Giant Bombcast 12-20-2011

Hey everyone, It's Tuesday, December the twentieth, twenty eleven, and you were listening to the Giant Bomb Cast. I'm Ryan Davis. We are short of man this week, but we still have mister Patrick Klapak. I am not Vinny, mister Jeff Gerstmann, and mister Vinny Caravella. I'm Vinny there it is. That's not Vinny at all. I'm Vinny. That's Brad Shoemaker. Vinny is furiously working right now on our Game of the Year feature, getting all the ore I don't know, processing the ridiculousness that we've shot. He's doing it. He's doing some of the most important word yeah, that any of us have done all year. Yeah, and and I don't even I'm not even gonna talk about it anymore. No, look for Giant Bombs Games of the Year feature between Christmas and New Year's Yeah, Patrick, epic what you been playing. I'm gonna make the Skyrim because I put it on hold for like two or three weeks while that patch was like the backwards dragons, the magic Resistance stuff textures. So once they patched all the fun out of it, Yeah, yeah, they're still backwards dragon were still they're still hanging around, which is actually kind of the way it should be, right, Like, yeah, I don't actually totally gone, because then it's not any fun. But like if what once in a while, if you end up seeing one here and there, that's okay, it makes it special. I mean, if they're gonna if if if they if they're gonna be completely unable to make this game bug free, which seems like the Bethesda track record at least make the bugs interesting. Yeah, you know that's not that's not giving it a pass. That's not apologizing for it being kind of fucked up, but it was gonna be fucked up anyway. At least still be that. Yeah, at least like the magic that that's that sucks. Yeah, Babar's Dragons a little more, a little more forgivable. But like it's so reading all that stuff and especially like the torture that like the p S three users have gone through, which I felt pretty bad. It's been really poor run with us as part and communicating the issues with it. Like I really started to sour on that game because I hadn't been playing it, but I've been reading all this bad shit about it. I really needed really before we do Game of the Year. Really, I really need to go back to that game I remind myself why I was so so into it. Unfortunately I finished the main quest line, which is perhaps not the best way to remind myself. I think it's a good little story. I don't want to spoil it on on on this version of the podcast, but I mean, given given their history, that's probably saying something I think. I think it is legitimately cool as a cool little twist. With the problems I had with it was that the sort of the conclusion is similar to a lot of fights you have throughout the rest of the game, not a lot of interesting things to it. Uh And and I think that the their main quest stuff this time like really kind of points out we're but thus is having this issue where they're in the writing are outpacing what they can almost do with like the technology and the scripting and sort of the basic systems they have to make their games function where they want to kind of want to do these things, but they can't really pull it doesn't look as cool cramming it into this engine that like, when it works, it works great, but sometimes you can see them stretching it. Yeah, they envisioned this grandiosity that they just can't achieve it. It's kind of unfortunate that they would that they would go have this new engine and do all this stuff and still be bumping up against it. It's not that it's yeah, I mean, it's it's like specific like sequences where a traditional game would cut to like a very specific set of custom animations and cool shit, they would really drive home this epic moment, but instead Sky Reviews is like it's generic sort of fight animations that you excuse when you're in the midst of game and a lot of dynamic systems are happening. But it kind of it kind of kills all tension when like it's just this bad who who and the dragons going through it's like weird, like like I don't know, it's it's too bad because I liked what they tried to put together. But I think there's and it hit this wall and maybe it's part of the technology of just like these current machines. It's hard to say where that that wall hits. But the main quest is not either good, but I do like that it opens up at the end so I can keep playing, And I just wanted to get that main quest out of the way so I can kind of do like it kept just bugging me, like the thing that you talk about where you keep going to do other things and you're like, it's kind of weird that the game doesn't force me, well, like I should go save the world and I'm off like breaking into murder people, and then part did bother me, so it was like, I just need to get out of the way so I can go back and do the side quest stuff. So it's not I'm excited to do that, but main quest is better than what they've done before, but I think you're still more looking forward to digging into all the side stuff. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I mean I would say the main quest is like as good as a lot of the side stuff, yeah, which is saying something for given given what they've done in the past. Yeah. Yeah. The again, it's sort of points to that sort of like the average quality of everything in the end the game has kind of gone up, and that that extends to the main quest too, so and it's nice to have decent textures like that pops on the weapons, like not realize how much of an issue that was on the weapons that are right in front of you the entire time, can't go back. Uh yeah, so it's it looks it looks a lot nicer now, and that playing a console version, Yeah, okay, I don't. I don't have a I don't have a PC I can convert to. But Brandon, you said you're still playing Other three sixty even though we could have converted. Basically haven't played that game since the day it came out. So were you also put in like nineties for review? So I'll go back to it over the break. I already know what I think of it. Yeah, to just Skyrim, that's yeah, yeah, yeah, So I put like twelve hours into that over the weekend, So it's about it. I was I wanted to get into TOMORROWO three d Land, but I eventually resigned to myself to knowing that I'm not going to be able to get a chance to play that, and now it's gonna be like my my day loss to travel for Christmas will be the entirety of Yeah, that's what I'm gonna do too. If you lose the whole day with that, assuming that you can find power to plug that thing in and keep it going, you have a la Okay, so so like I have like a going to Washington, DC or my dad side of the family is, and so I can like a four hour flight from San Francisco to Chicago, lay over there that I can charge it and then I should be able to play it from Chicago to Yeah, you should be able to do most of the game, finish the first you should be able to get to the first actual ending of that and then open up the rest of it. Great, So I would get in that first four in my first arc of my trip. I'll get to the past the slow party to the better part. Yeah, so I'm looking forward to that. There are a lot of good platforms this that's cool. That's a that's a great that's a great travel game. Ye else that you're making game plans for push Mo, I should say that they always great. Yeah, PUSHO still deep on the pushmyh just started. Still good. It's a good game. Yeah, I think it's it takes a while before it starts really Yeah, it probably takes about an hour and a half. But there is I think, unlike perhaps three, I think there's legitimate reason for that game dolen that out slowly totally totally because the way it ramps Up is just like you'll be happy to actually, because sometimes I found myself going back to old puzzles to remind myself, like what the tricks were for some of the old ones, because it starts stacking tricks on top of tricks and it becomes really easy to to forget. It's it's a game that is not worth trying to explain the complexities because it's it's it's just such a visually oriented game. It's it's a public game where you're moving things in and out and it's using death perception against you. So we're gonna say, we're gonna take a look at it. You know, Jeff tried to explain it already and it's just and it's like I don't really understand. And then I went and played it and like, okay, now it's complete sense what he was attempting to your Jeff, your description of the game plays sense once I've actually played it pushing pull blocks and then done. Yes, that's roughly it. Yes, roughly it Yes, for the most part that that explains the experience. But yeah, that's cool. Yeah, we'll definitely do a quick look of that. Yeah, all those Ambassador games, uh, just came out for the three DS two. I've never played wire Land four. I want to go to that. That's a good game. I've never played Minis Cap, so I want to play that. I hear that's very good. I think I've played Zero Mission. I want to say Zero Mission was the first on for GBA. Yeah, okay, then there were two, right, Fusion Fusion Zero Mission is the you know Affusion. Fusion is the one of the Ambassador program. I think, yes, yeah, Zero Mission is a remake. Ye Mission is the remake of the first game. Okay, Fusion, it's more than that. It's it's weird. Fusion is we're liking on the Metro creator's name. Anyone know? Yeah? Is it? No? That's the game creator he was later on anyway, the designer of the Metroid games. Like. I think Fusion is where he came back into it, like he wasn't really involved in or at least definitely prime like the like the retro games like which are kind of light on story. Fusion is where that series like takes like a real serious like there's a lot of weird narrative that starts with that, and I think climax with other m I just was not very good. Yeah, so I just want to finish the game fast and then be a bikini lady. There's your story finally, sexy bounty hunter. Yeah what I needed. Yeah, all those GBA games that totally happened. Yeah, and if you hold apparently, I guess if you hold starters to like then it makes a run and it's native rez. Otherwise, if you just boot them, it just stretches it to that three DS resolution, which is like two or three times with like Game Boy Advanced games were originally at. Oh wait, so if you launch it, you just straight up launch it, then it'll stretch or yeah. Yeah, but apparently it has a border. So but it looks a lot sharper and nicer. I mean maybe if you just don't ever look at it any other way with regular DS games. Yeah, I don't know. For GBA game that I just want that real estate. That screen it is so damn small up top. I'd rather stretch it. Yeah, I don't know, I haven't played it. Like, if you haven't seen the games how they would look originally, maybe it wouldn't bother you. The The one thing with the GBA games is they don't have the sleep state function. I guess gonna get patched later because and intended just SAMEINGD just figured out patches, same thing with the next games right now. Yeah, yeah, they were gonna the Game Boy. Yeah the stuff, Yes, all the ambassad program stuff came out before they had figured out how to do save states and patches and all that stuff. But they'll they'll patch that in when it's ready to be sold. I guess it real basic stuff figure out well, considering they're not even putting these in the shop and it's like you go into your settings other like they're doing some backward ass. At least at least get the download later option this time, which you could cure it out, which I could not get to work, and you could not get Did you get it to work? Yeah, bradbably two hours. I left it sitting there, and I came back and and they were all that they were there. You have to close out of the shop. If you just home out of the shop but the shop is still open in the background, it will not go. That is the thing it says specifically in there. You must close the shop. I don't want to close the shop. You must close the shop. I don't want to close the so now my three ds full of games. Not a decent battery, but yeah, full games. I don't know. I look at it and I just go, ah, I got all these games, and these are all theoretically great games. But I was gonna play all those nest games too, and I didn't. I didn't do any of that, but I guess I look at it, I go like, man, I've got the legend of Zelda and Zelda two on this thing. I got boot that up whenever the funk I want. I never played Zelda two. Hell of a game, a lot of grinding. I hear, it's a lot harder, or yeah, there's some there's some difficult. It's the one is a difficult game too. Compared, I always want to play just because it's such a divisive sort of either it is amazing or it is total ships because it's a total crap. That's amazing. It's garbage, it's awesome. It's for garbage people. It's for bad people with those cases who don't know good things. It's one of it is one of the best, the legend of Zelda games ever created. It's right up there with Major's mask. See now you're being no, I'm just fucking with him. Say it's like Majority, you're coming to my size, but it's like Majority's mask. And then below that is Zelda two and it's below that, uh that CDI game, scar Ret Sort, Yeah, scar Ret Sword, that that CDI game. Were there two CDI games? Yeah, there was a pair. I don't know anything about the CD Wand of Gamelan. Is that one of them? That sounds right, yeah, Gannon's Quest Wands of Scott Gamelan. Yeah, it's I think a lot of those games I don't. I don't play a lot of games when I go home. So I go home for the holidays. Okay, so yeah, I don't know you're out of town for the durations. Yeah. I don't go home for Thanksgiving because I just picked one of the other it's too expensive to go home both. So yeah, so I like every but every year I bring home with three sixty hard drive thinking yeah, I'm I'm gonna play a game and that I usually just end up getting drunk with friends. So maybe NBA jam that's about it. That's what we did last year. One night than that, just that, no big games, clearing your handheld stuff. Yeah, a lot of traveling, so a lot of sitting around. We're getting to meet up with families, so any big investments. Planet Xbox is my only friend where I am from at this point. Yeah, everyone else left, then they don't come back, because that's always the thing is theoretically everyone's supposed to come back and then everybody's in town for a couple of days. Really talk to anybody from there anymore? Could call I like, keep keep trying. Something like two or three people that I keep tabs on, keep tabs on. Yeah, I stalking them. Let them make sure that I know where they're at all times. I got people interesting phrase, I got people from my school. Jeff, Do you want to talk about the Old Republic? Sure? All right, because Brad won't talk about anything first, because I have a feelings we're gonna go a bit really, all right, Brad, what you've been playing is trying to still any good? It's still pretty good. You played on another platform. Yeah, I've been Oh I can't remember if I can talk about that. It's it's tomorrow. It's Wednesday, Wednesday. Yeah, it's it's out tomorrow. Like Patrick said, yeah, it is out. Well, that doesn't mean that I can necessar we talk about it. Then there's no pr people that are still around listening to this ship. By the time, by the time anyone paying attention, a demo went up prematurely on Xbox line markets. You could you could purchase that demo, so it's it's out. It got out. I may or may not have also played the full game. The frame rate is lesser significantly. The lighting also seems it looks about the same. I've been telling both of them a lot. Yeah, it performs way less. It does not perform as much. The frame rate is clearly thirty or less at all times, versus it's running ten eighty at a solid sixty on my PC and looks amazing doing it. So I would recommend playing it on the PC. It has portals in it, but finally, straight up added portals. You mean like like there are two openings space portals. You can't I mean you can't move them. Well, that's not even accurate. You can't slap on the walls. Okay, okay, it's not that kind of portal. I thought maybe it was just another like, yeah, we put our ship in their game, too, so it's more like the portals than portal portals. There they are physical objects. They're like frames. They're these sort of like ornate looking metal kind of they exist in space. They don't, they don't, you know, they're not applied to surfaces. They are. It's like a stargate physical. It's like a portable hole, yes, kind of. And you can't move them around in some cases, but not as much as you would think the Wizard or just anybody, anybody. There's like a switch in some cases that lets you move them, but throw something in one and it comes out the other. But generally speaking, still like trying to tell yeah, they've added enough stuff that it feels like a good proper sequel at this point. Okay, because the stuff that we saw it was was very much like Prettier Tryne. It's very iterative. I mean, I mean, the characters have a few new abilities, but they're basically the same. Okay, But it's it's more how you can interact with the environment and the new stuff the levels that that makes it different. Cool. Uh, And it's really good. And then I finished Saints for the third How about that sound a little less enthusiastic. Uh, this is not really the venue to openly discuss the endings, is it? We have a different podcast for that. Yeah, I only did one of the endings, so give both endings. Yeah, I'll go back and see the other one. Uh, yeah, I should do that. The one. The one that I did was I liked where they were going with it. Yeah, like it was. It was a good idea, they had a good joke in mind, but it felt like the execution was at like eighty percent. I didn't quite take it as far as they could have. Perhaps, I feel a lot of people say I heard a lot of people say that, and I think it's the ending that you're talking about, and it's uh, I don't know. I didn't get that vibe at off. I didn't have that that problem. But yeah, a lot of people in saying like, yeah, it's just not quite there. I'm like, but that's some of the other highs are so high, you know. Yeah, yeah, like that one. The response that was that maybe they took it too far to bowl ending of the game. The whole last like thirty minutes felt a little bit flat to me compared to some of the other completely first half of the last mission leading up to you making the choice about which ending you're gonna go get, Yeah, it's not good, not good fight in the three different places and doing the free fights like not a not a great ending. Well that's and that sucks that you have to do that. Yeah, so when you go back and do the other end, yeah, you have to do stuff again, but hopefully you will have earned enough fresh stuff in your one finish of the game that you can then. Yeah, I do have like three invincibility dollars at this point, by your invincibility by I think I'm high enough level for that. I didn't. Yeah, it took me another few hours of playing it. I'm not going to do so it will not happen to get to the invincible stuff because I like that game a lot, and there's a lot of fun stuff in there, but it all kind of wears thing enough for a little while. Sure. To me, the activity is, you know, like two or three times, I'm good. Yeah, it sounds like they're gonna do a lot of dealc. So I'm like, I will go back and so you bring it on, like we'll go back and stick around with that stuff. Like I think if I had like a couple of months off with it, then those side things would be interesting again. Yeah, I just need anything, anything, at all to do in that game. I've just I've done it all. So like what, yeah, do we know what their plans are for DLC for that because they just said this. There was at one point they were saying, like a lot they intended to do more DLC than like any other game four, which is how they were trying to sort of like pump up the season pass. They put out some additional uh they put out I don't know if these came out on console, but I saw on Steam, but they had put out it