing himself. That's fine, He'll be playing every character he's ever played,
which is the point. I just I just want not Mark Wahberg.
I'm absolutely there. If there are time, there is a time for Mark
Wahlberg. That time is now what the picture isn't dude, you can't.
You can't have the same guy playing Max Payne and Nathan Drake. Like I
think this just opens up, you know, the possibilities for the big hit
too, which I'm really looking forward to get Pokey wood Bob on the phone.
Come on, do you think this movie's next China Chow? Yeah,
Devinoke No, no, no, next to Devin Aoki. At this point,
it would have to be you should you should go online and look for
some of the apocryphal tales of David oh Russell's douchebaggery on set, because it
is unbelievable. I think I did us some of that Three Kings George Clooney
hit him in the face. Yeah, yeah, I remember that. It
was maybe George. It's it's weird because because that stuff happens, and then
after the fact, everyone pretty much says like he's a he's a genius.
I will never work with him again. Yeah, I mean the movies are
uniformly pretty good. Yeah, he's not a bad filmmaker. He just sounds
like a bad people person. Suffer ye whole Hogan's have made event for Xbox
Connect Jeff, I'm thrown over to you in the wrestling corner. That's right,
brother, because Connect Majestico your friends in mine. The makers of SpongeBob
SquarePants video cards for game Blay Advance and advent Rising those cards still paying the
bills right there. Connect this holiday season, dude, So, d well,
you know something, Majestico Brothers. Do you think there will be a
Yappa pie when on the dotted line to sign the contract for this brother?
I don't know. Yes, the yep Pie and strap match will be strongly
featured, so you'll have to get your body into the proper position for the
strap Asian. Dude, they said so like painfully little about what this game
even is. Well, well they've said enough in saying that Panic Button,
makers of Attack of the Movies three D is developing this. Yeah, there
you go, so only bangers. That sounds like a pretty good combination.
So that's yeah. So it's a rail shooter for Connect. I wish you
gotta spin your hand around and hold it up to your ears. Alien Hulk
Hogan not w w E, not even t NA no, which is where
he is now. Hulk Hogan is not even Suburban Commander Zeus will not be
in this game. That don't make these claims before you know all the facts,
because that that's something that if they said and Zeus is, yeah,
he is, then they could get they could get Tiny Lister. At this
point, trying to decide how I feel about that. I mean, yeah,
what is this game? Who does that's the question? Who does he
wrestle? Maybe doesn't wrestlers, you know, I know it doesn't say it's
a wrestling game. It kind of doesn't. Yeah, I mean, it's
just Hulk Hogan like shooting guys. Is he is he act wrestling in TNA
or he's like an on camera like like like leader, like he's he's the
he's the man. He's oppressing wrestlers. Uh So he just comes out and
takes up way too much airtime saying, well, you know something, brother,
you're not gonna get this match because I run the things around here.
Dude. He's kind of a too physically messed up to wrestle at this point.
Yeah, it doesn't he have like like just incredible back problems. Sounds
like, yeah, I bet if he wanted to get like one more match,
and you know, I made a whole lot of sense he could.
You know, he could do some stuff, but you know, he was
never like the most nimble, amazing wrestler in the world. Anyways. He's
also like in real heart up financial situation. Right. I guess his ex
wife's just like totally clean him out. Does that like that happened and all
the stuff with Oh that's right. I mean Rick Flair is still like in
TNA, they don't even call it TENNA anymore. They change their name.
It's just Impact Wrestling because they're like so reactionary. They caught wind of some
internal memo apparently, or that Vince McMahon didn't want people to use wrestling and
conject function with the products because they're trying to seem like mainstream entertainment, so
let's just call it entertainment. And they said, well, so now they're
the TNA slogan is down wrestling matters, like, so it's reactionary to a
memo that me and like nine other people get the reference of and care about,
but everyone else is like, you're stupid, this is stupid. What
is this thing? What am I watching? Now? So? I actually
started watching TNA a couple of weeks ago because I wanted to prove to myself
that I can only watch the worst television possible. So Farm Report, Farm
Report, Big Joe Polka Show. Yeah, heehaw, heehaw. Well he
was good. Yeah, it was classic. Yeah, And and now like
the worst wrestling imaginable. It's just like, let me, let me pay
for as much shit as I have talked about how bad like the WWW is,
Like man they put on are there is production quality, like things make
at least some things make wrestling sense, you know, at least wrestling logic
is a tenuous logic already. Yeah, whereas the things going on, it's
just like is it just is it just everyone walking out and getting hit by
unmarked Lincoln Town cars. That would be way better. T would be way
better than anything going on. Every match, whoever the winner is watch and
then run down who drove that car? Maybe we'll find out next week.
And then they never mentioned it. It's it. They just always come back.
That's that's the Kenny Dying of wrestling. Yeah, Whereas like in TNA,
they're calling back to like bad w c W shit where they have the
guy who used to be mister Kennedy in the WWE, who used to be
kind of good. Yeah, like he's coming out dressed up like old Sting
to get in new like current Sting's head and like yeah yeah, okay,
like ultimate Worrier face paint looking stingy. You know bleach, Oh does you
even like have the bleached high It's kind of funny, but it's just like
done so shodily. It's just like, what the fuck is even going on?
And it's like this, I don't yeah, I don't know women entrances,
I don't know. It's like this, she's she's been taken over by
the evil, evil other woman. That's why she's got dark circles under her
eyes now, and she snapped and wrestled this other girl. It's just like
dumb. I'm saying, the wrestling is dumber than ever. It's twenty eleven,
y'all. Oh, it's it is astounding to me that it still exists
there, that they're still able to build some kind of business off of these
dumb ideas. Never go broke play into the cheap seats, I guess,
I guess, and I'm not. I'm certainly not above it for those,
but those spare moments, Jesus, It just they never fail to make me
feel like the biggest idiot possible. Whenever I just watched that. And if
there's ever any moment where you might you we were you even accidentally get invested
in something related to wrestling, it's going to fucking go as wrong as it
possibly going. You'll be like, why did I Why did I care about
this? God, I'm an idiot. Why did I think this was gonna
end up awesome? Yeah, it's not awesome. This is your kids.
It's not kids kids wrestling. Wrestling is not awesome. Don't let it.
