Hey, buddy, it is Tuesday. Whoa it is Tuesday, October eighteenth,
twenty eleven, and you were listening to the Giant Bomb Cast. I'm
Ryan Davis joining me today clipping stuff on mister Vinnie Carroll Number one clip on
how's your pop screen? Have you addressed your issues my hands? I had
to scrape stuff with a hand. Pop screens got all switched around and they
were unknown particles on my pop screen. And I just saw Contagion last weekend?
So what do you think of that? It was great. It's it's
a very subtle disaster movie. Yeah. I like the way it moves.
It was it was less about the disaster and how normal people would have to
kind of do their job and deal with shit. I just I really enjoyed
how Gwyneth Paltrow looked awful, Yeah, in any of her scenes. I
enjoyed Larry Frish barnshe he looked pretty bad. Yeah. But also it's just
like it was like not a lot of yelling and running around with heads on
fire. It was more of like, fucking, how do you do your
job when the world's exploding? Like, I don't know, your job is
to keep the world from exploding. Yeah, and like you know, there's
just guys and real monotone voices being like you know, you're gonna have to
go to court for this and be like yeah. And it was like in
like six months and it's like okay, and that's the end of that.
It's like very much grounded, I thought, in good procedural. Yeah,
it's like it's like Outbreak but without all of the bombasts. Yeah exactly.
I kind of enjoy that. And again it was like every good horror movie,
we are the real monsters. Oh. Also soundtracked by the guy who
did the score for Drive, which if you know that, it makes a
lot of sense. Patrick Kleppik is here. Hey, how's it going,
sir? All right? How goes Horror month? For you? Speaking good?
Speaking of films? Our movie podcast paranol Activity three comes out this week,
which I'm pretty ampt about. It's gotten very good reviews. Does so
I still need to Yeah they've been doing haven't been reading very much, but
yeah, better than the second one, and the second one's pretty good.
I still need to see the second one. Anything else weird in the that
you've watched thus far? Trying to think nothing too watched the Thirst, which
is the that Korean director who did Old Boy and the Devil. I saw
The Devil. That one's really good. I Saw the Devil is like a
revenge fantasy, but then you think you know where it's gonna go, and
then they fucking dude over and then they fuck another dude over. It looks
it looks good. I also love The post Yard for that. It's really
good and intense. Jeff Gershman is here. Hello, how's how it goes
your skylanding? It's great land in the sky. I put the I put
the monsters on the power base, and then they're in my video game.
That's that's my horror story. Physical things, physical things into video games and
vice versa. And I don't really know what's what anymore. It's kind of
been over here, kind of frightening. And also I watched part of Bad
Boys too. How do you month? Yeah? How do you watch part
of Bad Boys too? I know that movie is three hours long? Yeah,
yeah, I watched the second ending. Oh oh yeah yeah. Yeah.
We were talking, Yeah, we're talking about it, and I was
like, yes, I just put it onto my computer for for you know,
that sort of digital use. And I was like, I'm just gonna
fire this up while I do something else. And then I found myself watching
the end of Bad Boys too. That movie ends. Yeah, and then
it's like, like, what if we had another hour here where? What
do you guys think about? Let's go It's it's only like two ten to
twenty. No, it's not. It's not long enough. Can you imagine
like a ninety minute My Bay movie? Can you would fathom? Like I
was just thinking about that, every single one of his movies is like almost
three hours long. It would just be split screen the whole time. That
have to be two things happening and once at all times to fit in all
of that award winning amazing story. Have any of you guys seen the third
Transformers movie? Talk to you about it about how I thought it was maybe
the most terrible movie of our lifetime. It's, uh, it's it's insane,
Like how like it gets to a point where it's like, okay,
everything's going on in Chicago, Let's go to Chicago, and it's like an
hour action scene. It's just like one hour that's just like like after just
like fucking robots and buildings following over and explosions and like characters are being introduced
and then killed over the course of this one like hour long action scene,
and then the movie just fucking ends. It's like killed the bad guys autobots
one credits, just like like no wrap up or anything. It's just like
and that's the end. That's where we decided to like we just I had
to stop the movie. It's not like it ended, it's just yeah,
this is that's much more. It's like two hours and forty minutes. Yeah,
okay, that's probably a good place to stop. Sure, I can
render some more robots. So what did you actually think of it? Did
you enjoy it? I enjoyed the part where so uh Leondard Nimoy voices one
of the the robots, Sentinel, and he's straight up says the spock line
needs of the many outwagh the needs of the few at one point. That's
how that movie is. It's dumb. It's so dumb. Also blatantly racist.
I had Asian character paying for community, but not not as Yeah,
so Opening Night Baby, I'm ax and three D not as not as blatantly
racist as the second one. Yea, the second one. Yeah, the
twins. The twins were way way, way worse. Although the thing that
kept throwing me off was hair on robots. Yeah, a bunch of the
Smart Doctor robots Like it's like like like bioluminescent hair. Also the clo he's
balding, Like he doesn't have hair on the top of his head. It's
just like wrap around to let you know that, Oh he is a older,
more distinguished what robots and then Sentinel, the Leonard Demoy character has a
fucking robot mustache. There's just there's one in the one that has a cane.
Yeah, and then why does Megatron have a cloak? Like but it
did make him look kind of cool. Yeah. So I had missed two
and I thought one was like fairly. I was like, Okay, it's
kind of dumb, but it's an action movie. It's kind of taking itself
at least a bit. Seriously. I don't know what happened in two,
but three is like a vaudeville act like three and I'll tell you this.
Three reigns it in some from two like the stuff in two. Oh my
gosh, is three has like little cybal kicks like two is like an atrocity
two has well, Two has like extended bits with the parents like way more
with the parents like hens like Pott Brownie's on a college campus, and then
the parents just go off for twenty minutes being high. Yeah wait, what's
what And then they go to Paris and then you like are following them in
Paris being like bad racist Americans in Paris. So it's like meet the Fokkers
in like it's a movie, a movie within a movie. Yeah, it's
this whole other movie that's happen run into Ben Stiller and then there's like this
comedist comedy mishappen, like oh no, and then somehow they like show up
at the climactic battle at the end, like they get like off camera,
they get kidnapped, and then just at one point a robot like drives up
to the fight and just dumps them out. In Egypt, yeah, in
eachy front of the Pyramids with the giant transform with two balls that are clinging.
But I feel like in three it's like optimist prime heads are kind of
funny eating the pot Brownie and goes out of the trip and that whole movie
was terrible, Like there's so many dumb jokes in it and like plays for
comedy and like bits but that's that's Michael Bay. Michael Bay can't resist really
awful, and no one will tell him no because his movies makes so much
money. But then all the trip, all the fights. But you think
some level, like you know, the general movie going public like totally wants
that. I can't imagine that the election wasn't that great. It was look
at much money. That movie made a billion dollars? Why because there's robots.
I don't give in disguise at one point? You know what I do
like that they're in terrible disguise. If they are the worst suise, I
will say this, they actually three uses the like in disguise thing better than
either of the first two. Like there are actually moments where it's like,
oh shit, that's a robot where it had not been led on. That's
they shouldn't just name the movie. I've summed up everything that's awesome about all
the Transformers with one sentence. And I and I, you know, for
as much as I don't care for the like movie designs of the Transformers,
I like the sounds they make. Whoever did the sound design for for like
their lasers and when they transform, I like that stuff just was digital on
me and Bumblebee parsing together like movie clips to talk and see you see this?
This is why I saw an opening night in imax and three D,
because if I'm going to see a movie this dumb, I'm gonna see it
the dumbest way possible. D box would have been the only improvement that I
could have done, and they didn't, and they didn't. It didn't come
out in the box, and so and when it so when you see that,
when you see that movie and I'm actually three D, the opening shot
basically of that film is whatever the new model, the Megan Fox replacement.
You know, she's walking up the stairs and her ass is just in front
of the camera and it's all in three D. The first shot in the
goddamn movie is this model just swishing her ass around in three D. And
I just like, like wearing like a dress shirt over like panties, so
it's just like a little bit of butt is kind of peaking. It's not
even like subtle three D. It's like popping out at your eyes three D.
And the whole audiences what it likes. The whole audience just looks around
at each other like we're all seeing her Butt's gonna transform shits a robot.
That's the porn versions Root and Brent Shoemaker is ever seen Transformers. I stopped
after the first one. That's why I elected. Yeah, you and I
saw the first one. That was my last experience I made. I'm in
an effort to not see any of them ever, because I thought they all
looked real, real, terrible, And then by the time they came out
on like HBO or something, I ended up in bits and pieces from having
people around me watching them because I am around idiots a lot of the time.
I saw the first one and the second one that way, then you
just you just have to see a third one. Story I told no interest
the third one. The story, Yeah, I don't even it's like nonsensical.
It might as well not even be there. Actually, it makes way
more sense than the second one. I guess I should watch the second one.
The second a script. Just make Tron turn into a gun in this
one. I'm not gonna see. Yeah, yeah, You're not gonna see
it as far as I'm concerned. There is one Transformers movie, and it
came out in nineteen me a space gun people, No, No, he's
a fucking pistol luger, yeah, Walter, Yeah, with a weird stock
extender on and a scope, so all cool pistols wouldn't fix those. And
then he turned into a gun, and wouldn't that would be the thing that
would be like, oh these, wouldn't that be over the top in a
way better way if all of a sudden he's turned into a giant like World
War two era pist into a person's size pistol, and him and another robot
scream shooting. Right, that's that's who fires. There is a there is
uh, there's sound waves. I don't have sound waves in two. I
can't remember it. Do you have a fake sound waven this he's terrible as
they like iPod or something. No, he doesn't do anything. He makes
like waves, shock waves. How is the sound wave if he has a
vehicle. I think it's sound wave because they Yeah, this is bullshit.
Because he has the little he has the cassette. He still has like laser
beak and yeah, and Laserbeak disguises. Actually, Laserbeak's disguises are probably the
probably the most significant, like a plasma TV or something. I don't know.
But there's all the weirdest part was not sound Wave. The dude who
guards Cybertron the telepart of the shot shot shock Wave shock Wave. Yeah,
he's in it, and he's giant worm. You know, he's ridding around
on the giant worm. He can turn into a space pistol. Yeah,
okay, that's the only way you know it's supposed to be because people say
shock wave and then like a worm comes out of the ground. You're not
You're not totally in the wrong for thinking that those were the same thing.
But yeah, Disney launched the giant worms. He's hanging out on it or
something. I don't know. I can't I can't believe the Headlinard Nimoy spouting
star Trek lines when he has history as another Transformers character, Well, why
don't they draw you know, it's the rich legacy, the whole thing.
The whole thing is you're getting caught up like the your incredulity, your incredulity
is being misplaced because it's it's the whole thing. It's not these minor shis.
If you want, if you want a dumb movie, imagine like how
much dumber it could have been if they had been totally faithful to original series
Generation one Transformers, but it had been this big budget live action movie.
But where he was turning into a giant pistol and shooting stuff, I could
go for that. Probably probably just lean into just the stupidity inherent to the
premise Primes trailer go. When he trans he does, he does have the
trailer in the beginning, it becomes like a charging stations like it's like it's
his weapon cash like he it transforms and turns his platform and he like runs
up to it and grabs like like axe or something, his his melee weapons.
So the cartoon, it seems like, takes itself way more seriously than
Yes, cartoon is pretty optimist, is not joking around. He doesn't crack
wise, he's a rust ghost or something. It's fucked up, what's happened?
And so yeah, it's weird to watch this movie, this big budget
movie be like Slapstick. The whole thing is like one big bad comedy act.
Like I don't well, it's I think it swings hard. Like then
it's like, look at the destruction of Chicago and how serious this is and
I'm gonna fight and no, we don't want you to die like it.
Yeah, and then actually Michael Bay knows nothing about consistency of tone. He's
just like, all right, now it's funny, all right, now it's
sexy. And I can never find there's problem with the first one. Three
I can't follow the robots when they fight, like it's just gotten better at
it. But you're right, it's just they really started like coloring them more
because the first one just like gray versus gray, and then and shot up
way too close for you to tell one robot and the shaky cam. They
move it back a little bit. They don't use the shake cam as much,
and they use slow mo like nuts. It's a lot of slow mopping
robots, and like the Red Shirt robots, Like I don't know where all
these like the septicons are coming from, Like what Cybertron? What the cyber
space bridge? Gotta get the energy on space bar the space bridge, I
don't know. There were there were no Red Shirts in the cartoon, and
they got a high jack to drive the car. Nobody ever done the space
bridge to bring the energy on to Cybertron. So they do mention energon I
think in the movie, but they never show the cubes. That's all I
loading cubes into sound wave about the matrix of leadership really yeah really yeah?
But not well that's in two right, Remember that we see Transformer Heaven.
Remember how not even goes to Transformer Heaven and it's told by like the transform
Elder gods to go back. Really yeah, you really need to see if
you think if you are this angry about three, really need to see two
Transformer Heaven Transformer Elder Gods like for how much? For how much worse?
It like you'll come back and say, yeah, they cleaned it up.
You'll be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, made some some
notab because you're you're you're missing the dip into You're going from one really second
act and being like why I don't why would they go this direction after the
first one? I remember like tearing up and the movie when the Matrix of
Leadership has passed Loan when prime is given it to seven, I would cry,
Right now, do you put that loaded up on YouTube because you saw
when you were seven? Yeah? Well I think if a kid saw this
and when he was seven, he would probably vomit. Yeah, gonna say,
do you think our seven year old kids totally into New Transformers? Yeah?
You think billion dollars. You know what didn't come from Kids are into
whatever you're put in front of them. SCOTL Skylanders, don't. I don't
know any better. I'm into Skylanders. Shelby was saying his daughter's like into
Spiro, yeah, which is like a crate reticulous concept of like, wait
a minute, there are people that are into Spiro and there's no cartoon,
there's no I think I'm telling them. When I signed it for the website
so that I could use my Skylanders in a bunch of really bad flash mini
games. The email it's sent said that your child has signed up for an
account on this website, because it didn't ask for your email, asking your
parents email, which I thought about my mom's email dress in there. But
she probably would have been really confused. Probably she would have said no,
yeah, exactly, no, no you are too old. She would just
say this is not age appropriate for ye. What we need to talk.
Go look at some pornography I've sent you playing put trigger Happy onto the Power,
the Portal of power. I need to get a chop chop, that's
right, where does that chop chops? I almost ordered a chop chop,
uh, but I would have had to order the separate one because the adventure
packs are not are not sold via Amazon Prime, and I couldn't. That
means I couldn't have it tomorrow. If you can't have it tomorrow, it
does not matter, right, limited time man, before the Skylanders craze passes.
Okay, yeah, let's do that, all right, they'll have that.
Okay, pick me up, pick me up? Serious? Yeah,
And if we're gonna do video of this, I want to. I'm gonna
turn into it and we're gonna produce the best dumbest coverage that we can produce.
Jeff explain Skylanders all right, So Cooks at Home through the eighties through
uh, you know, for generations, people have used toys and cartoons and
and yeah, like like as a means to sell products, you know,
Transformers the cartoon. Like. The argument glad about it was that it was
little more than an ad for the toys. I disagree because there were such
heavy stories in there, but they were also highly effective. They were highly
effective advertising, So it wasn't even deeper than that. Remember that, remember
that Captain Power stuff where you could actually shoot at the TV show. Yeah,
yeah, you bought the toys to shoot it. At your TV,
Jeff and I have watched No, no, no, that's the laser tag.
Captain Power was the video tapes. Yeah, it was video taps.
There was also a daily show, but they only made like eight episodes or
something like that. There were these like crazy glowing red and white spots on
the enemies and you actually shoot at them, and then and the gun with
the ship, which was a gun, would keep score. You would have
to look away from the TV with the pistol or the space ship when bad
things were on screen that we're shooting at you and have to go back time
crisis. But it was just using like you know, like zapper gun just
like yeah, so you'd record it and you'd pause the tape on the thing
you're supposed to shoot and just pull a trigger and over every order again until
you win. But if you ran out of points, if you got hit
too much, the dude would eject like there's like a motor in there,
who'd pop out of the spaceship. It was awesome, fucking awesome and also
end. Yeah, and the Captain Power. The production on the on the
show itself, lots of lots of uh like crazy proto cg on there well
it's that and also some very primitive like blue screen stuff like real not green
screen, definitely blue. That stuff we were watching yesterday, the Nightmare,
the clips you were sending me of that. Similar, oh great, similar
level of bad. Great. I need to have some UK friends and and
some time your series series over there, not seasons gets straight so Skyland.
So it brings us to Skylanders, which is kind of the latest twist in
this whole, like nefarious, like you get this, and then you need
to get these, then you need to get this. So what it is
is you go by the starter pack and you will gets seventy bucks available on
all platforms and even its a PC version even yeah and Mac yeah yeah,
yea, well no the game oh crazy, so you waste. Yeah,
they sell a package that says that's called PC slash Mac. That's insane out
there. That's so you get the power the Portal of Power, which is
this USB cable that leads to this this little base that you can put your
dudes on close and it glows when you plug it in. So that's great.
Color cycles, yes, color cycle, that's great. You get three
dudes, you get Spiro, trigger Happy and gild something the fish guy with
a spirit. Yeah, get murlock looking dude. Uh. And so the
idea is that you're playing if you get the same three and if three,
so there's he's a fire type, magic magic, Spiro is a magic type,
trigger happy, he's a tech, and the other guy's water type,
and that there's already a strong Pokemon. Yeah, they're like they're like eight
types. They're thirty two different figures, but you only get the three.