a couple of like weapon packs. Okay, that's just not what I like. Nothing it would make you want to come back to the game. I need content, like i've I've eaten through everything in that game that is to me worth pursuing. I want to play it more. I just give me a fucking excuse. Give me, you know, new events, new modes, give me new story stuff, anything, some some mission packs would be appreciated. You play anything else Star Wars the Old republic An for like maybe an hour? Yeah you were so you was so excited? Did you wait in the I did? Did you wait in the server queue longer than you played? Yes? I did, in fact do that yeah, this is like what Saturday night, Friday night, Saturday afternoon ish. Uh yeah, that was, and that was maybe those were the worst queues that I have seen in that game. Yeah. I said it said, uh twenty five minutes or lass, and it ended up being well over an hour. Yeah. Yeah, didn't really do anything else on your computer while that's happening, Like you couldn't. I couldn't play StarCraft all I was waiting to get in. Yeah, because it seems like you can play trying perfect if an application of like that battalog stuff, like if the server que couldn't if they didn't launch you into the direct three D mode like like actual full screen application, you can just we can all enter out of it and turn it into a window and then just run a full screen window so I can have my other monitor. I guess I could. Yeah, I guess I could try that, But that would assume that I'm going to play more Old Republic. Sure. Yeah, I suspect that they'll, oh whatever, They will fix the queuing problem eventually, because that's how it works. Either enough p quit or they add enough server capacity to balance it out. But I bet this launch there will be like the Wild launch after Saturday afternoon though, like whatever, Today is the official launch of that game, right, so today will be absolute bedlam because because because you'll have the real yeah launch of this kids, they're taking the service down Monday night from like seven pm to midnight or something and then put throwing them back up what for the official launch or whatever. So yeah, if you thought queues were bad in the pre launch period, although after after Saturday afternoon, after that that period that Brad sat through and I also sat through the que once every other time that I jumped into that game with the weekend it was fine. I heard that Sunday afternoon was or Sunday evening was rotten. M hm. I couldn't see for myself. It was just like people in the stupid general chat going is there a que right now? The people going yeah, it's like six hundred people. I just waited through it, you know. It shot like that. It seems like the the wave h sort of idea they were loading didn't do anything to stand I mean maybe, I guess so at some point in the process they actually increase the number of players that they allowed to be connected. So people were waiting in the queue and then had all of a sudden their number drop three hundred spots or something because they you know, allowed more connections or whatever it was. So, I mean, who knows if they're running at full capacity, who knows where they'll be at. Well, it's weird for his for today tomorrow capacity, as everything seems to or is supposedly allegedly running like the world is fucking empty whenever I go anyway, that's the problem. They've instanced up the world so much, and they have these huge fucking cities with zero people in them. Yeah, and you know, you see like one hundred and sixty eight people in your instance or something like that, and that's the zones are big, and yeah, you don't run into people unless you run to choke points, you know, your your shops, your class trainers or requesting points, you know, like like that's the that's where you see other people. I just yeah, I find it. It's I think it's a good idea to instance up like a lot of the a lot of elements here, But it seems like when you're in the big cities like that should feel full. I'm in like the Imperial Home Planet capital city, like as as much the center of the Empire as you can get Why you gotta play Empire because there aesthetics are way better. Why is everybody I know playing Empire on every server? I played like eight hours of Jedi and the Beta and thought it was boring as shit, especially compared to compared to the Empire stuff that I've played. It's it's jedire sanctimony as good. Does everybody start in the same zone, the same area, split up by class, But as soon as you get a little ten and get out of your around level ten, get out of your starter area. Well, even in that very first zone there were class specific phase points, right, so there are is that just if you happen to go there later? No, No, it's it's so like a couple of the classes Jedi, Yeah, a couple you'll have. You'll have two classes that started a place. Man, Yeah, like as the as the Agent. I started on Hudda. I'm sure who else start there. I think maybe perfect Bounty owners might start there. Probably, you know, the instancing thing, like it makes sense from some kind of technical perspective and all that, but it feels like kind of a big rip off of like, you know, it's like if you're getting instant it all instance, it all to hell like that, it's just Guild Wars. At that point. We also then it's like, well then what am I waiting in a queue for? Right, Like what's my connection to other players? Really? Yeah? If everything is is so heavily instanced, uh, even on yeah, even on that Capital City sort of level. And then the phases are all specific instances. You're always running in and out of little areas that are exclusive to you. While you're in there, as through one of those big green doors an instance, nobody else can come in. No, no one's else is gonna walk in there. The enemies are not going to respond on the same time, or it's it's a totally different thing. The upside is that you never wait for like do despawn yet you still wait for uh, Like like last night, I had to go disable a bunch of AA guns and I get out to where the AA gun panel is that I need to write click on. There's like three people waiting there in line to right click on this thing, and they right click on it and it blows up and the guy runs away waves to everybody, and you wait for like forty seconds or whatever for it to reset. And then the next person does it, and I'm just like, why are we not past this? Like, how do you for everything else? How they not fixed this thing? The other stupid looking thing they go to. It's like, oh, look the gun blew up. Now we have to wait for it to respond so someone else can blow it up. Oh look the gun blew up. Okay, let's let's fix it again. Next. Oh, that dick ran up and right clicked on it before I could right click on it. Now he blew it up. Now I have to sit here even longer. Thanks. It's it's just a that genre. Man. You start wondering why you're playing the game, which is where I got too, after about thirty minutes on each factions, and I said, I can't do this anymore. Thirty minutes. Huh? Level three on both characters I played just thirty hours. What are your classes I have? I basically have one. Really, I have two that I've played a little bit of. But I have a Sith Marauder that's like level twenty three. Is that one of the advanced classes. Yeah, it's the Sith Floyer split up into Deepest Fighter. Yeah I am. I am the DPS version of the two lightsabers. That's the guy I wanted to play instead of the one lightsaber and heavy armor. So after thirty hours, what do you think so far? It's it is certainly a massively multiplayer online role playing game, is exactly. I mean it. It's you know what, like production values are the thing they're going to set this game apart, and that's what gives you that kind of It's given me fond memories of World of Warcraft. I have to not angry memories of World of Warcraft like most other MMOs do. They have done a lot of stuff right with on the experience side of just like going through and just like, wow, this stuff looks really great. You can tell that a lot of people you know, made some good art here. At the same time, you do run into cases where like you see the same building through It's it's almost like Dragon Age two. You see the same building three different ways, only now there's a wall here, only even though there's a clear outline where a door would be, and in fact, there is a door here in a different version of this building. Like it's all real modular on some of this stuff. Yeah, I've definitely run into that, but in ways that I don't know that makes it doesn't Yeah, exactly, it doesn't. That doesn't break the game or anything like that. It's just a weird thing to notice, Like, Okay, sure the Empire is going to have prefab buildings that they're going to put on multiple planets, but why would they have this one, this one the doors over here, I don't know, we thought that would be the cool thing. It's going for this one. It's going to the suburbs. Man same thing. It's like, you don't put the exact same house all next to each other. But that's because they're all next to each other, and you can't. You know, people want a few different it's not two planets away. Oh you're talking about the similarities from Yeah, I haven't done enough space travel yet to start seeing stuff like that. You got a ship. I have a ship. I can fly around in space. Can you manually fly around space? You? Or do you like click where you want to go and then you're there? Well? You, so that's if you want to travel to another planet, you click where you want to go and you're there. But there are space battle missions that are like you need to blow up this the turrets on this space station and that's like a kind of a flash game, you know what it's. It's like they're bringing the magic of rebel assault into today's technology on rails just kind of absolutely year it is. All it is on rails, like you have a cursor that you're moving around with the mouse and your ship is on screen, and it's kind of like jankily following the cursor, just like moving around all Willy nillion. So you have to dodge asteroids and ship like that. It'll be in your flight path and that's why they draw your ship. But the movement just looks bad and it's it's like left click for lasers and right click is a is a paint targets for missiles like pancer ragoon style thing and you can hit the space bar to barrel roll, which I don't know why you would ever do that. So not exactly the next tie fighters, which you're saying, it seems like one of those things that like we have to have this in here in some fashion and we will do an expansion pack later that turns the thing. Yeah, I don't know, but like when you load it up, says in the upper right corner, like how long the mission is going? To because it's on rails. It's just like six minutes, So you have like six minutes to blow up fifty fighters and you get three or four passes on this space station, plenty of time to take out all the antennas and turrets and all the things you need to do. Uh, they're throwing a couple of bonus objectives and it's just kind of like free XP or something. Yeah, it's it's it's I will say, it looks kind of nice, like visually some of the you know, some of those asteroids are pretty good looking asteroids, but it's it's really silly hell of a rock texture. Yeah, I mean, yeah, they're good looking rocks. Well, it just seems I know, I remember that Galaxy's got really hammered for not having any of that right at launch and at all came and expansions like a year later. Yeah, so I you know, I don't think it was conceivable to ship a game without some sort of space combat, but also thinking that you know you're gonna get comparable space combat, give out everything else they have to build, Like this game sounds like a whole series of compromises of this grand vision for an emmode that's gonna be different and then just colliding with the realities of the genre and just not having, not having, or just realizing in order to make this work, in order to make it a shivable product, there's just some things we're not going to be able to do differently, and we'll trying to make it better in the areas that are within our control, which is writing, voice acting and stuff like that. That's that's pretty good. I mean, you kind of hear it sounds like Jennifer Hale. You sound like her. It almost seems like she's voicing let's say, two thirds of the female characters or something. I hear she's in there a bunch. Yeah, I thought I heard a couple of Nolan North's I guess he's primarily in the Jedi Consolar. I think that's the voice he actually provides. The is that main is the male Jedis. There's a smuggler looking character the is getting tortured at one point, and in my storyline that sounded like it was probably don't know. If you go look at the voice list for this game, there's yes everyone. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure Cam Clark, it's gotta be all hands on deck with the number of characters and stories and stuff that and like actual actors also like screen actors who are just kind of like Richard Cook does this one character voice that's really yep. But I just I pulled that one out of out of thin air? Could you that's not actually true? That's actually she really qualified as a screen actor at this point. She has, she is, She is primarily known for. She's all that more than she is also the past. She was in that movie, right, yeah, that while ago. Yeah, whatever, I'm not say I didn't say movie stars. I said screen actors. Say. I'm saying not Jennifer Hale, Cam Clark, Phil Lamar or Phil Lamar has been on some screens. Sure, but but again he is primarily a voice actor. It's all. It's my only point there. Uh, you know, it's Jeff to your point. I think you're right. It's like playing the I don't I don't know how many hours. Maybe I did twelve or something. I'm about I'm at about level twelve, maybe more, maybe less for the time spent. Yeah, it feels like it's a familiar experience as far as kind of pacing and structure goes in a lot of ways. But I have to say that, and and it's also gonna be a while before anyone will be able to tell if this is going to make a long term difference. But like all the voice work and the way that they present emissions and story stuff makes that stuff matter more than it has another emos for me, simply because it's it's there and produced, you know. And with the it's probably just the quality of the story or something like that. But I haven't been skipping as much dialogue with with this as I was during that week During that weekend with the beta, we're two hours in, I was just like, Jedi story just boring, boring, boring kat teeth, who cares whatever, whatever. The Imperial agent story seems better. It's fantastic, it's really good. Like it's it's hardcore and you do some really brutal stuff. Yeah, I think that's That's probably the reason that playing Empire is kind of interesting is because you find dialogue options that just say like let's say like no, and then in brackets to kill kill him. He's like, yeah, fucking yeah, let's do that. And just as an Imperial agent, like I'm doing a lot of just like no, we need this to work out. This way. It doesn't matter if that, Like it's either he will say no or we will kill him. Either of those is a acceptable outcome to this, to this interaction. So like killing kids dad's in front of them and then shipping the kids off to sith academies. Just that's pretty good. Yeah, it's hardcore, nasty, nasty, like just yeah, yeah, you gotta be a I'm fucking stone choking people in cages, like people in prison cells, just choking them through the bars just because I can, and I found it interesting. So you know, there's like the whole light side dark side. It's it's kind of the reason that the dialogue system has any weight is that you are getting these points and then these points will affect your alignment and then I guess at some point there's gear that you can only use once you reach a certain light or dark side. Now, there's an option in there that you can set it so that anytime there is a light or dark side dialogue option available, it'll tag it that's not on by default? What is it otherwise it's just otherwise woting it. Yeah, you have no idea what any well, yeah, you kind of when it says kill him, you think right right, there's no like you're doing good or you're doing bad, which I prefer because I feel like the Jeff, that's how you fell into the just you know, I want the best stuff, so I'm just gonna choose one side all the time, which is better for gear. Yeah, but I don't like the game's not hard already. Yeah, it's really not, so I don't need the best gear, so I'd rather see how like the story stuff plays out. And I thought it was interesting that, like the priorities of the Empire are not always the same as the priorities of like dark side light side. It's not like everything that is in the Empire's best interest is always a dark side decision. Sometimes it just means being a complete dick. Actually, it always just means what's the cruelest, needlessly nasty thing that you can do in this situation. Go for that because that's your your dark side choice. Yeah, It's like, it'd be better for me to leave this guy alive and take him prisoners, so he could, you know, confess to some stuff, but uh, I'm just gonna kill him. I'm gonna kill him. Well, there's weird ones where it's like where either options either well, you know, we'll either kill these people efficiently and quickly and then we can move on with this, or we will let this other thing happen and they will die slowly and horribly. And it's like well, and it's like, well, there's there's one character that's gonna benefit from one and he seems like a real asshole. But then the other one is for the Empire, like for as clear cut as the like light and dark side stuff might seem. Uh, it's there are some great areas in the working with the Empire. It's like all of my choices here are pretty evil. So it's it's you have to kind of divine, like, well, it's is it the difference is is there mercy or not? Like that's in a lot of cases that's the thing. Are you granting someone mercy or you just letting them die slow? Yeah? Like that that's that's kind of have those. So I turned on the the icons, so whenever I make a choice or whenever I have a choice, it shows if if it's going to affect my alignment, because I kind of want that gear like I'm dark too now. Uh. I think dark fives is the mac that as low as you can go on that or as high as you can get in the dark side. I wonder if you could go to a certain point where then you'd have so much in one side that the story decisions you make, you could be like you wouldn't be forced to be picking those for gear related purposes, right, you would have enough points that like, hey, I want to do this one. It doesn't get me points, but that's okay because I have all the points well. So it's it's a it's a balance that swings back and forth. So I have like four hundred light side points from when before I turned that thing on, and so I could be darker than I am now, but I made some light side choices. So it's not like you're just building up both and getting access to two separate trees. It's you either have one or the other. That's just kind of the weird flaw of those yeah, or the quirk of those systems, And you're kind of like, once you go in a direction, you kind of need to keep going that way if you want to benefit from that gear. And the gear didn't seem fantastic. I guess that's that's the only But the problem is that gamers are wired to do that, right, So by once you tie the two together as a mechanic, most people are not going to interest it in your story. Yeah, their story is secondary to getting the points to get the loop. Yeah, so I get. The only kind of saving grace I would say is that there are a lot of repeatable quests in that game that have alignment decisions in them, so you could probably grind your way all the way one way or the other eventually. So yeah, yeah, I know. Right, So like after you after you finished the kind of your your character's story, if you find yourself going like, oh, well, actually I want to make sure I have access to all this dark side gear, you could probably just run flash points over and over again until you you had it. That just seems too bad, Like it seems kind of missed opportunity to prevent players from maybe doing the most interesting things story wise, because it's all tied too. I mean, DNT know of those I mean like that again, I think there are certain yeah things they just end up happening because they have a lot of hard stuff, A lot of hard decisions probably had to be made developing that game. But you know, in most cases, when face with the how can we make this more like an MMO? They check that box like it's yeah, you know, tanks, healers, DPS, all that same sort of stuff. I like, how when you're picking your class, those terms are in there. Yeah, you have to click like three levels deep to find them, right. Like I'm sitting there reading all these descriptions, looking at ability lists and like combat roles, right, and I was like, please just say tank or DPS or healer and I will pick my guy. And then it says it finally you find it, all right, and I'm like, all right, all right, fine, I'll take this guy. