This week we’re joined once again by IGN’s own Jim Reilly as we talk about Alan Wake’s upcoming DLC, Limbo, and more, then move on to how you’re spending your summers, and close out by gently guiding Jim’s love life.
This week’s music, in order of appearance:
Fiona Apple – Sleep to Dream;
Acceptance – Permanent;
HIM – Please Don’t Let It Go
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IM FIRST
IM SURKOV
No, you’re the best, Surkov.
Please keep Jim away from your great podcast.
Shut up, Jim’s awesome.
How can you hate Jim. Plus until the end he barely talked. Same goes for Tyler, kept forgetting he was here this week.
Jim is awesome. Why do you not like him?
no im first you’re just looking at it backwards
WHERE TYLER?
nevermind….i thought anthony said he wasnt there.i am stupid.lol
i agree with Jim’s views on Uncharted 2…keep jim…he is cool
Same here… I’d love to hear his opinion on Uncharted 1, I felt the enemy design there was much better.
Agreed. Uncharted 2 is the best looking game I’ve ever played… As Jim said – amazing textures.
Almost every week Arthur likes to point out the limited video RAM in the PS3 (at least compared to the 360). But that’s a very simplistic view of what makes a console go. More important than that simple number are things like data bandwidth. This is why the 360 as yet has nothing as stunning looking as the Uncharted series.
And for the record, I own (and love) both consoles. Far more important than hardware specs is game play!!!
Oh man, I can’t wait for Starcraft 2. I’m getting the download-able version first thing on Tuesday. I totally forgot about the mod engine.
Mad props for playing Fiona Apple.
Guy who called Mark Rein a dick was not Jarred Wood, but Cliff Harris of Positech. I feel when Arthur burst out with that little bit of information, it stifled Tyler’s thought process a bit.
And the CRUX (please stop using this word or you’ll regret it) of the issue was not that dude called other dude a dick, it was that EPIC MARK REIN interrupted the GDC panel of three indie devs which included Harris, from the front row of the fucking crowd with his two cents. And nobody figured out who the fuck he was until three days later, when the blog calling him a dick was written. At least that’s how I heard it.
Hey, don’t be ripping on Beast Wars. While the writing was good the animation was also pretty advance for it’s time, especially since they where able to create realistic facial expressions. It even surpasses the CGI from the Unicron Trilogy, whose characters could barely move and could only emote Dull Surprise.
I’m a bit confused now after Mr. Gies’ opinion on DeathSmiles. A lot of SCHMUP(Shot Em Up) website praise this game. They say the controls/game play is amazing and the scoring mechanics are very addicting. Thanks for helping me second guess picking this up. I guess I’ll rent it.
Quick question to anyone on the board… Right now my two favorite bands are Bad Religion and Rise Against. Can someone recommend bands that are similar?
http://www.tastekid.com/
Just type in whatever you like and it gives you more of the same. It’s pretty good. It works for me. For Rage against the machine it gave me 20 artists and most of them had similar music.
You can also try Last.fm and look for similar artists but it only gives you the most obvious ones.
Might I recommend Strung Out and to a lesser extent 88 Fingers Louie. 88FL might just be too old for your liking, but if you prefer Rise Against’s 1st album, then you can’t go wrong with more Chicago Melodic Hardcore.
Thanks
Strung Out’s – The Element of Sonic Defiance is a masterpiece of 4th wave punk rock. It’s too bad that didn’t pan out, as I really liked the Metal influence.
Here are a few more you might dig:
Beatsteaks
Choke
Choking Victim
Good Riddance
Tiger Army
Propagandhi
Pulley
Youth Brigade
I spared you anything ska or emo tinged just in case, but Tiger Army is psychobilly.
To the tofu question guy: schnitzel, baby.
Take some firm-variety tofu, preferably a flavoured kind like teriyaki if you can get it, and then do the flour-egg-breadcrumb thing with it. Then fry it and put it inside a delicious hamburger. That’s the only tofu recipe I can cook, despite being a vegetarian for years.
Just eat Quorn.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorn
Awww… I actually wanted to hear talk about the Alan Wake DLC, since they saw fit to release it to the press and not the general public who are getting it for free anyway.
I hate how underappreciated Alan Wake is. I guess it’s a symptom of its release schedule, but then I’ve also heard a surprising amount of people who’ve actually played it and dislike it for whatever reason. I think it’s every bit as good as Max Payne was back when it was released.
Alan Wake was outrageously overrated.
it’s a C game, at best. but, it’s sitting at 83 on metacritic right now.
I enjoyed every second of it.
For Jim who is playing Uncharted 2 on crushing. You can be like me and try to beat the last boss for 2 hours and nearly snap your controller in half, OR you can be smart and just glitch the encounter as seen in this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISffods2NxQ
Yeah it’s “cheating”, but whoever approved of that boss fight in the first place needs to be punched in the balls. Don’t let a broken controller stand between you and the Uncharted 2 platinum trophy the way it almost did me.
