• Classic X-COM Soldier: Players will instantly receive a new recruit in their barracks inspired by the original X-COM: UFO Defense. The iconic soldier with the blonde, flattop hairstyle will return in his full glory, modernized with the rest of the XCOM universe.
• Soldier Deco packs: Players can customize their soldier with several aesthetic upgrades to armor suits, including the new Hyperion and Reaper soldier armor kits.
• Complete color customization: A variety of colors and tints for all armor sets in the game allow players complete control to customize their squad’s look.

It took a lot less convincing than I’d expected to get Jeremy and Scott on board with Diablo 3.  I hadn’t planned to cajole or persuade at all, and I only suggested they play the beta weekend so they could comment on an experience that every other human in the free world was sharing at the time.  Neither of them is particularly attracted to the setting or the lore of Diablo, and there’s really nothing in the genre that turns them on.  They are, however, suckers for what may be the slickest, simplest, and most trouble-free multiplayer engagement we’ve every experienced as a group.  The fact that you’re playing with friends is often more important that what it is you’re playing, and usability can rank awfully high on our list of priorities.  There are now at least two preorders based entirely on that premise.  It seems that even in its current and very well-fed form, Blizzard still has some things to teach the rest of the world.

The Mass Effect controversy endures, but it looks like there might be enough time before the new endings are released for hurt feelings to mend, or for sharp memories to fade.  There’s no forgetting the embarrassing furor, and there’s likely nothing BioWare can do to mend the damage done to their image – time and the fickle memories of the internet are their best hope for that.  For most of us it’ll never do to dwell on an ancient, weeks-old disappointment.  We want now what we’ve always wanted: the next great game.  For as long as there’s nothing else to demand my attention, I might find space in my heart for a little more hate.  But I’m sure that somewhere, a few weeks from now, deep in my cups, deep in the second act of Diablo 3, or ankle-deep in Max Payne’s bullet casings, I’ll wonder what the hell I was so torn up about in the first place.

I really wanted to engage the topic of Mass Effect on our own terms.  I imagined we’d compare choices and consequences and how they sometimes failed to materialize, then move on to highlights and lowlights of narrative and character development, losses and gains of affection, plot twists, that sort of thing.  We’d wonder why so few words were being written about the multiplayer and why so very many were still being written about the ending.  We’d have our own opinions and insights on the travesty, but we’d feel better after having a whine and could focus in the long run on the details of what made the Mass Effect universe a place worth visiting.  All I can say is we talked about it.  We talked about it and I feel worse.

It’s unfortunate we weren’t able to finish Mass Effect 3 by the time of this recording.  We’re always anxious to be a part of the full conversation, sure, but our worry is that the internet is being a real sonofabitch about this game, and it’s doing everything it can to spoil the surprise for anyone who hasn’t seen it to the end.  There’s some degree of difference between how we felt on the show and how we’re feeling at the moment, and we’re trending more towards the positive every day.  I’m told this will change abruptly at the end.  Maybe that’s a fact – it wouldn’t be the first time an ending has crushed our spirit.  But neither, if wrong, would it be the first time we’ve disagreed with the rest of the (apparent) world.  I promise you many thousands of words on the subject the next time we get together.

This second episode is actually the first to be handed back to Kevin for fine-tuning and post-production.  It’s a thing he was pretty insistent about doing, and though I can’t see why, I’m awfully glad for his help.  So, on his behalf, the show is once again soliciting ideas for bumper content, intro/outro music, and any other formatting gubbins you think might enrich or enliven the experience.  Send thoughts or files to one of those places Scott mentions in our greeting and we’ll put it to good use somewhere, I imagine.

I’d like to think it isn’t necessary anymore for me to explain myself when I fly into a rage about this issue or that, but I can’t help feeling I may have Limbaughed the show otherwise.  So however things may sound, I don’t hate Tim Schafer.  I’m sure I hate something to do with him right now, or maybe it’s something to do with the internet and he’s standing just where I’d like to put my soapbox.  I think I said as much on the show, but there’s just no way I made myself clear.  If I hadn’t already sent the raw files out for editing, I’d temper the Double Fine bashing more than a little.  Though maybe it’s never as bad as it sounds in my head.  Maybe.