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. It's uh, it's it's certainly well made. Uh it's Star Wars. So that's kind of a problem with it, depending on who I guess. Yeah, I don't know. Like, you know, they're tied to the fiction in so many weird ways like that it's but it's but it's it's own Star Wars, Like it's it's this weird thing where like, yeah, there's blasters, and there's the Empire and the decent cour references Empire. No, no, like none of it is really that connected to anything you care about. Well, that's just show me I care about any of that. Well, presumably if you're playing this game, you have some affinity for Star Wars, like yes, but I bet that on the like the notion that it is just going to kind of be the next big MMO, it will attract a certain crowd that kind of doesn't care about the license so much, like they're just gonna play this for the thirty days. Yeah, if it hooks, If it hooks the otherwise, they just wait till the Panda expansion comes out. I hate the like the tired universe of this game has just become this like a huge litany of recreations, like pocket recreations of the like seven or eight characters from the original movies. That's every Star Wars thing ever. But it's it's really it's egregious. It's really stupid. Like looking at the character select screens, it's just like, here are your character classes. Obi wan Kenobi is a class, Han Solo is a class. Stormtrooper is a class. You know, Well, I'm playing as a class. I'm playing as Evil Empire James Bond. Yeah, so you know, and I'm basically a rogue. Like it's all, it's all just patterned after really specific examples, you know, you know, like well, you know Star Wars Galaxies when you play at his Smugglers. Straight up, the portrait was Harrison four. I'm not saying it wasn't just like there's a guy that here's a photograph that we took. I mean he comes in like the Han solo outfit. Right, Yeah, yeah, it's not it's not a new problem, but I mean they've had a long time to figure out a better alternative than they have. Yeah, I think you're you're asking for a different and I'm not. I guess I'm not a Star Wars fan anymore because that stuff was just off putting to me. Yeah, like I want to I want to see like new characters and like that. That's what the original cod Tour stuff was so good at. Both of those first two Cotur games were really good at telling new stories in like that established fiction. Yeah, instead of just retreading the same over the stories aren't retreading. It's not like it's not like here's our recreation of the right there. You know, there're archetypes. But like my opening mission was dealing with, uh, like this weird political intrigue between two hut houses on Huddah, which was I thought they handled it well, made that stuff seem interesting, Like I enjoyed the way the story played out, and once and kind of like once that leg was done, it's like, all right, I'm leaving this planet. We're gonna go on to the kind of the next phase and there's gonna be this this core thing that's gonna kind of push us through the next area. And I found that and it's got some pretty good it's pretty good big old emo hair in it too. So if you want to be really really don't like that hair the best hair. I hate that hair. I didn't you end up choosing I'd ended up choosing that for my Jedi, but god, like, I'm not gonna play that dude real yeah, just just swoopy in the face. And it's weird because you'll see, like I wanted to build men in the swamp swamps of Huddah with this quaft justin bieber hair, but still have like the wrinkly facial features, and it's just this dissonance that I can't this. The aesthetic of that game is so weird, Like if you think about it, the kind of the squared look that they go for uh in in Old Republic, Like, it's kind of directly derivative of the way the Clone Wars like CG stuff looks where it's you know, very exaggerated and just you know a lot of hard lines and stuff, which was itself then kind of derived from the two DY like Clone Wars shorts that they were running on Cartoon Network. I think around the time that the second prequel camp sounds about so like the whole aesthetic of this universe in this like it's it's weird to me to think that it is kind of that that has become officially co opted by by Lucas, and I guess you know, by by By aware now that the look of this series of like two D short animations for TV has become this like de facto aesthetic for non live action Star Wars. Do you think there are a lot of I mean, I don't really know, but do you think there are a lot of kids that like got into Star Wars and stayed into it because of the Clone War? Stuffy, because I'm trying to think like who's playing this game, and and looking at the general chat in there and just everyone in there seems like they either suck or are twelve yeah bo or both? A lot a lot of kids like whatever. I go to meet with some of Katie's family, like her some of her family as like kids are like writing the age that we're talking about, like that where who had you know, call duty? Kids like they play these games and they just okay. So yeah, it was just like I think it is a lot of those people just the dumbest shit. And it's just like I'm I think I'm gonna join a guild just to suppose yourself, just to have that turn off the general chat. Yeah, and turn off there there's a way to turn off general chat. Yeah, I know, I know, I know, but I don't know that I want no chat because then it's like this weird thing about why am I playing that? Yeah, totally, and and I mostly am playing alone. I teamed up with Adam for a little bit and that was fundam. But that flash point, that's a fun flash point. I like that. That whold scenario. I thought, okay, I thought, I think it. There's plenty of opportunities to just smoke dudes. So it's a flash point. It's it's like repeatable instance basically, right, Yeah, it's crazy, you're taking over the star ship. There's all this bedlam. I thought that sounds like the one they showed to press. It's that one. It is that. It's a good one. It's it's a good yeah, the first one that you show that you come from the game. That's that's the Van Cleef of this game basically except that that except that you blow through this thing like you know, Adam had already gone through it, I think twice by the time you got to it. Yeah, and I mean in the key was over leveled. And yeah, it's your first it's your first real exposure to like a higher level piece of story content. Yes, yeah, okay, yeah, it is not as majestic in scope as Van Cleef, because I don't think any Clee ever made. There was a pirate ship. Yeah, that was a fucking pirate ship. You get it. You come out of the cave, you blow up that doors, like, holy shit, it's a fucking ship out here, dude, let's talk about the world. Oh my god, man, Like the whole thing was inc I mean a that game is really well made and it's time. Yeah, obviously showing its age a little bit now, but be like I just I don't know if you can go back if you're a regular person, like if you're not the kind of person who serially plays MMOs from one to the next. Like I I had that feeling once and it was amazing, Like like playing that game. I was fucking addicted to World Warcraft for two years. Yeah, but I can't. I can't recapture it, and I kind of don't want. Yeah, you know, has to be like millions upon millions of people that have never had that experience, and they will play for a couple of years and they will see that kind of on the other end of it this time, and it was sort of what kept me playing through the weekend was this notion that like, like, we don't roll with a crowd of people that play MMOs like we did when World of Warcraft came out, Right, no one is twinking anyone, It's not you know, no one's fucking no one's crazy. So I figured by jumping out way ahead of everybody and being like level twenty three when like I mean, what Adam's like fourteen, Where do you like, I'm twelve twelve. Yeah, if I can just keep that, then when I don't play as much, it won't be that everyone else is racing past me and leave me in the dust, and then I will have no reason to play, Like I'll be the person that's out in front and like, yeah, I'll come help y'all, come help you, like get people up and and do that sort of stuff. Like maybe it'll work a little better that way, like playing it all a little more casually or playing with people who are not out of their goddamn minds. But yeah, to your points, yeah, it is. It is an MMO. It hits a lot of the same conventions that they have before. It is incredibly well produced. Yeah, well put together for one of those good looking games. Game it is. It is exactly that kind of nothing. You know. It has a lot of the same problems that other games of its type have. They have not come up with innovative new solutions to problems in a lot of cases. Uh yeah. They have addressed story stuff and the lower stuff by giving you a mass effect style codex for text and fully voiced cut scenes really well done. Yeah, and that stuff is really well And then then and my first quest was go kill six of these scavenger slugs. And I was just like, all right, that's first and the last time. I want to do that this game, and and what happens when you get through that content. It's not cheap to make. It's not like they can just punch it out. Well, they can so long as they have like non basic speaking quest givers, because they're just recycling that, right if it's just alien dialogue? Yeah, which was already a bummer. Yeah, like immediately the first time I tell you could tell that it was not the worst part is when they stop talking, but they leave huge gaps because the amount of text that they have for the translation is clearly way more than the amount of like fake alien voice work. So it's just a guy standing there. I'm like, all right, I guess I'll read the rest of this while you don't say the fake dialogue that you clearly don't have that and that bothered me. I realized it. It's where you see them cutting corners, and yeah, you know, I understand why they would have to cut those corners, but that it's still incredibly noticeable. I mean, you played it. I think that it's it's I like what I've played so far, even if it's not like revolutionary or anything. I'm intrigued by the their storytelling techniques. It's nice to have an MMO that has that level of production quality to it. It's kind of like a nonsense World of Warcraft sort of thing. Yes, I would agree with that. I have not had this much fun and felt as compelled to keep playing with an MMO since that first World of Warcraft run and it it has that level of of polish to it. Yeah that, you know, just that the underlying content is good enough, the writing is good enough, the quest design is good enough, even if once you go off it's like, oh, I'm just gonna go find groups of three dudes and shoot them or stab them, and yeah, that's that's where I tripped over. It's just what you're doing every time they send you off on an errand was just I think that some of those classes are better or worse about that than others as far as like what you're kind of initial like. I eventually got into that kind of stuff, but the the Agent class doesn't like start your right off with the most tropiist of MMO tropes, the Sith Warrior stuff was was decent as as well, especially compared to Jedi, where it was straight up a lot of six of these eight of this. Yeah, I mean they both had a lot of that. The one the one thing I saw with the S fifth Warrior. I don't know if this is I guess this has to be common to every every instance of that class. But like I hit a subplot after like thirty minutes where there's like other SITH and issue. It's who kind of want my head? Yeah, like you kind of run into them in the hallway and starts to cut scene out unaware. Yeah, do you have that? Yeah? Like that that just has to happen for everybody. Yeah, I mean you walk through the green area into an instance that's where the story stuff is. That's always identically like that. That was slightly in its way, it's way more interesting. And the treacherous nature of the way the lower paints the scythe and gives them the kind of treacherous nature means that at some point you kill teachers. Right, that's the whole point of that whole fiction, right, So hopefully it SITH or a bunch of dicks as long as it keeps going in that direction, You know that that sounds kind of interesting and fun to watch play out. There's a bunch of real space assholes, like Empire just wants to control everything space paranoids. The Empires just just they want to control everything. They're OCD. But the Sith just want to go out there and funk with each other. Treachery is all they care about. And I like that divergence. I still yeah, it's still makes me wish that and it will probably never happen because who would make the investment on something unproven, but kind of makes me wish that it would happen with a new a new world, a new set of fiction, like not tied to Star Wars is something I realized, like even about World Warcraft, Like I kind of didn't like Warcraft three, which is which is where we're kind of most of the most of the fiction made its way into the game. Yeah, so so that was always kind of working against me there too. It makes me wonder if the Secret World will be any good. That looks that looked pretty interesting, but I don't know. I wish that they had solved some of the problems of the genre. The only thing that I can think of off the top of my head that where you look at it and go, oh, that that's a neat way to handle that is by giving you companions, they make you more soloable because they're essentially like giving you a tank to roll around around with. Yeah, and companions handle all the crafting, so crafting is done. You can still run around while you craft. There's no there's very little animation of you moving your hands, standing around in town for an hour while you are, uh, you know, crafting a number go up, Yeah, totally. You are instead hitting the end key, clicking on some buttons, and then three minutes later it says we completed that end the number went up, and then you have to go in and do it again, which is kind of saying I want more numbers, keep the numbers going. There should just be a keep the numbers going up until I hit this button option, give me more numbers, just keep keep these going. I don't know. I hope I'm not setting myself up for disappointment, but I really want to see that new Blizzard in the mo Like I feel like, if anything, that's that's our last best hope for like really pushing the genre forward, right, Like they're not just going to turn around and make World war Craft again. I would hope not. If that's what they're doing. They're way too smart. But the way they has been like it makes no sense to do that because World War numbers are going down. But now at the pace where like they need to cannibalize, like these is gonna keep going. That train will just keep going. To nobody's on the point. Who's to say they could make the same game and recapture the success again. Yeah, a lot of people are just over that kind of thing, Like the kind of game is sort of old, and yeah, I would, I would like again, I hate EMO combat systems. That's why none of this sounds interesting. Yeah, I don't play this game because it is totally exactly the same. I thought it was going to be something different and turned into kind of what I expected. But I love the idea of a massive and most player game. Just the actual gameplay just never quick gets me. So first I had the three key and then I hit four that usually stuns everybody around there, what is hit one a few times with no auto attack? I know what, I don't know what. I think it's part of it is the way that all the global cool down stuff works like with the other abilities, Like I just like, I'm great. I didn't put much time into it, but I've never really got a good sense of like where the attack loop was ending and when I should hit the key. Again, I'm just staring at the actual So I got to the point where I'm watching the cool downs every time. I'm not even liking Yeah, I'm looking at the bottom tenth of the screen the entire time. At that point, like, what kind of game are you even playing? That is an excellent criticism. You were playing a favorale game, but I still played it for thirty hours. But you guess sick lightsabers color or your lightsabers right now? They're both red because I've been crafting color crystals with extra Yeah. See wait a minute, wait, you could change the color. Yeah, that that infers all sorts of crazy shit. I'm back in. Yeah, there are four slots on a lightsaber. On most lightsabers, even some blasters and armor all will have slots. Yeah, I just I just I just upgraded it out of head. You can throw in better stuff and you know, basically destroy the old stuff over and over again. So well, the blasters, I can actually pay money to extract enhancements without destroying them. Really, Yeah, so I can pull stuff out of my blasters, so basically the last the last blaster rifle that I had, I fucking field stripped for all of its subcomponents. Yeah, and then just sold it off because it wasn't worth anything without the parts. I'm put all those parts into your new one. Yeah, so I can put those into my next I wonder if I do. I could also just if I just override it, if I just like put a new thing in that thought, they'll say, hey, you didn't remove that last thing. It will be destroyed if you continue this way, So I can I can go either way with the Yeah, with those upgrades. What else can you do to a lightsaber? Uh? It's you replace the hilt, which is it's it's just stats, it's not as the only visual change is the color crystal. But it's like hilt mod uh color crystal and and one other one. Can any force user use any kind of lightsaber? Like I saw they had like recommended or I don't know if it was requirement. It was like this guy uses dual lightsabers. This guy uses a double bladed lightsaber. I cannot use double bladed thrillers. That's the that's the advanced thing. That's when you spec. Yeah, at level ten, you pick your advanced class and you can't respect that, you can, you know, that's when you get access to it to a skill tree is when you hit ten. And then at that point, yeah, you choose whether you're like it is, and you don't really have a chance to go try either of them in combat or anything like that. It's just like they say, like, this is an important choice that it's going to affect the rest of you of your experience. Choose, Yeah, choose right now. It's like, well, and then they pop up Actually a lot of the same menus you can get at the beginning of the game about what those classes are and what they do and stuff. But that's kind of it. So that's that's a little weird. But I don't know, but I think you know, in the storytelling area is where this game makes its improvements. Everything else is MMO standards. But the way that they present you know, mission