And basically you take these figures they must have R F I D chips or
something like that in there, and you place them on the base and then
they are in your game and instantly, instantly, I mean there's an animation
that takes place. It's not like totally instantly. But and it's also a
unique idea. Yes, it is a unique idea because you're getting gear for
your dudes. You're collecting hats that will let you crip better. So this
is now Jeff's Spiro every time exactly. Yeah. Yeah, So it has
ownership, like it says you own this. You can give it a nickname
if you like, honey, make sure that you write your name and your
phone number on the bottom of it. Yes, basically, so you can
take your dude off and put another guy on at any time. So they
build puzzles in this kind of in this game based around you need to have
a tech guy right here to open this gate, and that's the puzzle.
It's there's a tech logo on the gate and it says you need to have
a tech guy on the gate. Right if you lose that toy your bone,
Well, no, no, you're buying another one. Yeah, more
of the point. You don't have one to begin with, right, what
do you mean, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, so I do have
a tech guy. But yes, there are eight types or something like that
across all of them, so you're not gonna have all of them. You're
not gonna be able to see the entire game right out of the gate.
And you know, the different characters have different abilities. So Spiro and shoot
fire and does like a fire charge. Trigger Happy has guns and he also
throw golden safes that appear out of nowhere, like I don't know what's happy.
And then the other guy has like a water cannon that is like Mario
Sunshine style, and also a harpoon like a spear gun. And then since
he's a water guy, he can cross water so you'll find water, you
can swim across it to get to the treasure chest on the other side more
hats. You can kind of see where this goes because they have thirty two
different dudes and across eight types. So so if I was going to buy
a dude on his own at the store, yeah, what's that caught?
Like, what's the So the pricing seems to be somewhere between eight and ten
dollars per dude. But they also have produced three packs that are three packs
for twenty Okay, so you can get chop Chop, which we encountered.
So we found a gear that only Chop Chop can wear. It's not even
like class specific. It is dude specific specific. Dude Pacific, which is
my new beach broadcast show that I'm working on, Stabut and next four.
We're gonna take take some time with this one. Yes, So when you
find the chop Chop gear, it's like, hey, do you want to
watch a little video of chop Chop And they produced movies for this. Chop
Chop just run around of the swoord just effing guys up, and you're like,
that guy looks awesome. We gotta go buy that I need some chop
chop mom. So if that's if that's locked in, if that's hard coded,
which I assume it is, everybody's gonna encounter chop chop first. There's
gonna be a run on chop chop. So we need to buy. So
we need to get all the chop, yes, before people realize, oh
shit, ain't it chop chop to get in here. Oh god, it's
gonna be a terrible But so, okay, so you've got three yeah,
you'd say there's eight types. Yes, so you need to see everything in
the game you're gonna regarding disregarding the gear thing, like the character specific gear.
You need to buy five more of these dudes, at least at least
to see like the different areas or whatever. Yeah. So like another like
four's not necessarily full on areas though, Like when when when they have these
gates that you can only open if you're a specific dude. It's just there's
some treasure, some coins or something over there. It's not like, oh,
here's a whole level that only this guy can partake in, but by
worlds, right. Yeah, So the one thing I have bought so far
because I need to see how this works is they are selling something that is
like the Pirate pack. It's like some adventure world and it says, unlock
a whole new world in your game. It comes with a little fish creature,
which imagine it's going to be another water type, which is a bummer
for us. Uh, this this Pirate I'm handling it pretty well. So
this Pirate themed world, which is a boat. It's a picture of a
boat on the box. I don't know what it's going to be. No,
I mean, like you have to put on the magic I don't know.
I don't know it. That was just the cover of the box.
I don't I don't know. I don't know how it's gonna end up.
I don't know how we get this into the game. That's why I ordered
it, because it's just it's you know, it's sins different code or that
door, and it's already on the disc and you've just yeah, imagine it's
all on the disc because it needs to be, because it's I mean on
all these platforms, like not all of them are going to be internets.
If you play, like with the handheld one, it's like these I'm not
sure three D one and I'm not so. The figures also come with codes,
and I imagine that something yeah. Yeah. Also, and when you're
playing all the three sixty, you can generate a web code that is a
code that I imagine you can enter on their website to update your dude with
the bright hat. If you're not playing on the internet. Hopefully it sinks
automatically. If you're on the internet. It would be a real bummer if
you had to exchange these codes around all the time. But the third thing
in that pack ghost swords sold ghost swords. As soon as I read ghost
words, like yeah, I'll buy that, that'll be here tomorrow. How
much was this World Adventure pack? Twenty twenty bucks? And I think uh
Will and Norm or Norm was looking at the like total cost for everything,
and it would be like four hundred bucks to get to get it all,
get all of these sky stuff. Jeff, you know what you have to
do. No, I can't do that. I can't come on it.
It's like a Star Trek online lifetime subscription to the Skyline. Alright, let's
do this. We'll go to Toys Rest to night. We'll see what's there.
If they have these three packs, I'll get them. The one packs
seem a little sketchy. I actually have they gave They gave characters away background
E three well before the game was out. So I think I have a
spire. It might just be a Spiro if we get like a backpack generator
and we just we basically the three sixty run in on a battery, get
this game, bring your portal there, and just put the boxes on top
of the better idea because yeah you can. You can hold the figures like
I don't know, three inches above it and it'll still read. We get
all the gear and then we leave. That might that might work. But
what might also work is cloning the RF ideas. Assuming it's using ideas.
I can't magic in there. I mean I just don't know, Like,
yeah, it doesn't pretty much the two choices. If it's not our if
idea, it's probably magic. So I mean, I don't know what else
broadcasts that passively as a chip from those things. Very dust works pretty well,
I don't know, it screams at it. I mean, I'm just
saying, I literally don't know. So let's crack open. See it's guy.
Yeah, I do want to yon as soon as I'm sure that we
can do that without breaking it. We will totally break one, yeah,
and figure out and look at its insides. Uh. But so what's the
actual game. Yeah, there's a game actually worth playing. It's a kid's
game, but like, what what is it. It's it's sort of a
top down, like fixed camera's perspective, Like you don't have camera control.
It's real, real simple. You're just kind of walking around the world busting
stuff up. Uh. I shot a bunch of trees and coins came out.
You're fighting any dude. Yeah, you're finding some dudes, uh,
and and doing some jumping. There's like jump pads that you can bounce on
to get up to hire areas and stuff. And yeah, you're you're fighting
dudes. There's a battle mode so you can do two player competitive TV.
Yeah, so you can put two Skylanders on the on the base. The
base like the bottom of it says power like Portal of Power for Xbox three
sixty like on the sticker on the bottom is. But yeah, it had
like the all the breakaway cable stuff. But I wonder if that's just they
had to meet Microsoft's requirements. They had to make one of those and maybe
the rest are all t but then you also able to plug that into your
computer. Yes, and it worked on that Yes. So for the so
I mean there's a PC version of the game. But also they have a
website where you I installed the portal drivers for my Mac. Great idea.
Always it's just all random drivers for total bullshit. And and when you when
the installed process for these drivers finished, it pulled up a date pop the
terminal windows that process completed. Really elegant stuff. Yeah, it's not going
to freak out enough once that, Once that process was done, I could
totally you know, scan my Skylanders into these awful flash games without entering the
code. Instead, you do. You have two options. You can enter
a code or put them on the base. Of course I was like,
ooh, put them on the base. The magic work. And one of
the flash games is like a really badding re Birds clone, like really bad.
It's gotta be weird to be Ted Price looking at this game being like,
yeah, like we what happened dudes? Iron that first game, the
first game they made, the first three Yeah they created and that was bought
by Vivendi. Yeah, when the crash like all the Crash bandicoot stuff,
But this is like the most interesting thing that has been Spiro related in since
those three games as far as I'm concerned, Yeah, totally like good or
bad. Like it's at a certain level, it's a kid's game, so
yeah, like we can talk about and and like I think about like that's
what guys. The kid's game is not super engaging to me. Yeah,
but it seems well made for what it is, and at least from like
the business pert perspective of it, it is like nefarious and awesome. It's
interest. It's totally interesting. Yeah, and I bet kids would be totally
into But the only cash is that none of these figures actually move or do
anything, so they're just we're not using for the game. You can't.
There's nothing cool you can do with them. Can you imagine the tears when
your kid takes there because you said all the gear attaches to a specific thing,
Yeah, but you take it to school, it's lost, it gets
stolen, and all of a sudden, that get all your gear is just
going Yeah, totally like you're leveling that dude up and unlocking additional attacks and
stuff like this totally gets swiped and then the options you have when you have
it on the base, you can actually reset it, right, So if
you're if you swipe one and used one. Yeah, if you steal some
kids thing and it's got his nickname and his ownership on it, totally get
away scot free. That's terrible. And being a kid's tough. I think
I think it's weird that they don't randomize any of that. You can't buy
the starter pack with different people, so like you and I, if I
bought it, we have the same guys. It's not like it just over
Well, I've got a sorcerer type. You know. The early parts of
the game are a tutorial like in Nature, so it makes sense for them
to be able to assume that you have one of each of those three types.
But like, I've got to buy an expansion pack to open up a
new area. Everybody who, everybody who is in on this has to buy
something. Yeah, yes, everyone has ever or like you're the rich kid
and you buy them all and then you just come over my house that you
can't touch mine. I think you play two player with with Skylanders that are
owned by the same person if you want also, it's not but I want
this gear. Yeah, I want to happen online, right, Uh No,
No. Also, all the achievements on the three sixty version are tied
to primary profile only, so you wouldn't even get points if you went over
to someone else's house and played have you tried? We should get all right,
I should get one and was trying. What happens if you're plugging two
portals the same three sixty? What happen? It's the only one way to
find out. What if you get two portals and then you put one portal
onto the other portal? Or what if you put a portal in the Skylander
in range of both portals? Stop there, there's five USB ports on that
thing. Then a hot, going hot chick comes out of the computer and
five that's insane, you're a madman. Spill coke on the portal? Yeah,
and then uh, and then weird science happens up. I made a
dragon, lady, I don't know, and chick turns into a pilot.
The answers to Spiro, it's kind of hot. Just half dragon got tail
for days. Well, thank you for that extension. Skylanders update, Jeff,
I'm glad I could help. I look. I look forward to hearing
more about this, and I can't wait to get to toys, taking your
credit cards away, taking taking all your cash. I'll lock you up for
a week. Now, he's just gonna have to steal. Now, he's
just gonna gona you can't be trusted. It goes way further back and deducting
a service. It's gonna be hanging out at the school. I got that
chop chop. You like that chop chop? I got level chop much chop
chop chop chop. You can be like on the other side of the channelingk
fins like trying to like fit the figures through chop chop. But you look
like I got eight. You look like a kid who knows quality. I
get you chop chop, but give you one Aquiferians. That's right, just
give them a taste. I'm just gonna give you this one for free.
I like you. You're smart kid. You're smart kids. Just come back
to me when you need something or what if it really is writing back to
the figures, like the data so that you know you could What if you
could hack those and just hack all the gear onto one and just start selling
boot legged like level maxed out Skylanders. It's like, yo, man,
this one you put it in the whole game goes upside down to be even
better, though, if you could just start manufacturing your own RFID chips and
putting them in Bootleg. Actually Spart Simpson put it on there and then Spiro
appears. That's actually what I want to do is take other action figures,
like take these chips out of these dudes and put them into other stuff.
Oh yeah, I mean not that it would change what the game did on
I just like Chop Chop, that's what you're talking about. Take this marital
aid and slap it on the power base trigger happy chop Chop indeed, or
you just you know, take it down to just the RFIDA or whatever the
whatever the chip is that's from that on there. Yeah, and you're just
carrying around super incognito, slap your wallet on it. Oh it's a robot.
Oh shit, it's a robot. Put him into Transformers. Yeah.
Yeah, sky's the limit, because that's what Activation will probably do next if
this does well, Sure, that's actually a great idea. Yeah, Ship,
we've also got I contacted mister John Vigniaki, and uh, it's gonna
send us some of those cars to iPad Toys. I think Will has those
did he did he get him already. I think he bought the wrong ones
at first. He didn't eat he bought. He bought a bunch of cars
to toys. Yeah, I just have all these cars toys. It was
a lot too. Yeah, it was like like ten or twelve or something,
big old pack awesome. But yeah, I think Johnny's gonna send a
couple of those. I'm curious to see because the kind of this, you
know, similar idea of take a toy, place it on the iPad screen
screen, so it's like the bottom of each toy has like a different it's
it doesn't have as much stuff. It's not like r ida, right,
that's a different pattern of conductive. So it touches the screen in a set
pattern and that's how they dictate. Yeah, and the app itself is free,
so you're just buying the toys. But that stuff, I want to
see what that looks like, because that seems like it could be I don't
know, more weird kids stuff. Yeah, I just totally like even if
this is like exploitative, like all kids toys are always exploitative, Like it's
they're always designed to try and goose you for a little more for fucking you
know, Castle Gray Skull or whatever. I got a thing that might not
be exploitative. Why not let me get my profile on an RFID tag that
I can attach to my keychain and then let me just scan that in forneverther
three sixty so I don't have to like recover a profile anytime. Yeah,
okay, because I love it, I'll let you do that, all right,
I think about it. Who can I call? Uh? Yeah,
that'd be great. I know it would be great if you could hack the
portal of power to scan my profile. Yeah. Yeah, I should just
get a little bobble ahead of me, and I just don't want to put
it. That's what I carry around. Just dig out my babble ahead of
me and put an RFID in it. Chop chop, Yeah, exactly.
All right, we'll table this Skylanders discussion. He further Skylanders discussion for next
week once we get to all this stuff. So yeah, look forward to
that part two. I don't want to have inaccurate information until then. Hey,
mister Vinnie Caravella, Hey man, I've been just working on my RFI
D login system. What you've been playing in? Uh beat Resistance three three?
If you have any question about what number game you're playing this year,
it's probably the third one. For a second, I thought you had maybe
played a game called Beat Resistance, and I was just say, that sounds
like a really kick out third one Beat Resistance. I can't believe I missed
the first two. Damn it. It is a good This is a big
year for the thirds. So get with a kill Zone three, System three,
Gears of War three three, Uncharted three, Uncharted three, Batman two
three. Right, I'll take that. That's a two three mast fact three
would have been, would have been, would have been, would have should
have Elder Scrolls four three? Anyway, beat it. That game is pretty
good, except for the parts where you had really weird, you know,
a much different experience with the game scripting than I did. Yeah, so
at least five times five and maybe not three, and maybe at most five
times, Uh, I had to reload uh checkpoints and saves because the scripting
would get hung up and not moved me on to the next sequence, so
so like, and for very obvious reasons, sometimes sometimes not so obviously,
like one time I got done with this big old firefight, this this diorama
esque sequence, right, like, oh my God, things are happening.
All this crazy stuff is happening. And then I finished a battle. I'm
just hanging hanging out there. Nothing's happening. I'm talking to Brian, You're
like we beat it, like okay, great, and then Jeff, you're
hanging out. They're just standing there. And then Brad is stuck in a
car, like clipped halfway through a car. I was like just just like,
you know, why get out of a car, Brad. And I'm
like, I bet Brad has to go walk over two feet to go trigger
the next sequence. But since Brad is stuck in the Brad's also girl,
she's stuck in a car, it's not gonna happen. So I have to
reload fight through that hole, you know, battle again. And then sure
enough, after the battle has done, she walks over two feet and it's
like let's go, and then it goes and then it saves the check one.
So that happened about four or five times. Like dude to just be
crouched forever and with a nicon over his head. I'm just walking around him
in the circle. Will be like, I know you're the guy who's gonna
open the door. Just open the door, you're not gonna open the door.
Finally reload, fight that whole battle again and he's like, great job
and one that's all of them and opens the door. How do we go
open the door for you? Sound like Metal of Honor. Yeah, So
like that that happened about that specific style of the MPC not doing anything probably
happened about three times. And two times an enemy would clip through a wall
and you have to kill all the enemies and like I had to go hunting
around listening for where the enemy is in the wall and then use something that
had like an area of effect to kind of blow through a walk a grenade
or something, or they can technically go through it, yeah, or use
the to pretty much shoot through the wall and find it. But like hunting
him down by sound like listerally like see I think he's here, Okay,
I think he's he's like shooting up through the wall. I do. So
that helps. That helps. So that that was annoying, But the game
is actually really good. So like that technical stuff aside, The weapons I
thought were fantastic. They have an upgrade path for weapons where you're actually collecting
points as you use the weapon. So yeah, like ratchet style, so
like, uh, you know, not coincidentally like ratchet style. So the
great thing is, though, if you die, all the progress she made
on the weapon sticks with you, so you literally just like you can grind
through it and the upgrades are meaningful. So it's like it's not just these
these bullets are more powerful. Yeah, it's like the shotgun goes from like
regular shotgun to like the bullets are incendiary, So it's like now everything's lighting
on fire, and that makes you want to use every weapon. The weapons
are good on their own right, but it makes you kind of wanted,
like the next upgrade for this sounds kind of awesome. I'm gonna use this
until, you know, until I get it. So that was really fun.
The story is much better than two because it has basically because there's a
story with two. Yeah. Uh, and it kind of more of a
sequel to one, or does it just it's separate kind of like Insomny said,
man, we introduced a lot of mythological elements to our story that we
don't really have any way to explain. Or maybe they're leaving open questions so
that when they're done with this franchise that other developers could come in and answer
them for them. But it feels like a side story, like a really
good side story, like it tends does carry forward what happened in one in
two and you're trying to stop the camera menace, and but it's very loose
how how it connects, and it's sort of irrelevant, like you don't have
to have played one and two. You can jump into three and and really
enjoy it. And the new engine is great, like the lighting and looks
pretty amazing. Uh. The but the story does not feel like it is
the end of anything. It answers no questions, lingering questions about the about
the universe, you kind of, I mean, in a nutshell the they're
they're trying to cool the planet because the camera like a cold and like you,
I liked, everybody likes it at sixty five under, so like they're
trying to drop the thermostat even lower. And to do that they have they're
also opening up a wormhole. Uh you know, I don't know they're bringing
even though like the little journals in the game insinuate that they've been here,
like war the world style for which is interesting, except it's like hidden away
in a notebook that is option also, so like by the end of the
game, you were basically just trying to kind of you're fighting your way to
stop in New York City, this one thing that's happening there, trying to
start global warming. Yeah, yeah, it's right. So basically just buying
a bunch of Aquinette and just kind of holding them the button for about eight
hours, depending on if you find everything or not. You're holding down the
spray cand for about eight hours. You play with the move for that.