Arthur’s description of the Tool concert is why I don’t go to concerts anymore. I’ll go to the occasional black/death metal concert but metal concerts draw possibly the most drunken idiotic groups of people of any concert crowd.
Great show by the way. I enjoyed this one more than usual for some reason.
That boss was bad/cheap enough on Hard.
No one should feel any shame for using the glitch to beat him on Crushing.
Cookie monster voice (aka Death growl) keeps me from going to black/death metal concerts.
Interesting. Too bad black metal doesn’t utilize “cookie monster” vocals. Way to distill a genre down to one stereotyped generalization though.
Awesome, my podcast comment was read!
Just wanted to point out that DarkStar One on the PC hasn’t been a $20 title for years. Both GOG and Steam charge €/$10 for it, and have had that price for a couple of years.
Another podcast with music…another podcast sans Devin The Dude. Fiona Apple made the podcast…but no Devin.
Too bad I can’t listen to HIM anymore because it’s too connected with my ex. And not liking my ex = not liking HIM for whatever reason.
Protip for couples; don’t have the same musical taste. At least one of you is going to hate that music when the breakup goes bad.
damn…if it wasn’t for a very recent break up…I’d make a joke right now. Sorry to hear that man.
Great show! My weekend is now complete
Great show as usual guys
Jesus Christ Arthur, Company of Heroes ‘struggle to make a profit’ is demonstrated by Relic making a free to play version nearly *four* years after the game came out?
I thought your comparison between Demon’s Souls and roguelikes was interesting, though I didn’t agree with it. Roguelikes are almost like a slot machine in that whether you live or die is usually decided when the floor is randomly generated. Demon’s Souls is more predictable but it’s always possible to win.
Deathsmiles is a good shoot em up to me still not as good as Ikaruga but is still a good game. It is hard to take the opinion of someone who seems to hate damn near everything he plays. I love the podcast but I am really getting tired of listening to Arthur Gies negative talk about every damn game he seems to play just gets very old after awhile.
It’s just Arthur’s opinion; don’t get too upset about it.
Deathsmiles has a better average on Metacritic than Transformers if that makes you feel any better.
I got the game and it seems alright if it were a $10 downloadable alas it is not. I will buy just about any bullet hell shmup that seems half way viable thought–creepy manga sexy babies or not.
Well, I’ve never heard Arthur talk about a shmup on the podcast, most certainly not about recent games by Cave like e.g. Mushihime-sama futari, so I’d take his opinion on Deathsmiles with a huge grain of salt.
About the letter asking for books. Well now I think I will go and get The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and the other two books because I just finished the movie and loved it to death.
what was the name of the book that tyler recommended, something about a robot apocalypse. I thought it was robotocalypse, but i couldn’t find it anywhere
Pretty sure he was referring to this book – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Survive_A_Robot_Uprising
close, it’s the same writer, Robot Uprising got Daniel Wilson attention, his next is Robopocalypse: http://tinyurl.com/y4ycd5r
For suggestions of books to read I’d throw in Illium and Hyperion/Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons. Hyperion is like the Canterbury Tales in Space and Illium is a cross between the siege of Troy, The Tempest by Shakespeare, and Star Trek. All three of them are fantastic novels.
Generation Kill might just be my favorite book I own. Surprisingly, the HBO miniseries actually did it justice.
Kat Bailey’s piece on the death of space combat sims.
http://www.gamespite.net/toastywiki/index.php/Games/1999TheEndOfSpaceCombatSimulators
Amazing episode. Jim Reilly is really great on the show. This is the first time a guest has asked a relationship question while on the show, and the way he was talking around it was freaking hilarious.
Extend a permanent invitation to him if possible.
You guys forgot Captain Impostor, the third Captain game. It wasn’t particularly fun, so I understand forgetting it.
What was the twitter account discussed here? Bill something?
The guy who writes the most disgusting posts ever. Need to read them
=)
Bill something.
?
Good episode again,
And as a German I have no other option than suggest some awesome board games. If you wanna go easy for the start, buy carcassonne. It is easy to grasp and you don’t need 15 hours to set it up. Basically you are building a map and get points for every structure you complete.(And by the way, the iPhone version has the best asynchronous multiplayer implementation I have ever seen.) If you want something strategic get Torres. In this game everybody builds a castle within a confined area and you want to get as may points as possible. But the twist is that the points are derived from the footprint times the stories the token sits on. But play that with somebody who has a similar strategic skill or you’ll get the chess effect and somebody will hate it.
Oh, and I want to send my regards to my fellow PhD candidate. I know exactly what you are talking about. I am writing up as well. Hopefully you can write it in you first language at least. I have to use this hideous one. And the scots around me don’t help in improving my language skills, aye?