details and kind of a overarching story for your character is yeah, it seems pretty It's still like you get to an area, you see a bunch of dudes with icons over their heads. You sweep up all the quests that oh, look, they all happen to take place in the exact same area. You go out to that area, you do all those quests, you come back discover oh shit, you missed one, and you have to go all the fucking way back out there. That was the point that it's just one thing. When I realized I had to run all the way across a giant area that I just covered and there's nothing there. Yeah, I did that last night, right before I stopped as well. It's like, shit, it's like so close to getting off this planet and the yeah, I just I thought about it. All the other games I could be playing at the same time. Yeah, and then I stopped, but he didn't play them. It is like Saints her Own trying Okay, it's all the other games. I'm I'm gonna keep trying this out. I'm curious to see where my interest stops in this, and I'll be curious to see I still don't. I mean, for first much as we've discussed this game over its lengthy development, I still I'm still not sure what's going to happen to this game. I'm less sure now than I was before I played this much of it. It was one of those things that like, like it's totally a fucking mmo. Yeah, and that's that for me. Is not a great thing, but it is made. It is extremely well made. Yeah uh, you know, they have paid a lot of attention and at least made one of those games pretty well. Even if they didn't go out of their way to fix a lot of the issues, it seems like less of a disaster out of the gate too, Like Syracuser a problem and we'll probably be a problem for the next couple of weeks. But I mean it seems like the game itself once you're in there, than it being a little empty, you know, is working. Yeah, I mean it didn't. I mean I ran the client for twelve hours straight or something on Sunday and it didn't crash once. Content like that's always been a problem with people, couple, so there are as For as much as you do send people out to do all your mineral gathering and stuff, there are mineral deposits in world, and some of those are getting stuck so you can't you can't trigger them. I saw a couple of mobs get stuck and continue to reset. You know, people are getting stuck on geometry like the typical. I saw a couple of Matt markers flagged with like clearly placeholder texts, just like Matt Marker. Passive five one was like a launched with massive gaps in the quest cycle, right, but like there were entire legs of major quests were just not completable. Yeah, and stuff like that, like raid bosses didn't work. It's better. It seems like it's better than that. I have not run into anything where it's like, well, I can't keep going because I mean, people are killing world bosses like like stuff's happening. It's that end of the game seems fine from what I've seen of it and heard other people say about it. Right, the good folks of the Kessler Run have already killed the world boss on that server. There are multiple world bosses, I think, aren't they don't they killed a world Yeah, I don't know. I haven't seen it. Yeah again, I'm lovel twelve. I haven't seen any of that shit yet. Yeah, I'm just a little imperial pole to join up with those jerks. Butch jerks over there should have picked a better name for their guild. Still name, but the best part about it actually it's a great name though, because of how furious people become when they see your name in world and think that it's a mistake. Oh okay, all right, that's pretty good. That actually makes it fantastic because there's so people just just just just furious. No, that's wrong. If they come up to you and said that, not to me, but yeah, multiple other guild members gild immediately because that's good. Any run stupid, anything that angers people who like Star Wars is okay. But I mean and and the world. Didn't you watch the movies and the world is full of bad Star Wars pun character names, which guild names like it's it's everywhere. Yeah, which, yeah, fine, I'm fine with that. I don't. I don't need my Star Wars to be that self serious. Did you have RP servers? If you're into that, they do. It's true. They're probably easier to get into, alright, guys, but way harder to get into. I played it. I played it on an RP server, and Will at one point why because he didn't talk to anyone anyone to see what it was like. Nobody paid attention, Like it was just like every other Just the names weren't monkey Dick right, which is the name of mine? Right? The you're wrong, Yeah, I'm on Monkey Dick and but it's felled weird with lots of apostrophes, and you fil Jeff, you said that a certain character name wouldn't wasn't allowed when you were trying to roll your god not let me name my character Terrace Cassi. That's a shame. After the did you put a space because you can't use spaces? Maybe that was it? Will it will? Why do they let you hit this fucking space? I don't know, I know, yeah, it lets you type out a name of the space in it. And then because I tried as well, and it just says like illegal character. That shit is the worst. Yeah, I hate that guy. Yeah, yeah, everything I said, forget it. My character is named after a major corporation. Mine is named after and it let me use it, an old baseball player. Mine is named after an imaginary racist because space racism in that game runs fat, fast and fucking furious. Yeah all right, Patrick Serny, if you put anything else, uh no. I played some Warrior Wear for GBA on my three DS for a couple of minutes. Pretty good it is. Yeah, it was a great game. Still might be my favorite warrior Ware. Did you first? Did you play Twisted. We were talking about this before TWI Twisted. I hadn't. I haven't played, but I've heard. Yeah, Twist is really good. That's that's the one that had the censor and that. Yeah, yeah, Twisted was great. All of them are great. Yes, except for the downloadable one that they put out for DS. She was too slow when they first put up there. It was like a camera one. It was like oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that was not very good. Okay, that's the one I was thinking about. That wasn't that we one was not fun by yourself, but it was a pretty good multiple if you had a group that we on was it just wasn't fun to play like by yourself at all, you know, I don't know, I looked it. I like that Warrior War. You just like Warrior I just like Warrior War that is serious. War Aware and Rhythm Heaven are probably my top two Nintendo franchise. We have a release date for Rhythm Heaven now, so it's like Rhythm Rhythm Heaven April. I want to March April one of those. Yeah, no, no Zeno Blades in April. I thought Rhythm Heaven's February maybe as soon as I have to keep in mind out my we plugged in for that much longer? Is that what you're telling me? I think it's gonna be too. I think Rhythm Heaven comes out, I play the ship out of that and then just box it all up. Done. Probably they all all work on the machine later that year, So oh, all right, box it up now you could? Yeah, you could just wait and just played any you. I don't want to get a at launch. I'm gonna get away you at launch. Of course you will. Yeah, it'll be one thing that you go like, oh, I definitely want that, and you'll get one and go, oh, that's like how I'm gonna end up buying a fucking Vita for I came pretty close to pre ordering or wax ordering now a Japanese beat. There was a moment there, but I was like, hey, will do you want to take one of these apart? And he said, if you work, if you get one and we'll let me take it apart, I will take it apart. And I was like, okay, that'd be one more thing we could do with it. I was like, is it worth spending the five hundred plus dollars to get one over here, it's like it's not enough game, not enough games, and it's coming out over here so soon that the games that are coming out a lot closer to America, Like there's like Alex we put up a future looking some of those are are some legit ass cool sounding games. It just doesn't sound like this very much highly Actually, well hearing the Ridge Racer is a fucking if you were kissing piece of shit. If you want, if you want a really good wrap up of a launch, listen, listen to that done well by the Ridge race name. They have not the eight four podcast, like a four hour fucking breakdown of the entire if you want to do everything about that whole Vieta launch, Like they're gonna know more than we could say. But the like, yeah, John mccarti was telling me about how like Ridge Racers forty five dollars whereabouts. It comes with three tracks, great has a horrible frame rate to the point where when you are I guess drifting, like like fifteen frames a second and you can't like complete the drift or transition to a new drift because the frame rate is so bad. That sounds awesome, thanks Namco. But the most oppressing part is something that I heard, Oh, is that the dubstep music thing not in there at all, the demo thing not there, which hopefully that means they'll just get released separately as a downloadable thing. At some point they have to put that out, but you'll need to get a memory card to be able to save it. I don't give a shit if they put that thing out. I will get all that stupid garbage. And if you can, apparently you can't find them, well, you can not enough memory cards at launch. You can't find the thirty twos. There are plenty everywhere, four eights and sixteens. I think it might be the sixteen is the one that people settle down, but yeah, thirty two is impossible to find. Let's talk some news here for second. Since we're already talking some news here, let's talk about the news of the PlayStation Vita launching in Japan. Sets that in Japan supposedly shipments for his high seven hundred thousand copies sounded like it was actually turned out to be a pretty yuh. Actually, all the handles are doing well over there. I guess three DS it's sound really well too. Importers made it sound like it would not be hard to get units, provided you were willing to pay the marked up prices that exporters were charging. It didn't sound like NCS is not Yeah, NCS is out of stock as of this recording. But play Asia claims to happen for five and a quarter. Yeah, it sound like too much money. Money, that's too much, Yeah, I guess, and charted as some serious some serious visual issues based on what I was was hearing, like has some real like some A leasing problems. I wonder if they'll patch that stuff. Well I wonder. I mean, they've got a little bit of time before they do US releases, I guess, but I wonder if they're gonna patch stuff and work on it, or if there's any left to do, or if if all this stuffs locked. But when you turn on the Vita, the first thing you get is a software update. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm sure they'll do constant And there's like this really weird I think I have this right, like a really rat issue with the PSN stuff, where in order to something along the lines of if you try to log in with your existing PlayStation Network account when you boot up the Vita, it will say you do not have the updated software to log into this account. So if you then you have to go back to the original PSN menu screen and say no, idea, not have the PSN account, and it will give you a temporary account which then allows you access to the software update, and then once you have gotten the software update, then you go back and put in your log in information. I guess, yeah, well, because what it sounds like is what you would what makes sense, which is that we're gonna put out this, you know, the one point oh firmware, and you know, we're not going to build in this idea that you're gonna have to get a software update because we'll do that after everyone. And then it turns out they launched the software update, you know, prior to its shipping, and then the OS doesn't know what to do when presented with the software update. It's weird. US launch will probably be probably fine, Yeah, probably fine. This is hopefully some lessons learned to do. This a fun beta test for the future of the Vita. I guess it sounds like sales are are doing really well. It sounds like the software is maybe not there, but I mean it's launched, and it's sounds like the American launch maybe pretty good. Like Gravity Days looks really neat sound shapes. Escape Plan is the other one. Escape Plans when the Princess guys Carbon Games or something like that. Yeah, so none of that stuff is launching in Japan, No, I don't think so. I think it launched with like Luminaz, which is apparently fucking lumines, right, so there's more of that. I think, great, great, I think, I don't know. I don't know. The three sixty three, the awful X is really soured. The PSN one, like basically anything everything they've released past that first PSP game has been depressing there to me, they're actually put out a Luminas too, right, Yeah, it was not, No, it was great. I don't know. I don't know. I never touched it. I still got that first one. I just yeah, this one is pretty good. Think I'm good. I just yeah, that the first one probably would have been enough, because that's that's really all those other ones are needed, right, was the first one. I don't even think I want a theme pack. I think like what was in that first one was that is luminess to me, guys, let's just play more. Let's just all get ours out and you get way into playing Luminez. That was a great game. That was a great game. I have a Lumines call at lunch every day, all over to the studio or playing Luminez the multiplayer in that No, yes, there is, yes, what do you do? You adds blocks to the other dude's field? Okay, so it's a puzzle game. Then yeah, it's a block base. I get you. We tell you about Luminaz. All right, pretty good, I follow. I never got good enough at Luminez. I didn't either. I didn't figure out like the garbage trick you could do to play forever, and I didn't get great it the other way either. It was it was still fun for like like twenty minutes. Fans like I felt that satified, Like the music was so great. I always looks so good. At the time that NPS be launched with the kick ass Virgin of Ridge Racer, that was a great game. It was. Yeah, really enjoyed that game. I think that they just need to totally rebuild that franchise. Like that was right around the time where they added all the nitrous mechanics and stuff, which was cool, the last real fundamental change before they just fell into this, like, you know what, we're just gonna shot out the same thing. The gamestraor six came out at three sixty launch and kind of had had all that Nitro stuff, like some changes but not a lot. Then seven came out and it was pretty much a six with some additional options, and and well it's this shitty disingenuous thing that Namco says of like, you know, we really want to just make a game for the fans, which doesn't mean just put the exact same tracks in. Everything's boy fucking because you know they'll buy a game, Yeah, exactly, Like when when you say that, what you really mean is, yeah, we're not gonna put any effort into this because we know how many people are gonna buy a Ridge Racer game, and they're always going to buy that Ridge Racor game. So three tracks, forty five bucks, enjoy yourself. And the idea of a build your own Ridge Racer is a great idea, like the idea of paying ten dollars or fifteen bucks for a three track new Ridge Racer and then build your own from like if they're going to start putting out tracks and all the Ridge Racer series, like hey did you love our four well, you know, here's here's some tracks for that, you know, pay five bucks. Like, that's actually not a horrible model if they're just going to recycle everything, but the economics aren't tailor like three tracks, is it? Even even if they are chopping up those tracks in multiple ways, which I don't know if they are or not, but that was that was always the classic ridge racer thing, is it would be like environments and then they would open up different pathways and close them off depending on if you were playing on hard or what unleasy or whatever. Uh. If it's that and they're turning three tracks into like nine different actual roadways or something like that, then that's that's still shitty. That is no way I take all everything about it. That is still shitty. Yeah, especially if any of those three tracks are tracks that appeared in previous I'm sure it's there. Yeah, it's it's just the laziest, especially which it's weird because I guess the kind of Mari game is pretty good. It's because you can imagine how that trackpad, but yeah, might be and I guess the track pad of the mechanics of the Vita one is a like a stretching and pulling sort of thing. So okay, if they have unsurprisingly released some really weird trailers for that game, My Majestic kind of Maria, and it also has the Yeah, I think that's right. I was gonna say they're just about run out of names for those games. I think that's what it is. It has, it should just called it. We still love slash are okay with but yeah, the idea is you use the back panel, like there will be areas that you can't get in unless you push together and basically squish your catemorial or stretch it out un to let you pick up more stuff at once. So it sounds like Noby Noby boy infecting a little bit a little bit. It's also crazy is that game like this Real Split with Namco, where like that game gets DLC right where there's a bunch of DLC for it, but there are in game hidden items and if you collect all of them, you can get the DLC for free. So it's like, how is there's this one totally fucked? I mean because it's Ridge Racer, because because people are gonna buy, like people like John McCarty will buy every version of that and grumble about it the entire time, but just don't buy the next one. Are you're gonna buy the next I'm sitting here saying that I think it's total bullshit, and I'll probably still end up with a copy of it. The American ones should be a lot. The American ones should hopefully, Yeah, they can get away with that stuff a lot. I mean, like Japan pays a lot of higher prices for things. They are as competitive with pricing, so my guess is that will be less of an issue here. We'll probably get all the DLC tracks in our version of the game that comes out in February, so those of you in Japan keep in mind region free games. Mhmm, good point. Patrick. You want to talk about this Q and A you did with Stephen Toulouse from Xbox or stuff too. I did. I enjoyed that when I was talking to PR getting connected with him, Like when we were on the phone, the PR person called him Steptoe and then also Stephen and like sort of apologized for it because she wasn't she wasn't sure which one to call. Oh, just that guy's everyone calls him Steptoe. Okay, he's like the only the only time that they don't call me Steptoe is when I'm in trouble. It's like, all right, that's like it's like the equivalent of my middle name, Patrick Benjamin Klubbick. But he runs a security at at xbox or is one of the main policies police management, and so that kind of feeds back into the story that you've been falling for a while about people getting banned. Perhaps it's more it's more like I ran a story on Octower at the FIFA twelve was this weird fishing target for people getting access to accounts buying a bunch of Ultimate Team packs, which is like the sort of meta game that plays on top of FIFA trading card thing. Yeah. Right, so I guess what people were basically doing was compromising, finding accounts they could compromise, buying these packs, and then selling these ac It's like in other markets, you know, like the UK, like a place where you would want to, you know, purchase an account that had a full FIFA Ultimate Team okay pack and start and you be obsensively paying less for the account than if you were to purchase all that yourself. I think there's some way to trade cards with other players there's a gift kind of like you could gift cards to players from your Are we gonna die? Yep, it's a pyramid head. Ah, Apparently the horse that lives upstairs has died and now they