No, I didn't pull down the trigger. No spray in my hair.
So like it's it's a cool game. It's really really good. I wish
I didn't have those moments that yeah, with those bugs in it, but
the game is really weird. Weapons, like the Vomit weapon is probably the
best. It's like this goo gun that you shoot down enemies and then it
causes them to vomit and then explode and you have a The alt attack is
like just this giant glob that goes and sprays in front of enemies, and
it sounds like that's how you kind of broke some of the scripting, Yeah,
because I was I don't know they could have been because I was like
literally it's a big area of effect attacked. That's like, if you're in
this clap poison cloud, everybody's just gonna like start wretching and kind of like
blowing up. So I was just like, I'd see guys and i'd fired
way far before I had triggered, and he be like, oh my god,
those are the bad guys. And so I'd walk up and then they'd
all be throwing up on the ground, and then the guy I was with
wouldn't know what to do, and you just stand there and they're like,
fuck time paradox. You weren't pretty bad way to blow up though. Yeah,
it was disgusting too. It's just kind of awesome, Okay, I
think I feel better. Oh, giant sist and then these these giant puss
things start growing on them until they start coming at you, and then you
shoot them and they just explode into another puss cloud. It's really good.
I actually I thought the game was really good. Yeah. I liked it
better than Kill Zone three. Uh, I don't know the direct comparison.
It's just because they're PS three first person shooters. He didn't you can also,
Rico wasn't there. Also, I made Rico throw up and kicked them
out of Resistance three. Uh No, the characters are all actually pretty good
and they try for a lot of gravitas and it worked mostly until the crypting
would get me and be like video game crap, video game. So yeah,
I recommend it. Yeah, it's it's good. You haven't played the
first two. I didn't try any of the multiplayer. I assume it's in
there. You might. You might. Almost sounds like you almost might be
better off if you haven't played the first time, because those didn't exactly lay
like a great foundation, and they don't really reference that much. It's like
they have like Nathan Hale Memorial cemetery. I think you're right. Yeah,
don't read the Wikipedia like story summaries for the first two because then you're like,
wow, this story is real deeps Like they don't. They just go
surface level the actual story. They have a previously previously in resistance thing that
is as long as it needs to be and basically sets it up. It's
like this virus entered her atmosphere in the nineteen hundred chimera taking over. They're
fighting their way across the world. Stop them. That's it. Yeah,
Nathan Hale tried to stop them. It didn't work out. You're the guy
you were into without spoiling some major stuff into the squad member into two and
then you take him over or whatever. They spoil that In that opening thing,
they say, here is everything that happened. Yeah, yeah, but
but it's it's it's a pretty good game. I definitely recommend playing it.
And then I tried some rage h and I guess they patched a bunch of
stuff on the PC. They did put out one pretty significant patch, yeah,
which would expand the PC option beyond the first that was the there is
a bigger patch because the first thing was actually a driver update, not a
patch to the game. Oh yeah, yeah, I'm talking about Since then
there was an actual patch to the game itself. So this adds options for
like v sync and and some other like texture fixes and stuff not in there.
Before the hardware level, there were zero. Their whole philosophy was figured
out sixty frames a second or bust, so the engine would actually dynamically like
turn features off as it was playing to keep the frame right high. So
they just didn't offer any like manual options because it's it's a noble goal.
But at the same time for the PC for that not for that audience.
Uh so those those things in there, you know, if that's if that's
true on the yeah so so an example, on the p S three version,
which is the one I played through, you'll have instances where the resolution
drops too barely above high definite seven twenty P and you'll what happens is like
it'll you don't really notice it when you're playing the game, but if it
occurs during a moment where, for example, you switch to a menu,
all of the text and graphics are garbled, and then you'll switch out,
turn around a bit, and then the resolution will pop back to where we're
supposed to be. And that's that way. And but that would happen in
just like walking forward like that. It wasn't like there are eight enemies on
screen like it was just the game was in real you know, yeah,
dropping features and resolution gards and maintain this EXTPM or second which must be also
related to you know, how the texture popping is working. And yeah,
so it random times I would just go to like create an object and it
would just be garbled mess that I had to exit out, wait for the
resolution to switch, and then go back in so, yeah, it's definitely
doing that on the console side, is I think other people determined to a
very lesser degree that happens on the Xbox. But yeah, it doesn't drop
the solution as much, so you don't see it. That's kind of interesting
though. Well, they you know, they picked one thing that they were
going to focus on and nail, and they did, but they did it
at the expense of some other stuff. Sure, you know, kind of
have to. Yeah. So the only big thing that I ran into on
the PC booting it up fresh from that patch was there was horrible, horrible
tearing, like maybe the worst I've ever seen. It was pretty bad on
our machine here. Yeah, and it happened. It didn't happen to fix,
but it happened on every move like it just big band. But I
couldn't. I couldn't get it to save the turn of vsing option on,
and so I had to do some monking around and go into the graphic drivers
for and video and say, okay, add rage to this. Here's a
special case. And I had to say, like, let rage decide,
and I think in my global options I had let the game decide. And
then once I had added that specific clause into the you know, the logic
of the video cards, like the video card drivers, yeah or something,
and then it would then it would stay on, and then it fixed it
and it was fine. I mean, it's still got a very slight texture
popping. I haven't gotten that far in the game, but it seems to
be working fine now I just play in Rage. There's there's a there's a
bigger patch actually on the way for the textures right console commands too. I
can't remember exactly. All I know is the Carmack's been out there talking about
it, saying, like, you know, this is basically going to be
the best version of the game, like something. They're I think they're like
fixing all the stuff that they know is wrong. He's been out there saying
crazy technical shits. Yeah, so there's a work you can also get in
there and you can protect shade. There's also rockets flight maps. See you,
I can say so, Johnny, you can enable if you if you
weren't to really dig in and enable some or edit some config files, you
can enable the bigger textures. I don't, I'll let it go even mega
megast so there's like the a K textures and it forces the high risk textures
rather than doing the layered If you go on like the Steam forums, you
can find all the launch options. That makes the billion things. You kind
of have to do that if you want to maintain the achievements, because the
moment you go into the console disables the achievements. But you can get it
to do console commands prior to the executable running, so that you can maintain
the achievements. That seas right, yes, yeah, So the biggest thing
I'm running into now after the vcing fix was the one place with the controller
or the one place of the mouse and keyboard, and the vehicle controls on
the on the keyboard are kind of laime, but the gun play with the
mouse is really good. Yeah, So it's I can kind of have both
going at the same time. Trade off there, ye little trade actually can
you actually just like pick up the controller, but but all the prompts on
the screen will be for the control there, she gets you should get a
wheel. I should just get That's what I was thinking. Just get foot
pedals, get a racing wheel mount in the middle, so then you just
like put your hands around the wheel for any of the first version controls and
then just come back and grab the wheel and I just give you the wireless
speed wheel and you get one of those wireless three sixty things for PC,
and I bet it would just totally work. And think like I like gun
yes and breaking bed. Yes, that's right then, great man. I
saw I finished season four, like what is what is it? It's at
least three different episodes that that game is in, right, yes, My
favorite one though, and the box will be laying about an episode. My
favorite one is there's that fight. There's a tussle and like a bookshelf gets
jostled and like the copy of Raids like falls very prominently in the frame.
It's crazy because it's just it's it's this natural like fight between two characters and
somebody gets slamm against this bookshelf and it you have to wonder it was like
was there a pa right off the frame like that, like like very carefully
dropped at the copy of the games into place, as I also saw why
you thought if we didn't haven't have the discussion here about the opening of that
game, and like I thought there was a spaceship, I probably would have
thought there was a spaceship. And really because it's a big, spiky hunk
of rock though. Yeah, but who knows that. I mean, it
didn't look like a bad space. Yeah, We've seen plenty of Aliens spaceships
that were just hunks of rock. I mean, you're ranted. I knew
with the story going in. Uh but right because they had someone else wrote
in and said I'm with you until until you had that conversation, and I
thought that you were living in space and crashed. Yeah, And they don't
really they don't do a good job of saying like these are bunkers and stuff.
I mean, I knew it because we had talked about it. But
if they just if they just come up and said, like you know,
fall out right, all right, here we go. When they call they
call your they call them arcs, right, the underground things like that arc
kind of yeah. And they also they say APOTHEI is on its way.
They don't say, like, you know, this killer asteroid that's gonna wipe
us out. So yeah, it is. It is not set up very
I don't know if it sets it up more as you go a couple hours
in. Okay, understand all this stuff, but yeah, I could definitely
see that. Uh yeah, games games close so far, I shot a
bunch of guys. They animated really nicely and kicking some He he doesn't he's
not in it enough, like he should have been the main thread. Then
I will know to shavor him when I finally it would have been great if
he had come back later in the game to lead the movement. So now
I guess I'm I'm doing the Rage thing and we'll see. We'll see how
that goes. Trying to trying to catch up really quickly because it's happened.
There's Batman, I got data sex to finish up. Finish up Rage,
which isn't all that long, right, and the side question are pretty in
consequential, so you can kind of just mainline the story through it and listen
to hours and uh, and then I get Skyrim. You know, that's
that's gonna hits up. I'm I'm trying, and I was worried about it.
That's you know, as fixed length of time. Skyram is the one
I feel like, well, if you're if we're talking in context of you
know, what are we can argue about for Game of the Year, which
is pretty much what we're talking about here. Well, if you can,
you can play enough Skyrom to know if it rates for you without well,
he's also wants to play the I'm also hoping it's really enjoyable. Yeah.
And so as I put down Dark Souls for a bit, yeah, because
I reached a part. I reached a part where they're pretty much like,
great, you, you are doing really good here. Uh so there's four
other guys, now you need to go kill. And I was like,
okay, you're gonna tell me exactly what I need to do. And I
take a break out like where I'm at that they haven't give you really any
direction at all. Yeah. So yes, I opened up this like I
don't even call it like another act or whatever, but they're basically like,
you did all this stuff that I'm amazing. I didn't think you'd do it,
but hey, here's this next objective. And so it's very clear what
I need to go do. Put that down for a bit because I think
it's going to be a lot more of the same. I try it all
these other games that have come out. I beat the Gargoyles. That's good.
I rang the Bill. I need to get back to that. You're
still playing, Yeah, off and on when I have time, I can't
play it for long stretches, like people like these Matt Rory's of the world
who were playing forty fifty hours. Like, I don't get it. I
like to play about like an hour. Yeah, I grind and get a
little for the progress save then then if I have any frustration in that hour,
I haven't lost that much time. I like, if I just get
one room forward, yes, go back exactly. Put that added to them
my memory of the pattern. I'm fine with that because because you have to
memorize all that stuff, there's so much repetition involved that, Like it's just
just really hard to do the same thing like five six times in a row
and then keep playing the game and then go and memorize a new section at
the same I like that game. It's treating me all right. Now recent
understanding with Dark Souls, Viney, you play anything else? No, So
it was a rage and resistance resistance. I don't think there's something I not
a bitter up that Xbox or something, but health I remember, I don't
know play games watched Hannah, how is it? I haven't seen that yet?
All right, Yeah, it's okay, Patrick lepic Hey, how's it
going all right? Cool played the use of skyroom. Yes you did.
Yeah, are we gonna like that game? Yeah, you're gonna like that
game. Wait from the guy who doesn't like fantasy, right, that's right.
So it takes place in space. It's like an hour with a sword,
and then you fight like eight dragons and then you take off. There's
an arc. Okay, there's the authority fly those dragons into space. So
I didn't I didn't really like I didn't dragon cherryot. I don't really like
oblivion. Why didn't you like Oblivion? I thought the combat was really boring
and the area as we're not Yeah, I mean me and him had a
conversation about this last night, and it's partially I think me and and then
you have similar personalities and that we have to do everything that we see and
like that. It was literally doing the same thing over and when when you
have that mentality and you're just the completion is the attitude, but then nothing
interesting to do to problems. Attitude makes them go and see all of the
kind of inconsequential site. That's why it's a case where the achievement system like
actually works out pretty well because if you view that as completing the game,
like they've got all the major like faction quests and all that stuff for Oblivion
are are given achievements, not stuff. So by doing all that stuff,
I felt like I saw everything that game had off. Yeah. I bought
Oblivion on the PC, which has no achie. That was at the dawn
of the achievement of ages. Really and well that the way that I played
Oblivion was thirty hours of going in every single cave and every single like elders
ruin that I found, and then never playing it again. If that had
been the game it was, it was awful. It was awful. The
games should have been complete each faction and like you unite the factions of something.
Yeah, close the OBLIVI yeah, yeah, because that was the most
interesting stuff. By the end of that game, I was like running up
those stairs, like running past enemies to get their Oblivian gates. And they
were like they were like three they had like, for lack of a better
word, like three tile sets for every war room, like three different ones,
like the goldish looking one, the bluish glowy one, and like he
just there was never anything interesting at the end of them. No, and
they all looked exactly the same. The Oblivion Gate stuff was so repetitive and
monotonous, and I thought the combat, the melee stuff in particular, it
was was just kind of boring. It was just like swinging that sword the
guys are just running into they bounced back and forth and get on top of
rock and kill something. Yeah. I felt it's kind of cludgy. Yeah.
So, and also there were like two voice actors, so yeah,
so I don't come from good Yeah, there are two of them, all
Patrick Stewart. And again, though you like one context of the time of
kind of it was that was like when you were like, god, I
need something to play on my brand new Expox six. They came out four
months after launch, perfectly with it. Yeah, So tell me about Skyrim
now. So one, it's it's gorgeous, like a like absolutely gorgeous.
Like, so, I come up from the Fallout perspective, you know,
I played basically an hour of Oblivion, uh, and then I played like
an hour of Fallot three, an hour of fallow in New Vegas. The
game player is really familiar if you played a Fallout one. So they've adopted
like the cinematic kills from Fallout three. So that but no vats, but
but it's like, you know, so when you're your last strike will sometimes
trigger like a really cool animation sequence, but it's still as awkward as it
wasn't fallout where it's like not quite a cool camera angle. It just kind
of like pulls out and then you're pretty sure something cool will have. Mysterious
stranger shows up dumps three rounds, but the stranger I didn't get fall enough
in the combat to see if the game breaks sort of the combat meme of
oblivion and fallout, which is you're always running backwards for your points to recharge,
but they're but do you have like stamina, your stamina you have you
know, magic And the one of the things that I didn't get to is
that you know you have these dragon shouts, which is what you earn these
powers. You find them in the world by looking at different like you can
read dragon language or something. I'm not totally familiar on the plot, but
basically you see these words that gives you a power, but then you need
to kill a dragon in order to unlock that power. So like I found
a dragon shout, which a lot would basically let me do a force push,
and I didn't get but I kept dying to the fucking dragon, so
I never got to use that. But basically that would I can imagine that
kind of making the combat a little more interesting because you could get get guys
away by yourself some time. Yeah, you have a In terms of I
found the I found the combat pretty interesting because the new Favorite system, which
is basically how you equip things, so you have and I played on the
Xbox three SIXTI, so I'm not sure how that's going to change the PC.
But basically the the inventory system, when you go into it, you
can assign favorites and that's a sublist of your total inventory. And so if
you like like this particular spell, shield weapon, you know, that can
be your default, but you can also add others to your favorite based on
like these sets, are they individuals, not set? There's all. It's
just a it's a flown list and then when you're in combat, you hit
up or down and then it pulls up a favorite. It stops combat and
then you can hit yeah, hit left trigger, right trigger to switch over
to some other spell. So you know, I had my setup was like
I had a shield and a fire spell. But then when I would run
out of magic, I would switch to a shield because magic was different than
stamina, so it would buy me some time while I went in for the
magic to recharge. But like, the dungeon themselves seem way more interesting,
Like so I only got to the first side dungeon, but there's actual like
I don't know if I believe in there were there puzzles in the actual dungeons,
like or was it just your fighting through some dues collecting loot get into
the puzzle. It might have been like got to find a key on a
dude to get was this stuff like that? So so well, okay,
I'll just list the puzzles here. So there are two puzzles in the first
major side dungeon that you can come to, and one was, uh,
when you pull this lever, a bunch of arrows shoot out you and you
see a guy laying on the ground who clearly pulled that lever and then died.
And then you look up at the top and there are three symbols and
this the missing there's a symbol missing in the middle. Then you look over
the left and there are three levers where you can you can switch the symbols
around. And so then you have to look in the environment find where that
stone fell down to figure out the three statues that you have to line up.
Then it disables the arrow as you walk through. Another one is you.
So one of the side quest is you have to go find this this
golden uh through what it's called, but it say this gold yes, and
it doesn't really matter. And so you come across this door and it's got
a bunch of symbols and there's really no discerning way to figure out how you're
supposed to open this. The game lets you open up every object and look
at it. Three models inspect it. So if you pull up the quest
object, flip it around, it shows you the sequence and then you have
to put that sequence in and then you move forward. There was stuff not
like God, but this is also these are quest so this is a mainline
quest. So this is actually making some of the stuff that you don't have
to do perhaps a little more interesting than didn't get didn't get too much into
it because I mean I played three hours, Like it's really overwhelming to start
a game like that, and like I have three hours? What the ship
am I going to do? I guess, yeah, because like do I
want to do the story stuff to want to just like go screw out in
the world and figure out what I can break. Do I want to even
rush at this point? Or is it still so early that I don't know
how any of the systems work because they start you forty five minutes in the
game, so like I don't So you didn't even see like the opening.
