In-Game Chat

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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Scott has no opinion about the following link.

To look at it, you wouldn’t think this episode had been curtailed, but I can promise that we generated a lot of footage for the eventual director’s cut.  We haven’t been in the habit of making large edits to our program, but it’s become a necessary part of our new situation.  Of course, familiarity breeds contempt, so for every cut I make to cover a gaff, I grow more comfortable with revising the events in the studio.  The upshot is that we really do have a vault of (priceless?) artifacts planned for release at some point in the future.  Paid DLC, perhaps?

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There’s no excuse for our behavior at the following link.

Superfast show for you this week – superfast in IGC time, at least.  The bald spot in our news readers and the inevitable spread separating one host’s Mass Effect progress from another’s contributed to the hard cap on our run time.  There were also conflicts with More Important People who wanted our recording space.   There’s stuff in here we figure’s worth listening to, but I can tell you now that we’re saving our breath for next week’s show.  For tonight, alls we got is the hour-forty-five in front of you.

Regarding this week’s studio: having been turned away from each of our previous spaces for one reason or another we decided, reluctantly, to schlep out to the trailer farm behind our theater.  There, at the perimeter of a moss-choked wood, sits a disused telemarketing building.  It’s an evil place, but we really had no where else to set up shop.  I’m sure you’ll hear the keening spirits of former call-center workers and at one point, the howling of a werewolf.  So yeah…last minute change of venue makes the show sound like shit.  Sorry.

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