have to drag its corpse out. Maybe it'll sucking clumping around if through everything we record. Ever, I don't know how they put a horse into high heel shoes, but they figured out a way clumps around up there all day. You were saying, yeah, and so so I'm as results of talking to users about that, there are a lot of people complaining about these sort of like customer service process with Microsoft, and so the average time people are having those twenty five days for basically, you know, sometimes things that are in their control. You know, if you had an account and you didn't change your password on everything. You know, if camp in the PC and stuff for the Gawker leak like a year ago and you use the same password and everything, like, it's not hard for someone to kind of piece that stuff together. So it sounded like people are having a hard time just getting Microsoft to kind of solve that stuff. So I had talked to a bunch of users about some people that had twenty five days scenarios and then stuff that win as long as ninety days and had tried to contact Microsoft about it and I never heard back. And then the two scenarios they are like just spike the story because you don't have any real answers, or run it and hope that the company yeah, freaks out and then gets in touch with you. And the latter is what is what occurred the word on how long it's switch Cheff Keeley to give his account back very quickly, Yeah, good day. I was curious. It's not it's yeah, that is one of the things. I didn't touch them. But it's very it's uncommon, like the one thing that like people in our like us, like if you complain about on Twitter, suddenly you get bumped up in the queue real fast. And the actually one of the things that Steptoe denied being a thing, but it's very much a thing where the louder you are about complaining, like, the better your chances are of looks like the bigger depth and the bigger your megaphone is there. You know, they don't they don't want people out there complaining about this stuff. It becomes a public relations problem at some point. Yeah, it's the same reason why they used to have a separate process set up for red ring xboxes for journalists, because they would much rather people go through that process very quietly than loudly talk about how their Xbox is broken again. Yeah, it's like you would. You would say, hey, Xbox break, and I'd never like that. That option was floated out and I never took advantage of it because it was a little too too weird. The Xbox at my desk is showing preliamentary signs of a red ring. That thing's gonna fucking red ring before this year is out. Things launch, Xbox launch. There is no reasonable reason why that Xbox should still be allowed to run. Xbox still works. I don't Actually, it's not active service. I might like use that thing all the time. Three or four dead Xboxes that I have torn through manufacturer date October two thousand and five. Four that thing ever came out. Yeah, I can't believe it's still going. You can go to game. Didn't that thing check out game? No, that thing. That thing didn't set foot anywhere near a game. Many wish I was that Xbox, My Xbox wishes it was that Xbox because ended up getting smoked not that long afterwards. Too much xboxing. I've seen it said that every Xbox from that era is guaranteed to die. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It is by by virtue of it being a launched Xbox without fail, it will red ring. Yep. Well, yeah, I have heard one of the most committed numbers. But then Microsoft is the the number of Xboxes that have been turned in for service, like the number they would never want to actually they come out. Oh yes, so even one of the most guarded, numb the worst, most secretive numbers coming in. I would love that. Whatever, you know, we got a billion dollars loss and work backwards. Yeah, I still have my red ringed Elite sitting in a box surrounded by I've just never set back. I have another red ring Xbox at my house, and like, what am I gonna do with it? Sitting there on a shelf somewhere, and I guess this one's gonna join it, But like, what do you put? I'm not gonna throw it in the trash because then it's going to go to a landfill. And then like Will said that, say that he knew how to fix that ship that's probably not viable. Yeah, but you know it's more viable than letting it sit in the closet forever broke. I mean the board is warped, like like there are fundamental problems with the electronics inside it. He's not gonna you know, he's not gonna unwarp it. That stuff is amazing in retrospect. He's not gonna break out a soldering fix fix that stuff. That was pretty amazing. Stuff was crazy, And there was like the day that like Petermore did like interviews with everybody, and when they announced like the three year warranty extension, it's just like this ship must how bad this ship must actually be for this to be the response? Yeah, like it's I wish that we had hung onto those other Xbox three sixties that we got before launch that would not connect to Live ever. Oh yeah, that was weirdly they very quietly. You could just send those back, Yeah, that's right. It was this moment of like, wait a minute, how many in your launch lineup are gonna ship? Like I was like pointing to the wrong IP or its like there's something it couldn't be updated like automatically or anything like that. It was just like a handful of ones that were totally broken, And it was this moment of just like, all right, is this launch going to be the most fucked thing ever? They rushed that console to market. I don't know if you noticed. Don't do that again. Yeah, that was weird. Although if these rumors are true about the GPU or the CPU taping out for the next and everybody's saying end of the year after next, like that is a everything I understand that is getting a huge jump on your launch to be tap taping out now and for a twenty thirteen launch. Yeah, they're in a very comfortable position where I think I think they have sort of written off Nintendo is not being able to probably smartly so reproduce their phenomenon status a second time, or at least operating as though they're not and then react to any Well, I think even if they do, it's it becomes like they're they're still kind of over in their different other first undercutting you on price and stuff. Yeah, but I was thinking more just like, you know, at no point, even when we was on top sales wise and just crushing everyone, at no point at Microsoft or Sony look like they were trembling about it. They were just like, yeah, they're selling those huge numbers to people that are not our audience. Yeah, they're not our audiences. Not yeah, not yet. Yeah. And then now they're adding Netflix and services and all this stuff, and it's kind of become the same audience. But I don't know video games, video games. You say video games, Spider Man, he's a video game, all right. So we got Vita launched in Japan. It's doing okay, and step Toe is talking about weirdness. There's a big interview to where we kind of break down some stuff, not a lot of actual, like real answers. And despite his claims that reporting your problems with mixoft in your account to the Better Business Bureau will not get you bumped up, I have heard too many stories to the contrary from users. So if you are in one of those people in the ninety day or plus category, if you dispute it with your bank or file report with the Better Business Bureau, there will probably be a fair chance that your account will get fixed. But a lot of a lot of this stuff seems really rooted in and stuff that we've talked about the office, A lot of just these councils weren't meant to last this long. These services were not meant to sprawl the way they have become sprawled. And you tack on enough things to a foundation, and that wasn't meant to do those things, and things things, things are eventually going to become kind of spiral out of control, and eventually one of the things you tack on is going to be less secure than the others, and people can hammer away on that. Yeah, in even just terms of the foundation they've built to manage these accounts and reverse them when people get a hold of them, Like I mean, I believe Septo when he says the moment they change regions and that flips the licenses, that creates a massive headache for them, And I believe that's probably true, and that's what happens in a decent number of these cases. So it seems like a lot of that stuff will hopefully be addressed. I have no hope in it being addressed anymore this generation, but hopefully it's all like take notes and let's because there seems to be there seems like a path now, Like it doesn't seem like it's all going to radically change, like it did so much in the last five years. It'll be more just a natural evolution, more services, more expansion of those types of services, as opposed to like this volatile change that you couldn't really have predicted, like something like Netflix was inconceivable when the Xbox launched. But bottom line is that soccer is to blame. Yeah, soccer all all, all of these issues can all be rooted back to soccer. So thanks Pale, thanks a lot, Gretzky. Yeah, stick it to those soccer players. I certainly will take that. Saber Hagen. Yeah, every when Paley came out of that UBS off press conference, Yes, God, was that the Wizard kids Harry Potter soccer Uh, tournament of something of Champions, Tournament of Champion, tournament champions that was called might have been Academy of Champions Champions, Academy Academy of Champions. Almost as awkward as the James Cameron stuff. Just a guy that doesn't no offense to him, but just he did. Shouldn't have you know, just we awkward for everybody. Yeah, sorry, Pale. He listens, he writes in a lot A huge fan him and shoosh, He's always like, oh, Dar's run who isn't that way though, to be fair fair enough? All right, Well, that's let's it for news. I guess Patrick. I think I'm going on not much. It's everyone's gone, man. Yeah, we're too busy to make news right now. People are too busy to put out new games. Also not too busy to write emails a bit trying to though out on PSN and Xbox Live Arcade this week. So if you yeah, that's an option. Alan Wake, I forgot about that. You saw Alan Wake American Nightmare. What do you think? Do we talk about that last week? No? No, I mentioned that I was going to see it, okay. Uh. The first line they gave me when I sat down to see it was, Hey, if you thought Alan's Wake, Alan's Wake some DLC where Alan died u Alwick was a two third story, one one third action, the American Nightmares the reverse, God damn it, three third story, no thirds action. Yeah, that doesn't seem to be the direction they're going. No, it's it's they. Basically, it sounded like they when they were doing some stuff after the fact, they started messing out on some levels, trying to make some gameplay tweaks to make the combat more interesting realize that they kind of had a slot to do a downloadable game, and that if they were going to beat the downwall game with the Allan Wake name, they had to put some story in it. So it sounds more like a downloadable entry with some story trappings as opposed to, you know, a full fledge. You know, this is not there was some talk of this being Allan Wake two. This is not gonna say so this is this is not like necessarily representative of the future direction for the series. You know that the story takes place after. So like if you've beaten uh Alan Wake and played both of the DLC's, especially crucially you've played the second one, because the villain introduced in the second DALC is the essential the land in this one, Okay, and it has a lot of full screen fullmotion FMB a lot. Yeah, the trailer kind of alludes to there being some more actoring from a lot of a lot of actoring. It's very excited. So that sounds good. Yeah, that probably, Yeah, that part of be good. And when I doubt when I talked to the Remedy CEO of the Matthias like I brought that optional Scandinavian. Yeah, I mentioned, like, you know, over here at Jack Bomb, we'd like real big fans of FMV, and I'm not like I was trying basically, I was trying to suss out, like do you get do you get why we are or I don't think I don't think they do, which actually I think is better off. You need to be careful. Don't go out there telling everybody that we're big fans of F and D, because that's when everybody's gonna start doing it. I don't think that's I don't think that's a worry, Like right now they don't know. See, that's the whole thing. I want everyone to start doing it. I wanted to turn the cycle must begin. We've already come too far. I'm saying, like right now, by their own admission, like they don't or at least you haven't tuited that they don't understand why it's good. As soon as people start thinking they understand why it's good and everybody starts doing it, that's when it's not going to be good anymore. Like, Yeah, I just didn't get any impression that they understood the ironic nature of it, which I was like, great, I'm saying, preserve that so told someone recently that they need to bring FMV back to Need for Speed. I was told, you don't really want that, and I said, no, yes I do. Do not tell me what I do and do not want, but don't tell the guys that they're gonna make it. Tell them you want it deadly serious, yeah, but then give them, give them nine dollars to make it. That's what I'm saying because the makers, the makers of Need for Speed Most wanted, did not think they were making camp. Yeah, they thought they were making cool, serious action movie, fast and furious business. Soon as everybody starts trying to force a wink and nod into the video that they're producing, well, then it just requires them to act be good at it. Which if if that happened, if everyone got to the point where they can make a good KITCHI FMV and do it right, I twisted pixel does it? They know what they're making. Yeah, but that's one. That's this one, this one studio. But the point is that most people wouldn't be able to pull it off and wouldn't even try. And even them, I would argue, like their best stuff was when they just like had to do it out of necessity. Yeah, like the original explosion man. Yeah, yeah, which is when they just didn't have just didn't have an anywhere, Like what's the it's way cheaper to go shoot something and editing it is actually to build game assets. You need to cut the entire conversation that just occurred. Don't let this out. Don't let us get into the public. We're treading dangerous ground. No, I'm with Jeff and I just want a new Need for Speed Most Wanted game with Most Wanted too. Yeah, their turn of Raza Callahan, Yes, yes, this one you are Sergeant Cross. Raza Callahan is the main bad guy and he's for Speed Most Wanted. All right, he is incredible. He's done some soap acting. Yes, he was like honestly like Chris Evans fucking Posse or something. All right, have you ever played Need You should really play Need for Speed just you should find the you should go. It is a good Need for Speed game, and it is you know, open world. They dude, they do a lot of stuff, right, but just watch some of the stuff that they did that they sat down and said, like, all right, street racing, what's it all about, guys, Let's figure it out. Let's cast some characters and go and the guys they came up with. So it's just the one with Maggie Q, that girl. So this has no one in it, no names. Yeah. See, that's my whole point is that game with Maggie Q, and it is what happened when they tried to get back to the right. But they Yeah, but they tried to make that but never stopped. They didn't. They were still on their regular cycle of That wasn't like deliberately campy. That was just well, that's what I'm saying though, like, well, what was the one in between carbon? Carbon? Carbon didn't have Carbon had some stars across in it. That's what I'm when Carbon was actually well, carbon was actually connected to Most Wanted right under Undercover, which was the one with Maggie Q, and all three of them had random hot lady in it. It was that Dominique. Whatever was in the I'm blanking on names, some some personality was in the first one as well as in the second one. I mean, I can't remember who it is. So so so that was not something that they suddenly started doing it all and I'm just using that asn't an identifier. Yeah, No, Undercover is not good and the cut scenes weren't good either. Uh, and Carbon had some moments, but it was no most wanted. Yeah, definitely diminishing returns in that series. But Raisor Callahan still an amazing character. And you just go YouTube some clips. You'll be happy. YouTube hard enough, you'll find mind clips of me edited into clips with Razor Callahan. That's true. That's I don't think you had to take that hard Yeah, probably not. It's pretty cool. I think your name is forever linked, forever linked to the name of Razor Callahan. It's a pretty I'm just saying, if they want to recast the role of Razor Callahan, I am available. Okay, be his cousin. Yeah, Blazer Callahan, Blazer. You look like you can race, not see, and then they don't need they need to hire writers either. Yeah, you're like, no, I got this. Yeah, don't worry, guys, don't worry. I'm a professional. I know all about cool things to say to other street racers, such as not what you're also gonna tell people that they've been totally moded. You've been so moded, You've been commoded. Oh god, move on, move on, all right, let's take it. Then. Finally, Brad to your favorite part of the show. I love the emails. Bomb cast at john bomb dot com is the email address. Our first email comes from Olivier in Whiting, Maine. I'll sit up for this. I was gonna lean back, but you were and you got all serious seriouser. No, no, sir, No Lawrence either just Olivier like that's his first name, or some shit. Dearest Bomb Squad. If you had to choose between owning your own slick ass go cart track or a lifetime supply of Klondike bars, which would you choose? Please keep? Please note the Klondike bars would all be of the traditional variety and not the dark chocolate or chocolate ice cream variants, and you would have to wear a helmet at all times on the go cart track for insurance purposes. Patrick Kleavic, what is your choice's go cart? Easily? Jeff? When he says slick ass, do you think he means slippery? No, he says I'm sorry, he says sick ass. Okay, Yeah, then go cart track because I don't want to slick track. Slick track sucks. Brat Schumaker. What if the stream of chicken dumplings came out of the exhaust of the go carts. There's no there's no provisions here about magical chicken and dumpling cards. I don't I'm not this huge go cart fan or a fan Conda. Wouldn't be the first time I try to suck on exhaust pipe. I don't think. I don't really, I don't poking them for chicken. I will take That's what heaven is charity, So you go, Brad's gonna take the ice cream bars, give them to charity. I will take the go cart track because that would be a cool da would wouldn't you just get tired of it after like a week, though, But I would still have a go cart track to where helmet. But you can take the go carts out onto the regular streets. It doesn't say you can't dare yeah. I can drink all your yeah while we ride these go carts. And also also I don't have to actively keep the go carts frozen if I decide that I lose interest in them. Unlike these its constant because they'll always bring you more. It doesn't preclude me from going and buying my own Klondag bars. But I can't just go buy a go cart. I bet the up cart upkeep on a go kart track is more than upkeep on Klondike bars, That's true. You gotta pay people to do that or do it yourself. I just assume that, like there's just a huge shipment of these Klondike bars that are just gonna come in every like, regardless of whether you are still interested in Klondike bars, like weekly klondike shipment coming in and said, Fuck, what am I gonna do with all this? Goddamp them over to the creek, throw them in the creek, just like I do with all the garbage. But I'm saying, like, just the time it takes for you to dispose of all of these Klondike bars, Charity is gonna