They were skipping over the intro and basically just starting you where you exit this
cave kind of like you exit the vault and fall out, and I think
this is where the game like forty five minutes must have been set up in
tutorial, right you can't really Yeah, now it's just all this stuff that
you had to play the game. Here's the world. Yeah, So I
like I jumped in. I figured, well, you know they're giving you
know, but that's gonna be the save. I'm probably like pre equipped some
spells and stuff like that, and encounter my first wolf and like, no,
nothing's equipped, Like I have no armor, equipped, no shields,
Like I'm just punching this a wolf with like this. Yeah, and a
certain love like kind of feel for pr that has to like present hard game,
Like you know, First Dragon Age was constantly plagued by you know,
here's here's the same and you've got you know, full party and like have
fun. Lack of context was a demo killer for games like Yeah, so
so this is kind of the best way to do is here's three hours.
Make of it. What you will give, you will come over to you.
If you're going to do something that you shouldn't shouldn't be doing, you're
gonna break the game. Uh. But like one of the things is the
weather effects are really incredible. So like when you're going up to that first
side quest, which is you know, in this in this this cave area,
Uh, the first time you come to it's completely nice looking, sunny
day, like totally normal. And then as you're going up this mountain starts
to get snow eier and snow eier, like to the point where you can
barely see anything in front of you, and like it's a really, really
damn good looking blizzards perfectly fine. Yes, you're fighting through this blizzard,
which makes even like normal combat scenario is kind of interesting because you're trying to
fight, but you're also trying to fight through this blizzard. And I'm not
sure if it changes dynamically or not, but as soon as I went down
the moutain it started raining. So the weather's changing pretty pretty often. And
it's just like the attention to detail, like to the point where I went
into one of the castle areas and there's a map on one of the tables
and you don't have to go look at it. There's no reason for you
to go look at it. And there's a bunch of little markers on the
map, and I thought, well, that's probably just something I could steal,
so it'll probably show up is red and I shouldn't steal it. But
if you examine them, those are actually legitimate map markers that add markers to
your map, And it's just like you don't have to go look at that,
it's just there, like it's one little like I imagine there'd be tons
of people that never ever come across that, But I was just kind of
a testament to it does to having made these games for as long as they
have to have these just crazy tiny details. Did you were you able to
check out the third person mode at all? Did you? Yeah? It
is better you're not going to use it. Yeah, okay, I imagine
that must only be there for people that just want to see what imagine with
Oblivion, they probably got a lot of people that never would have played a
game like that, right, Like the w when that came out, it
was just you wanted something for your Xbox. So I think the third person
is kind of just there for like people who are more into maybe action games,
and they're used to having a third person and that feels more natural.
It looks better. It's way better than it wasn't Oblivion or Fallout. But
like you're not gonna you're not gonna want to see you to see the armor
and stuff. Yeah, they get on my guy. Yeah, I can't
remember. I thought Moro Wind was third person, but was it not?
Maybe you could. I think that was another one where you could look at
it that way. But gosh, I think I don't know what happened.
Like I really love Moro Wind, Like I thought that game was amazing.
I don't know what changed. Maybe I changed between Moro Wind and Oblivion,
but I just did not dig Oblivion as much. So I'm hoping this is
like that attention to detail, like you said that they put the time in
to flesh out this big world because Oblivion just did not feel it was a
big world. Yeah, I just felt repetitive. Well, I mean a
Fallout like fallow Out three's main story was not that great, but the all
the other stuff around it, like the side quests, were way better than
any of the mainline stuff and can follow Out three, So I'm hopeful that's
going to be the same case here. But yeah, I mean, if
you've liked other beth As the games like this, this game looks awesome.
It's do you mess around at all excited? I know, like you can
equip the same spell in both hands to do like a better version of that,
or like we've saw some of that, yeah a few months ago.
Yeah, I think I didn't get far enough to to really see any of
that sort of stuff. But the the upgrade system is a combination of I
guess Oblivion and Fallout. So it's not just they've got you're not doing any
You're not gonna be doing any sort of like tying a rubber band around your
analog stick in order to jump to ninety nine. So like, for example,
when you're blocking or doing physical attacks or anything, you're those are going
up and you're getting rewarded as you're as you're in combat. But that feeds
into the perk system, which is in order to unlock certain things within the
skill tree. For like blocking, you have to get blocking to a certain
level, like thirty five forties. So it's not like you can just dump
a bunch of you're not dumping skill points. I think skill points are kind
of intimidating. Like that's just me as a guy that hasn't played a lot
of old school RPGs. So like when you get like a stat screen,
it's like, here's twenty, you have twenty points, just put them somewhere.
They really just a speech. I think it's I think it's just strength,
dexterity, and magic. Yes, it's those three. And then you
have perk points to go across like fifteen twenty different tributes and there's a speech,
there's a speech one, and like I was trying to like go through
some of them and write down some of the cool attributes. You can,
like like one of the perks would be like convinced the police to forget the
crime you just committed, and that's like a specific perk under the speech tree,
and you can like you can pay people using speech tree, so that
the middleware generated all these great dialogues really family. Yeah, I think they
went with talk engine for this one. Wow, talking engine, talk engine
degree. So they're they're back in supports just so much better. So does
that like things are red? Don't steal this? Yep? Okay, yep,
that's for stuff. I mean, are there are karma points or anything
like that. I'm no, I don't think so, okay, not that
I didn't steal anything. So I guess I I guess. I don't know,
but I mean, but you can you can you know that, Like
one of the first quests is like a really simple like setup of like morality.
Where do you run across this elf who has this he's in a competing
uh this love triangle, and so he's written a letter in the words of
the other guy to try and discredit him. And so you can either go
inform the other guy like, hey, this dude trying to suck you over,
or you can go to the other guy and tell that guy, hey,
this dude's trying to suck you over, And you can kind of play
the two sides. But can you get the girl? No? Maybe later.
I'm pretty sure same sex marriage is in the sky repisode. You know,
wait, you can get married. Yeah really yeah, not since Fantasy
Star three has video game marriage been so progressive. But can I can I
marry like a tire lady or lizard manage? In your species, marriage is
defined by a union of a human and another human. Take your human elf
marriages and get the hell out of here. I mean, Jeff, Jeff
brings up middleware flippantly, But I mean they've made so much noise about this
being like a new engine and stuff. Did it actually feel more sound like
the world, feel like it's put together better. I didn't run into any
of the weird glitches, but like I there were other I've read other write
ups for people you know, are walking along the line and just get stuck
in a hole. But I mean, but does this come out and said
like this is like this is pre alphab pre alpha bill and this from a
while ago, but it was like this was a stable code that was this
branch of the game as far as they figured writers would get was enough.
So the game has made you know, some approvements since then, I'm sure,
But yeah, it's a but that is the game, so it's gonna
be fucked up, Like I mean, that's just yeah, that's part of
it the price you pay for, like the size. Yeah, but the
game looks the world looks much much more polished, like it's it's come a
long way, like it's it's substantially above oblivion and follow three and yeah,
yeah it's it's much more a par with what you'd expect from a moor.
Again, they would have much more linear structure and more time to dedicate to
assets and detail. Sky. Yeah, dragons. Only playing three hours was
kind of a bummer. I tried to fight the dragon like four times,
and I kept like, do you want to try more time? Tell me
more about the dragon. Is he a talking dragon? Yeah? Dragon heils?
Yeah, dragon killing? Really talking in dragonese? Or like, hey
I'm flying, I'm a dragon. Are they like the gold hoarding kind of
dragons? A small style like a smag? I don't. I don't.
There's lots of different dragons, different tributes. I love. I love dragons
that aren't just beasts. I love it when a dragons like no I can
talk and I have desires for things like gold. So you start in the
world where people don't believe dragons exist, and then like dragons start appearing out
of nowhere. I think I think you're I think your character it's called like
a dragon born. Yeah, so you have some sort of connection to that,
and that's why you can read the language of the dragons probably, and
so the game you're half dragon, but you're I wish I was half dragon.
How do you know you've got some dragon in you? Would you like?
Yeah, what are you selling? Yeah? So yeah, you reade.
You start you start talking with a bunch of different characters about rumors about
dragons, and then you go to investigate the first like major quest as you
go to investigate where it was a room or dragon attack and then oh shit,
there's a dragon dragon confirmed shoots fire. He's powerful and he yells,
I'm gonna burn you. Weird? Was it a red dragon? The dragon
fight that I saw back in April, it just roared. I think it's
a blue dragon, just a monster, you know what? It sounded like
the dragon. I'm just gonna say the dragon was speaking. I'm pretty sure
it was speaking refined British accent. I don't think. I don't think it
was Sean Connery, maybe Patrick Stewart, Eliza would it was actually Spiro?
Yeah, somebody put somebody put out of the base. Yeah, it goes
in the sky rim. Did you see any of the any of the shouts?
The first Yeah was so the first one is is like a basically a
force push. But you have to kill you have to, you have to
you have to kill the first dragon to unlocked the ability to use that.
And I kept kill the dragon, kill the dragon. Maybe could have got
your speech up and talk the dragon out of it. Man, that would
be commitced the dragon to kill itself. That's right, and then get the
heart of the dragon. Chop Chop, Yes, shouldn't it shouldn't be my
charcter name, Chop Chop Chop Chop. I'm looking forward of that game at
some point. When is it? Do you remember? Love it? Yep?
Should It's almost done? Still alpha? Still isn't it? Isn't it
like three weeks? And then yeah, get that DLC probably a couple of
weeks ago. It was as stupid as is. They should totally just put
out new horse armor. Yeah, do you get a horse? I wasn't
able to afford it. It was a thousand dollars or a thousand jail or
whatever. Senny horse. There's a horse and you actually ride like fast travel?
No, you no, you ride it. I think I think you
can attack off of it too. What do I need? Where do I
need the pre order from to get the free horse? But like, shouldn't
that be the pre order bonus for for all it just like we came up
with like eight different body horse armor variants and you're gonna get one. Yeah,
and I want them branded. I want like the target yeah, exactly,
targets. But if it's just like actually just like billboard on the horse,
not like not not tongue dynamic ads for the for the company, for
the place that I'm advertising, advertising upcoming films, normal activity three this weekend
multiplayer stuff like you're there straight up like a subway trucker hat that you can
put on Nathan Drake around and the multiplayer well no, yeah, finally it
wasn't been missing. A dragon has a giant game stop billboard around his neck
to the gold chase. It just says, don't trade me in DLC coming
soon, please, you don't trade anything at discount. Patrick. Last week,
you me and mister Shoemaker here wheeled on over to Friday Friday Night.
Friday night wheeled on over to Double Fine. That did happen? And then
you came back here for the doctobercast after that. It was the best night,
but also the worst. I was when I was at home after because
I took off from the Double Fine thing early. When I was at home
watching the stream, and when I saw that you guys had brought a full
posse with you from the Double Fun thing, was like, oh God,
damn, but I wish I was there right now. Oh, it's pretty
good. This looks so much. When Karen shows up, you know it's
a good bad time. They brought I have sack of hairburgers. Yeah,
I saw the Hamburgers showed up and everyone got real excited about that. Karen
yelling sounds about right. Yeah yeah, But that's about my recollection of Then
the wave did not come, Yeah, Gary, not a big wave is
a real wet blanket when it comes to waves. No Google waves and no
real waves. Maybe it's a you know, British thing. Probably probably don't
wave so much. The people whole Navy events. They just fight each other.
Yes, the wave is soft. If you if you do a wave,
you get glassed, ye, so look out for that. Anyway.
Double five they were showing off a couple of things. Six amazing products.
So one of those things which count them off, which so Psychonauts for for
Mac yeah, yeah, Costume Quest for PC, yeah, which which came
out that night. They hit the launch button, like when the event started,
did they really? Which is sending steaming? Which is sending which is
sending Steam? No, all right, so their version of that is sending
Steam an email saying they already worked it out with them ahead of time.
Hey, we'll send you an email when our press event starts. Yeah,
and that's when you put it on. The other one is a valve actually
has like a big red button that is connected to Steam that when they put
their stuff out, they'll the team gathers round and they hit a big red
button actual physical reel, but there's actually like a lever. They pull it
like it's all yet they said, there's like actual Steam that comes out,
and every time they put out a new product, they all gathered together and
all his video of this everybody. So that's that's the best part. They
keep it for themselves. Yeah, I need Yeah, that's that's so awesome.
This gave Newell selected ceremonial knife and slater he cuts his own tongue and
the newest and most new bottle of interns cuts there. He stands before the
symboled employees and a loin cloth and takes a bite of the still beating heart
and then put then cleans that knife off and puts it back on the shelf,
never to be used again. I'm once per game. It's a great
place to work as long as murdered. That's great, all right. So
there's cost request PC, there's the Psychonauts stuff, Once upon a Monster,
the Trench DLC, Iron Brigade deals still Trench right now. It will be
Iron Brigade shortly, but it's only DLC for Iron Brigade. That delC does
not exist for Trenched. It'll it'll be Iron Brigade before the dec the title
up date turns it into Iron Brigade comes. Guys are being funny about not
remembering the previous name. Ye're really good about that. They did not say
Trenched one whatever it was called before. I don't. It's funny how you
can forget that Rise of the Martian Bear with actual bears with a mechanical bear
bear. Russian Martian Trenches. Yes, that's the name of l I feel
like I feel like they always some of this stuff. So they so let's
talk about the Iron Brigade stuff some I guess that's awesome. Uh it looks
like it looks like more Iron Brigade. It looks like more trenched, all
right there there, I will say it. I wanted more trench absolutely so
absolutely so when they when they put out that patch, that's gonna they got
no dates or prices for any of the stuff yet, but the title update
is really soon, yeah, and then a DLC is soon, so that
so that title update will and they were saying like probably like a month between
the two, yeah, and they want to get scheduled out. So that
tile update's gonna change the name of the game from Trench Time Brigade, and
it will also introduce one challenge mode level and that'll probably coincide with the launch
in other territories, right, yeah, Yeah, that's that's supposed to be.
So when it comes out in Europe as Iron Bride, everybody will get
everyone will get the patch that also introduces this challenge mode and changes the name
and then yeah, and then they kind of were saying like it with the
name, like you know, they'd like to keep a Trench to you know,
but if they don't make an Iron Brigade, then everyone can't play together,
right, so otherwise you starts splitting territories. In addition to they have
to just ditch the Trench name at this point if they want to do a
worldwide brand, they still call it your Trench. Yeah, everything else like
it, like, it's still the Trench Brigade. It's just the and even
like literally the title like you saw it during the Big Live Live, like
the title screen looks exactly the same, except instead where it says Trenched,
like the same font and everything is probotector is a photoshop later change. Yeah,
okay, yeah pretty much. But so then they've got a new campaign's
DLC campaign. Do we get another thousand points? Not a thousands? No,
no, no, it's because it's because that'll changed the name on the
back end to it'll it'll everything on dah for that. No no, no,
no, no, I imagine they will add points for this DALC patch.
I wonder if you'll be able to clear your system cash and then go
back and play Trenched. You should be able to. Yeah, it's usually
all that stuff works. So this is a cosmetic change for Trench. They'll
change the title screen. That's pretty much all you need to know. But
they're also but they're also adding the Challenge mode, which was okay, basically
you know, yeah, Horde mode, the thing that was missing from Trench
before. Once you got to the end, yea and so end in that
similar style, every five waves or something, you'll get some hot new piece
of loot. Cool. But then there's the the DLC Rise of the Martian
Bear which is coming out, which is paid later paid deals. Yeah,
that's that's proper downloadable content. A new campaign that takes place primarily on Mars
four areas. I think it's exactly the size of one of the three areas
from the main game. Yeah, yeah, except that you're on Mars now,
and except for the first mission where you're like basically fighting in the dry
dock of the McKinley. Yeah, as it's being retrofitted to go into space.
Really turn the aircraft carrier in the space. They put it so they
put a bubbled dome over like the flight deck of the McKinley. They stood
into space, and there's also a crow's nest on there that also has its
own tiny little dome on top of it as well. Do you have to
wear a space helmet when you're fighting out. Mars seems to have been like
terraform Marsan Cohgan gave the people their air. But they but they have resistant,
did any and all they say they have resisted any and all total recall
references as that is, and they actually actually identified Twist of pixel is having
corner of the market though total recall references, so they just didn't touch it.
Good on them. They're just going with Ghosts of Mars jokes now.
But the best yes, the best part just ghost of Mars. Yeah,
remember the darkness, Like you just find a TV and you can watch all
of Ghosts of Mars, just the whole movies right there. That the best
part about it is that's kind of poor John Carpenter breaks ice Cube out of
jail. Then it's the other way around it breaking. That's hosh answered that
jail. One of them breaks the other one out of jail. They're running
out with shot and then credits. Yeah, fucking great Southern theater. No
Vampires was the last time I got burned by John Carpenter. Movie in the
theaters was okay, the very beginning when James was like the first time they
go and kill a vampire and they're like using the crazy like the lines to
get vampires out Like that was cool. And the part where James Woods is
just cursing like crazy as he's stabbing the ship out of this one vampire best
part of the movie, like opening five minutes those two movies. Well,
Vampire is okay, Ghostmar is not okay. But there are things I liked
about it sure, like the fact that it's called ghost Smar. Yeah,
that's pretty much. I'll give you that. So yeah, so so rising
the Martian Bear. If you left out the most important part. Uh,
Lad is now a bear. Yeah, Vlad has downloaded his brain into his
pet bear, Boris Boris and and now and now that his brain is in,
it has the the Lad multi layer must be and it's got it's got
straight up just a TV in its head that has Vlad on it. And
you can watch Ghostmrs on this evie. That's exactly that's it. More you
know, more new loot, whole new Uh I only played a played like
one of the mission and through there and uh do you know stuff goes back
and forth. Yeah, you take your character in but like back from Mars.