Don't let them tell you otherwise. I was looking at screenshots of w W
E twelve this morning and going like, it looks like, no, actually,
all right, in some smart changes, this is the year. This
is the year. Like wait, no, fucking god, damn it.
Shame on you, Jeff. Moving on to more E three business, Uh,
we got you know, we We've had announcements from Valve saying we are
not going to E three and Bungee saying we are not showing anything at E
three. Add Hideo Kajima to the lists. Dude says, you know what,
I'm not going to E three. That's crazy because E three is like
Christmas for that guy. Also, like, you know, metal gear,
solid stuff for me. Yeah, I don't expect to see too much of
that, so I don't expect. He was on Twitter talking about how something
that he had been working on isn't dead or something like that, yeah,
or some undusion to a project not happening or or something like that, or
you know, it just could just be like he was shopping for a new
leather jacket and that fell through. I mean, who knows. But so
this, I mean, don't count out metal gear solid stuff during the Konami
press conference, which is happening before E three, right, But it sounds
like Kajima himself will not be But it sounds like that they have recorded some
message from Kojima ahead of time. Yeah, with eight fours Mark McDonald,
it does sound like that. I don't know what the contents of that are,
but it's kind of weird. I can't remember any year past where people
have felt compelled to announce that we are not going, we will not be
here. How many brad Bucks do we want to lay down on the notion
that metal here, Solid Rising is never going to come out? Oh,
I mean, I could see that rapidly turning into a StarCraft Ghost kind of
situation. They showed it though. They made such a big deal people that
people had played StarCraft Ghost. They have to be brought to our office.
But this is a Japanese company. I think they have to finish what they
started. I think, you know, I think they would lose too much
face by canceling this game. They announce it for the move was that was
that was the craziest rumor that I have seen about. Do you guys see
this on Twitter over the weekend that Platinum Games is supposedly taking over development of
that game? Huh that's one way too, I guess, yeah, total
here say, I just saw some people branded people who might know yeah,
yeah, saying that they had heard such things. That'd be one way to
finish it, I guess. But it's it's just weird that that game.
I mean, it's it's been at E three and kind of like nowhere else,
right, they didn't really Yeah, they showed it last year at the
Microsoft conference. Yeah, and then they show it the year before there.
They just announced it the year before. They announced the year before that,
like the cutting of Watermelons, which was a game. Was there a site
with like lightning and yeah, big teaser and all that stuff. But nothing
they've showed has necessarily looked like a game. And you know, it's like
the thing last year basics, right, you haven't really been hearing tons of
people talking about, Oh I hear Rising is gonna be this and Rising is
gonna be that, Like it's I just feel like the further we get away
from for the less relevant that game Metal Gear slid for the less relevant the
whole franchise. Well, even that character becomes like he was like Ninja riding,
right, It's like all cyber Ninja right now, It's like who why
was he? I can't even remember what happened? You got crushed by a
rocker or now? I mean, you know, the most likely Metal Year
thing we're going to hear is related to the three DS games. Yeah,
they're showing that. Yeah, that's like that's on a three DS release list,
right, but that's just three with with some extra stuff exactly. That's
that's an existing game. Basically, they're just setting the stage for Acid three
D. I know, you know, I enjoyed Miliar Solid for as much
as the next guy, But I yeah, I wonder about just overall relevance.
Yeah, totally with you. I'd be curious to I mean, I
don't I don't really know what the sales were for that game, but I
wonder like if they look back on that project and how much it costs to
develop and what they got out of it, like like how that project is
viewed, if it is viewed as a a total success or is it not?
Fine questions? I like to know that as well. So I really
like that that game. I would be into playing another game that has that
sense of scope and that sense of crazy to it. Could you do without
Solid Snake ye completely just nowhere you're seeing all right? Or you know if
it maybe he's the voice over the codec or something ordering riding around or something
like that, you know, it's I don't think you have to play a
Snake and I think that, or or you know, you reboot Snake because
he's a clone, and you can do that. He's a clone. You
can do that. You could have young Snake running around without that many leaps
of logic, considering how many leaps of logic that game takes. You can
do the first twenty minutes. But should you You know what you should do
is Big Boss's dad go back even for a boss that's right, but you're
a clone of him, so you don't know any of your young Big Boss's
dad in the dear future, the far flung future, which one is that
the woman star no Big bosses who Solid Snake is cloned from okay, big
Boss. Big Boss is the star of mil your solid three. Right.
What's the woman's name? Just Boss, She's the boss. Okay, yeah,
some really great naming conventions in there. And where's Bruce Springsteen fit in?
He is also the Boss. Okay, that's in a different time,
different confer he is the Boss North American chapter. Yeah. Yeah, So
when when he goes out of the but he's going on a motorcycle. When
he goes out of the country, he has to say the Boss US.
But he's in the US, he can just say the Boss and then hugo
Boss. Final item PlayStation Vita Vita via Vita. I wasn't really paying too
much atention to this over the weekend, but basically the name for what we
were calling the MGP Sony's new handheld. Uh, there's a decent amount of
evidence and circumstantial evidence that they are going to be calling it the PlayStation Vita
Vida v v v I t A as something of that effect. What now
that'd be vita d Oh, you're right, I guess Vita with a T
like like vitamins, like vitamins, like life in Latin. So they're just
trying to say this is a healthy product. This should invest in this.
They're trying to say from the people that brought you the bloggy all right,
the PlayStation Vita for the people that brought you lots of other badly named things.
So I guess Patrick did from some research into this, and seems like
the Vita name was used early on as a code name, so there is
some history there with it. And if you go to like their dev site,
but put vita dot on it, it goes somewhere, right like,
so they have mapped that domain to go somewhere, which all that really says
is yes, they have used that name at some point. Doesn't necessarily say
that this is the final name. But I'm gonna put some brad Bucks down
that that's the final name Vita. I you know, I'm I'm now more
curious for the Sony press conference at E three to see because there has to
be some sort of spiel associated with why they're calling it the Vita And it's
definitely not I feel like I feel like when they I'm gonna say it's like
vitality. No, it's like vita, like the same root word but not
pronounced like vitamin M Vita, which sounds, you know, sleek, light
airy. It sounds like a Italian sports car or a Samsung phone. Mhm,
I like Vito, like a big fat Italian guys. Yeah, okay,
yeah, the PlayStation Vito. That's actually the bigger version of it.