Cheers
Jensemann
Beat Red Dead Redemption over the weekend finally. It has dethroned Mass Effect 2 for my GOTY (thus far). And the end…wow. Talk about an original way to end a game. Best open world Rock Star game to date. Bring on the DLC!!!
Good lord, the roguelike + Demon’s Souls comparison was just god awful. Shows that you guys didn’t even get past 1-1 in DS if your complaint is that “you start over and grind the same shit over and over”. No, you don’t. Once you get past the first level of the first world, 1-1, you are free to choose between 5 different worlds at any time you want. Also, reaching the half-point in every level grants you a “shortcut” if you die. One of the many things that makes Demon’s Souls not at all as hard as people make it out to be. Also, there’s the whole “I am always connected and surrounded by people everywhere that I can invite to my game and who are giving me hints”-aspect in DS that is nowhere to be found in a roguelike.
We get it. You guys hate DS and like to talk about how you hate DS. That is fine, but whenever you try talking about it you sound very uninformed, immature and irrational with your reasons to why you don’t like it. It’s a shame since you are normally NONE of these things when talking about other games.
As mentioned before, it would be nice if you would bring on Kat Bailey if you want to talk about Demon’s Souls so badly. At least then you will have someone who knows what they are talking about and got past 1-1. Honestly, I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t be hating at it with the same confidence if she was on the podcast. Because then there’s someone there to call you out on your bullshit and not just pat you on the back.
Thanks for the great show and guests as usual. Should the show ever need a name change, you might as well call it “Weekend Complete”.
Also, I blame your podcast for motivating me to do crazy stuff. Last year, it was a half-marathon. This year, NaNoWriMo. Thanks heaps.
Picked up Darkstar One for $5 on gog on the recent sale. Pretty decent game. Kinda a downer how every planet system looks really similar. Kinda missing the point ya think?
Also dug up my old copy of ev nova. Good shit =P
Cool podcast. Every time I hear your loveline letters it makes laugh. Also makes me happy I’m already married. Just a couple comments… funny that neither have to do with what you guys are best at – games.
1) Your music choice between segments is surprisingly terrible. It’s almost like you have a big box on one side marked “frat-rock-cds” and on the other side a box of “emo-fucktard-cds” and you are trading off. How about some variety? Ginuwine rules!
2) A few podcasts ago someone even mentioned the Deftones (great) but the White Pony album? Seriously? You fuck to the White Pony album? White Pony is to music what Michael Vick is to dogs. Best part of that album? All 40 seconds of Maynard. Which brings me to…
3) Tool shows. I just saw Tool in SFO a few weeks ago and I was having the other side of the conversation. That people in SFO have an entitlement rarely seen at metal shows. I didn’t care for the opening acts so naturally I waited in the back and when Tool came on, made my way past the “hey, go around” and “not here asshole” comments and finally made it to the front. If you don’t like getting pushed I’ll tell you what I tell all the girlfriends that complain up front… Stay out of the pit.
That said, you guys kick ass. Keep up the good work.
Yeah, my Sister used to be a big mosher/heckler at Tool concerts. Then she had a hip replacement and had to retire.
But can someone tell me why the fuck we would have a 20 minute long Tool discussion, and then go to break with any music clip THAT WAS NOT FUCkING TOOL?
Warning DeathSpank is way shorter than you guys are anticipating. Took 5 and a Half Hours to beat 100 and reach level 20. They start making a ton of pieces of land with not much in it, so the map seems larger, and almost 1 third is taken up by water.
When you say 100% are you talking trophies/achievements? And are you using all the fortune cookies for hints? Also what difficulty?
To me it feels like all the people complaining about the length are just burning through it as quick as possible.
Myself, I go through most of the dialogue trees, because even if 70% of the humour is pure corn, the remaining 30% is pure monty python style gold. I don’t clear out all the sidequests in each local area either, I like walking around, and maybe next time I’m in the area I’dd do a quest for someone. Anyway I think I’m at 8 hours now and I still have 3 orphans.
Everyone who complains about a game being too short usually go through it as quickly as possible and then say that is the official length.
I mean I remember seeing people saying they beat Assassin’s Creed 2 in less then 10 hours.
It took me 22 hours. Don’t know why they feel the need to rush when they don’t have to write a review.
if only more gamers took the advice of sage Ferris Bueller: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbR7axof1wk&feature=related
Arthur, please NEVER talk about a bullet hell schmup again. You clearly hate the genre and basically every complaint you had is a convention and not specific to Deathsmiles. For example, in EVERY bullet hell schmup you have a big character and a comparatively super tiny hitbox. They also all have similar animation quality (in fact Deathsmiles has extremely good animation and overall graphics for the genre). The rest of your complaints are way too vague to even comment, but it seems clear that if you ever played another game in the genre you would hate that too.
Good job! what a great post!
i’ve been advocating this for a extended time nowll
Such superb text! No idea how you were able to say this text..it’d take me weeks. Well worth it though, I’d suspect. Have you considered selling ads on your blog?