So yeah, you should be able to I would have I can't see
bring your stuff in from from Yeah, probably totally, totally. I know
it would be too good for that, Like Cordin now, it sounds like
they've they've kind of been rebalancing some stuff. They said that like by the
time they got to the end talking to it to Brad muir Uh from Double
Fine, he said, by the time they got to the end of development
on on Trench Proper, that they had gone to some kind of outland as
ship as far as the power of the weapons, So it sounds like they
might be tweaking some of that stuff and making it more reasonable. It sounds
like they were also very like it was good for them to have a time
when they were not working on that game and then come back to it,
because by the end of this is crazy. By the end of Trench development,
those guys guys are right. I was wrong. Oh my god.
Those guys were like you remember how they were like, we have nod if
this is good, We've been too close to it for too long, so
we know it's a video game. Fresh Eye was good for that. That's
a crash. I don't know. I'm not even sure that yeah, I
don't know and so so so. Yeah, the most important part I kind
of don't want to say it, but I know other people will because I
want people just see it for themselves organically for the first time. Okay,
stop there, stop, I don't even know what you're talking to. Close
the door on it. That's it. What's the next what's the next product?
They were showing. Someone else is gonna say this. Maybe they would,
maybe they won't read it. Ye, don't say it. Don't be
the guy media black media blackout on Iron Brigade. I don't oh man,
Yeah, don't say it. Don't say it. Somebody's gonna beat you too.
It's all right. Don't be that guy though. Okay, I mean
there is there is something. I keep this more to it. Having only
played one, uh one scenario in that game in that DLC, I can
guarantee you that if you like Trenched, this is is worth the price of
admitting already our Trench team back together. We don't talk about that. It
was you and Will Smith and wild Card. Ah right, I forgot I
forgot me in this time because by the time you guys have played it,
I had already completed the game. So I didn't have rolled with David Ellison
the fourth swap, That's right, yeah, but so uh. In addition
to that campaign, that DLC will also add two more challenge levels, so
you have multiple stages to go pour on. Just say it, just say
it. No, we're done. Not that. This is another property,
the biggest deal and so you know what, we'll cover it later. What
was the other announced? The thing? Uh? Double fine Happy Action Theater
hat de fact is so uh so this is a actually, Patrick, you
want to describe this one? It's a connect game? Is it a game
collection? It's good minigame collection without scores or real objectives. It is very
toilet fail state. Uh, it's I mean like Tim Shafer basically pitched it
as we wanted to make a game for kids and drunk people. That's exactly
and that's exactly what he said. And that's and I was like, we
should make another one of those. He was so so I talked to it.
I talked h a little bit about this, and and he said,
you know, I was sitting next to the Once Upon a Monster guys while
they were you know, making that game, and uh, and just seeing
how much frustration they had dealing with like with with like fail state issues with
the game where if someone walked in front of someone else it would fuck this
up. And he's like, I just wanted to make something that didn't have
those issues like so that so that if if connect acts weird on you,
it doesn't matter. It's like it's it's the part of the fund. So
the attraction is look at the weird stuff that you're doing on and also try
to break it that you're trying to break Connecting, like bum rush the screen
with a bunch of people to just see what it does. Here's here's the
best example of how that works. When you were Patrick, you were doing
uh, there's the one mini game where it's basically all seventies style like stars
constantly flying at the screen. Yeah, like you know, like stuff.
Yeah. Uh. The fourth player while you were playing that got identified as
the curtain behind you guys, So every fourth star that flew out was like
the curtain fluttering or whatever, and it looked amazing, crazy like it didn't
break the game. And there's better and there's you know, there's one where
it's like a like Space Invaders where everyone's a tiny butterfly at the bottom of
the screen, and enemies are flying in from the top, and everyone's kind
of shuffling back and forth to try and shoot stuff, and the shooting is
all having automatically, so it's just like wherever you are standing. You know,
of course, it's impossible to not try and pretend you are the bullets
right right. And there's one where it's just like the room fills with with
like bouncy balls, and so you're just kicking and punching them around, and
there's a breakout clone. There's a like a hot lava circus mirror. There's
a hot lop. I didn't see the hot lava stuff. There was this
Godzilla style. The wholest one that I saw though, was like this like
multi photo sequence thing where it which is the depth camera. Yeah yeah,
it would just like layer like one picture on top of the other on top
of the other, like you know, everything that's the same stage is the
same, so it's only adding in like whatever you changed, so you get
like dude has like eight arms, or dude is punching himself, Dude is
making out with himself, right right, a natural extension of the depth camera.
Just lots of lots of weird dumb stuff like yeah, yeah, it
just it just sounds like this is like almost like the ultimate connect fun Labs
apt or Yeah, totally totally it would fit in with that stuff, except
that it's way it seems, it seems way better than most of it does
what that was trying to do, and also that it it just goes like
each of these maybe lasts like a couple of minutes, so it's like or
an example, like the breakout one, like it doesn't end until you like
lose. So we were doing it for like a four or five minutes still
Kim came out. I was like, why are you guys still playing this?
Like so we even failed yet so well, and like so you're trying
to not hit the balls. See five people attempting to not get their breakout
thing paddle to hit the balls, but you just keep hitting them. And
so we just kept going until it supports up to you can identify up to
six. I can't. Yeah, maybe maybe it was four was the most.
But so it does like it goes through one of these things and either
there's a fail state or it's just like all right, that's enough time and
then just loads up the next things. But not that manic. There was
more time to focus on each game. But the key is that at a
party, nobody's ever gonna get bored of what they're doing because the next thing
it's always gonna be coming up. And because you don't have to worry about
like I'm player one, I'm player two, you just jump in and just
do a thing. Like in the Space Invaders one, like the score is
going up irrelevant of what's happening on the screen. So if you're all missing
and not hitting any enemies, score still going up. Was there any like
direct control avatar stuff, because that's always the funnes stuff for any where,
just maker avatar, ripe the crowd just always you okay, No, but
that that days flour one, Yeah, unbelievable. Which one is that it's
just like it's a bunch of cutouts of all the people that are dancing,
like two D cutouts, like doing weird jerky animation stuff, but like it'll
focus on one guy in the middle, like doing a dance solo from time
to time, and just like you have to see it. We got a
trailer up on the site that has looks hot. Lava one is really good.
Toe's really good. Uh So yeah, that is that an unloadable game.
I don't they don't have date or price. That's all fourth times.
It sounds like it's more or less done. Uh yeah, yeah, that's
the impression that I got up the Action Theater. It's worth It's probably worth
noting if you care that this is the first project that Tim Shafer has headed
up since Brutal Legend. Yeah, since they since they went like small game
crazy and it's it's goofy and I feel like it makes really good use of
the connect tech from what I've seen, and it understands that listen to this.
You know this technology has significant limitations and if you try and take it
too seriously, you know it's it's not gonna be a fun time. So
just swinging take it as stupidly as possible, so you can just jump around
like an idiot in front of your TV and see funny stuff. And I
just like the idea, uh that you like, I could just have this
running like throwing a party. It's have this running on a TV in the
background. It's like people could like walk up to it do something for a
while. It's not like you be like, okay, everyone, we're gonna
play rock band now, so we need we need you know, oh,
we need at least three people to play oh jump into It's like no,
just walk up, do something stupid. And also if you're fun, yeah,
and if you're the only guy that knows how to operate the system,
you're the one that has to do all menus and like, let me set
it up for you again. Like here, it's just it's just sign again.
Yeah, it's just like yeah, just let it run and it'll cycle
from one thing to the next on its own, so it doesn't even matter
if you're connected. Doesn't really fit in your apartment, Like it's like it
because it's it's it's regardless. Yeah, it's really cool. Yeah, yeah
it's I from what I saw, I consider that much more toy than game.
It's dumb in the best way possible. I think it's kind of funny
that a team there had to seriously figure out how connect all works for Once
upon a Monster and then work out all the bugs and make it work with
like three year old right, and like kind of figure out how this is
supposed to work. Like fuck, like you were saying, like walking over
and we're like we're just having a really tough time because it keeps on doing
this weird thing where five of me will flick on the screen and do whatever
that's awesome, Like you think that, you think that like their bugs squishing
for once pond of monsters like okay, no, we wanted we know how
to do that accidentally. Yeah, well no, I think it make that
on at some point that the overlap had to happen, right, and just
one team completely frustrated with like connect breaking any other team to feel like,
what did you guys do? Oh we broke? It is just this look
at the skeleton on that that's awesome. We need that, we should do
that. Do that, and then once team just hating the other team,
hate you guys. It's like this weird lamb prey. That's just the lag
is just terry. It's just like we can't get over the lag. There's
lag. How do you enable the lag? Yeah? Can you get We
were too much not do that. You're saying that the Happy Action Theater team
was like the little bird in the crocodile's mouth picking the meat out. Yes,
it's just the QA team just like going through finding bugs and turning those
into minias. One team being super excited when everything was just mess up and
the other team being so like, we gotta, we gotta, we have
milestone coming up. What do you what are we gonna do? We can't
get this to work. And that was that all this six Then the sixth
one was the iOS game and Iowa, the app that has the Psychonauts.
The second of few words got commentary. Weirdly, Ron Gilbert program that.
Yeah, it's the first thing, the first thing that he has done.
What is this? This is the it Basically it's basically like all those like
the like the movies from Psychonauts with commentary over it by Tim and Scott.
It's not actually a game, it's just no, no, no, it's
just it's a free app. And yeah, Ron Gerbot does all sorts of
Mac programming in his free time and was goofing around with iOS and so we
just did it by himself. He's working on something else that they're not talking
about yet, but that he just did that. Guy like he's kind of
on board with them now they've been actually full time double fun employees are okay,
But the way it's on the stuff, wait this on this stuff came
together, it's weird too, Like the the costume quests like or it's Psychonauts
for so Psychonauts was ported by someone at double Fine. But then like costum
Quest was like this angel investor. That's just like a fan that programmed it
and contributed the money for this to happen. And he's listened to the credits,
but it's just like one dude. Wait so he actually because I got
the impression that they just got money from someone to just develop it. It's
a dude. And like there's like Tim Schaefer was like linking to the guy
on Twitter saying like here's the guy that made this happen. Yeah, financially
financial, Yeah okay, if I'm not mistake, that's what that's. That's
what I mean is that they got the money, not that he but but
it wasn't it was but it was a fan like it wasn't like it was
a guy who got some money. He's a little bank. They didn't go
to some business man like okay, okay, I think the guy actually is
in fact a business man on top of it, but yeah, probably,
but yes, but he didn't. It's not like this guy said, hey,
guys, here, I brought you this PC code for Costume Quest to
go ahead and put it out, okay, I think yeah. Yeah.
Costume Quest is also like they're because they owned that. I P and the
TCHQ worked with them on that, and I remember them saying they wanted to
do PC versus A TACHQ was like, we're not gonna give you money for
it, So they found their own way to do it, and that's self
publishing. So that's all their money. So it's publishing Happy Action Theater too.
No, I think that's Microsoft. That's an nicest thing. Okay,
but yeah, Psychonauts and Costume Quests and then the app those are three self
published Double Fine things, so they're kind of we're stacking a little fall suit.
That's Microsoft. I think stacking is THQ as well, was it?
Yeah? Maybe? Yeah. So any date on the Happy Action stuff,
that's just I think they said this year, really is that so many much
time left this year? It's true? Uh so, yeah, that was
the Double Fine event, some some fun stuff that, Yeah, curious see
more of the Happy Action Theater. It was really cool to just have them
running their own event, like no external publisher they're calling any shots. It
was just like, hey, very casual, we are going to bring in
a keg of this homebred beer that we have someone here beer drink it.
You're gonna hang out and play these games in our office, and it's gonna
be cool, or it's gonna be just don't walk in that direction. That
don't walk in that direction. But otherwise it's cool. It was just super
casual. It's really it was a lot of fun. If you go down
there, it's bad. They seemed happy to be doing that over Yeah,
it's for their passing endeavor. Yeah, it's been a rough couple of years,
but I think there seems like they're definitely on a path that makes all
them trajectory. Yeah, Tim, apologize for calling you a child. Well,
you know, it's not the first time it's happened, Patrick, What
else have you been playing? My friends saw Max Pain three a couple of
weeks ago, Okay, and that looks like Max Paint three. Yeah.
Do you hold how many guns can you hold? Well? You can hold
well, you can only hold three weapons at once now, so you can
have two pistols and like a shotgun, or two pistoles and a sniper rifle.
Okay, sold a pistol and a shotgun. No, well, not
not in this not at the same time. Okay, the game does have
sequences in New York City. Yeah, So the demo I saw basically sounded
like backing up when the game was unveiled in Game of Former what like a
year and a half ago, a while ago. It was basically, you
know, all right, it's Max and it's a new voice actor, Like
it wasn't the original the guy originally his name is escaping me anyone, remember,
No, the voice actor Maximilian Pain. Correct, it was different voice
actor. It's gonna be in Brazil like new setting, and it was a
very rock star like, hey, we're taking this franchise, We're we're putting
our own print imprint on it, kind of like they did with you know,
Red Dead Redemption was Red Dead Revolver. They bought that off Capcom,
and fans were like, no, like I don't I don't like any of
this. I want more baby screaming and pain. Yeah, and and so
so this tour u this the first time they're really showing the game, basically
felt like an apology tour, like maybe all this stuff was already in the
game and they just decided they wanted to show this is our rock Star part
and all that stuff. Don't worry, we're gonna get in there. But
like the demo starts like even as I was sitting down there, So,
so what do you know about this game? Because basically trying to figure out
what my misconceptions were and trying to trying to correct them. And the game
like starts in New York, and he's got the leather jacket and he's got
the you know, the the the winey, he's got the hair. He's
drunk, he's taking pain killers. He's he's not a very happy man.
He's a very very broken person. But yeah, it starts on end gangsters
just show up at your apartment and start shooting at you. So a max
pain game. Yeah, it sounds like it's got the violins and so it's
it's it's got the slow motion and yeah, I mean it's comic book panels.
Comic panels have been it's not like the stylistic drawn stuff, and now
it's like in real like the in game graphics. It just divides them up
and it happens more often now, so like you'll be finished a compet is
stuff like actually in motion in those things or okay, yeah, it's kind
of the natural. Like I don't think rock Stars much more what they did
in Max Pain one and two now for the especially for what rock Star likes
to do with their stories, Like it's just not it's much. I mean,
it's I think it's going to be fantastical in some sense, but it's
rock Star is a bit more grounded. But it seems less from what I've
seen, And it's not that much seems less noir. It seems like it's
moved past the kind of like very darkly lit and like very sparsely lit,
kind of high contrast dark noir. Tailed this didn't show. So they showed
me like a first like fifteen minute in New York, which was just to
say like, hey, New York is here, and there's a big chunk
of it in the game, but that's not what we want. That's you
know, that's not the big shifts winter. It's winter, and so you
go to Brazil. But even in Brazil they were quick to be like,
so we know the people when they look at the Brazil they're like, hey,
this is really bright. That's not really Max Paint. There's plenty of
dark stuff. So they didn't show me any of that, but they were
like very insistent there's going to be all the noir stuff. It's just I
don't know why they're not showing it. I mean, the game was out
in March. Theoretically, it's I mean when we saw that trailer, when
we saw that new trailer, I mean also, it just didn't look like
if you took away the sound and the like, if you took away the
the music and the voice actor, I was like, this doesn't Why is
this a Max a Pain game? Because bullet time isn't really like a unique
feature anymore. I mean I'd argue at this point, not when's the last
time that the game really used strangle? Yeah, and that game wasn't just
a Max Pain clone. Yeah, you mean just like acrobatic bullet times.
Yeah, like made that the focus of the gameplay. So even though it's
been done and it's kind of I think the last one that it's it is
unique again. Yeah. The one wrinkle they've added is that when you're close
to death, you'll go into a slow motion sequence, and if you take
out the guy in front of you, you'll get some sliver health back so
you can keep going. But otherwise the slow motion stuff is kind of the
same as it was. I mean, you know, they've got all sorts
of really interesting graphical touches. Like they got both the like the the jump
as well as the just like trigger it the way that Max Pain two has.
Yeah, you can just be walking and do or you can do the
really awkward die over. I always jump, yeah, always. I would
never use the just press the button. That's no fun. I got pretty
good at diving onto couches while holding two pistols in real life practice. Yeah,
would you put on the violin music as you were No, I didn't
mean so it has a dive and then kind of like swing or torsto around
yep, to shoot everybody yep, twists yep. Yeah. I mean,
like I could go through the litany of like smaller details that they were focusing
on, like you know, like the like they you know, done some
really amazing things the animation system, like in terms of way Max moves,
like even on the ground when he's like twisting around, like each joint is
moving realistically, but like in broad strokes like it's it's Max Pain three,
like it's got like a rock star flare to it, but more so than
any other game, Like they they don't seem to be trying to stray too
far from like they're putting their stamp on it. But it's not. You
know, I still I still don't totally get why, like they had to
do this good have just done a new ip. It's just because the way
they presented it was a very unrocked they like they don't apologize, right like
this, this is what we're doing. Go screw yourself exactly, and and
and this is very much like, hey, we've talked to Remedy. You
know, we showed them the game. They seemed to like it, so
that's cool, right, Like it just it was just very awkward for I
think it's you know, well, yeah, I mean it it's hard to
say, like the father behave that way, but if you think about it,
like for better for worse, like rock Star doesn't really care about its
creators and its creations, so giving that respect to the creators of Max Pain
maybe makes sense in that content. Yeah, I mean I guess technically that.