The stains on his wife beater, that's right. The back is all just
kind of oily. That's when they do the PlayStation. The when they do
the Vita go called the Veto for short, uh, carried around memory sticks
forget about it, just download it with the Veto, they'll definitely be a
lot I feel like I hear you Ryan, They'll be like slideshows of people
running. Oh yeah, I'm they've already They've already had that though. For
the m g P roll out there was like video of people running and sitting
on busses. And I'm already kind of light already. I'm already picturing like
like baby chicks hashing from eggs and time lapse photography of flowers blooming. I'm
thinking of like like Central Park runners maybe see but all I could think of
is I love Lucy and vitaminta vegamin. That's that's that's that's that's the first
reference that I think of when you tell me the name of this thing,
that's it then, But you know, who fucking cares what it's actually called?
Yeah, yeah, what it names brands. I feel like this is
the one that finally broke me on giving a fuck about what platforms are called,
because you know, you feel that I just talk like the time we
spent I got past that over the years of of of bitching about names,
and I sat down and thought like, well, obviously they can't just call
it PSP two. Yeah, And there's no good name for anything ever,
Like all the all the names are bad if you sit there, and if
you sit down and look at them, like what PlayStation was kind of the
last good one. Yeah, even that the first time you heard it just
like sounds a little bit like a Fisher Price children's toy. It's pretty good.
Any PlayStation is pretty good. It's all right. PlayStation became great because
of what it symbolizes, you know, but I mean Xbox also, you
know, it's a it's a great brand name now. And that's also another
case of a code name becoming a real name. The Commodore best name for
a platform, Commodore, Nintendo, you know, it's the Commodore sixty four
was the greatest game platform show some goddamn respect. I'm saying that is a
great one. Commodore one twenty eight also pretty good because it had sixty four
modes, right, the Commodore. Yeah, I just I feel I don't,
I don't know, I don't know what on me got soft, But
I can't I cannot rile up any sort of rage about via this name.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's I'm kind of with you, like
it's I imagine that just you know, and and it's why I bring up
like the Samsung stuff, So I just imagine them trying to position this alongside
smartphones and alongside other handheld devices, which all have really dumb ass names.
Well they have, they all have super disposable names. Yeah, because you're
not you know, Samsung focused, HTC, Thunderbolt, like those those are
like fucking they might as well be chip setting names. They all live on,
they go away for years, they all live on six month products cycles.
They're always about to be replaced, and you're really I mean, that's
just the container for what you really care about, which is like, oh,
you have an Android phone, Like that's right. The thing around.
It isn't as relevant as like, okay, you have the latest version of
it. And maybe it's not a perfect analogy because I mean, hopefully this
platform will last longer than the average smartphone. But mhm, I'm just thumbs
because it doesn't acronym into anything like what it sounds like. It sounds like
preev. It sounds like a sexually transmitted disease, a really bad case of
PSC PlayStation VD. Yeah, so you think it would be a PlayStation Vita,
not a Sony Vita will be PlayStation Vita. The mock ups which created
could be photoshops straight up said like PS Vita Vita. Oh I like PS
Vita, I like when the last I like that better than psv We'll all
be used to it in a week after they announced it and we'll never think
about it again. Yeah, you know, after saying enough times and then
it's the wei yeah yeah wi. Yeah. The ultimate example is yeah,
it really doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter. It's Dreamcast was fucking phenomenally
dumb. That was the one that was the one where it was like,
all right, I'm gonna drive myself crazy or I'm gonna stop carrying and I
went with stop caring myself crazy and that dumb swirl Dreamcast DreamCatcher controller smells like
and that's one. Honestly, in retrospect, I've come to really love the
name Dreamcast. Like at the time, I was like, this is the
saying of you hidiots, this is the dumbest, hokiest shit. But after
the time, Dreamcast is kind of cool. I like that. And we
burned through all the good names early Commodore sixty four. I wish you were
just kind of out of names for everything. And you're right, like,
you can't in television, intelligent television, You're fucking perfect. You can't put
the PlayStation name on it in some capacity, right, it has to be
PlayStation blank. You know what bugs me is, Yeah, like the pervasiveness
of certain but like the branding hierarchy that goes on now. Yeah, it's
like, well, video Card has been really bad about it, Like they've
made about fifty G Force models in the last ten years. Well it's it's
like G Force is meaningless to me now because I like, I'm like,
I've got a g X five forty. Oh that's ship. You need to
have the but FX six twenty good one the current numbering. If you're at
least in the current like basic recent generation, then it's like okay, seven
series, nine series, like like it's it's almost like cars, but but
it's they go weird stuff where it's like, well this is the hundreds.
Now we're in the thousands, but the thousands are not as good as the
hundreds. Like there's but like they made that change a while ago, and
then now it's they're done. Yeah, yeah, they switched that. That
was one thing that happened, and when like if you just drill that into
your head that that thing happened, and everything since they made that change makes
a lot more se To be fair, I just don't care about it's either
it's it's just it's it's not as convoluted as its initially seems. Like I
now that I've gotten through two video cards in the current numbering scheme, like
I'd feel a lot more comfortable with without all works. Nintendo's pretty good about
letting go of their old brands, but yeah, you get like endless iterations
of PlayStation products, Like it's like brands and then sub brands. Well,
it's because Nintendo is the top company. It's it's it's because it's because there's
a PlayStation division of Sony that you know. I mean, those people identify
themselves as I work for play Stoffle, which is a crazy thing. I
was thinking, like, like the DS, you know, they've readily dropped
the game Boy name and came up with this whole name, which is crazy
because the game Boy name was still extremely strong at that point, but probably
not as strong as the Nintendo name. You know, It's like, you
didn't necessarily confuse people by dropping the game Boy name as long as it's said
Nintendo somewhere. You're right, You're right, you can still have that.
