Category: Episodes

Oh my God is that a blue letter at the following link?

We’ve used the stored energy extracted from last week’s show thread to power our way through this week’s recording.  We’ve approached the topic of pc re-uptake more directly this time, but have done so without unnecessary value judgments directed toward the kludgey, overpriced, and unlovable set-top boxes that are so popular with the kids these days.  Diplomacy was the watch-word of our youth, after all; the ethos of our tender years.

We mangle other topics, of course – for the most part according to the whims of our inboxes.  But we hope to have avoided pulling a Molyneux by over-topping the threshold of believability, or making like a bunch of Schafers and fig-leafing a useful barb.

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Take a deep breath at the following link.

We’re not prepared to accept the decline of the console empire just yet, but don’t hold it against us if we sing paeans to PC gaming over the next little while.  The particulars of this generation notwithstanding, this is roughly the time when we could have expected to see the first information about successor hardware for the consoles.  It’s also the point at which the performance lead of the desktop becomes clear to even the meanest understanding, and the PC begins to reclaim lapsed users and lost mind share.

In the absence of exotic new game systems, we can expect the raw power of the PC and the siren song of Steam (and mods, for guys like Scott) to claim an increasing number of curious gamers’ souls.  Nothing wrong with that, though.  Maybe this time they’ll stay put.

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We’ve only got one setting at the following link.

In all fairness to our inner children, it should have taken something really special to stoke our love of stompy, shooty, pre-historic robots, but War For Cybertron manages this in spite of itself.  The game isn’t a hateful thing by any measure, but there’s plenty more they could have done to commit themselves to the license.  The gunplay might only be serviceable, the environment an occasional disappointment, and the palette a low-contrast mess, but the voices, the characters, and their literal machinations are enough to put it over the top for even a casual fan and player.

They didn’t give us the world here, clearly, but we’d be lucky to be even this happy with our games on a regular basis.  I suppose the whole thing may have been fair after all.

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Past is anything but prologue at the following link.

We recorded this show on the cusp of E3, at a moment when most of our expectations for the show still seemed viable and only a few of the rumors were coalescing into fact.  It’s clear that our hand of expo-bingo was a loser, but we hadn’t expected to be so very wide of the mark.  Now that we’ve put the show behind us once again, it’s time to sit down in front of the mic to lay out our feelings.  Before we do, however, you ought to know just how optimistic we were a short week ago.

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We expect to rue the day at the following link.

This isn’t the sort of guilt you’d feel over any of your typical worldly transgressions, no.  What we have (and have had for some time) is the perennial guilt that only a gamer, or maybe a bookworm, could feel.  It isn’t a revelation, and we’re far from alone, but that doesn’t make us regret our unplayed games any less.  It’s likely that the pain is especially sharp now because summer was the traditional season for eating through a backlog, and our minds still expect to weather the dry months of our youth.  We’ve been cursed with precisely what we asked for, and we were unprepared to accept the blessing.

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It’s an unholy alliance of man and beast at the following link.

Despite reports of countless technical faults and a middling experience south of the border, Red Dead Redemption owns our full and complete attention this week, even for those of us who were lukewarm on the prospect.  It has strong similarities to and differences from the parent GTA series, of course – each in the right places and in just the right amounts to draw us in, regardless of our feelings about the not-so-old west.  I had hoped to be trading scary stories about Alan Wake this week, so I was a little disappointed to find myself living so deep in the horse-flesh and gunplay.  There are worse things to bear, though, and good fun is all we can reasonably ask.  The ghost stories and nightmares can wait.

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The money shot was out of our reach at the following link.

For this episode we’ve been forced out of our usual studio space and into a backlot trailer.  The sound quality is an embarrassment, but only if you make the mistake of comparing it to any show we’ve produced in a proper environment.  If, instead, you pretend that you’re listening to a wiretap or some other kind of covert recording, you might forgive the dead echo, the drone of the air system and the rattle of ancient vinyl siding.  What you won’t forgive is the mindless banter – that shit seems to happen no matter where we record.