I mean, rock Star was involved in rocks Pain one and two,
like it was a take two game, but rock Star was like the production
house, especially especially by Max Pain two. It was you know, just
rock Star logos all over it. Yeah, so, I mean one of
the Houser brothers is co wrote or wrote most of the story and this one,
but they didn't really lab and they also they also were pushing that the
notion this is like one of their first like really like it. They weren't
even assigning one studio to this game, like they were saying, this is
all of the rock Star divisions contributing bits to this, Like it's really it
sounds really spread out, weird across the studios. I wonder if that was
the plan all along, or if I mean, because this game has been
in development for a while, I wonder if it just went real sideways with
the way they were doing it and like, okay, we had a call
in everyone on this one to get it finished. Yeah, like I I
yeah, I almost. I almost wonder if, like after the weird like
rejection from the fans after the first unveiling, that maybe there was a attempt
to pull it back a little think or something, and that in order to
make that turnaround happen in the year and a half it's been, I think
since that's first unveiling, and they were very much committed to the March date.
So and that's the end of the you know, fiscal for take two.
So I guess is that game is going to come out before the Internet.
So I'm ready to I'm willing to give it a chance. Yeah,
I don't I don't want to make Yeah, it looks like Max Pain sound
like a bad thing, like you know, it's it. That's fine.
I'm fine with another Max Pain. And they it should be. It's it
looked fun that trailer, like seeing like just straight up shaving his head or
whatever, like like going through that transition. I think makes that way cooler
than just putting out a screenshot of here's Max Pain. You don't recognize the
guy in all and they and they kind of copped to like that was a
bad like that the way they reveal, you know, the way they kind
of showed their their hands. They thought they were being bold and instead they
just hadn't explained, like you know, there's like a whole that happens hours
into the game. You're gonna see why he does that, why he makes
that transition. Because when they first when they first unveiled, it just seemed
like, oh, just like needless, like we wanted to make the character
look different, so this is as different because he looks like a real dude
who works here and they're not working on it, so like, yeah,
it almost so. But if there's like a character like plot motivation, like
kind of heart of Darkness, you know, things going on, it's not
like the opening cut scene like they're beening cut scene is in New York and
there's a reason you go from New York to Brazil, and there's a reason
that he eventually shaves his head and tell me that Max Pain feels a need
to shave his head, Like shit, that can't be good. Happen.
It will continue to happen. The old character of Max Pain was kind of
like a stagnant archetype at this point, like totally French co wearing war detective
guy, and you're giving him like a new arc to follow and made a
game that has the title already so they don't need, you know, And
and two is such like they broke the fourth wall, like every twenty minutes
like that. My favorite sequence is when the game acknowledges that it's it's it's
Max Paine watching himself in a video game and acknowledging the weirdness of watching a
player control him. I think that game got super weird, like the best
way possible. And I know you you didn't ask them this, but I
just I hope there's some address unknown stuff in there, just even just a
little bit, because that the stuff they didn't too with with that was so
fucking good. Yeah they did. They did tell me how much of that
is remedy like, like right, if that's if that's a remedy trademark,
right, So I wonder if it would it would be out of place or
weird for them to do anything like that. I mean, if remedy sign
it is a total like remedy touch like, that's clearly one of the things
they like to do. Are there going to be entire movies I can watch?
And I loved it so much? Another great opportunity for ghosts Mars.
Let me watch all of ghost Mars just walking to television. The Houses already
owned the rights to it, they bought it years ago. It's true,
not a lot of people know that. I wish that was true. They
actually hate it. They just wanted to just get it so that nobody else
can watch the whole story of g T A four is basically just a retelling
of Ghosts of Mars. Yep, not a lot of people know that.
Patrick anything else. Now we cover pretty much everything else. There's a cool
iPhone game that peoples to check out called Major Gauntlet. It's the game that
was making the rounds of a while ago. It looks like Secret Amna Ormana
Banana. Uh it comes out next week? Yeah, Mana Manyana. Secret
of Manana comes out tomorrow. No, next week, Okay, doesn't come
out Manyana. So you can then said that you're talking about. Uh,
well cool, what do you guys think about taking a break? Yeah?
Whatever, all right, we'll take a quick break and we'll come back momentarily
with more of the Giant Bodcast. And we're back. Jeff Gerstman. Hello,
how's it going. It's going great. I want to talk about Batman
Annie, Yeah, okay, Batman's out. Batman is out. Arkham City.
People are banning a second Batman game for all intents and purposes. Batman
two. Yeah, Batman two, it is better than Batman one. You
should play Batman two five stars. Okay. Uh, it's it's a it's
a it's a really great game. Yeah. Do you want to talk at
all about this because you've got a review of a review. Yeah, there's
there's there's now three separate ways. You can hear you read me saying stuff
about Batman. So, you know, maybe we'll keep it brief. But
one thing I wonder, how much, uh the game was first game is
amazing. Seems like it's like one is amazing too. How much is that
because Rocksteady is just doing something so different than anybody else that them just kind
of doing that that similar things again is just totally fine. That is a
big kind of like Assassin's Creed kind of gets away with the same thing where
it doesn't have to totally change things because it's so different than everyth doesn't feel
like it's getting away with anything. Okay, I'll say that much like it
is very similar, Like the game is not dramatically different. You know,
they have built onto the combat system in some really smart ways, you know,
more traversal stuff to to make sense of the kind of larger world that
you're navigating. But you know, it's it's a very linear path through the
main story. The side missions are very kind of compartmentalized off to the side.
It's not it's not an open world. It's not it's not an open
world in the traditional sense. Yeah, even like the seemingly random acts of
political prisoners getting beat up, like show up on your map and it's like,
here's where you go for this, here's where you go for that,
and that helps them avoid political prisoners. It's it's they have to. So
the whole game takes place in Arkham City, which is a mega prison.
They've taken a section of the city, condemned it, turned it into a
gigantic prison. So in order if they're to be innocent people that you have
to help. Someone at some point had to contrive like, oh, well,
what do we call these guys? Because the whole criminal scum, But
why would Batman save these guys? Like well, what if the subtitles like
and it's it's only says it like in the subtitles, like what if it
said political prisoner? Like, yeah, okay, that could be. And
there's a couple of cut scenes where you talk to these guys and they're like,
I was just working on his calm system and then he threw me in
here for no good reason. Hugo strange running this whole thing, right,
So it's kind of corrupt from the top down exactly, so they have to
like make these distinctions so that the people you're saving are not bad people.
Also, its right, so they say, I don't know, they're just
political prisoners. They could exactly yeah bus or something. Yeah, who knows.
So yeah, it is similar in a lot of ways. And I
think, yeah, they do kind of get by because like, no one
else is making a game like this, you know, no one else has
really emulated this combat system to this extent. Yeah, Captain America did try
to Captain America like like a reasonably good attempt at kind of aping some of
that stuff, I guess, but also probably shows how hard it is to
do it as well as rock Steady does exactly. Yeah, So you know,
and it's it's a it's a great looking game like that. You know,
they've increased the scope of it, uh in really cool ways. And
the story is is a lot of fun like it It's it's kind of back
heavy, like a not a ton of super important stuff happens at the beginning,
but once it all starts all unfolding at the end here it's kind of
fucked up. It's real bank bank bang, like oh shit, oh shit,
oh shit, as these things happen. So that's that's pretty cool.
That's that that two hour spoiler that everybody got all insensed about, totally meaningless,
totally totally the dumbest thing ever. Stuff. Yeah yeah, like that
stuff is resolved literally four seconds after it happens in the games. So why
which is why the guy was so quick to turn the Xbox off right when
I saw the first part of that happen. Yeah, yeah, that was
the I think that's they kind of did themselves at this service aboutever, maybe
not every it got everyone talking about the game, so I guess, you
know, probably Mission accomplished on their part in one sense. But yeah,
like the game didn't need that. The game didn't need it exactly. It
comes commis as gimmicky for a game that is just legitimately great. Kind of
the gimmicky part, though, is the way they've handled their online pass stuff,
And so what they've done is Catwoman is only playable if you enter the
code or give them ten dollars. And the weird part about that is is
not challenge room stuff. You do get that as well, but there are
actually four Catwoman chapters set in the middle of the game. You know,
kind of one real early on, like like spread throughout the game basically where
you are playing as Catwoman, and that stuff is kind of woven into the
story, you know, you it intersects with Batman's story in kind of meaningful
ways. It's not rate if I had to pick a point of the game
and say, like, this is the part they should have not put in,
it actually probably would be some of that Catwoman stuff, because she's just
a limited version of Batman, Like she plays almost exactly the same, but
just as fewer options. I've come to play as Batman, Yeah, exactly,
Yes, you're here. You're here for Batman. I'm not playing Catwoman
Arkham City. And it's kind of annoying because you actually have to upgrade Catwoman
separately. So if you've put all your points into upgrading Batman as you should
and getting you know, ballistic armor to reduce you know, bullet damage and
reduce melee damage with the other type of armor upgrade, then by the time
you get to the final Catwoman chapter, you have not spent any points on
her, and you're a room full of guys you know, the same same
set of points that you're set. Yeah, so yeah, and they're and
they're not there's they're cut up. They're not sequential as Catwoman like you go
bounce back and forth. Right, Okay, so it's like spread out throughout
the game. Yes, what would you So I actually had to a new
game, but I actually had to finish the game and then go so guy
to basically like do new game, plus start level up a couple of times,
spend those upgrade points on Catwoman, and then go back into my other
game. Oh, the levels are persistent regardless of Yes, where you're out
in the story. Can you also grind those stuff out in the challenge rooms?
You get any experience in there? I don't believe so, so you
basically you were grinding Batman. Yeah, I play the early parts of the
story. Again. I mean there's there's a there's a finite amount of potential
in the world to gain experience, right, those guys response, so yeah
you can, So you could run around with can't run around and just beat
people up and get Yeah, XP, yes you could do that. Uh
what do you what do you? What did you say? Like? Total
run time playing with Catwoman is like, oh, with Catwoman, that's maybe
an hour and a half or something like that. Okay, like throughout the
full game, these four sequences, but this is the thing that you you're
getting the code for new in the box with the game, where if you
don't have that, those sequences are just just missing. Which is crazy because
there's you know, it's it's really only kind of one scene, and I
didn't see how it plays out without Catwoman, so I can't really speak to
that stuff. But there's but I can, I can kind of guess how
it would play out. But it's it's the stuff where Catwoman is basically,
you know, helping Batman out of a bind, and if you're doing the
stuff leading up to that and seeing the motivations there, like the story payoff
is is better than than any of the gameplay stuff, and and that's that's
kind of unfortunate, and it's it's weird because it actually has a download at
least on three sixty uh like that it's not on the disc. It's like,
so I then sit there and wait for three hundred megas of stuff to
download before I can start playing Batman, which is like lame. Yeah,
that's weird, Like that would be the thing I would expect to be.
You're on disc yeah thing. Yeah right, it's weird. It makes me
question how that wound up all happened. It's also it's also because they just
haven't communicated, like I think a lot of the backlashes because they haven't communicated
that this was going to be like an optional thing. Yeah. I think
he said it was like the big reveals, like you could play as Catwoman
and all that stuff, and like if they had set up front going to
add a Catwoman, it's gonna be our online pass. It's gonna be like
the reason. It's the bait and switch that pisses people off. And it's
not like if you if this had been part of the message with the game
for a while, the putting Catwoman weaving into the story, but it's also
online pass and this had been E three Yeah, no one, no one
would care. But it's because a week before Catwoman's a big part of the
game and then all of a sudden, all by the way, it's part
of our you know, anti used game policy. People like everyone's gonna buy
the new version anyway. It's because people feel burned that this is happening a
week before the game comes out, and it's just by the way, no
big deal. And also apparently GameStop is just printing versions of the codes and
putting them in the used copies, which is like a policy they do with
some games. They must they must just have to work that out. They
work that out with the publisher. But so even if you buy used copy,
I don't know how long that goes on for, but it will come
with a unique code inside. That is like, that is maybe one of
the most fucked up things ever because the publisher is creating this system in the
first place, ostensibly to stop use game sales, then turning around and can't
do that and people aren't buying it used and exactly game stop is obviously paying
for it and making a sense for them, but at some point it's like,
why don't we just agree to do away with it? Is it sounds
like one of the most atrocious things I've heard come out of this industry.
Atrocious things come out of this industry that makes you really upset that that's the
weird way of getting paying your way out of Like this is hurting our sales
in this one department. Please stop doing this, Okay, let's make this
side room deal. That's basically like, but if the side room deal is
game Stop kicks down money to publishers for their used game sales and leaves us
out of it. That's what everyone wants to happen. It's just the GameStop
says, look, we pay you, like Riley being these weird code nonsense,
like just ever use game sale apportion goes to the publisher, and it
does, then we don't have to deal with the bullshit like it if they
would just work it out. This is a weird way of them working it
out with also having the bullecific Yeah, yeah, oh, the whole thing
just yeah, it's it's backward backwards, but it's not as malevolent as you
as you probably think it is. Like the whole problem is a publisher not
realizing any profit from sales of use games. Understand the problem is like should
they you know, I understand the symptom of the disease, but like basically
trying to backslide this stuff into use game copies seems ridiculous to me. Yeah,
I don't know. Is it my problem? Your games are so expensive
and you charge sixty dollars for them? Not really, like that's the nature
of the industry. Like I I just have I have trouble feeling bad from
a consumer angle, but I wish they would just figure it out behind the
scenes rather than making it we're jump through all these hoops or you know,
just like jump to the end game and include just start, go the CD
key route, go the PC game route, and just like here's your key.
If you won't play the game or the key done. Well, I
mean that that is currently that's not possible on the existing consoles, right,
the infrastructure is not there. Yeah, well ually is. Well, you're
talking about Steam style. Just straight up, you buy this game, I
have it. You know, you still on disks. I'm not saying I'm
not saying do the download part. I am saying they should do the download
part of it. But let's be reasonable. We're not there yet. Well,
I mean, what we're talking about is divorcing a license to play the
game from the physical object that is the game. Sure, and you know,
you know PC owners have gotten used to this over the years, as
you know, it's it's just been an ongoing it's been the ongoing fight against
piracy. You know, this is just an evolved out of code wheels and
all that stuff. I mean, it's it's what is becoming the old argument
about games as goods versus games as services. Yeah, I just think it
just figured it out. I think it's one of those things that it makes
me so annoyed because I feel like the brick and mortar style stores are the
biggest roadblock to get in all digital. I'm sure there's a lot of lobbying
for them to not go all digital and distribution. They'll be lobbying when it
finally happens. They'll be still pre order bonuses from specific stores that get you
into those brick and mortar stores. And to see them basically finding this backdoor
to get around this coats UF just makes me feel like, fuck man,
somebody's hands are in somebody's pockets, and like we just follow the money direct
to consumers and let's get rid of all the pre order bonuses, these codes
whatever. Let me buy this game physical establishments its own. It's basically where
they started. I mean, so like now they have become like an incentive
to shop now that there are digital distribution places like Amazon or even just you
know, buy it online, but it's where it's started. But they're not
gonna go away even when everything goes all online. No, no, still
want insteadive to buy your game from from store wide and total stores each and
also and also to put the money down before the game is out right.
But but it give me the option, uh to just download the game digitally
so that I can vote with my dollar of where I want to get this
game. Uh, and then we'll be done. We'll dry up, we'll
dry up the need for brick and mortar stores. I can go buy a
guitar here or there if I want to, Uh, But I don't need
to pre order because it's a digital distribution model and the game might move,
the servers will be crowded, but then we'll introduce preloading on them something at
some time. I'm just all these fucking vaudeville hoops and circuses to get me
into a store. Yeah, it's it's insane, and there's there is a
good business reason they're still prioritizing brick and mortar sales because of holidays, because
gigantic bulk of sales occur. There's still a meaningful number of consoles that aren't
even connected to the internet. Yeah, I'm not saying I'm not saying that
it's a smart business decision. My personal take on it is that it's starting
to turn into like a three ring circus for like trying to get absolutely people
take is that a point now where just to I mean even if you're trying
to just navigate and figure out, like how do I get this special thing?
Because when they put out the information about it, it's like, here's
here's all these extra Batmans. We may put out a guide for that.
Yeah, these are the guy we have one of the highest traffic. Yeah,
one of the highest traffic stories we put on the news. Alex is
right up about how where do you get all the crap for Arkham City,
like the fact that that's something I have to do and from region to region
and yeah, but you keep in mind you can't use any of those skins
until after you've beat the game. Wait, which is another thing. Even
if you have one yes Batman's skins, you your first time through the story,
you will play as Batman ass Batman. If you want to play as
any other Batman, you're relegated to the challenge rooms, or you have to
beat the game first and then you can pick whatever Batman you like. That
explained that that makes more sense now knowing that that they're going to sell all
those as DLC you have for the fact, right, Well, I'm glad
that I did not pay for the one hundred dollars collectors attition, Yeah,
to get my Batman. Something about that codes it burns me out. Is
there something like you tell me that you're including this code so that we could
stem use sales and then to channel around That's not actually true, but they
a bunch of money, so you know, well, I mean it's it's
the same nets. You're right, it's absurd that we are going through this
whole process. It's absurd, but it's not offensive. It's offensive to me
why because it's like you're introducing you're basically saying like I'm gonna give you a
speeding ticket if you speed before you can just pay the cops to speed.
This is the step towards getting rid of those codes. I would pay the
cops to speed every time. This This is this is like the first step.