I'm just thinking more generally of you know, at that point when they were
introducing the DS, like you're talking post GameCube, which was not great for
them pre we so, you know, game Boy was the strongest brand aside
from you know, hierarchically Nintendo. Uh, you know, to get to
the DS and go yeah, no more, yeah, you know, game
Boy micro and we'll put some lip service to we're gonna keep using the game
Boy name. I think at some point you just get to a point where
you have released so many products that say game Boy on them that it's hard
to tell people why this one is more expensive than the other one. Yeah,
you know, because they didn't roll out a numbering scheme with it,
game Boy to game Boy Advance, you know, discount of game Boy color
and the stuff, then to switch to the dscam much more dramatic, right
of, like, no, this is no longer a game Boy, this
is something else. Yeah, which they could have called it the game boy
Ds or the game Boy Duel, or you know, there's all kinds of
afforable roads they could have gone down to assume. That's what Sony's doing,
right, It's trying to distance itself a bit from the PSP and this whole
new product. That's why they can't call it the PSP. They already that
was a good name. That was a fun my name for afect name for
what that product was. But outside of Japan, there are a lot of
people that are gonna shrug if you say, hey, we got a new
piz damaged at this point. But I don't know if those people are gonna
be then enticed by the PlayStation Vita. It sounds sexy, I don't think
it does. I don't think it does at all. Sounds like a bad
car. It does it sounds like a released in Europe by four car cars
have pretty bad names, these things vauxell Nova, so it's like a Ford
Salsa. Who is it that's making the leafiss on the leaf? I think
that's actually what's an all electric car. I know it is, but you
could just I feel like though you could just you could smell the product testing
and focus group stuff coming off of that stuff. If it's with like some
of the Japanese only car names that don't make it over here. I guess
it's just like I just think, like Vita water and stuff like that,
like that prefix just maybe seems done already, which is why I don't think
you're ever going to anyone call it We're in Vita, except except for at
the target when I try and buy one and say give me that PlayStation Vita.
Yeah, and the ladies like, okay, I know what you're talking
about, the Vita. What the fuck is that? Like, no one
mispronounces we anymore? Like there was there was some confusion about that upfront?
Was it why there was strong messaging from them like the day of the announce
Yeah, this is how you how you pronounce it? Yeah, this is
do not call it the we call it the Nintendo, we call it the
Yeah, like all kinds of how to use this how to use this word
in a sentence? Contact your pr rep if you have this question. So
that's the last of our pre E three news. Next next stop E three?
Yeah, that's right. What the next one? The next one of
these that we record will be in the city and County of Los Angeles.
Do this California and the Breach. That's true, USA. It's gonna be
fun, man. There's some stuff that you guys need to see. Yeah,
there's some stuff that I really want to see, and I'm super excited
about some of the stuff we're lining up for for podcasts and live shows during
the three yeah, which we will be doing nightly stuff you're all gonna want
to see. Yeah, yeah, yeah, everyone you I want to see
it, like big shows Monday on Monday for Thursday, but you know,
we might do something that's the big show anyway. Yeah, big shows coming
on coming on? Is gonna tell us why wrestling is so fucked up?
In an exclusive heart to heart, will you see, Originally they tried to
say they tried to say I was Andre the Giant's son, and it all
started from there. A car is gonna crash run over that's right, it
unmarked black Lincoln Town car will clip him. And then fortunately we got the
unmarked Lincoln Town clock car on for Wednesday. Yeah, which should be interviewing
inclusive. But it's gonna be hit by a tank. Who's that big rig
o? God, Cliff, I can't feel the tires again. Uh.
New releases this week week before E three. Uh, somehow less releases than
the week of E three. Yeah, we have Hunted Demons for Sorge.
I'm gonna give my first impressions of this game, and I want you to
know. I'm gonna say this up front. This comes from like the first
five minutes. Okay, like literally literally five minutes. We got it today.
I put it in, I started playing through it. I'm not out
of it. It's paused back at my desk, not blowing me away.
So first five minutes of Hunted, oh yeah, some cut scenes and it
kind of looks like an Xbox One game in spots like it's well that that's
a little harsh, but the lighting and textures and do you know a lot
Fargo worked on it. His name is up first in the credits Okay,
I can confirm that. That's all I need to that came. M h.
I have my suspicions about the quality of that game. You have reservations
about maybe it will get immediately awesome after that. I cannot say for sure
it does have loot, all right, Okay, if it has loot,
then maybe that'll be better. Because right now, walking around one shotting everyone
with his bow I've got has not been satisfying in the least. We'll look
at a little more of that. Yeah, we'll see. I intend to
play it, probably to completion on Xbox Live Ricade this week. Yeah.
Crazy Machines Colin Elements, which I guess is you see that right? That
was the box shot that was on Xbox for like until about three days after
lan War came out or Elen War. Oh no, miss that I thought
it was. I thought it was a pre release gaff because I had a
copy of a couple days before the game came out. It it hits shelves
and that did not get fixed. And there were like eight people on my
friends thing playing Crazy Machines Elements at one point. Oh you mean it was
actually even listing no, no, no, nothing next and the achievement.
It's all fit to lnir. But just if you look at that Friends channel
or just like some sort of like incredible machine style game, puzzle league game.
Yeah, I think so. So I think they did this on phone
first. It sounds like it all they're doing a summer of Arcade on one
of his Phone seven. They are hydro Thunder is part of it. Yeah,
so last year's some of ourcade is this year's mob undergo some of ourcade.
Uh. That's that's all I know about for coming out this way.
There was a crazy interlude on the Tested podcast a couple of weeks ago about
how Will Smith kind of thinks that one of his Phone seven might be the
successor to the mobile Crown when I don't know, like it was all it
was all in the It was all in the wake of this Mango announcement five
and changes to the thing, and like if they think if they can come
out with a sweeping batch of devices that that sell it to people. Yeah,
Well there's the whole thing about them Microsoft acquiring Nokia's mobile division and like
putting serious muscle behind it. Wait, if you acquire Nokia's mobile division,
what else is there left of Nokia. I don't know. I don't understand
that Nokia or Nokia Nokia. I always say Nokia, but everybody else says
Nokia. So I started thinking, ok, man, I must be wrong
because I think it is supposed to be Nokia. Yeah, really, that's
what I've always ass but I would rather land on it. I would rather
call it a Sus Nokia and visus. Assus is way harder for me to
deal with than Nokia. Yeah, Assus. Anyway, what if one this
one's oven becomes popular if it's a good phone, it's not really it's got
a solid base, like it's not it's not a terrible phone. It's just
not as good as an iPhone. Yeah, I don't like I don't like
a lot of their interface stuff, like it's slick and clever, but I
don't think. I definitely don't prefer it to iPhone. I feel like they
just they need to They still need to, like find there. You gotta
start with a niche. You got to you gotta figure out what it is
that separates you from both Android and iPhone, because those are both things to
to consider in that market. They are Yeah, I mean I guess,
I guess iPhone specifically has seen flat or maybe even negative growth in the recent
past. Android it has exploded. But I guess I mean I would say
that, you know, I mean, I haven't had a ton of experience
with Android phones, but from what I've used to those, I would take
a Windows phone seven devices the Android. That's the question they were putting forth
was all these people who are getting Android phones now, are they going to
be willing to buy another Android phone after this? Right? And if not?