get tired of them real fast. You need to cut the part where I said I throw stuff in the creek. Nope, stand in here, everyone, head on over to the creek if you want some of Jeff's garbage. The creek, the creek, the creek, all these Klondike bars in the creek. So what you call him? So I got a bunch of emails from people that are super pissed about sweet about Skyrim and its stayed on the PS three. Yeahfully so apparently things are super bad, Yes they are. Yeah, at last passion and you nothing. No, the latest patch does nothing to alter the some of the more egregious problems in terms of having long if you have a large save that you are playing for hours at a time, that is still an issue. They were soliciting saved games with people that had problems to hopefully trying to address it, but it did not sound optimistic. Well, I recommend it to people who asks not to buy the PS three version before finding out if it was a FT when when? Because that was the one version you had not seen around review time? Yeah? Ay, they didn't send it out ahead of time. And b Bethesda has traditionally had all kinds of problems on the PS three. Fallout three was not great on the PS three. That was not the best place to play a Fall three right, and that continues to be there. I mean, you know what, I you can you can sympathize if the p S three the one and only place people I have to play games. Absolutely, But I get I'm not gonna credit this to anyone person because I got a number of these emails but there's there are people that are looking for people that are outraged that there is not more outrage about this, and I think they have a fair point most but that's because I would wait, your guests and most of the press, and also most of the press copies are on three six ten PC. So most of the press copies were three six three version. But then but then most of the alternate version than any member of the press is playing, is going to be on the PC. Like they have a legitimate beef with people not being exposed to that issue as much by virtue of the platforms there. It's not even just in the press, I mean the general public. Yes, like I would I would bet good money that the p S three version is the least selling of the three. I would probably say that that was the case day one. That's not like something that has happened because the PSTRE version was fucked up. But that's just yeah, you're you're probably right. It's just, you know, it's not like you're outrage isn't justified. It's just that the chorus is probably pretty small. I don't know if i'd say imperatively, I don't think that's I don't know if it's not as narrow as you think. It's at least probably a couple of million. But you're ships ten. Yeah, if they ship ten, if it's gonna be a few million in there, there's three million people, you're well, pretty liberal. But for a game that people play for ten hours at a time and being told that like basically every thirty minutes you should quit out so that you're saved doesn't become dogshit. There's nothing good that's saying that the issues is praising the the issue. If they're not being enough yeah, like I yeah, they're like Brad says, there are reasons for that. But but this does in subsequent response to to this problem, which has been I felt largely just dismissive, is which is how they've handled it in the past. And then one of the programmers are one of the guys who worked in New Vegas, basically kind of outlying how this problem is is an underlying issue with their technology, and then pe Hines, their PR marketing guy just basically saying, no, we solved it, that's not that's not the issue. Well, then explain what the issue. Like, I think it's be a little more forthcoming about what the problem is instead of just saying yeah, you know, with this never came up and testing sending some saved games. And maybe that's true, but I feel like they would mitigate a lot of the anger if they would just be a little more forthright about the problems. And instead it said it said it sounds like they just didn't test that version enough. Yea, and that is I see why you shoop a game like that, But that is not no the I mean, the tone of all these emails is frustration that people feel slighted by Bethesda because everyone else is having this fucking amazing Skyrim experience even when it is being weird and buggy on the other platforms, which the PS three owners should understand. It's you know, it's playable though it's messed up elsewhere, though it's not technically messed up in the same way. Absolutely, Like that's a much grander issue. Well, I don't know that you can find some people on the PC who would be envious of the p S three's problems. Yeah, because I've talked to people who to this day have not been able to play it on the PC because it's so fucked up, just like, are weird isolated instances. Yeah, like you can't explain those way in mass but yeah, but but there has not been that communication from Bethesda. Yeah, like they have not whether the patches aren't working or not, Like there needs to be some sort of outreach there. Yeah, because like like with the any issues that anyone's run into in terms of a quest that are broken, they have already come out out right and said that we are The way the code is structured is like there is data and there is quest stuff, and data is stuff like backwards dragons, magic resistances, quests are different line of code. Is breaking out simpler than I'm sure actually is, but this is the way they explained the quests probably operated at higher level. Yeah, and and they said that we're not going to address those till January. So if you have a broken quest but at last, you know, that's not great, but it at least you know when you're like, I'll just go and focus on the rest of the game, come back and do this quest when I get that patch out. And they spent a pretty long time like kind of ignoring that there was anything going on. We're just saying we're looking into it. There are issues across all platforms sort of the generic just sort of like scratching there and oh we have there anything about that is, oh we gotta, oh look at it, and then running away. Yeah yeah. I just I wonder how much resources they have in a post release, because obviously all three versions of Skyrim got problems, and the patches they been putting out so far have been cross platform patches that fix the same stuff on all platforms, so it's been universal stuff that hasn't even really specifically been about the PST texture thing on the Xbox. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, there are there are platforms specific fixes. Yeah. In fact, every patch you can find a couple of couple here and there versions, but it's been a lot of us. But you know, when Magic Resistance is broke, it was across all PLATFF, so there's enough unified code that well, I hope they fix it, I really do. Did they fix it in previous Bethezta games or was it just kind of like a factive life that's just like up. Yeah, well, I good luck you guys. I played there. You mean on the PS three specifically, Oh I don't know about that. Yeah. Yeah. In general, the games do get better over time. Well yeah, that's yeah, Like I played through follow Out three like a year and something after it came out, and it was it was fine fun. And I guess this is also different from a controller lag issue, which has also been an issue with PS three, but as the games. But I don't know enough about how they resulted on the other platforms. But I think this one is sold enough that maybe there is a better reason for optimism. And I think compared to previous times, people have a lot people know who Pete Hines is now right think Twitter, and things have changed, where like Pete Hynes has parody accounts, like like things have changed, people know where to direct like their complaints and sort of their their rage and just keep doing that. I guess that's a rate. I would wait a minute, Yes, all of these issues take them to Pete Hymes twenty bucks on team. Yeah, you got a problem with your pha exactly your red ring and a spe Hynes the fan of my PS three is real loud. Pete Hynes, what can you do for me? Let's flip it upside down for twenty minutes, let the fan kick in and you turn it back over you and be fine. All right? Thanks? Doesn't work it's right. It depends some people have didn't work for me. Yeah, I solved the problem, thanks Pete. PS Three, I'm not willing to solve my problem solving the world's problem. That my problems, that money to the economy that bad. Yet. NEXTIMO comes in from Shahar. Hey, Hey, I was wondering what you'd think about a Tony Hawk game in the vein of track Mania. It's just for you, Jeff, just everyone else, pit shut up. It's questions for Jeff. He seems to be vibrating user created levels sixty seconds per run to get your best score with a set time being a venue, challenges et cetera. Chat slash dub step obviously included. Uh yeah, I mean that's that's that's one way to do it. They have had track editors or a level editors and Tony Hawk games that are modular and peace based, uh, similar to how track Mania does it. So you know, obviously track Mania has a whole scripting language that makes it way more robust than anything they're gonna put into a level creator on a console game. But yeah, sure, that'd be a cool way to do it. Yes, though I don't know that I don't know that the dubstep is the right genre for skateboarding. I don't. I just don't know that that part works. Sc step, Yeah, I don't know. We needed check we didn't check back in with skateboarding. I don't know. It's yeah, they kind of. Dan Amerk has his blog activision employee Yes one of Swords, Yes, one of Swords, uh, talking a little bit about about the music and kind of coming out and saying, I think what everyone already knew is that you know, they don't automatically have licenses to the old Tony Hawk music and then and then said like, or if you remember the Tony Hawk games were used to kind of break bands in some cases and kind of expose people new music. Maybe they'll do that again, which I guess that's one way to go, but it's it sounds more like they'll probably get a couple of those songs so that people are happy and then but not all all that good do custom soundtracks if you write, if you want the whole thing, it sounds like it'll be new artists. Yeah. I guess My only issue with this idea is that it kind of it suggests a format that it's more like the downhill jam levels from the first Tony Hawk. Then yeah, that would be bad. I mean if you get if you're building levels and then doing two minute runs in them, sure like that'd be kind of cool. And you know what if it was a case where they took out collisions and you could just have one hundred people on that level for that kind of track mania style, because I just immediately think foundry and I think doing that big grinding, that big loop and if another dude comes around and it's going faster than you, just knocks you off the list, just knocks you right off that loop and you can't keep that's the loops. Yeah, it's good. It's the one run where everyone goes. Everyone just becomes this horrible dodge them. It's all the old Attardi game. Dodge them. But with skateboards you have to you have to know when to jump off. Yeah, and it can be hard to know. I have to know the ledge. I'll be curious to see whatever whatever it is that this this HD collection looks like. Yeah, and then what that then means for the future of the Tony Hawk franchise, because, like you said last week, Jeff Activations got that Tony Hawk for a while Yeah, they're paying for at least you're paying for it till at least like twenty fifteen. It sounds like the right time. It's ridiculous, all right. Next email comes in from Maury Sutton and he's in Finland. She's in Finland. They're in Finland. Hey, bomb cast. After watching the end of Star Wars Galaxies, things you guys did, I got kind of interested in the Old Republic. I've watched a bunch of videos and read people's opinions on forums, but I'm still on the fence about the game. Remember Jeff being pretty negative about the game, saying that it's a lot like Wow. One doesn't bring anything new the table. So obviously WOW veterans won't find the game very interesting. But what about the people who haven't played MMOs before, such as myself? Do you think the game would be more enjoyable in this case? But the games problems persist from for RP MMO RPG rookies. I don't know. I found myself asking that exact same question I was playing it. I just, you know, I don't know that the game really does a terrific job of explaining how you're supposed to play those games, it's it's I mean, it's yeah, you're right in that. I'm not sure because you go in if you've played enough, Wow, it's like I kind of understand the beats of how does you know how agro works? You know, you know, like pulling is less of a deal at least from what I've played in this, But I don't know. Uh, Like they have pop ups that you like, pop up tooltip things. The first time you do something, it'll kind of explain the big picture stuff about how some of the systems work. Yeah, but getting into that nitty gritty, I don't know. Yeah, for a new player, I'm I like, but I think of any MMO that's launched post World of Warcraft, this will probably be the one that's most friendly to new players because I think there you can it'll be promoted enough and popular enough that there will be plenty of new players there with you. You know, you'll have those people that have played all the games all along and they'll just kind of be off and running. But you know, if you can team up with a few friends that also don't know what they're doing, you will probably be able to figure that stuff out. Uh. Bank A chare over ours Technica did. He hasn't played him most before and I haven't read the whole feature, but he played like fifteen hours of it and tried to play it as though the original pitch of I'm gonna play this this cotour and just try and play it himself. And I read a bit of it, it sounds like, yeah, it doesn't explain things very well, but that it is largely with with some accession, like there, I guess there are some missions where you can you can there's like, here's the option to do it solo, and then there's another way to do it group, Like the mission will branch based on whether you want to do it by yourself or with the group. Well, it's basically like this this this flash point, this Black Talon flash point that we're talking about is okay, you have to go to this planet from this planet. Now, you can take this ship over here, which if you're by yourself, is probably the best way to go. Oh, that's probably what he's talking about. That's that's not that's that's probably what he's talking about is the way that it pitches you on that stuff. Yes, and all that is is an introduction to flashpoints, which are meant to be done as a group, so it's not like it's either you fly directly to the planet or you go on this mission and at the end of the mission it says like, do you still want to go to the planet. But you do also find when you're on missions, like there will be like secondary like ultrabject bonus objectives that that aren't listed when you first take on a mission and you'll be in the middle of it, will say, oh, kill X number of things here if you want to for this bonus objective, which can sometimes she's like, sometimes that rules you into here's an area that is higher level or would require multiple people to to go through successfully. No, it's it's never been significantly tougher because most of those objectives are killed thirty of these dudes that you're already killing. But something. But I've had I've had ones. I've had like arcs where you'll go into heroic areas, right, which I guess are like the tougher. Typically there's a heroic quest that is with that. So the quests that are meant to be done by multiple people just straight up say heroic two plus or four or texts and kind of just tell you like you should have four people or be So I did a four person thing by myself last night, but I was also six levels higher than the recommended level for it. So yeah. But the so there's some stuff that they do spell out that there's yeah, and there's another floor on the space station that straight up is is as far as I can tell, every single flash point, Yeah, just shuttles all around you and you can just run off to any one of them. So there is that that first one they introduced to you by saying like, hey, if you're playing with friends, you can go this way and do this thing for friends or don't, but you can always go back and do that thing later, because that's a thing you're supposed to do right eventually. With friends, It's less about it being the same mission beyond how well it explains all the mechanics. Like I just didn't feel like the world was drawing me in in the same way. Like you know, it's impossible for me to say if this is just down to personal preference or if it was, Like the Wow experience was my first one, so it's my favorite. But like thinking back on like starting at that abbey and then like making your way down to Goldshire and kind of screwing around killing Hogger, you know, in Princess and all that stuff, and then like finding storm Winds and like, oh shit, look at the size of the city. Like I didn't feel that like enticing sense of place in this and like I dabbled in those two start zones. You're right. I mean I've been to like through four planets or something, or yeah, I guess i've I've I've been through four planets now, and yeah, they're all kind of similar. Like you get to the Jedi Temple and that's kind of a big area, but it's also totally fucking empty, and it's like three places to go, and then everywhere that I went it was empty, Like there was not a lot of interesting fiction beyond the occasional conversation, Like there weren't a lot of players around, and granted the games on out yet, but ors just now coming out, you know, there are tons of people playing it and they've been letting people in a huge way. Yeah, thank god. Like I just like playing Wow for like fucking two years on end, like it never lost that sense of like, my god, there's so much in here, and I want to keep finding it. And then discovering it, and like, none of the stuff I saw in this have that kind of draw. I don't know how to call you're you're you're right about that, Like there there's no there is no like storm Wind equivalent. Like the towns are so spread out and sprawling that you never get that sense of it being a bustling hub of activity, even with the I mean, they put NPCs all over the place, but the vendors and stuff are spread out so far, and and you get to like, was it so back or something, which is like the the kind of next next area past that, and even that's like it's as smaller town overall, but it's really big. And as far as I can tell, there aren't even any crafting trainers there, so it's like it's it's not even like a full service area. Well, it's this, it's this weird. It's this weird thing. I think you you were kind of touching on it when you were talking about doing like the during the preview stuff of it feels like they built this world to be full of player characters, but then instance did out of existence by not allowing that many player characters into any one world. So it's like they're these huge avenues and and like even in a specific like all right, you're in the marketplace area, like just everyone is scattered so far. It's like, oh, well, Goose team that that's because they expect there to be a shipload of people in here, and so you want to have room for people to run around and not just have to be this match of everyone so through each other the thing you need to get to. Uh. And it's it's kind of like when I got it, I was super happy that I got it, but then at the same time it just made me realize that it's like kind of a shitty solution to a larger problem. Is that at some point it might be a level eighteen or it's either high teens or just right at level twenty you get sprint. Yeah, you're mad love for sprint. It's like a thirty percent movement speed increase when you're not in