When you consider the full five-year run of our show, the lateness of this particular episode doesn’t seem quite so bad. Or am I wrong? We took some time here to examine our recording habits over the last several years, and it’s clear that our frequency has plummeted, though the raw hourly output has only slightly decreased. I suppose it’s fair then to predict that we’ll eventually produce a single seventy-two-hour episode, in the peak rumor season of some year down the road. Maybe that can be the live convention show Scott’s always going on about.

So, there are many thanks and congratulations inside, and some small amount of talking over the news. There are also some empty promises, some stupid ideas, and at least one really good story. But mostly there’s thanks, even though a lot of it is subtext. Our feelings are best expressed in the dialog, though, so we’ll leave you to it.

This episode, unlike the last one, is long.  But because they’re both so goddamn old at this point, and because they’re the last of their kind, and even more because we’d like to forget the delay ever happened, they’ll be published together right this moment.  Hope that’s alright.

Yes, this is a painfully old episode.  There’s nothing that could be confused for a modern or contemporary topic inside.  It’s been so long, in fact, that you’re likely to have forgotten many of the classics we discuss; games such as Skyrim, Uncharted, and the Old Republic beta.  I think there’s been two whole Steam sales since this was recorded, so it was a crazy long time ago, I know.  Now we’re going to barf out everything we’ve had on hold for you in hopes of getting caught up with ourselves.

This episode is exceptionally long, and we’re going to go ahead and assume you’re alright with that.  It’s ridiculous how many quality games are available to play at the moment, and now is our time to enjoy this embarrassment of riches; to play as much of each wonderful game as we can, and hope that we’ve found something to add to the discussion when we’ve finished.  We’ve got a heavy mix of final thoughts and initial impressions inside, and we hope by now that a majority of listeners can stay past the spoilers and add their own voice to the conversation.

The first of our opinions on Arkham City are smeared over the bulk of this episode.  There’s some Dark Souls to be had, some nonsense about pandas, and John Carmack figures into the conversation somehow.  But our thoughts are with the Dark Knight just now.  It’s as good a time as any of us has had this year, but there’s a sense that it won’t satisfy every taste once we’ve all played our fill.  We, the hosts, will be of roughly the same mind, I imagine, but there are some sick people in this world, and I’ve heard rumors they liked the first game a bit more.  I can only hope they’re marginalized as effectively as I was regarding Max Payne, and that the inevitable third entry can follow the logical progression.

I’d should have accepted the virtue of hard games by now, but I’m still not sure of myself one way or the other.  Some of us have spent so much of our lives avoiding the painfully difficult that it seems unlikely we’d ever subject ourselves to it willingly.  Arjay makes a good case, of course, but it’s as dispassionate as ever, and I think it would be unfair of us to suggest that some of what we already love would be considered quite hard by another player.  The question always seems to be how someone can find the difficulty itself a prominent feature, or how an otherwise brilliant game could be ruined without it.  I’m suspicious of these claims, and I don’t expect to be convinced any time soon.

So, Human Revolution has those four endings that are crap – or maybe not so crap if one of your hobbies is to go on and on about what things mean when they’re in a video game.  There’s also that bit that leads up to the endings.  We feel pretty strongly about that as well.  And the girl.  Really, who thought that was the best way to handle things?  All of this is in the show, but there are no spoiler warnings, and it isn’t handled in one stretch as it should be, so you’re on your own for avoiding what you may not want to know.

So, Deus Ex, right?  I know, we feel pretty much the same way.  Setting aside over ten years of bias and expectation can be difficult, but Human Revolution has a lot to offer for those who bother to try.  It may well be the best version of DX the world is capable of delivering anymore, which is a sadness.  But there’s plenty here to point the way toward what the future of gaming should have been.  We’ve got two hours of other unfinished opinions in this episode, and likely another several to go before we’ve had our fill.  With any luck, we won’t have to wait so long for something else so worthy of our time and attention.

Well, that’s not really true, is it?  But it’s old evil in any case.  Ancient; nearly a month old.  And what good are month-old opinions of video games without an archaeologist around to provide context?  You could point and laugh, I suppose.  You could mock our primitive belief that EA might not have any footage of Battlefield 3 worth showing.  Maybe you’ll raise an eyebrow at our worship of the prophet Deus Ex, with a future-man’s full knowledge that he’d bring boss fights when he returned.  And how about all those games we swore we’d finish?  ”How’d that turn out?”, you’ll ask.  About as well as you’d expect from a bunch of cavemen, honestly.