Like Windows phones up and kind of seems like a natural place for them
to land. Maybe we'll see it does have points. It's kind of what
I'm getting at all. Right, Let's let's take it to emails bomb cat
at giant bomb dot com Anthony from Bloomington in Illinois. Why does it always
fall upon Jeff to buy a new technology for the ability to professionally comment upon
it? The PSP GO and three D TV are examples that come to mind.
Did he draw the short straw at the very beginning? Does he value
his journalistic integrity more than the rest of you? Or does he just hate
money and buy all this stuff by a choice? I say it's a it's
a heavy milange of all three question. This question gives you hate fever.
I mean, bradn't even buy a Wii, so I've been surrounded by Weis
since they came out. Haven't needed to buy a wash and Wei? We
If not me? Who? If not? Now? When? Good answer?
Good answer? Good? Yeah, terrific answer. Uh. Next email
comes in from Adam in Des Moines, Iowa. Over the weekend, my
seven year old stepson was playing New Supermyre Brothers and at one point he asked
me, what are these little numbers that come up when I stop on the
enemies. I told him that those are points. He then asked me what
they are for, and I had to take a moment to try and explain
the concept of scoring points on a video game. I told them that they
were used so you could tell how good you were at a game, and
when you play games with friends you can compare your score. He understood,
but still didn't see the point of it. My question is this, Do
points matter anymore? Have they simply become another box to be checked on the
list of requirements featured in a ritro style game? But we simply remember scores
and games to be the precursor to achievements and trophies or is there still the
possibility for points to matter. It sounds like you gotta teach a kid about
goals, about getting points, yeah, about score people, about putting everybody
else shame. I think in certain games they're still totally relevant. I just
don't happen to play those games, like, you know, I mean game
games that are purely based on an exhibition of skill, you know, like
javerty Wars, like that's the only way to track your progress is how high
are your points? Because there are no like story milestones or anything. I
mean, they could have set it up to be just time, a wave
based or like bullet Hell Shooters and all those games that it's just well,
you know, but I mean those games like that game specifically, we all
revolves around multipliers, and that's hard to represent with something like time. It's
like it's it's the easiest way. Like numbers are are pretty clearly hierarchical.
I'm less interested in the actual question here than I am in sort of this
notion of of you know, the the video game high score being so far
removed from from games from you know, modern games anymore that you know that
that we have shifted that progression into these other kind of metrics. I guess.
So, yeah, you know, it's the rise of the story based
game. You know, scoring doesn't really matter. You're not going to go
back through you know, even even some of like Gears of War, you're
gonna play the entire story over again to get a score, which is why
they break that stuff out into like Horde mode and some of these other like
points based modes that they can kind of build for that stuff for that purpose.
But I think it also it also kind of represents the shift in how
games are made, is whereas it's it is about the experience and not it's
not about skill in most cases. Think of the thing about high scores just
being ranked now for multiplayer games where you're just like that dude drank eighteen that's
pretty good. Yeah he's ranked eighteen million points. Yeah, but even that,
you know, it's not necessarily an indicator skill. It's indicator time cases,
so you know, even that's not perfect. I that's that's that was
one of the appeals of the achievement points system to begin with. It was
that it brought score in two games that didn't lend themselves to that and gave
you that kind of base point to compare to other people. Brought that bragging
rights, that that sense of bragging back to games. And that's that's probably
the coolest part about it, as you know, is going to you know,
cool as a relative term, I suppose, but being able to go
to people and saying like, hey, I got all these points in this
game because I played the shit out of it and did these things that you
didn't do. You know, It's an easy way to kind of plant your
flag and lay down challenges other people and stuff. You also don't get free
lives anymore when you get a certain score. Yeah, also don't really get
live you Also you barely even have health bars. Also, you don't really
get your wars anymore. Yeah. I hear him in Lubbock, Texas.
Dear Bob Crew. Uh, Michael Packtor, who was on last week.
I'm sorry you guys missed that, but we had Michael Packtor in the house
and I saw Michael Packtor. He said he was sorry for missing my birthday,
generating headlines him. That's what he does. At least four on topic.
He walked into this room and said, off of crazy shite, is
that all it takes? Just say some crazy shit. If you're Michael Packtor,
you gotta look good doing it. You gotta say it with a certain
amount of authority to get yourself two suits, get them pressed. Yeah.
Uh once. I would actually like to once again thank Michael Patrick for coming
through last week. That was a delight for me personally. You know,
I don't I don't think he's he's always right. I think he's often extremely
wrong, and I think he often knows that. But I still think he's
an interesting character with a unique perspective on this industry that that I think is
worth considering. Yea, at the at the very least perspective. Yeah,
absolutely, he's you know, he is looking at it from an angle from
kind of a blended angle of both, you know, the kind of hard
economics as well as a feel for the culture side of it that I don't
think anyone else is doing it quite the same way. Uh. And he
was the guy kind of saying they will find a way to monetize Call of
Duty multiplayer sooner or later. Just you watch, and he was right.
You're saying I have to pay for multiplayer yep, nine dollars a game?
Yeah, nine dollars game. Uh, and then fifty cents bullet So just
like uh metro, you know micro transactions on the iPhone. Yeah, paid
two bucks for this rocket launcher. Anyway, Michael Packer raised the question I
was wondering what your thoughts were on which I was wondering what your thoughts were.
Can of video game console come out that's just video games and still survive
or does it have to be a multimedia entertainment box all of the three sixty?