battle. And why would they lock that away? Well, that's basically like getting amount. It sounds like, well the mounts are way faster. Yeah, but I mean like it's a late high level like speed increase. You get mounts at level twenty five. I would say that they would lock that away because they don't want you to run past everything. They want you to stop and see the world. But that's a really dumb idea. Fine, if there was stuff there to see, I just didn't notice. I guess, I guess when it doesn't play these games. That sounds stupid, That sounds really stupid. It's locking away running. But it's like great, but you're you're so many hours at that point that when you get it, it's awesome. I'm sure great, thank god, Oh I'm moving so much faster than all these other assholes just because they've irritated you for twenty hours. Then like after like a handful hours of sprinting, I was like, this is still too slow. Uh. And then I'll get a mount at level twenty five, and then there are higher level mounts that go faster and they let you mess around with a speeder bike. In the area I'm in now, Like there's just a bike sitting there. You just get on. It didn't seem that fast, and I just, yeah, I don't know, is that what the mounts are? Stuff like speeder bikes? Do you ever get a taunt on? I don't, I don't know, I don't know. I've not seen any hath shit path is in the game. Is it's on the out I should hope that there is a Hawth level. Yeah, and again there's there's is there. Like I'm sitting here now, like just during this conversation realizing that the place that I go to now for this like kind of density of world content as Skyrim, Like that's like it's like a falling into place for me right now, Like Skyrim is the new Wow to me, and they don't. That's the place where I like, I'm roaming around this massive world and every five minutes like finding something new and cool, yeah that I haven't seen before Because I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if the problem is with me or with with old Republic. You know whatever, you're I mean, you're older, you have more responsibilities as an adult. You don't have the time to be spending your weekends and your underwear playing fucking World of Warcraft. Though time that was fucking awesome. So what I did this weekend is sat around in a pair of sweatpass and played World of Warcraft for thirty fucking hours. That's that's the upgrade, swept. Yeah, you just get the sweatpass. Just get the sweatpass. And every first weekend that first weekend, yeah wow, Yeah, woke up like I went home straight after working Friday night, played until I couldn't stay up anymore, got back out of like eight am, played until one ail. Like, dude, that is pretty much exactly what I did this weekend. It's like I played till three in the morning on Friday, then woke up at like eight on Saturday, going shit, I should keep laying here. It's like, oh, I better get up before the queues get bad, and played almost the entil I played till about midnight that night, and then woke up again at like nine and played till midnight again. You having fun that whole time? I don't know, sure, yeah, you know whatever? Like and I and I realized something about myself. It's not that I'm obsessive. I'm not a completionist. It's I don't need everything, Like I'm not gonna go collect all the flags do all that stuff. But I'm a sucker for any type of persistence in a game. That's why That's why I like, Yeah, but like that kind of progression when they can when I can say, my dude is better because of shit I did. If I can look back and the numbers are higher, that is a thing that is a pretty powerful hook. It's why Call of Duty four works so well because it merges that idea or borderlines, yeah, you know, it's it merges that idea with an action. He kind of game. That is the type of game that I also like take more than pure skill, but just like the time investment is more than because you can be bad at a game and it stay at least I at least I got proof. If you're better at the game, you're advancing faster. You know, that's there's been, it's been, right. So yeah, if I didn't, if I didn't hate MMOs, I would really like MMOs, is what I'm saying. I mean, I'm enjoying myself and but but I also subscribed to the you know first and last first went in, Last one out. Is the way to play an MMO is that that launch weekend is amazing, and when everyone is still discovering stuff and people are showing up with shit that you haven't seen before and you're like, oh shit, how did you get that? Like that's that's still a fun social experience to be had. Uh, but I never have interest in doing that for three years or something like I didn't haven't doing that with Wow when it launched, Like I didn't play as long as as other folks did there. But I like the like the intensity when it is that zeitgeisty thing and everyone's playing it. No, no genre benefits as much as the MMO. Like, yes, everyone was playing sky Rim all at once. Everyone's talking about it, and you know it helped the conversation, but that never really trickled back to the game experience, you know, It's never it never came back to oh shit, well you should come over to my sky Rim and we'll roll together. I mean, the best the best you can do is hear about something and go seek it out right exactly, it's like, oh wow, that sounds crazy. I want to see that. And there's almost like an element of gambling to it with the way drops work, you know, there's that that notion of just like if I keep at that, like I'm gonna get something super crazy and no one's gonna know it's gonna be awesome. So they've added that a level deeper into this game because one of the quest rewards, you can pick a lot of the times and you have to pick between a few things. Yeah, one of them is just a fucking box. It says, there's a fucking item that's like level twenty in here. Hey what is it, dude? And I'm gonna pick that almost every time and maybe it'll be something awesome. A couple of times it's been awesome, like way to rip the last tatters or your fiction off of the raw mechanics in this game and say, fucking here, you go roll the dice. Maybe you'll get something good. There's no reason for this box to be here, but here you have at it. No, It's it's like, you know, if we're completing a quest, the guy says, like here, you can have this box, or you can take some currentcy you know, some some or planet specific currency, get your commendations on it turns it away. It's like who wants to make a deal at that point? Exactly? Oh my god, it's intoxicating. Yeah, it's you understand why people why there are some people that get addicted to it and for a way big parts of their lives because like it taps into some of those same centers for like constant positive reinforcement, because you're always building your character no matter what you do. Man element of gambling like that, Yeah, totally like slap some electrodes on there. I bet, I bet your dopamine response is just fucking like like this. It is. I'm making the discs go into the holes while the thing is strapped to my eye. That is what's happening, and the whole ships actually judd damn you always. Next, TEAMO comes in from Adam Schually. He's in Portage, Michigan. Gentlemen of the Bomb Cast, we're calling back to the beginning of the year when Dragon Age two came out to a largely tepid response, and there was a lot of musings about on the internet and on your own podcast that big Western RPGs just weren't feasible in these modern times. Now that we live in a post Skyrim world, it seems like a ludicrous idea. Skyrom being one of the biggest most Western RPGs of all time has sold incredibly well despite launching the same week as Modern Warfare three, and it is largely agreed upon to be awesome. My question is, do you think Skyrim's an outlier on RPGs are still largely done, or that Dragon Age two was disappointing for other reasons. You guys really suggesting that Western RPGs were done because of Dragon Age two? Maybe, I don't know. That seems sort of crazy, Like, I don't I don't think anybody said that nobody wanted to play them anymore. One game is going to kill any if anything, the implication is that developers are not necessarily in a position to make them on a regular basis, Yeah, or like I mean, I keep it, keep in mind at the time that this was I mean whatever at the time, still there's a Byoware developed RPG and kind of the expectations that that came, and then them kind of actioning it up in some spots, right right. I think that I think the fear of the action and shooter sales influencing the design of what would these be more traditional RPGs. That's probably that is a legitimate fear. I don't always said, but I think it's it's one of those pos things where, yeah, like very few developers are in position to make something that has that depth of content, right because we even saw like this was the follow up from BioWare themselves, and even early on it was apparent that like, well, they just don't have the depth of the content. It's just not there. It turned it around too fast, and they called it too they call it's like one thing starts to but it came out it's one thing. If it was something else, and we're saying, hey, this is here's something in between dragon Age dragon Age two. It's not as you know. I I think people they positioned that the wrong way but knew they would sell them, or if they called it it too right. I don't know if you remember, but it took them a long time to make the first Dragon Age. Yeah, a long a long time ago. I remember when that was on the cover of Computer Gaming World, which was the second time it had been unveiled. If that game got unveiled like three different times, look radically different. The announced the name of it like years before they ever showed it, like like it was yeah wow, yeah, I must not have been attention. The point is that was probably a longer development cycle than the A is comfortable with. Yeah, so they were not going to get to do that again. By contrast, Bethesda like clearly has like like solid processes in place and can make these games well in two to three years even then well, and then they'll spend another year fixing it, right, you know what I mean? Like the ground world, like look at what Skyrim is of, Like this took you know, a developer that is you know, if not if if we can't say really good, at least has done this a few times. I think that's more important. It's just like that building up that skill set in the process is just unfathomable. To do it on that scale. Yeah, Like it's it's not even a matter of money. It's just like, how how do you even do that that? This is taken Bethesa to get to the point of Skyrim decades to get to where they can pull this stuff off. It's not you could just even if you just panted people a bunch of money and they don't develop anything else internally. But games like that, right falls three and then yeah, this is Yeah, all that said though, like the breadth of the content in that game is fucking staggering. Yeah, like it's it's it's legitimately just like from forty hours in like there's a major city, but like what it is Skyrim and Outlier absolutely because it takes a lot of skill and a lot of resources to make something like this. Skyrim would not be a big deal if it were not such a difficult thing to execute on. Yeah, so I still think, you know, yeah, big games like this are going to be a rarity because it does take just time and resources and abilities. Like they're not going to annualize the Elder Scrolls franchise, at least not without destroying it, right, I'm not sure they could, right, I'm not even sure how feasibly they Then again, I would have said that about Sassin's Creed and name. It would no longer be they would no longer be recognizable. It wouldn't be a win, you know, Yeah, you would flatten it across a bunch of studios and bring the quality down like things that A Max is smarter than that, I think, man, but was smarter than that. I doubt Bo was paying much attention, way more curious to see that MMO right than anything else. I want to know if I want to know if Matthew Perry has played Skyrin, isn't he Beathta fan super fan? He was like Fallout fan, like like he went on the Ellen Show and brought her an Xbox and a copy of Fallout three because he's like obsessed with it. That's why they cast him in New Vegas because he was like like Fallout fan number one. Weird. So yeah, like the idea of some random random actor with you know, like former drug problems and stuff like that. It seems like a regular Hollywood guy problem, except all of a sudden, Wait a minute, he's spending twelve hours stay playing a Bethesda game. Like what, yeah, dudes like games. I guess I'm hearing is that he shows the VG. Is that what you're saying? That's what sounds like true. Next year, it comes in from Eric. It's about handheld game of the years. It seems that they're that this is a ridiculous notion. Let's start this email over. It seems to me there is this ridiculous notion that a majority of gamers have that a handheld game can't be a game of the year. Where does this come from? And why Ghost Trick is probably my game of the year and I see no reason why I can't stand alongside which are Two Day Sex, Dark Souls, Skywrid, sort, et cetera. Platform shouldn't matter. It should be about the quality of the game. Your thoughts I have been there for the selection of handheld games of the year, or at least where they've come down to it where they know major contenders for sure. Uh. You know, I think it what it comes down to for for for most people. Uh, you know, a console game is gonna just be flash here if nothing else, like you start looking for or it's it's easier to look for spectacle. Uh when you start talking game of the year stuff, then what are often like subtler things that make a handheld game really great. So it's easier to start looking for a lot of things, you know, like consoles are just more capable of machines like it might it might it might be flash, it might be depth. Sure, there's a lot of things that handhelds just can't do. Ghost Tricks really awesome. Yeah. I don't know that I would call it my game of the year, and in fact, I don't know that I would call it one of my top ten games the year, but it is pretty awesome. I think just a fewer people play them like that's you know, that's in terms of the time you have throughout the year to play x amount of games, and I think you're more interested in playing that triple a game on your console than you are on handhelds. Also, I keep waiting for Ghost Tricks to come out on the iPad because it came out on the iPad in Japan. Did you really Yeah, translations just sitting around slapping on them, that would be a good Yeah, it's supposedly awesome, So yeah, I think it's possible. I've seen Super Mario three Land on some lists, so I mean, yeah, yeah, Super three Lands telegame. I mean, I'm sorry, I don't want to digress too much. I have a downloadable game that now runs in a web browser, like right at the top of my list. Sure, like it can happen just you know, Yeah, I guess. But at the same time, I think that like when you start going to, like, you know, picking the game of the year, like people tend to for the same reason, like the Oscars don't pick comedies a lot of the time, like people, you go for the big prestige piece. I think, yeah, I think there's an inherent bias against things like fighting games and racing games and things that aren't big, traditional sweeping, single player experiences. I think those always get preferential treatment at a staff level. When you get a bunch of people together talking about games, those seems to be the ones for for whatever reason, that that people can agree on. Yeah, I think that's true. I think I think that's that's what you find. I think that's why it comes up in these lists more is that it's an easy common ground. Yeah, Whereas like we're like, oh, you know, I don't really play this time type of game, you don't really play that type of game, but we both played this game. We both agree that this game is pretty fucking excellent. So that's why fighting games definitely get right. Fighting games, strategy games, you're right about fighting and end racing games as well, like driving games, like there will be a couple there will always be someone on staff that loves one or two driving games intensely and no one else has seen fucking right sight of and and those conversations. I imagine it happens across all publications this way. I can only speak for a couple of them. Yeah, I guess. But so it's always like someone goes like, well, I really play I played four to three and I think it's incredible in the best game I played all year. But I'm not gonna win that fight so I'm just gonna say that and say fuck you guys, and go ahead and pick year whatever whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've seen exactly that happen year after year after year. You have to say it out loud, yes, said loud. I don't know. I'm not gonna try and four you assholes into this. Part of the reason why I feel pretty good about us putting our deliberations out there, because when we say that stuff, at least someone gets to hear it outside of people in that room who just go like, oh yeah, soccer game. Sure we And also, maybe more importantly, our personal top ten list. Sure yeah, bastbard. We can air all those personal preferences without any any kind of no oversight, perverting influence. All right. Next email comes in from Matt. Matt says bomb cast, I did the math. Had Jeff been paying for Star Trek online monthly for the past twenty two months, Jeff would have paid over three hundred dollars boom. Coincidentally, that's the cost of a lifetime subscription Boom. Jeff is now technically playing for free. Right, It's almost like he's making money. I am, who's stupid now for buying a lifetime subscription. Huh, you guys are total fuck ups. You could have got in too, they were selling them. You could have just bought one Star Trek online. Star Trek Online. I really want to try it again, like the idea of Star They redesigned the away team combat stuff. I really want to try it again, like they supposedly made it more actiony, which if they actually nailed that, that might be okay. Fuck the Old Republic. Yeah, let's Star Trek. See this is this is where it comes in. You can fucking start practically start out with a space ship in that one. But this is where we strip away clean where it's it doesn't really matter if it's about MMO stuff. It's about deal still like Star Trek or do you still like Star Wars like some affinity for that for that underlying material, regardless of how it's treated. One of those brands has been salvaged in the other one has been torpedoed. You know that playing Old Republic has as started to crystallize why I don't like Star Wars. Yeah, it's because it's just the same fantasy bullshit, but with laser swords instead of regular it's years. Yeah, it is no different. It is Lord of the Rings with some space I just like all of the Imperial stuff. Yeah, I like a lot of their design stuff. I like the aesthetic the Imperial high fighters. Look, yeah, their wings, they'll pattern on the wings. That's when I run into the into like the spit into the you know, star destroyers or whatever wherever it is that I am in space, and they just have like the huge banners with the spotline in the middle on the Imperial symbol. Everything's all black and red and gray and just looks it's a bunch a Nazi shit. It is they really, they really lean into the Nazi ship. Yeah, they are incredible space Nazis. And they are fittingly space racist about it as well, totally like like right down to the eugenics or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, straight up spear destiny of that motherfucker. Uh. Next Emil comes in from Scott Lumsden. Lumsden Lumsden, you as a question about video game trailers. Numerous trailers were released during this year's Spike Video Game Awards. I'm noticing that many of them, such as CNC, generals to use the term in game footage. However, the new BioShock Infinite trailers specifically uses the term in engine