Which blow, we’re not exactly sure.  Maybe it’s the awful truth about Catherine, though it might be the awful truth about beer.  It might also be the inevitable, annual dread of the fourth-quarter.  Maybe it’s Origin.  Whatever it is, we won’t be held responsible for any misunderstandings, mispronunciations, overdrafts or backlashes.  We’ve got guilt enough as it is.

We’re offering a sleepy recollection of the Steam sale this week, and a more animated guess at just what kind of bug is up EA’s back end.  EA’s public spat with Steam is entirely one-sided, but that doesn’t prevent us all knowing the likely truths.  Obvious as those truths may be, they aren’t officially obvious just yet, so we’re bound by duty and tradition to suggest outrageous alternatives.

There’s a lot less content in this episode than what we started with, so you’re not imagining any clumsy edits, abrupt changes of topic or a punchline that never seems to materialize.  We left it all on the live stream, apparently.  You won’t mind, of course, since those conversations only dealt with our hatred of children, freedom, hard work, clean living, the American south, tower defense, the rest of America, and movies.

We stick to what we know. As you can see, this episode is quite short.

There’s no reason to believe our predictions for subscription-based expos will come to pass, or that our pleas for even-footing in games journalism and transparency from games publishers won’t fall on deaf ears.  Which is all just fine, so long as a top-shelf developer is somewhere toiling away at the SilverHawks property.

We spent more time talking about comics than we really should have.  Not that they aren’t a fine subject, and there’s certainly a lot of crossover, but only one or two of us know what the hell we’re talking about, and the rest of us are either completely ignorant, talk too much, or both.

There’s only this year’s E3 to be dealt with tonight.  We’ve got nothing on our minds but what the hype machine says we should.  Though I wonder, after what Scott says about Kinect Star Wars, if he might not be plugged in to a different machine altogether. One more reason this expo should no longer be reported on or attended in person by humans.  Maybe I can subscribe to a telepresence feed sourced by a cloud of journalist-nanobots?  Or is that what I’m doing already?

All we’ve managed this weekend is a survey of our E3 predictions and our hearts deepest desires.  We know better, but can’t help burning our share of prayer paper in the hopes of seeing some proper, cheer-worthy games.  We know that suffering through adverts for Kinect integration or social networking is our due, but would it kill the industry to slake our lust for news and announcements in a more traditional way?  Likely it would.

Yes, it’s been a minute or two since we’ve posted an episode, and there’s no doubt that’s my fault.  It’s also true that this episode isn’t entirely the one we’d like to have delivered.  There was no hope of retrieving or recreating the four hours of talkabout we’d laid down already, so a backward glance is all you’re going to get.  In an effort to move forward, however, we’ve provided a confusion of format changes, a new venue, and dubious audio quality.

We imagine that recording directly from Scott’s home studio will result in several casual changes, not the least of which is his ability to lounge in pyjamas.  But we aim to make improvements overall; to bring some of our toys into the process with us, and to draw you into the room as well.  And post more shows.  That, too.

We have an exceptionally long episode on offer today, but it’s one we think well worth our efforts.  The conversation is a little out-of-date, there being a lot of “I wonder blah blah blah about Portal 2″ sorts of talk which makes little sense in a “What did you think about Portal 2?” kind of world.  There’s no griping about ARGs or countdowns to countdowns, either.  Much of last week’s kerfuffle was yet unknown.  We’ll approach it all in time, though.  Mere hours, in fact.  I hope I can remember how angry I was supposed to have been.

Jeremy’s elsewhere tonight, but Matt’s come back again, and we’ve welcomed him in the fashion to which he’s become accustomed.  In the moments we aren’t giving him unearned shit, we make our way through the last three weeks of happenings.  Games having been played, there’s a lot we feel the need to share.  We’re probably wrong about some of it.

I’d also like to save you the time wondering by telling you straight away there’s no April Fool’s goings-on.  We aren’t the sort who plan that far ahead.