This is towards getting rid of those things. Is the first step towards
disarmament? Is Okay, we we introduced this thing that that started, you
know, devaluing the used game sales some so now game Stop has to give
them a little juice put the game stop to the decision of like, are
they gonna you know, pony up to make something like this happen or right,
But but it may be the first step to holding game or or or
a reseller accountable, or it could just be another step in inconveniencing the consumer,
uh, while they figure out how to both make money. That's exactly
what's happening. They're going to incommunity the consumer because they'll the game. The
consumers will buy the game's regardless, right, because they want to play the
game. So yes, maybe it is a step in that direction, but
it looks like to me, hey, we added another thing for the consumer
to have to worry about while we figure out how to connect with each other
to make it any situation, and it's gonna get worse before it gets better.
Absolutely, games you already So it's like what no, I just like,
like I understand, like philosophically, but like practically, you're gonna go
buy sixty dollars, Batman, You're always going to buy sixty dollars Batman.
Yeah for me, Yeah, yeah, I mean whatever and used and used
guys, we're going to get a cheaper price on the game because they're buying
used anyway, but only not as cheap now, because I'm sure that whatever
money game Stop is paying to Warner to take this reality ends up necessarily because
the margins on use sales are so enormous, they might be willing to take
a small hitter the game. The games end up being about for the first
couple like month or so, like it's like five bucks. Alos they're taking
the game at about forty dollars for the first month. Then they're selling it
at fifty five. You can imagine whatever they're paying off to Warner, they're
still making a pretty crazy margin those games. And here's what happens when I
buy a new Batman. So I buy a new Matman, I gotta figure
out where I'm gonna buy a new Batman from because there're seven different pre orders
I was always gonna buy because they just sent it to you and they and
then also Amazon gives me like my twenty bucks for buying games from it.
Like you know what, twenty bucks way fucking better than any Batman Skip.
I don't care what pre order bucks you've got lined up, but from my
point, you have all these different options if you're gonna buy a new Batman
where you're gonna get with it. Then I've got to open up Batman.
I have to enter a code in to get content because I'm a new owner
that I have to put it a stupid code in almost like a game,
and then the content almost but not anymore because and then it downloads and then
it downloads. Whereas if this system weren't in place, I would buy the
same Batman that everybody else is buying for sixty dollars, put the game in
on day one, and just be ready to play. So that is an
inconvenience for the users, and I do think it's only gonna get worse before
it gets better, as they kind of split up and figure out how to
transact these things that are slowly becoming less of an on disc and just kind
of like hey, we are including in the game and more of a like
you know, hey, we're gonna sell you this piece. We're gonna sell
you the game piece meal from seven different stories. You put the puzzle together
and someday you'll have the full Batman experience. It's just weird. It sounds
like Skylanders, Yeah, sounds like micro transact, sounds like we're gone.
And then Chop Chop comes with a code I don't know, but then if
it's that part doesn't even bother me as much as somebody then being like,
well, we're just gonna put the codes in the use games, right,
And it's like what you introduced, this was supposed to stop you specifically from
doing this, Well were you are the single No, it doesn't apply to
it. But that's them, just like that's game stopped blinking to me.
That's them going like, oh shit, this is actually cutting into our sales,
like we have to do something too, But at the time they're staving
off the inevitable. But I have to imagine that they make a bulk deal
with with whoever's giving them the codes, you know, whatever publisher it is
to be like, it is worth more to us to buy these codes print
amount, insert it than to reduce the price or of the game by x
amount or to or tow include a gift card for Xbox five or whatever.
I'm there. So they obviously are not making the full money off of they're
getting a bulk rate on some codes. I have to imagine, so it's
not like the ten dollars or whatever you'd have to pay to do it,
but on that on the published on the business side, everybody wins. Maybe
I don't know what the deal is. Who knows assumingly, who knows?
Who knows a bit. They have pretty good projections on how many, like
what percentage of use sales they would actually get someone to buy the code to
get with the code. But I'm saying, like what the conversion rate is
on use sales to who goes and gives them the ten bucks? Like I
mean, and I bet that's probably low enough. Or maybe they're just buying
those codes. They're putting them in the use box sales and they're saying,
this is as good as new. We're gonna charge you the full price for
it. Well, they don't do that, but they're not. They could
become close. Yeah, they're pretty close. Five dollars is basically like you're
buying. But I don't I've seen them, especially the rate that game prices
crash these days, like off of sixty bucks? Are they going to give
me the full price for that game if I include the code when I sell
back to the music? Come on? Why not? Could be could be
a child that a child on that on that point of like you know how
this works I do, and I think they take advantage of people. I
think this is them continuing to take advantage of consumers. I think I think
video is a point in that you see this playout over and over again,
where because because gamers just want to play games, they are willing to put
up with a lot of bullshit because at the end of the day, they
do just want to play the games. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't be
incensed over how you're treated as a result of just wanting to play some games.
I think they take they take advantage of a disenfranchised population, which is
a bunch of kids and a bunch of people who, just like Patrick said,
just want to get their hands on games that don't really feel like they
have a voice. And then I think they exploit that. And I think
this just seems like a really weird work around or a really weird wrench to
throw into the whole thing. Fat It just feels Yes, it feels like
back room. Yes, it's jerrymandering, some kind of move of the districts
around, tax loopholes, around against the codes. Yeah, follow the money.
I don't like it. Prohibition against online passes anyway, do you run
the Batmobile. No, forget it, cancel my Well that that is one
of the pre runners. The batmobile has the Batmobile, Yeah, my Batmobile.
Skin. I just want to point out that if this calculator, if
this inflation calculator is to be believed, you know what, actually, hang
on, I pushed in fifty bucks, considering that the price of games has
only gone up ten bucks in the last twenty five years. Well, I
don't know about that. I played like eighty bucks for a lot of Strider,
except excepting a few outliers. Yeah, okay, Star four was one
hundred bucks. But whatever, Uh, sixty dollars now in nineteen eighty six
dollars twenty nine dollars and fifty seven cents, So I don't really I'm still
confused. There's a little perspective for sixty dollars might as well be zero dollars.
I'm not saying that all games are free. I'm just saying that every
as much as development costs have ballooned from one generation of the next, like
I'm shocked, the prices on games I have not gone up more. Well,
that's a different conversation. I mean, whatever, I'll pay eighty dollars
for the game. I will not pay you know, I don't want to
give that money directly to a game stop. Suh. I mean I think
I think you're not because the margins on new games or ship so so even
if you bought them from them, there they're making what keeps them they're making
next business? Yeah, I mean what I In fact, it's super Nintendo
cartridge cleaning kits really the business. I really want to take the game stop
buy all your games new from them and just draining. No, I mean
I'm sure they make go in there and say no, I don't want the
disk protection. No, I don't want the guide. No, I don't
want to pre order anything. But I'm gonna but I'm gonna take up a
lot of time online. They do they do that, I use up your
employees time so that you can't make sales. While I'm there, you're saying
we should occupy game stops, right, be there? All right, let's
move on out of this, batman. Oh actually, so I guess when
the question I had was yes, it's very good, thanks for asking.
Uh, yeah, it's any good. Great? Uh but okay, that's
fine, let's move on. No good, No, if you have a
question asked the questions. Oh no, I was gonna say, like the
impact this has on like trophies or achievements. Yeah, they're a Catwoman specific
trophies. Uh, Riddler trophies, I should say, not not PlayStation trophies,
but collect trophies, trophies associated with collecting all of the trophies. I'm
not sure how it works if you haven't redeemed the trophies. If I think
the Riddler trophies, I mean, because they count the Batman trophies and Catwoman
trophies separately, So it could very well be that the achievements you get are
tied to the Batman. You have not yet collected all of the riddlers.
I have not yet and will not. Yeah, there's a lot. There
are four hundred Batman like Riddler challenges to complete Batman alone. Uh. And
there's a much easier way to get all that stuff filled in on your map,
which kind of makes the riddles themselves a little less potent, a little
less less cool than they were the last time around, because it's less about
you figuring out like what does he mean when he says this, and more
like this is the spot of the map. I'm gonna go here until I
see something that looks like it's a little out of place and then take a
picture of it. So uh, yeah, it's it's a lot of collecting
trophies and doing kind of skillful things to get access to the trophies. They
change the bad vision detective mode stuff a little bit. Yeah, goes away,
you know. But but basically by not having the riddler stuff be as
prevalent and the riddles specifically, there's less of a reason, the less of
a need to to go around and use it. Some of the side missions,
and even in the main story mode a couple of times you go into
like the forensic version of it where you're like scanning an area and looking for
evidence. Yeah, and that's cool, following blood trails and such. My
copy comes tomorrow. Batman All right, Jeff, anything else you want to
talk about? Covered the most important games of Skylanders and Batman. So yeah,
that's it. Oh, Hogan's main events. I haven't tried it yet.
We did track down a copy and pick it up, so we will
do some video that and uh track Mania two can't move on? Move on?
Bank, how's it going? Which been playing a couple three hours uncharted
three that I can't. Okay, well don't don't. Let's just move on
power through that. Are you wearing a subway hat? Are you doing not
yet? I haven't unlocked it. I'm kind of getting there kind of wear
like kind of wear like a thick J talbot. That's true. I did
play some of the multiplayer, uh near as I could tell, that subway
hat is the hardest to get accessory in that multiplayer. I'm still clear if
that is all of the multiplayer. Is the competitive multiplayer it is to be
the full that it is? Sure if it caps prematurely, because I've seen
I've seen enough people at level thirty five and that thing too soon. It
might be the thirty five is the cap, so I haven't seen anybody above
that. Yeah, but I would have to imagine the retail goes higher than
that. That seems like a pretty low level cap for for for a retail
game. It's supposed to last for some time. Anyway, We'll talk about
that next week review coming soon. That might be it. That's it beats
Beat Gargoyles. How do you feel about that game? How are how are
your emotions about Dark Souls? I mean, I'm still enjoying it. I
just like I said, I can't play it at long stretches. Just have
to have to inch my way through it. I just got through the undid
Parish. Okay, yeah, that's what I'm still there. It's a rough
game play. Dance Central two, yes, my girlfriend, that's pretty fun.
Dance Central two is pretty good. How so, I haven't had a
chance to do any of the two player other than when I play with John
Drake when he was here. He hardly counts as a person. He might
as well be a set of curtains pretty much for a dance I like,
is that? Has that been a good experience with the two past stuff?
It was good, except that it's almost that weird guitar hero issue of like
the better you are at the real thing, like the worst you might be
in the game. I'm not sure. I mean, it's a sample size
of one so far. But she's a way better dancer than I am,
and yet I beat her consistently. Don't say because yeah, go figure,
But I don't know, because maybe I know more like what the connector is
looking for. I was able to kind of a game she wanted to like
do with the real moves and stuff like when alimb is going a ready,
you're like, okay, I need to exactly elbow out more or whatever exactly,
just you know, just like a guitar player, Like actual guitar players
had issues with Guitar Hero. I think that it is pretty good. I
don't think Just Dance three is particularly good, though they've been doing head to
head dance offs. I've been comparing the two. Yeah, trying to at
least a boy, that's barely a game. Just Dance three. It's just
silhouettes. It's barely tracking anything, right, And that's the thing is like,
is it's it's just it's a connect game and it's never been about precise
movements like Dance Central. The thing is like the dancers are are always doing
far more challenging and complicated dance routines in Just Dance because they're not animating people
or they're not animating like polygonal figures. It's just like we pointed a camera
this dancer dressed all ridiculously and then made them look all neon and glowy,
and you have to, you know, kind of mimic their moves and they
have like you know, they'll do like a little kind of like the flash
cards and Dance Central. Uh they'll have you know, like little figures kind
of scroll across the screen at the bottom be like here's what your next move
kind of looks like. But it doesn't have like the level of granularity that
that Dance Central has, where it's like, here is like the left hand
move version of this, and then the next car is gonna be okay,
and here's the right hand move. So you know you're gonna shuffle, shuffle
to the right, shuffle shuffle to the left. It's like, oh,
okay, when when that thing comes up, I now know what that means.
Like they don't give you that much direction. Uh, not that you
need it though, So it's it's kind of this weird thing where the dancing
looks far more chance, like it's way harder to pull off the proper dancing,
but the game doesn't really give a shit, Like there's it's just like
as long as you're flailing around sort of maybe rhythmically, you're okay. I
got like three stars on a song sitting on my couch. Granted, now
there's an easy mode where you're sitting on your couch Rhythmically, No, I
was I was like literally not moving like I'm not I wasn't seeing on my
couch and like trying to mimic it. I was just sitting on my couch
watching it, and I was getting points for it. You can like,
couch, it's mine now. So you're saying like, if you just if
you don't care about really what's going on and you just want to do just
dance, or if you want the full experience of dancing, you want to
go to Dance Central. I don't know if if so. So for me,
as someone who is not a great dancer, I find the Dance Central
experience far more satisfying because I feel like it is the moves, at least
on kind of the easier levels, you feel like you're actually you're like,
okay, I'm actually doing this move. I can actually I can read that
card and I know how to do that little side step move, and you
feel kind of involved in it. You're doing enough of it that you feel
like you're doing approximating a move, like if you feel like I'm kind of
dancing here, I'm actually kind of doing a thing here, whereas in just
dance like not enough direction and it's it's motion tracking is so haphazard. That's
like I don't I can't. I don't know how to do that move,
but I have no motivation to learn how to do that move because I'm still
scoring decently. Just kind of There's another time where I was just like just
kind of like fuck these routines. I'm just gonna jump around and shake my
arms and did okay. So yeah, I've thought that because there's there's both.
There's both. The there's an easy mode in a normal mode, and
the easy mode literally is just detecting your waist up like it's It's where I
do my best dance. It's like no, no feet, you just you
can just lock your feet into place. And even on normal I for the
most part would have my feet locked into place and be like I just shift
my shoulders kind of the sides and it's kind of how I dance anyway.
It takes it. So there's some other cool stuff actually happening in Just Dance
three uh. With with like a you can record your own choreographies as they
call them, and it's able to cut your silhouette out and make you look
like a just Dance dude, and it uploads it and then other people can
danced like multiplayer choreographies, you know what. I haven't dug into that part
of it, maybe because it supports up to four but supports to four players
at once. But it's again it as fast and loose as it is with
one. I can only imagine, uh, just record, just record a
couple of people boning and then uploading the silhouettes of it. It's like,
here's my dance. That would be pretty amazing. Uh, But it seemed
like the idea of and I'm not sure how like if it's if it's then
like monitoring your movement and then like scoring people they're downloading and playing it based
on that movement. But the idea of beings like here's a song and here's
my dance routine for it, and people can see that and play along to
it, like that seems like a neat idea. It's just that it's in
a game that's not good. And again and also like soundtrack, I really
like the song selection in Just Dance three. Uh, it's just it needs
to be in a better game. But Dance Central two, Dance Central aer
seems pretty good. Yeah, I like it, well, it looks better.
The the like the crew challenge stuff is cool, kind of giving a
little more structure because that's the story. Yeah, Yeah, Dance Central.
The first one was just like dance and then it was like a Tar Hero
one. Yeah, it was very feature stripped. This slightly more. I
feel like that's like the two players simultaneous, which obviously is a big addition,
and the crew challenge stuff seemed like kind of the biggest. Oh,
and there's Connect support so you can yell at your voice voice support. Yeah,
voice support for obviously there's wait a minute, there's always been Connect support,
but yes, Connect voice support. And when you when you first loaded
up, there's just a little note on the menu screen that says, you
know, just shout dance at Connect and you can just say Connect dance and
it loads stuff up. I'm gonna I'm gonna give the Fitness Mode a run.
I've heard it's because they had something that in the Yeah, it was
like the first one I've seen it so far. It's just got like ten
or maybe a dozen playlists. I don't even know if the songs vary because
they've got down to the second how long each one is, Like this one
is ten minutes twenty one seconds long. So it's probably the same songs.
Yeah, but I mean the tracks you know, burn like chained playlist like
that's good. Yeah, Like some of them are up to like an hour
long, and they're they're even listed out for like you know, this one's
an interval, this one, this one is like Max Cardio, you know,
like it's right. Yeah, I've fallen out, as I do every
six months. I've fallen off my effort to get back in shape, and
so I'm gonteresting. But it's it's into this, Yeah, it's it still
has that and you know there's good goofy songs in in Dance Central two as
well, Like it's a good mix of I guess you know current dance music
as well as you know the Humpty Dance and Ultimate Dance music. I think
there's some Bell lived vote in there. I believe you're Bobby Brown. Well
yeah, my prerogative is in there. Definitely can import to Dance Central one
stuff eventually. Can you not do it yet? Yeah, yeah, because
the game's not out yet, so the store stuff still isn't up. The
same thing be paid I think maybe five ten. It also comes with a
points card, all right. It comes with two hundred and forty a code
for two hundred and forty points on I guess to encourage you to go buy
a song. I was. I was looking at the original game actually because
how's how's the soundtrack? And first one because you need the first one,
like a new copy of the first one to import. So I was figuring,
I'll just go buy the first one, uh and pull it in.
It's good. It's good, it's good. It's good, good stuff in
there. I was considering how much a new probably was going through some some
Dance Central one also just to kind of compare and contrasts those two. And
uh, I honestly I like a lot of the d LC songs more than
the stuff that was necessarily on the disc. There's some there's some good delC
for that game. Well, that's what I was gonna make light of.
Was it on Amazon? Like the first game by itself is thirty five bucks
and the first game with a two hundred and forty point card is forty five
bucks. Pay us ten extra bucks to get this three dollars voucher done.