footage. I assume this is to mean that the gameplay for C and C Generals two is simply a video found within the game, and not actually footage of gameplay. I find this should be quite gross and misleading if on the part of whoever creates these trailers. Perhaps my assumptions are wrong, But if I am correct, I asked, I ask you what your feelings are on the use of the term in engine, I'm sorry in game if any I think, I think you're reading too much into it. If you think there are differences between end game and an engine, that they're both kind of getting at the same thing. It's just different companies using different terms. Yeah, yeah, it's not. That doesn't mean that you're going to be controlling one of those exploding things in that fashion, and that General's trailer, it probably just means that they use the game engine to render it, and it's not some team making high grade CGI right renders of all those models. Yeah, I'm sure someboch But you're going to see most of that game, I imagine, except for whatever cut scenes and whatever stuff they throw in there and dialogue. True, you'll see it from above like an RTS, So I can't imagine. I can't imagine you will see that exact footage in there. I mean not allus used a third version of that phrase, which was captured entirely from the PlayStation three or however exactly however they first means that they took a Blu ray disc stuck in PS three, pushed play on the movie they had rendered out on trait like that's recorded that. Yeah, that's a really dumb phrase to use because there's so many loopholes in that that it just doesn't it's all getting at the same sort of thing. Just look, it's not as CGI trailer right like this this is some like there's some federal agency that's requiring them in the UK, is it. Yeah, if if they're putting out average does a truth and advertising like if they if they put out commercials and stuff on television that are not representative of what the game really looks like. In some cases, even if they were showing the PC version and then promoting the WEI game like and not specifying what it was like, they would go after them. Yeah, Activision's been hit with the suits a couple of times. There a lot of fees, so apparently there is federal They're very they're very strict about that. Kay, you're CCTV. Yeah, you know it is. Actually it kind of gets rid of lot of the bullshit, or if you're gonna pull the bullshit, atleast are gonna get fine for it. Right, Spike is not in the UK, They're not. They are the most American of networks. Indeed, next team, what comes in from Locke High Giant Bomb squad lock here from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. As far as I know, both Brad and Patrick have been and possibly finished testing the slew of games for the IGF. Is that accurate? Can you talk about that? Yeah, I'm doing student showcase stuff now, which Brad is not. But we are done with the first round of judging for that. Yeah, with all contests, with all contests of this nature, the cream always rises to the top. But both of you said that there were too many great games. Is there a way to see, play or consume the IGF games that did not make the cut? There's a complete listing on the IGF website that has like a summary of the game, or at least a vague allusion to what it's about. Video screenshots everything. There's a ton of them. Yeah, there's seven hundred, six hundred, seve hundred entries this year, but you can't play any of them. And well they're they're and some of them are already web games out, some of them. Yeah, like the developers put them up on web pages and stuff. Probably there's no build a Fez sitting there. Yeah, they're the big games you're thinking of, Like, no, you can't play them, and a lot of them after that you have disappear for several years, they submerge, they get bought. Yes, it was really weird. Like you log in as a judge and it just directs you to your like dozen games or whatever that you've been assigned. But if you back out, you think you can see everything and they all they're all there to download and you can't rate them obviously, but it's really eye opening to be scrolling down the list of all these games you never heard of, and they're like, oh, Fez Jim and I ru you know, like I'm blanking on a couple others like insanely twisted Shadow Planet was on there. Yeah, you know, like it's weird to see these like well known and in some cases already commercially available games like mixed in with these like practically student projects in some cases do they have divisions? I mean you have the student showcase stuff, but it is there like a other than that is just a gigantic list, a big old melting pot. Yeah, it sounds like next year there might be there's a little more structure to just because it's starting to get kind of unwieldy. As the term indie, right, what is indian? What is indie exactly? Which is define that account pop cap. No, they're owned by EA, who owns the a man the people. That's the most independent of all. It's not the government like Zinga. It's independent, yep. I mean ven epic games are independent if you want to play that game. So I think it's I think it gonna win I GF next year. It is indie in spirit, I think is what has kind of just come down and spit works. Something like Planet was like made with Microsoft money. You know, like where does that? They don't draw a line and if that was We talked about this like the Big fight a couple of years ago was Phil Fish calling out a que Games Forward winning awards for pixel junk games despite them having a multi game contract with Sony and right the Inevitable, like they decided not to make a call in it because it was just there's no there's no hard lines you can draw. Also it gets too weird. Well at the same time, like most games are made with somebody's money. Yeah, so yeah, I can't wait for the finalists to come out because yeah, I didn't get a very good crop of games. I can't really we can't really talk about the ones we got, but I got a couple okay ones. But talking to other people, there were a lot, a lot of fantastic stuff that like I quickly downloaded builds up so I can try and play them later. But yeah, the one year I did it, like Super me Boy and Limbo popped up in the finalists and that was before anybody had ever heard of that stuff. And it's like you downloaded and play it like everything else, and they're like, oh shit. And a lot of times you're playing like you see in Mac builds of games that will just become or are going to be XPLA or PSN games, like especially if they're built on like X and A or something like that, Like it's they will never become PC games, but you can play them on your PC. So UH should probably wait for to discuss this stuff at length or at any sort of length once the actual awards kind of shake out. But was there stuff in in this round that you felt hit those same notes? Was there anything that you hadn't heard of before? Not in my group? Yeah, not in mind that those names definitely start getting out there. Yeah. Yeah, Well, once we get to the finalists, and then also use you're on the finalists, you can work out with into like each developer to perhaps talk about their games, we might be able to do something a little bit more. I mean, you know, some of that stuff has gotten out in the press already. Dear Esther was spoken very highly. They just have just announced that for release in February for like ten dollars, although you can find that right now. That's the one that's in the IGF is just a remake of an existing half source source engine mod. It's some sort of ghost story that's supposed to be really good. There's new Cappy Games, super Time Force, which is some contra game where you die a lot. And I'm not sure how much I has to say because I don't know how much of the content is out there for the new Cappy game. They made Sword and Sorcery and here's my magic uh Clash of Heroes creer clash Clash. Yeah, tell the game. Actino comes in from Bernard Redmond Washington. Hey, bond cast, what are some of your favorite pinball machines and which ones do you think are the most important? Important? Pinball? Important pinball? I think my favorite is probably in my new math rock band I will say it again, is F fourteen Tomcat. It's probably my favorite pinball machine and high speed important. I don't know. Pinbot, Pinbot's probably pretty important. Pinbots probably important. That's that's a medieval madness big, Big, recognizab Twilight Zone, those are Yeah, I would call those like like Big some of the best and also kind of important for what they did for that era of pinball and kind of raised their profile in the nineties. But for me it was it was Star Trek the next generation Terminator two were like the return of pinball. That was like, oh, suddenly I care about pinball. It's not just the weird thing my dad goes and plays where I play real video games, you know, yeah, like it made it relevant to a crowd that had just been playing video games and didn't give a shit about pinball previously. So it's all about the movie tie ins. That's what did it. Yeah, I put those. I put yeah, start put the money in. It says Judgment Day. You're like, fuck, I'm gonna go see that. It's got it. It's got a gun triggers up on the thing. The T two one was great. Terminator two kind of cleaned up at the arcades between that and the Light Gun game like those those both in play at the same time. Those were those were arcade hits. Yeah, obviously, you know, for source material reasons. I love that that Twilight Zone machine, but that's just well done. Also, it's a fantastic machine. That's just a great machine. Beautiful piece. Same same with it. Yeah, it's a beautiful piece. Nice table, Yeah, nice table. Good pin. That's a really nice Yeah, nice pin got there, Uh yeah same, what's same with the Adams Family. That's another good piece from there. A spot for the Super Mario Brothers three. They made one out of right, not Super Mario World. I think it was three. I just called it Super Mario Brothers. But like the art, yeah, it's like that. The aesthetic was I think Super Mario Brothers three whenever I go to Whenever I go to Santa Cruz, they have one of those there, and it's it's not the it's not the best pinball game, but it's he talks a lot. Yeah, and says that's enjoyable anywhere. It's like it's custom samples for that. Yeah, it's enjoyable for the one quarter. And I'm like, I am satisfied. Good that is. That was the movie theater I hung out at had that machine in it for a while. It was annoying. I would imagine, Yeah, it does talk a lot. There's a lot of people just walking around in you know, dressed up, and I'm working at the theater where it's like I'm super now over and over again. Oh that sounds like hell. It was. It's pretty rough. I was. That was. That was not the two weeks that I was working there, though, so I could leave. Next email comes in from Matt. It's coming out of Dallas, Big D. Big D and Ded a long time listener, and I value your opinions. There's something I've been conflicted about for some time. Straws. Do you peel off the paper with your fingers or tapped the straw on the table until it breaks through. For most of my life I was a tapper, but after a streak of broken straws, I switched to the other method. I can't help but feel a little less cool, though. Should I go back to my old ways, risking the occasional cracked straw? Patrick Kleppick, how do you deal with straws? I think you have to take the risk by tapping. Yeah, I didn't know there were other ways, Jeff, what do you think? Yeah, I think tapping is the right way. But lately I've been rabbing. Let's say the first fifth of the straw. I'm just twisting there and ripping that part off. Yeah, and then I end up with two pieces of straw. A lot of the time that way, Brad peeling for years because it is what grown ups do. I will tap if if you peel string cheese. I don't trust you when it comes to peeling. I can't string string cheese. Don't. Yeah, you can't. It's not okay, Jeff, No, it's not. No. No, it's not missing the pot. You're missing the point. You know, what grownups really do is not drink with straws. Also, maybe don't eat string cheese. What's what is it about being a grown up that says, I like ice banging off my teeth Like, no way, man, Straws are still fine. I'm not saying drink milk through a straw. Drink milk at all. Well, that's because it's what grown ups do. Oh, I see, all right? Yeah, but when you have frail, bitter bones that are cracking like a grown up, you come see me, mister osteoporosis king. I will I will tap if it's paper, I will uh twist or tear if it's plastic, because I find that oftentimes the plastic sheath does not tap out as easily as the paper does. I bought straws off the internet. What kind of straws drink straws? Just like three kind of drink straws? They are? They are? They they're not wide, they're not wide, but yeah, they do have stripes on them. They're not they're not big wide straws. You couldn't really drink a milkshake with them. But one night I went to a fast food establishment and they did not give me a straw. And I got home and there was no straw. I was like motherfucker. So I went to Amazon and ordered straws, said, fuck you, never again. I win this one in every three thousand scenario. Will It has happened twice as I bought the straws. Though, Now I understand that's key difference in the lifestyle. Like I'm just yeah, that is. Yeah, if you're dealing with that style of beverage, right, you definitely straws happen. Yeah, okay, I'm not like, yeah, I'm not like getting a pint glass and like to pour me some lemonade straw like a glass of water putting a straw, and yeah, my girlfriend will do that. Well, yeah, women wear lipstick and thus don't want to fuck it all up with glasses, and we'll use a straw. This okay, this makes more sense. Yeah, I used to have a big old like gross of I guess theaters. Yeah, yes, commercial straws that were in the home. Commercial grade straws. Nothing like them. Yeah, yeah, because she doesn't she likes to drink through straws. Weird hankering for some boba now just because just because I want to use one of those giant straws. Yeahly oversized straw the tapioca balls can go through. You know who doesn't like straws? Ryan McDonald, motherfucker hate a straw. Well, the number of times I've seen that dude take a straw of drinking fucking throat just like get rid of it. Actively against straws cleared the way so that he can deliver straw until that cop later on. I can't spit through a straw can. Next email comes in from John C. San Diego, California. John que John C asks what's BioWare? That's email? That's a great question back, come back, come back next week? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think they're doing great. Full steam ahead, guys. Next email comes in from Chris Norris and Vancouver can feel better about their whole situation after playing a bunch of old republic like seeing that game is at least well made. Seems like the laws is probably going okay. I don't know, I don't know how many people want to stick with that sort of thing. And I think that, you know, there's still a lot of questions that will have to be answered to buy a subscription, subscriber numbers and server expansion and stuff. But but I am not as certain as is the success or demise based on what I've seen of that game, like, yeah, this, maybe this could keep going for at least they they have made a good one of those games. It is functionally competent. Yeah, to be clear, it is not what I want, but at least they yes, they can still set a goal. They have They have not pushed the genre forward in huge ways from what I've seen, have a little bit of that biowareness to it. A little bit just enough, a little just enough what I love about me, but enough of what I love about like, mass Effect is still in there even in just like certain design decisions, certain esthetic decisions, where I can I can feel little bits of the mass Effect design creeping into much as how as as much as you know, you know mass Effect is a rip off of, or a conflagration of Star Wars and Star Trek, you can feel a little bit of that kind of washing back into older public. Yeah, a little bit. It's just I don't know, I fucked a Darth. Yeah that's if you want. You want to talk about some BioWare ship right there. I don't know, it's I know I want to fucking Darth. Not know that you can. It's hard for me to forget this was made by different people though, Like the people who made Cotour went on to make mass Effect, right, Like, that's that's that's the actual that's the true legacy of the Cotore Games is mass effect. We'll look forward to mass effect online. I would rather that they did that. Yeah, if they had made a mass effect mmo, yeah, that would be the ideal. I think in a lot of ways, which it was all cartoony. What if it was all cartoon wouldn't like that at all? Chris Norris, What if Shepherd was a king wearing his sawn. It's just a holographic crown. He wasn't actually wearing it. It's just a hollow crown. Oh man, that would be in keeping with the aesthetic of Old Republic. From what I've seen, dude, the amount of holographic signage that they throw everywhere. What is up with the thing? Every time you level like the little legs, I don't even know that is what. I don't know. It's weird though, it's like where are you? And then it zooms away with like this like motion blur on it. Well, it's like it's these actual, like little mechanical things the show and say, hey, by the way, you went up a level later and put up a sign you. Yeah, I don't know that. That is a weird. Third, Where where is it coming from and where's it going? Does it exist in the same physical space as my guy? It must because you see it happening to other players, do you? Yeah? Oh wow, Okay, I haven't noticed that. That's weird. Moving on, that's it for emails. Thanks everyone who wrote in BombCast at giant bomb dot com is the address. And with that, this is our last regular podcast for the year. Thanks for listening and be sure and to check out Giant Bombs Game of the Year feature rollout, which will be happening all next week from every day, every damn day, will be rolling out new winners. We will be rolling out a new deliberation podcast where we record the processes of us deciding on those winners. And it'll be a bunch of other ship too. We're doing so much stuff. Look for lots of stupidity on the side. Oh yeah, yes, there's other stuff. Vin he's off editing right now, but he's off making sense of it right now. Yeah. Yeah, he's tried to process it for all of us so that it will we gave him the equivalent of nonsense, scribbled on a napkin and said, if you could turn this into something magical whatever, he scribbled it to him. Here, he scribbled to himself with his left hand, showed it to us and said, all right, now make that into something, and we gave him. You know, the funny thing is like we made a lot of decisions about how it was gonna go, like me, Drew and Dave, Yeah, and then like made a lot of those decisions based on like what's easy and doable, and then Vinnie came in and said it's not fucked up enough. We gotta do and then like exponentially, like Emeber. There were some modest plans, and then Vinnie came back from vacations and they were not they were no longer modest. At the end of that day, it was like, all right, here's what we're doing. All right, all right, it's it's gonna be awesome. It will be awesome, sun look forward to that between Christmas and New Year's all over the site and then we'll we're back in twenty twelve with more I mean, Jeff will not be returning to the site. No. Twenty twelve it's good working with you. Get that exhaust exhaust pipe thing together. Do you think the chicken and dumblings will come out of the exhaust part? I don't think. Maybe this time I stuck in the exhaust pipe Pard enough, something magic will happen. And with that we bid Adie a bunch of flour and chickens into the gas tape. Yeah, okay, stacked the deck in my favorite in your go cart. Yeah. A safe, insane holiday season and we'll see you all in twenty twelve with more of the Giant Podcast. Mm hmmmm