In lieu of having played much of anything, we’ve chosen to act like shits about a few of the trailers making the rounds.  We can’t abide anyone being happy about something that makes so little sense to us, and there’s not much room for hope in a world that doesn’t trust us to open our own doors, so things are a little downbeat until the drinks break.  If you look just to the left of our pointless negativity, though, you can make out some faint praise for an actual game or two, which could well be in the company of some weak optimism.

The hosts are just now developing a sense of the new year. A new year of games, anyhow. Our perception of the holiday season seems to bleed farther and farther across the line each go-round. So far that our list of what we expect to be playing in 2011 hasn’t been considered until now.  Our prognostication is weak, I can tell you that now, but it’s good for men like us to make even a faulty list of what we’re interested in doing with our time.

I hope for once we’ll remember our promise to revisit a past episode so we can judge our predictions, and that we’ll remember something of what we’ve done along the way.

The thing I tend to enjoy more than digging into a new game  is the exquisite pre-release trailer that makes me ache for that new game.  Any combination of actual gameplay and post-effects bullshit is acceptable, so long as it’s in the spirit of the thing.  I can wave off the purchase at any time or hold out for a trusted review, so I’m hardly committed on the basis of  marketing.  Like most of you, I’ve learned to adjust my expectations to compensate for hype.  This is why I’m able to enjoy the hype when it’s good, but it somehow doesn’t prevent me being a terrible audience member when it isn’t.

Deus Ex – which doesn’t need much beyond a release date to earn my attention – is the sort of thing I’d expect to fall in love with on its way to market.  This material very nearly sells itself, and I worry for anyone who manages to cock it up.  As it is, I’m not sure I’ll bother checking back before it ships.

After what seems to me to have been an awfully long break from the show,  I’ve come round to participate in the conversation once again.  The hosts may have kept the faith, if not the schedule, but things will only be right when we’re restored to full strength, and Jeremy has made sure that won’t happen for at least another week.

As for content, you can expect a fair amount of Matt bashing and the banging of some familiar drums as I try to rediscover my role and my friends begin to regret my return. Otherwise, it’s business as usual.  Here’s hoping we meet expectations.

You could call this an interview but given the relationship we have with Josh Bear and Michael Wilford from Twisted Pixel, it feels more like we’re just catching up and having fun.

We’ve got a lot to do of both, actually, as it’s been a while since we’ve spoken to the guys at TPG. In that time they’ve released Comic Jumper (complete with a mention of us in the credits and a big ol’ picture of Jackel as an unlock-able), announced Ms. Splosion Man, and have been working on two brand new IPs we should be hearing more about in a few months.

This is as unorthodox an episode and interview you’ve probably ever gotten from us, so enjoy, and thanks for listening.

We hope you’re enjoying the more frequent output of episodes. We’re kind of on a direction to keep these coming at a consistent pace. We’ll see how well that turns out.

This is one of our shorter episodes, but we still cover quite a bit, directed, as usual of course, by your correspondence. You guys can come up with some interesting questions and comments, but no matter, we still address them – some of us better than others.

It’s been over a month since we’ve done one of these and quite a bit has taken place, both in the show’s life, our lives, and gaming in general. As my writing of this show post and the content of this episode indicates, we’ve sadly lost James. He’s alive, to be sure, but his day (and as it were, his night) job has taken firm hold upon his time.

Instead of the interview focus we mentioned in our last episode, we take this time to catch up on all our correspondence, catch each other up on all we’ve done in the down time, and randomly diverge into discussions that have nothing to do with gaming, but those are minimal.

We would like to again apologize for such a delay, especially following an episode where we’d just done that. But it still stands that we cannot thank you all enough for continuing to listen to the show, writing in to us, calling us, and reminding us that you all still want more of what we do. We appreciate it more than you know.

Thanks for listening.

Yes, it’s been an unforgivably long time since our last show.  A not-all-that-specific breakdown of why we were unable to record can be found early on.  We can account for most of our absence, thankfully, but there seem to be some holes in our memory.  Maybe hypnotic regression is called for?  With as much as we’ve forgotten in the interim weeks, it certainly couldn’t hurt.