So I think the first Dance Central I don't I get the feeling. I
remember really liking the soundtrack for that. In terms of like it made for
good gameplay, even if they weren't always your favorite songs, It's true they
were. The routines were good. It was a you know, they were
good songs to dance too. Oh and there's some there's some good stuff in
two. They did some of this in one, but like songs, the
dance routines incorporating stuff from like the videos or oh right, in the case
of Hadaway is what is love? Okay? That at the Roxbury? Yeah
stuff, Oh it's got. It's got a little good little head snap parts
of the routine. It's a small part, but it's one of those like
if you know, it's like, it's a funny little thing. I can't
the name is Escaping Me, the Internet meme song. It's like the second
song in the game. Uh Romanian pop song. God, is it actually
that song or is it the TI song that sam? It totally is that
song. And it's got it's got the the dude, the YouTube guy,
it's got his motions and stuff. Residuals. Yeah, kids getting paid,
So the kid gets paid. So the one issue I had with the dance
battles, which is not the fault of the game is that, like there
were elbows getting knocked into heads and stuff. You know, It's like basically,
we're standing as far from the connector as the living room and allow,
and we still couldn't move far enough apart and both be in the frame.
Yeah you need Yeah, so that's not the fault of the game. But
so I immediately it was just like, all right, fucking I'm buying that
thing. I was so I wanted went on Amazon to buy it. It's
the Niko Zoom yeah, And I was like, I mean, it's optics.
Why wouldn't that work? You know, just whatever. So I get
on there Amazon and out of one hundred user reviews, sixty of them are
one star. And it's just ranging from like from like it completely fucks up
hand tracking too, it only works with some games to this is fucking snake
oil. Like people were angry about that thing. So I was just curious.
I mean, sixty those people Microsoft, I mean, who knows,
who knows, But I mean, if any of you guys use that thing,
I've been waiting to hear from other people. I was from Harmonix's John
Drake, and it sounded like he liked it, so yeah, consider the
source. Truly, I feel like they would want that thing to work.
That would make me buy more Connected, because right now it just don't work.
You're you're right. But at the same time, if it did,
wor own, it would be Microsoft having to admit that we could have made
this thing. But like I said, a lot of the people were saying
that it does anything that requires finer tracking of the hands and stuff. That
makes sense because it's just distorting the image. I mean, I mean,
Microsoft doesn't have to admit that San Francisco apartments are really tiny and you probably
shouldn't have Connect, but they would have to admit that they made a thing
that doesn't work in San Francisco apartments. They already do. They were really
like eight feet, don't have a coffee table and like you know, mount
it on the wall. They kind of already admit that. I kind of
knew going into this whole thing. How else are they going to force you
to buy a second one? I just ordered it. I just ordered a
like another sit on top of your TV stand clip thing because I bought the
one that everyone recommended at launched, which I had this thing that would go
down the back of the TV and you could bolt to it and stuff.
But it didn't fit my TV at all, so it was useless. So
I bought another one that seems like it might be a slight more precariously positioned
thing. But I at least look look at it and see how it would
work to keep that stupid thing on top of my TV. So maybe I'll
get some dancing in. I still have to, yeah, I don't know.
I still have to rearrange my living room if I want to, if
I want to do it properly. So there doesn't know. It's a shame
there is. There is another company bringing out an attachment the same concept as
the Niko, but maybe that thing works better. But I can't imagine they
don't have to work rarely. It's all very I don't know if the Niko
Won is baddly designed or if it's just an inherent limitation of concept. But
yeah, I was curious for anybody listening to this has had a good experience
with that thing, even if it actually works well, because we will find
out by next week. I can guarantee you that probably now that you've said
that, I'll get a million emails, uh anything else, Brad, you
want to touch on. That's it we have we have burned through this podcast.
Uh, Patrick, is there any uh any news of particular note that
you want to to bring up here or any stories you want to plug?
The NFL Blitz Yeah, oh yeah, yeah and announced today with zombies.
Yeah. Well, I mean they had they had weird guest teams before,
so it's it's not that's not the crux of it. Yeah, what is
that? Was the crux of the article? Says to me that someone who
didn't play a whole up that's maybe oh okay, the hand the hands on
article, you think you did not have a lot of hands on in it.
You think that that's more of not EA making the folks, but the
writer making that the thing. Maybe maybe hard to say, but uh,
you know, there's some footage out there that the EGM has in their their
story and I pretty much muted it and and kind of went to look through
the footage and it looks a lot like NFL Blitz, Like it's it's uh
similar animations. Uh you know, a lot of the same plays are in
there, though whoever was playing it no jump passing in there. And I'm
worried that if if they've taken out jump passing, then that game is being
made by someone who doesn't understand what makes NFL Blitz great. I'm just hoping
that whoever was playing it just to it didn't know that that's how you play
that game. So are they bringing Blitz back? This is a new game,
sort of like a how NBA Jam was a new game like this is
this is no Tibron's developing it. This is NFL Blitz like no number,
no nothing. And it's gonna be a retail game. It's gonna be apparently
be a retail game out January third, which I don't think they would have
learned from NBAJAM last time. So are running through was dead? Well?
People that are fans by twice anyway, So why not just squeeze him out?
Well? Yeah, why not get forty bucks out of him the first
time instead of fifteen? Uh, you know, because you could sell a
disc the first time out and you're in. You called this one as far
as release window of you knew that once once they once they announced it officially
that it was gonna come real quick. Uh, syndicate style. Well I
called that because I knew that. But but yeah, super perceptive. No,
no, the you know, I mean, we we ran a story
on this in November at twenty ten, yes, saying that, hey,
guess what he is working on our new NFL Blitz. They of course would
not confirm it until today. Yeah, but yeah, yeah, it's uh
so real quick turn around from announcement to ship for whatever reason, the ship
January third. So do you feel like you just I mean, do you
know enough about the game to think that the contents not there for a full
retail game. It depends on what they add. I mean, you know,
they've they've added like something called the Blitz Gauntlet mode or something like that.
Like they're they're looking to expand in ways that are probably similar to what
they did in NBA JAM. Sounds exactly like the remix Tour. Yeah yeah,
but so so wait so retail but not sixty, no idea, but
probably I will come out and say that they will probably know better than to
try to charge sixty for this game, because they you know, with NBA
Jam they did charge forty, So they're not trying to do the league or
anything like that. No, it doesn't look like it in this game.
You know, it looks like a visually upgraded version of the old NFL Blitz
like old four player, like turbo bars at the bottom and you know,
versus screen codes and and all that sort of stuff. So you know,
it looks like whoever's making it is like similar to what they did with the
NBA Jam, Like they're looking to hit the same notes and kind of do
the right thing. A lot of the plays come right out of Bliss ninety
nine, but you know, and then looking at it being played and looking
at you see the receiver's flashing, so you can tell it's probably the same
style of point and shoot passing that they would use in that original in the
original games. But he doesn't jump. I don't know, he doesn't jump.
It's gonna have to reformulate your entire blitztress if you can't jump, they
can't jump. There's something how many how many dudes are on the field,
you know what, seven on seven jump jump passes their pre order bonus.
Fuck. But they're putting those codes inbody, so it's fine, but only
at target. Yeah, So this is kind of you know, like I
think some people thought that this game was dead because, like the the story
that I wrote came out when when it did come out, like Mark Turmel
was still working at Tiberon and he has since left and gone to Zinga,
I believe so. I think some people thought that the game died when he
left because he is the NFL Blitz and NBA Jam dude, and that he
has basically just been burying these properties their unearthing as they come out. Did
you know the new NBA jame came out. I wouldn't be. I wouldn't
blame you if you didn't know that, because that game just kind of yeah,
and just to like kind of yeah, you know what is it's it's
we're mid October now, right, games come out in January. Like I
kind of liked the idea of announcing a game and turning around this quickly.
But you know, they're not going to spend any real time promoted that game.
Well, I don't know if they're putting it on disc. Maybe they
will, who knows. It's it's just such a weird thing like that,
just to say it will even be fully functional like that NBA Jam, it's
kind of kind of broken. Yeah, it is kind of broken in some
spots for sure, I don't know, but it looks enough like NFL Blitz
that I'm very excited. It seems like DA's attentions are elsewhere right now.
They got that MMO, between that MMO and that first person shooter. Yeah,
yeah, obviously this is the sports group, so that's a slightly different
thing. But i EA seems kind of like it's not just like, oh,
obviously these are big things for them. In a lot of writing,
they seemed distracted. They're waiting to give like the amount of attention that I
feel like I've seen for EA properties that are not those uh, doesn't seem
that focused. Well. Yeah, it was interesting going to the thing that
they had in Vegas where I mean, Battlefield was there, but it was
the stuff from Games Calm mostly. They didn't really dwell on that game very
much there at all, and it was about the kind of other stuff they
had coming up, and it was weird, like it felt like Crazy Worlds
like I'm at this EA event and Battlefield's not really the focus and Old Republic
isn't here at all. This is great. I'm gonna go play Need for
Speed. I'm gonna go play Syndicate like like Syndicate. You know again,
I think Syndicate looks like it. It's got a real shot like it looks
pretty awesome. Mass Fact three played that multiplayer stuff. I think what's the
date eighteen? Still can't talk about that, okay, but all those details
are out there, so go, yeah, do something. Go read the
internet. Go read the internet. I guess about that, and then come
back on the twenty seventh and I'll give you a thumbs up for a thumbs
down. What do you think? Thanks, scary Larry. Yeah, they'll
come back because some cheek cold po tips. You want big head, if
you want to show field goal percentage, hit the pass button once and then
pressed down. How do I get to the minus? There are cheat there
is there's cheat codes in the what we saw on the footage, which yeah,
yeah, so imagine that I'll be you know, that's traditionally that's where
you would turn off computer assistance or turn on field goal percentage or big heads
or any of that stuff. Then be turbo two on two or you think
they'll they'll ratchet it up to three, three, four and four. But
the way the hut, the way that you guys is drawn, it looks
like there's room for four turbo meters. So I measure system. Yeah,
so two on two, okay, so you know think it'll be like four
four. Uh? In fact, I mean if they are, if they're
sticking to Bliss the way Bliss has been made, you want to play a
one on one you don't even you don't even want to play that games,
Yeah, because the loose player without the ball on offense, you know,
you can kind of play receiver, but you're mostly just kind of pushing other
dudes down, and it changes a lot of really weird stuff about the game
that makes it like a little less skillful in a sense. I would say
the games that game is not enough of a football game to really support multiple
live players. You want to be passing to yourself and having two defenders out
there, like if you know what the plays are, it's it's easy enough
to bust up plays when when you're one person, uh, just kind of
being able to pick out what's being called and know what the formations look like.
If you have two players, you're just fucking breaking every single play as
it starts. Uh, when you did that tournament, was that one on
one? Yeah? Okay, because when I did that tournament, it was
before Blitz was a four player game. The first Blitz was a two player
game, and then for Blitz ninety nine they added four player, So which
which which cabinet did you get ninety nine? So it was the four player
So technically, by winning the tournament, I want a Blitz machine, which
would have been the old one, but then they said, like, hey,
would you be willing to wait two months and get the new one instead?
Yeah? Okay, I guess. And that's the one that has the
N sixty four memory slight on it. Yeah, so I can plays on
the N sixty four and on the control pack. Wow, I forgot about
that. I think it's got a door that opens up mechanized thing because they
want to keep it closed most of the times when people can't jam gum in
it. But apparently those things got gum jammed in them all the time,
and you know what's say and gum and that's that's like the ultra rare version
of like the neo geo set up with the memory the memory, because those
are slightly more common. So are you gonna this inspired? Do you feel
an itch to power that thing back up? Start playing some Blitz and even
if maybe I mean it's it's you know, it's one of those things that
I played so much of it that getting it to come back is not the
hard part. So not that just for it's finny people that are just like,
yeah, it's really as good as the people you have around on the
internet, you know, just plugging the internet to it, play somebody else
with the blitz and okay, I'll do that. Just link it up to
that grid machine, right, and then it'll all works. Trying to get
me to bring the Blitz machine in. That thing's gonna be That screen is
real big, Yeah, it's it's it's the NBAHM cabinet basically, you know,
but probably a little yeah, but just with the you know, the
moistness of that backbar area and all that time. I'm not I'm not gonna
bring it in to kill it all beat up. That's bringing your what's make
make make him come to your house. I spent a long time look about
arcade syrts this weekend. It's a dying it's a dying dying. Yeah,
it's it's a gardener still makes Nope, it's a real sad state of affairs.
They're just there. You can't manufacture CRTs anymore because it is lead in
the coating on the senior T to prevent the radiation from the number of CRTs
are available that you purpose, they're only going to be less CRTs from here
on out. A couple of people still make them, but apparently they're ship
like some like the Chinese manufacturers still will actually produce new ones, but apparently
they're really no good. And is there a way to convert him and hook
up an LCD. Uh, you can hook up an LCD, but the
resolution on it is so different that for older games, they just don't look
they don't get the blur that a CRT would give you. So everything is
real sharp. Fine with that, actually it's sharp edges. I mean,
yeah, it's a taste name. It's definitely like an analog versus digital kind
of. It's just one of those like if you're at the point of having
an arcade cabinet, like you want, right, are you gonna you weren't
want to drop an LCD in't your Defender machine. You're you're you're chasing,
You're chasing the authentic experience. So like, yeah, it's totally you know,
usable and livable with a digital PA, but but to me, it's
it's not too far off from putting those led lights into pinball machines. Well,
yeah, it's a little less cosmetic, I think because the actual hard
part, and not to spend too much time on this, itet to blow
up to the full screen. No, it's it's try and find a four
by three LCD screen to chopping there. So some people are actually turning buying
big enough ones where you can turn it vertically so that the width of the
screen is the four by three point. It's just really weird, uh finding
that stuff. So they actually do sell some arcade LCD screens that are four
by three that'll run in E GA and CGA and stuff like that. But
I don't really know, and they're like four hundred bucks, so I don't
I don't really understand what's happening. It's just sad to look at it.
Be like once these go, that's right, that's you will no longer find
those Patrick any other news highlights you want to bring up here? All right,
good, because we are out of time. Uh, games out this
week, Batman's out this week. You should probably play Batman. Layton games
out this week, lad He's out this week. Also Day pay Day pay
Back payback past Ratching, Ratchen Clink, All for one, Rock Smith SIMS
three, Pets, Professor Layton and The Last Specter, Power Up Heroes,
Family Feud twenty twelve, Minute to Win It, Bigfoot, King of Crush,
Prices Right the Decades, Tropico four for three, sixty uh, Skylanders
Jane's Advanced Strike Fighter. On Xbox Live Arcade, there's Dungeon Defenders and Bejeweled
three, as well as the Days X Missing Link DLC campaign. On PSN
there's Ocabu, Rocket Birds, Hard Boiled Chicken, pay Day, The Heist,
Dungeon Defenders, Real Steel, Beat Hazard Ultra and Salmon Max Beyond Time
and Space Beat Hazards p S three. Uh. Yeah, Beat Hazard Ultra.
Interesting, that's serious, Sam, Did you say that? Yeah?
I didn't, Oh, but yeah, serious Sam. Random Encounters on Steam
that's next week. That's next week. I thought it was this week.
I think it's next week. Okay, And that's the which which one of
the based based rpg of course I did. Sorry, it's next week.
I didn't look. I didn't look up seeing Steam stuff, so I didn't
know either way, I did, I didn't know. H I got I
gotta cut emails, no time for emails. There's no time for emails.
One email. It's the best email. I see, we don't have time.
Crazy, this is the best email? Well whatever, whatever, how
would be those email? Okay, it's gonna be about Batman? Uh?
Kurt Myers in Island, New Jersey? Am I saying that? Right?
I don't know how I spell it? I S E L I N.
Yes, sure Island. I thought maybe you was. Hey, guys,
just wondering, do you think Batman would have sold better if they timed along
with the new Batman movie next summer? Not saying it won't sound well now,
but it would be in a dead spot, probably out of the super
competitive holiday season, and everyone would be swept up in Batman fever. Not
that there should ever be a time where there isn't. Batman Fever does do
the movie was really create a palpable sense of Batmania? That's I think it
would. Maybe would it sell one more copy than it's currently going to sell?
Maybe? Maybe? At this point, the Arkham brand is is done
blockbuster status. Like Warner Brothers putting it out in mid October is them saying
this can stand with the other big games. It's such a different take on
Batman than what Christopher Nolan's doing with it. I mean, this is comic
book Batman. Yeah. And also if you put it on your the you
know you start, you're gonna assume it's a movie license game, which people
have a bad taste for, like they've people have been burned in the past
of those they thing they had to actively work against that perception with the last
game, right, and when it comes to Batman, like, I don't
really want an abundance of Batman related stuff, but this game. Every couple
of years, want a bat Vacuum perfect, Like that's enough Batman. Batman
shows up. It is. It is probably the best form of Batman that
is available. I haven't seen any of those movies. It's not about it's
not about volume, it's about quality. Yeah, I'll take a high quality
Batman game any day of the year. But I don't really care about what
they tied into. Isn't Isn't there some there's like some Batman blu ray out
though. Oh yeah, it's a there's an animated Dark Knight for Night or
something. I don't know. Yeah, there's a yeah, yeah, there's
some there's some other Batman stuff out. But the Batman. Thing you care
about is on a video game console and then three weeks on a PC.
There's always some kind of Batman out there. Yeah, I Will's phone calls
him Batman. Now. I like seeing him get really excited about that.
Yeah, he's not Batman corn in Sirie. He is Batman stupid. All
right, that's it for emails. Thanks everyone who wrote in mostly about Batman,
so all right, and we actually covered a good majority of those questions.
It's talking about Batman, so we're pretty good. BombCast at time bomb
quinn dot com. That wasn't one of the questions. Spoiler can shit.
Uh. That's it for this week's episode. Thank you guys for talking in
this hot room, and thank you guys for listening. We'll be back next
Tuesday with another edition of The Giant Podcast.