What was the number that Microsoft put out today that forty percent of Xbox
three sixty usage is non gaming? Is that what they were saying? Yeah?
Crazy, I think that's what will will sign some press released to put
out. Well, they're also saying like twenty percent of all peak Internet usage
is because of Netflix streaming, right, which a lot of that has to
be coming through the three sixty because that's kind of one of the broadest.
What's one of the broadest platforms that you can do that through? Yeah,
other than you know, doing it on your computer, So that means a
lot of people have to be doing I feel like any time I turn on
my Xbox, I could look at my friends list, at least one person
is watching something on Netflix. Yeah, I wonder, you know, I
think it's safe to assume that the next Nintendo console will play DVDs. Put
some money down. Don't know that the we did not I know exactly.
I think now the licensing has got cheap enough, they can just you know,
well, we'll see what they have internal storage to do, like streaming
and download movies. Not enough. I mean, if if it's going to
be comparable with the existing consoles, like they're saying, it'll have to use
something ray right, I mean, I don't know. I shrug my shoulder
or something. You could use a proprietary similar this point, who knows,
but it needs to be it needs to be sufficiently massive to accommodate those games.
I'm sticking. I'm sticking to my Yeah, I'm sticking to carts.
I think it'll just be fucking but you know what, what's a modern cart.
It's you know, it's an SD card, it's a USB thumb stuff,
really huge, big ass thing you gotta slam in there. You want
to look expensive and hard to lose. It would be kind of awesome if
it's a fucking carts, giant carts, big sticks, a ram in there.
I really We've got to the point where you know, the storage technology
for that stuff is cheap and easy and fast. So the cheap stuff is
too unreliable. Though the cheap best stuff like it would be it would be
more expensive than cart or than than disks. Still, that's always wouldn't it
be cheaper though for them to ship on disks. But put an SSD in
the box to get the speed of your and your SSD obsession, it's gonna
happen. It's gonna happen on the Nintendo platform for sure. Well you're talking
about in the console. Yeah, yeah, it's too expensive, too many
technical issues. I'm opening the new HD we or whatever they're gonna call it,
the HD Vita. It's gonna be you open the box and it's an
HDMI cable and a power supply, and then you buy the game. You
just plug that ship right into the cart and that game's got the controller.
It's got no controller. You just watch a movie, watch somebody else places.
That'll be the difference as Nintendo. We'll call it the Vita. It
will be the PlayStation Vita and the Nintendo Vida. But it's one big vitality
sensor for the movie to keep playing, you have to put your finger into
the slot insufficient heart rate to continue to play back. Yeah, uh are
you dead? Yes? No, each card is a self contained system each
to your point. Yeah, the Wii is the example of its self,
like it's just the it. You know, it does games right, kind
of if that's what you're looking for mini games. Oh, you know it
does have the Netflix streaming and web browser and yeah even they got it's disc
three. No, it's disc on the p S three now, but it's
still a disc on the way. Okay. I don't think there's any word
to story and so what you want channel though, and you just watch them
in SD that's it. Yeah, it only does up to forty Wow,
what are you guys? Netflix on either Yeah, whatever on whatever system is
on, whichever one you have turned pretty much for me, I don't really
three sixties more responsive, but I kind of like the PS three better.
Yeah, kind of with you. I have not tried the PS three Netflix
out since right around the time they launched it, and I thought it looked
bad and did not perform WELLS three is nice if you don't want to fish
your profile out of your bag. If you have another stick that that that'll
be why I'll do that. If the like, I don't want to have
to the thing with the thing you have to get off this count. I
can just hit I can just brush any button on this PlayStation remote and all
of them and I'll hear the beep and I'm like, okay, good,
the Netflix box is warming up. Time to watch some Twilight Zone. Oh
my PS three is so loud though, and that you know it's yeah,
mine is like into the friend's house yesterday who has an old bottle p S
three and his is nice quiet. I don't know what the difference is,
but they body knows any tips for Quieteningdale and the wet towel. We're supposed
to be slim PS three. I almost I almost tried to go get in
on that crazy tart. He just get a quieter PS three because minds.
So there's supposed to be something where like if you you know, cover the
event end of the PS three, it'll like go into some jet mood like
rambles down, yeah, like vertically upside down like some periods supposedly blows all
the dust out or something. I don't know why. When we first got
a p S three, uh that that happened accidentally right out on the start,
making this noise like, oh god, this doesn't sound like a good
noise for this thing to be making. And then we realized that's because we're
covering the exhaust port with all this carpet. I feel like, I feel
like this next generation coming out of consoles, everything will be so digital that,
like you, just the distinction between being just the game machine and anything
else that plays movies or something will just be gone. That line will just
blur. Yeah, yeah, I don't. I don't think it's I tend
to agree. I think that we've reached the point where your can will have
an interface this guess, guys, guess what the set top box dream finally
came true and it's video games. You'll just download your apps or whatever to
your front end. Yeah, well it's everything, I mean even yeah,
it's TVs, rokus and like there's resilient options. Sure, but everybody's got
one just going to be a boxy TV, Like the boxy box wasn't enough.
They're building boxy software directly into a model of television. When that seems
like the next step is like, well, I want all that Netflix stuff,
but I honestly, don't give a shit about video games. You know,
build that shit into the TV. I know they're talking apps for TVs.
Yeah, it's just hot thing at ce yes this year. Or let
it like read a thumbstick and just load boot up apps for your TV on
whatever operating system. Yeah, there are TV's out there that actually they've put
out dev kits and they let developers kind of cow their own apps. They've
got li Fi on them. Yeah that sounds awesome. Linux. Yeah,
you can put a bootoo on your TV. Can my TV run Doom?
I guarantee you already somebody is running Doom on a TV, like the remote,
the firmware and the remote. Okay, I think we have to end
this podcast. We're at time. We're at a time at a time.
You're saving up time for the E three podcast. You're banking it? What?
No, this is? This was a long, goddamn podcast. Us
our last chance for E three predictions. This is our last chance for E
three predictions. What was the big What was the prevailing theme of that podcast?
I haven't listened till last week's special. Out of that anything mind blowing
besides his headline making Nintendo prediction uh oh about Nintendo getting out of the hardware
business. He predicted that. I didn't listen to that. He predict predicted.