You have a show here that’s the product of some truly thinkative listeners and our endless brow-knitting over their questions.  It’s a long drag through the summer months when you’ve saddled yourself with new-game tunnel-vision, and we clearly wouldn’t have covered much ground without your help.  You’re welcome to help keep the inbox full, regardless of how much there might be for us to play at any given time.  What you want to know seems to be at least as interesting as what we’d otherwise have to say.

Quickly, I’d like to point out the very incomplete nature of our Halo coverage this week.  At the time of this recording we had completed only half the campaign in co-op, and had spent little-to-no time in competitive multiplayer.  Our opinions varied to some degree, but no one had anything particularly kind to offer.  I don’t want to suggest that we’ve reversed ourselves completely, but the second half of the campaign was full of what seemed to be missing from the first, and I’ll be damned if we didn’t end up having a right good time.  Of course, jetpacks and shit.  More on those things next week.

You’ll just have to trust us that some of this content was recorded before the items in question were confirmed by the media.  We’re clearly not seers, it’s just that context counts a great deal when judging speculation against actuality.  Thankfully, our feelings remain unchanged, so you won’t need to calibrate for old news.

Regarding new news, I can assure you that Scott has finally assembled his computer (with more drunken ‘help’ than was strictly necessary) and that we’re not simply shining you on with the further promises you’ll hear in this program.  His build stories and first impressions will have to wait, of course, but you may now stop harassing him about getting it done and begin properly hassling him about being online to play.

Like a personal AI director, our audience demonstrates its incredible timing and a facility for sussing out our weaknesses.  Unlike other merciless overminds, however, we owe this one our most genuine thanks.  Without its pointed corrections and a deep stream of worthy questions, we’d never crawl out of our angry rut and every show would devolve into a slander against some undeserving thing or another.

In spite of the brain trust’s guidance we still have a tendency to act like ourselves, which means covering some old ground.  So forgive us our trespasses, or however that’s supposed to go, and bear with us through the inevitable dog pile on Matt, or some breathless tirade of mine that I have no right to foist upon you.  The inbox will be along shortly to put things right.

You’ll notice straight away how long it’s been since this show was recorded, and I can guarantee the delay is only somewhat related to laziness.  There’s less movement in the industry at this time of year, which means less pressing business for anyone obsessed with new releases and crowded news feeds.  It’s as good a time as any to ruminate on the backlog and reduce the pace of production, so we’ll be recording every other week until things pick up.  Which, if the past is any indication, won’t be long at all.

It would have been foolish to think StarCraft 2 could avoid the controversy and criticisms that met its release, but how those issues have been handled is of little consequence.  SC2 is a juggernaut if ever there was one, and manages adversity by running roughshod over it, heedless of any doubt.  It’s a sleepy-eyed brute of a game, but one with long training and excellent reflexes.  Whether enthralled or disengaged or something in-between, I think we should all respect both its reach and the force of its swing.

Dragon Age has, for me, become the sort of gift that won’t stop giving, though I’d sure as hell like it to.  There’s a conversation somewhere in which that line is a back-handed compliment, but you won’t find it in this week’s show.  My thoughts and feelings are well documented, and haven’t changed overmuch since the end of the campaign, despite a broad failure of imagination during the game’s final hours.  But the Awakenings expansion pack demands my attention, the flow of DLC continues unabated, and I’m awfully tired of my own comings and goings now.  I can’t bear to walk away when I’m so close to the end (again), but I want nothing more than to plant this story in the ground and forget about it until the sequel.

I’ve begged for larger portions in the past, sure, but this thing has become a bit “Ole 96er” for me, and I’m not sure it’s worth it for the t-shirts.

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.

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.

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.

The content of this episode is nothing more than our breathless and shellshocked analysis of E3 – an analysis I’ve come to believe makes as little sense as the expo’s press conferences and show floor.  It is inevitable that we spend several long hours once a year detailing our reactions to the industry’s largest collection of lies, misdirection, marketeering and swank gameplay videos.  Unfortunately, our senses are crippled in the aftermath, and our opinions aren’t worth half what they might be in the weeks and months to come, when statements have been clarified and timelines made firm.  In the meantime, we offer a record of our own imperfect understanding of the event in question.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Enjoy!

We’ve decided to share in the New Year’s celebration by releasing our jealous grip on this, our last episode of 2009.  It’s older than most – we were hoping to cover the holiday gap with prepared content – so we trust you can find satisfaction in our take on events that are weeks old by now.