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There’s no room for dessert at the following link.

Our new protocol for directing the show has prevented us, again, from suffering any train-wreck moments that need an explanation in the show post.  We’re still adjusting to the idea of a 2-hour performance that isn’t driven (entirely) by rage or personal drama.  It’s yet to be seen whether this makes for better show in the long-run, but it sure as hell makes it easier to wind down after a session.  The cash bar down the hall from the studio helps somewhat as well.

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We can only remember what’s applicable at the following link.

There’s really nothing in this week’s show that cries out for a setup.  Other than our own thoughts on Splinter Cell: Conviction, we spend the body of the show fielding grounders from the audience.  In case it hadn’t been made clear before, this is now the preferred method of seeding our conversations, at least for as long as it takes us to radiate what’s left of our baseless rage.  Which is crap, of course.  We’re lazy, and we prefer to have you do our thinking for us.  Keep it up!

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We’re all quite gruff at the following link.

I’d like to say we’ve come back from our break invigorated and flush with tales of the games we played while on hiatus. The fact is we needed a break more than any of us knew, and not just a break from the studio. There’s been no strenuous gaming activity, and a few of us have avoided even a casual sit-down in front of the consoles. We’ve always worked hard to play as many games as possible between episodes, and even harder to make sure that we’re all on the same page. This is a ridiculous pace to maintain for anyone with a full-time job who isn’t payed to play. Honestly, it’s done us a bit of damage.

We really are happy to be recording again, though you might not think so from the first hour or more of this show. For a moment, in fact, I swear we all genuinely hated gaming. We hadn’t aimed to be so maudlin, but we were just then realizing we shared the same feelings about our past habits, and that we should come up with something a little different. I think we shed our funk by the end of the program, but we intend to adjust ourselves away from the inevitable burnout pattern in the future.

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Are we guilty or inn-o-cent at the following link?

Heavy Rain is in the bag, finally, and for the good of everyone concerned we’ve spilled our guts all over this episode.  The “good” not only being that we can move beyond a very contentious subject that has dominated the discussion for weeks, but that our final thoughts were surprisingly positive.  I don’t want to misdirect – we’ve still got a lot of awful things to say about how the game unfolded – but the shocking number of variations we discovered among each of our endgames, and the earnest gameplay experiment (something I’m always decrying the lack of) force us to admit that it was time well spent.  I’ll be hard pressed to look back in anger, and that’s something I’m usually quite good at.

Show note: we’re taking time off for spring break.  Scott’s going north, I think, and Jeremy, spawn in tow, will be heading south to the Magic Kingdom.    We plan to record again in two weeks, at which point we may well have played a game or three to completion – or maybe we’ll still be chasing class unlocks in BC2.

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Mea maxima culpa for the content at the following link.

We’re honestly going to buckle under the weight of too many truly playable games before this season is over.  We haven’t got what it takes (unemployment?  time machine?) to play as much as we’d like of everything we could wish.  We’re either ignoring one piece of work to favor another or, as is true in my case, we’re wading deep into the stream, playing through everything simultaneously and failing to appreciate each to its fullest.  I believe this second approach was a mistake.

We were invigorated to a pretty great degree this week not only by an unseasonable deluge of news, but also by the strength of debate and feedback from our listeners.  It’s amazing the change a cross-grained perspective can bring, and a timely query or opinionated rebuttal is like unto a fresh spring breeze.  Or something.  Keep ’em coming.

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Our show can be found in its entirety at the following link.

I simply don’t care for Heavy Rain – for the admittedly very small portion I’ve played so far.  I’m just putting it right out front that, despite how critical we are as a group, I may be the only one who takes an active dislike to the game.  Collectively, we may have focused too little on the forest and too much on the trees, but man…the size of those trees.  Of course, now that our first impressions are a matter of record, we’ll probably reverse ourselves and undermine whatever value our opinions may have had.  They are, after all, a full week behind the opinions and experiences of the real world.

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