You see, he kind of floated it as like, you know,
this is a potential future for them going third party Sega style. I've said
that for years, but well everybody said that after the game. So oh
really yeah, great minds think of my life. I left my notes on
his chair. I don't remember what else got said during that thing. Press
conferences will happen, Ubisoft will be ridiculous. Should we just do our E
three press conference predictions? That seems to be just the biggest thing, right,
Yeah, do you think what do you think Microsoft is gonna have anything
big to counter the hardware announcements at the other press conferences, because I think
it's pure software from Microsoft this year. This is Yeah, it's really you
back up the Connect. You've got gears at least one big major Connect title.
I think you have to have a like a fucking quarter of that press
conference at least dedicated to Connect stuff they sold. They sold a bunch of
those. They haven't had any good software support for it post launch. Maybe
you sold them already. Move on. They need to they well, if
they want no, they want to sell more, they need to keep they
need to prove it at some point, and this is I think where they
can do that. And other than that, it's you know, you trot
out your dudes that you've you've already got on the hook, you've got you
know, Dan Greenawall will come out and say some crazy shit about FORTSA and
Cliff will say something about gears, and Peter Molaneus say something about his balls
and they talk about the Window seven phone at all. They tie that into
their that's on the screen at one point for the well, they might they
might want to appeal to the gaming side of it. I don't think much
time you get spent on that at all. I think I think literally that's
Eco system better than ever. More importantly, it's a different business unit within
Microsoft. It's like those are not the people running this press conference, so
they don't care about pushing that thing. Is there a pie chart during the
press conference? Hell yeah yeah, microsart bar graphic. They have to they
have to announce something software wise. I mean, like everybody already knows about
gears and forts. Yeah. I think there'll be a slate of connected announcements,
both from them and from third parties. And I think the Connect ties
into a new yeah totally something hil a new dashboardy thing. Yeah, that'll
tie into the Connect and four type stuff. I think if the thousand friend
things going to happen, this will be the place where they announce it.
That be crazy and like, so I bet there's gonna be didn't they show
this like part Connect party room or whatever where you're like sitting has that is
a launch date? That's how was that coming that soon? Issh? I
think yeah, they have to they have to say something about what three or
four three's been up to, right, Yeah? Yeah, agree hopefully Yeah
yeah. Do they update the Xbox three sixty hardware at all? Year?
New HDMI port it just makes three D easier this year's model going straight up
car model on that stuff. I don't think it's too soon. Yeah,
you know, there could be a refresh, but I don't think that's something
that you really like try and double underlined during the press conference. What do
they even do to it? Like? What else do they fixed it?
Like it works now and it doesn't die every six months? Bigger hard drive?
Yeah, but you know, I mean Sony pushes out of new scus
with drives like every six months yearnet. I'm not saying you make a big
deal about it, say maybe meaningful changes, though, I don't think there's
much else to do. A Connect bundle for two ninety nine, I think
that already exists. They totally have had that hod retailers specifically. No,
that's just well, that's that's I think. I think console target right now
is I thought I saw some ad that had the two fifty at two ninety
nine with keys. That's crazy. It's crazy is that they're still selling Xbox
three sixties for three hundred bucks a pop and some like kind of a lot
of them. That's crazy. Yeah, it is crazy. I don't buy
into those sales figures because so many people are replacing old Xboxes. Yeah.
I mean, I'm not saying that that turns into like software sales every single
time, but still there's still selling. It's impressive number on its face.
Yeah, it's kind of impressive that if your Xbox breaks you go back and
buy another thing Xbox. You don't just say all right, fuck this cloud
support on three sixty profile cloud support where it's like you don't need your profile
on a stick. That's your that's your next generational The infrastructure is to set
in stone. I think for a lot of those changes to be meeting things.
I think we'll be lucky if we see that thousand friend bump new dash
dash Oh, I definitely expect some some new well like more connect enabled dash
because right now the connect stuff on the dashboard is terrible. You know what,
everything about the dashboard is terrible. Everything about that dashboard right now is
the fact that I have to navigate just to start a game, the fact
that I start on a row of ads. Yes, there they have been
debata testing some kind of new dash for a while. Anything new at aside
from the little chat room stuff that'll be you know what that'll be where your
your bar graph shows up is and they show this is fucking how much money
we make off this crazy avatar stuff and believe this? Can you fucking believe
this? And we continue to We're opening a new Avatar mall. I just
can't help but think, like, what if they got suckered in and by
the whole three D thing and want to update the consoles, specifically just to
update the HDMI to make it automatically switched to three D. I it's not
I'm not saying like it's a change that's gonna revolution, Like no one's gonna
go out and buy an Xbox. But you know, if that stuff's gotten
cheap enough, and if they're going to be dedicated to this platform for a
few more years, like why not throw in a couple of things like that
to try and maintain the perception of value and keep their prices up and and
that sort of. I don't know, because it seems like, you know,
do a five hundred gig drive. Other Microsoft hasn't done much with three
D now anyway, they don't really have they don't have that Sony impetus,
right, it's a huge it's a huge focus for their direct couplure. I
think if they were to do it, it would be something where they would
have gotten suckered in by Sony's involvement in that stuff and be like we got
to be there and are just now getting to do something like that. Maybe,
right, how much? I don't think I'm not saying that they should
do that either, Like you, if they took that turn, yeah,
I'm wondering. I'm wondering if they fell for that at some point and when
like, we gotta, we gotta get out ahead of this. I mean,
I think it's not out of this, we gotta get out of something.
I think even if they had been doing it based on the way,
like the three D backlash that's been happening this summer in film, they would
not mention that at D three they like they would be like, Okay,
this is under internal review for whether this project continues or maybe they make the
change and never even say anything about it. Yeah, seeing that stuff about
the lenses than the you know, having dim two D movies because no one
takes the lens off at theaters and stuff like that's fucking crazy. Well.
Also, just like the past three weekends or something that better. Yeah,
the two D movies despite having less screens are outperforming the three D. Pirates
and Pirates and Kung Fu Panda two both uh right out performing. Yeah,
the two d's out out performing the three D despite more three DS fewer screens.