Scott, for one, wanted to record a final show on the eve of the new year, but I plan to be drunk and immobile, and don’t intend to move from my comfortable spot in front of my computer, unless it’s to move to the comfortable spot in front of my television.  I can imagine any number of you doing the same.

We hope, as always, that you’ll enjoy the show, and that you’ll continue to enjoy it as we move into our fourth year.  We are proud of and humbled by our listeners, and wish we were equal to the task of thanking you for your time and attention.  Instead, we will simply clear our throats, shrug off what we see as a very unmanly display of emotion, and move on to the next in a long line of raving, hours-long fits of childishness.

There’s a chance this week that our familiar pattern of procrastination will run headlong into a powerful urge to post relevant information.  This particular episode should have been available some time ago, and we’re likely to push another one on you before the holiday week, so we hope you’ve honed your apetite.

We’re operating at near-zero levels of Arjay in this episode, but have compensated with a saturated mixture of Dave.  Fresh from the time-lost glaciers of somedamnwhere, Dave is once again in our temporary embrace.  We’ll soon lose him to another frozen hell, at which point Matt will have returned from his sandy nightmare and can once more fill the post of resident Air-Force guy.

Last week’s gap in coverage had almost nothing to do with the holiday season, but was instead the fault of a certain greedy co-host who, in his lust for consumer electronics, agreed to put on a second hat so he could take home a second paycheck.  That paycheck must now be poured back into a large, television shaped hole in the unnamed co-host’s savings account, with any leftovers to be applied generously around the insides of his PC.  I have it on good authority that it’s been time and money well spent.

What little time there was to spare between the working and the revelry and what-not was directed precisely where you’d expect it to be.  Assassin’s Creed 2 is the real star of this week’s show, and one we spent the lion’s share of our time discussing.  The evolution of Desmond’s tale has, as if by holy edict, moved beyond the perceived weaknesses of its predecessor, and claimed its rightful title of Damned Good Game.  The gameplay is refined, the mystery is elevated, the blades are doubled.  Clearly, they’ve gone about as fer as they can go…yessir!

We’ve gone on long enough about Modern Warfare 2 and we hope to put that topic to bed with one final installment as a few others on the show, myself included, finish the main campaign with a dip into the multiplayer.

On the other hand, we have Assassin’s Creed 2. A game we’re not likely to wrap up talking about for some time, and one during the recording of this episode that we’ve not even scratched the surface of.

And then there’s Left 4 Dead 2.

It’s a big round of musical assholes at the jump-off tonight; 3 of the 4 hosts arguing over which of us is the perennial asshole and which is just filling in.  I like to think I’m on the job full-time, but Scott makes a dash for the title, and I may have to concede the race.  Which is fine, of course.  Better that than to be at a loss for words.

There’s truly too much to be said about Modern Warfare 2.  I don’t know all the words a person would need to express himself fully after finishing this campaign, and light-stepping around the spoilers hasn’t made things any easier.  I’m pretty sure the game was just too awesome to be good, and I hope my fellows can lay down some of their own opinions when they finish it themselves.  Or IF they finish it…

Any ground Infinity Ward stood to lose to the enthusiast and idealist backlash in recent weeks has probably reached its maximum.  Modern Warfare 2 is alive and thrashing at retail, and there’s nothing left now but to count the player numbers online.  We may be acknowledged members of the disgruntled minority, and we’ve certainly never had trouble nursing a grudge, but we’d like to examine the game now on its own merits, without harboring any sort of rebuke for the men behind the scenes.  We make a last pass at discussing the peaks of the controversy in this episode, and hope to make room for a practical discussion in the weeks to come.

Despite the past successes of Bioware, or the songs of devotion sung by their many fans, a shamefully high percentage of players will never experience the world of Dragon Age.  It’s a magnificent game filled with magnificent flaws, and it’s unapproachable and impenetrable in any number of fantastic ways.  It has complicated sensibilities, and its roots are clearly showing, which is why it won’t be quite the thing for everyone.  For my money, however, I couldn’t be having a better time right now, and I couldn’t be happier that the experience seems to transcend the platform of choice.  A refreshing change from the divisiveness and bitter hard feelings of the recent past.