Wow. Yeah, and price, that's that's how much people are like
fuck you to three D right now, and so the financials are all reacting
to that right now. It's a complete I saw Real d's stock started a
complete cluster five. So so even if they had been devoting resources to that,
Microsoft opens up the Wall Street Journal to Dan and says, okay,
the twenty minutes, Alan, wake whatever, I don't know, let's take
this off. Let's take this off the slate, uh, PlayStation. Obviously,
the Vita is a big focus for them. That one is, yeah,
I mean that one is like what ten to twenty minutes of maya kulpa
about PSN and then ten and twenty minutes five two minutes, two minutes,
maybe a gag, yeah, no gags five minutes. No, no,
I'll conceeed the shorter time, but no fucking way, or they're gonna come
out and make light of that situation at all. I will put money on.
I will reiterate my prediction from earlier. Jack Trenton will murder the actor
who plays Kevin Butler. Yeah, I will actually murder him. That's not
a gag, man, I think, yeah, Kevin Butler to murder him
by strangling him. Okay, I think you push that off onto a fictional
character. It's the way that you know they're still responding to Senate. They
can't look, they can't look like they're like, ah, you know whatever,
it's a good time. Yeah, he's sony. No, they got
they still of that at least, so it's like single spot, like Jack
Tren rolls up the sleeves and sit down. Everybody pulls a chair. I
don't think, you know what. I think there's acknowledgement. I don't think
there's apology. We're coming back better than ever. Yeah, just look through
the future. I think there's a great Yeah. Yeah, you don't ignore
it outright, but they at some point they will say thank you for your
patience to everyone in attendance. I think that's totally right. Yep. But
yeah, obviously a lot of V to V to V to via vita.
It seems like PS three software would take a back seat because there's all like
that stuffs all knowed for this year. This will be launching like the next
day, and Charted coming later in the years. It would be a good
time for them to like roll out more of star Hawk or something like that.
But I mean, all these games have been announced and right on the
schedule, like maybe some new move stuff. I think I think they'll probably
do new XMB stuff, and I just mean like new like better integration with
some stuff. And I think they'll roll from the PlayStation network being down to
the coming back better than ever, and like, here are the new features
you can expect coming up in next year. Here's the core stuff. Here's
like better friends stuff, better trophy stuff, better you know whatever, Twitter,
ESPN, whatever they're gonna put in there to be like here's Fatus it
was down. Look how awesome it's gonna be in the future. Uh,
integration with the Vita, I don't know. And then you know, Nintendo
will be you know, new console and a lot of proof concept software and
some actual three DS games. You think they abandoned the weed or they just
they hit the you know, they'll Sward Sword coming to the new Nintendo console.
Levels you can't Twilight apprentis that game? You can't mirrored level I can't.
Oh no, Nintendo can't. I don't think they will. Yeah,
I don't think they will. I mean that's that's that's that's assuming that the
new console will even be equipped to play that game. Like, do you
think they will? It's I think they've said as much as that they will
replicate all of those controls. It'll be some way to do that. So
you think they lead new console stuff, and it's like that doesn't mean we're
not supporting the wee. We've got a great lineup coming up about the sky
resword and three DA come before the They waited until the last like twenty minutes
of that press conference for three DS last year. Yeah, and I imagine
it'll be close to that, if not maybe a little more in depth as
far as what you actually see of that system compared to the three DS.
It's like it's it's gonna be the it'll be the wall of logos, it'll
be yeah, quick trailer role, maybe harmonics be on that wall. So
I mean, if it's if the system is a year or two year and
a half out, then it's a whole like hundred and twenty eight Marios scenario
of like it'll be it'll be tech demoi stuff that's like ears, familiar things
that ye captain Ortega one hundred and twenty eight taco shells on screen. Yeah,
that's any other any any other predictions predictions about Ubisoft. I don't think
they can go really heavy on Nintendo tech demo stuff for that thing. If
it's going to be out this year, it's not out, it's out like
early next year though they said in twenty twelve. That's all they've said.
You think it'll be out before another E three? It could go all the
way to Holiday twenty twelve. I thought it was like fiscal No, okay,
pretty sure, it's calendar all right. I think they spend a lot
of time on it. But I bet they'll show at least three real games
for it. If they demo one game, maybe, but footage from at
least I mean, if if that thing is eighteen months out, then those
real games barely exist at this point. But I feel like they have to
show something. They're so we feel their software all the time. I think
like, yeah, I don't know, you know, proof concept like Mario
Kart type thing like not not a name like you know, Mario Kart WE
two or whatever they call it, you know, work in progress. Right,
here's what we could do on it. I think that they'll probably like
it won't be something like Mario Kart. It'll be some other stranchise that hasn't
been around for a while, not even Star five zero. Really, it's
a good frame rate, that's good time for us, Like sixty four was
all about how many like carts? Whatever you're gonna follow them, but they
could how many ships they get on the screen at once? Yeah, you
know, yeah, bring back af Tero people, people would get excited about.
Yeah people, I'll dust off my coffee of dukey and listen to a
bunch of duky and play a bunch of f zero. I think this year
will be fewer uh celebrity guests and fewer social network tie in's uh calm the
console but Day, I think no more Felicia Day, Steven Spielberg, Spielberg,
James Cameron, the Beatles, I think we'll go. I think this
year will be more about the just the games, and hopefully fewer, fewer
social network hooks. I mean last Stogan's gonna be there last year. Last
year, like last year, you think about those press conferences, it was
just like you're you know, you're trotting out Ted Price and the Harmonic Sky.
But also last year was yeah, it was just like motion motion motion.
There was a big focus on that. I yeah, I get some
lip service to move. Yeah. I don't have to do something right.
They can't. They can't just completely abandon it yet. Sports too, whatever
with the motion sports, you know what it's gonna be like you know,
and move support in all of these popular franchises, Like I don't even know
that they will like have move specific We had plenty of move games, it's
just not in games that you want to use the move with. They will
just they will tout the fact that a lot of games you could do.
Come on, all, right, now, we really have to end this
podcast. Uh yeah, we're we're in LA next week for E three.
Maybe you've heard of it. Look first. Then content kicks off next week.
Yeah maybe Sunday, look for us. Look for us Sunday. But
Monday is when the press conferences begin in Earnest and we will be there in
force. So uh, look for that then. And that's gonna do it
for this week's edition of The Giant Bodcast. Next week E three Like Parking
Nice and it's stores now.