Talk to Her – March 15, 2002

Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Producer: Agustín Almodóvar, Michel Ruben
Writer: Pedro Almodóvar
Actors: Javier Cámara, Darío Grandinetti, Leonor Watling, Geraldine Chaplin, Rosario Flores
Distributor: Warner Sogefilms, Sony Pictures Classics

The course of the conversation:

One day the guys will have a movie that won’t be painful to get started.

We have to give this a proper plot summary because the movie’s all about coma rape.

Benigno is clueless about how normal society works.

Marco is clueless about how relationships with women work.

Loneliness is a major theme in the film.

It’s not a comfortable film by any means, but not in the way you might think.

Jonathan doesn’t want to watch this again.  Nathaniel might.

Obvious Statement #1: a guy crawling into a giant fake vagina is really, really, weird.

Benigno’s not evil, he’s just disconnected from our reality.

Re-watching will likely deepen the experience, but is it worth it?

Nathaniel disses performance art.  But that’s it.

That said, the performance art in this film is picked very intentionally.

We’ll be watching two Almodóvar movies in a row.  The joy of random numbers.

Obvious Statement #2: a movie called Talk to Her involves themes of communication.

Father Beast is contributing a list of his own!  Have a fruit basket!

Tony Mast didn’t like how we long we talked about racism in The Searchers, but there was so much racism in The Searchers.

Nathaniel talked about how high on the list he was going to place Talk to Her, and he places it lowest out of the hosts.

Michael, briefly, places Talk to Her in the same rank Jonathan does.

Jonathan rearranges quite a bit of his list, and half way through the conversation derails into talking about The Searchers again.

And, of course, when we derail, we derail hard.

Thanks for playing bingo, Gaerma, Rokwynd, and WilliamPall!  We’ll be contacting you all with some gifts soon.

We then talk about E3 a lot, even though we’re all tired of talking about E3.

Current-gen consoles received pledges of support, but not a lot of air time.

The PC was strangely absent from the E3 news.

The portable scene is tempting, but it’s hard to overcome the piles of dust sitting on the hosts’ current portables.

Microsoft’s XBone offerings are intriguing, but not anywhere near intriguing enough to make any of the hosts look past the consoles other issues or $500 price tag.

Nintendo showed off a lot of games that will no doubt be a lot of fun, but are any of them enough to make a Wii U purchase worthwhile?

Sony slapped Microsoft around, and won gamer minds and hearts by maintaining the status quo.

Pinocchio – February 7, 1940

Director: Ben Sharpsteen, Hamilton Luske, Norman Ferguson, T. Hee, Wilfred Jackson, Jack Kinney, Bill Roberts
Producer: Walt Disney
Writer: Ted Sears, Otto Englander, Webb Smith, William Cottrell, Joseph Sabo, Erdman Penner, Aurelius Battaglia
Voice Actors: Cliff Edwards, Dickie Jones, Christian Rub, Mel Blanc, Walter Catlett, Charles Judels, Evelyn Venable, Frankie Darro
Distributor: RKO Radio Pictures

The course of the conversation:

Fair Warning: If you disliked us picking apart Singin’ in the Rain, you may hate our take on Pinocchio.

No matter how you spell it, Pinocchio‘s a cracked-out fever dream.

Finding Nemo causes another moment of confusion.

That said, Pixar seems to be harkening back to the scare-the-piss-out-of-them Disney mindset.

Jonathan was an exposed to an inappropriate amount of Pinocchio a few years ago.

Jiminy Cricket: the worst conscience ever.

Time: the worst interpretation of Pinocchio ever.

The plot feels very disconnected and slapped together…

…but that harkens back to the serialized nature of the original story.

The Moral: Go to school, dammit.

The animation is fantastic, and it was all done by hand.

Jonathan uses visual cues on an audio medium.

Nathaniel doesn’t much appreciate the music in Pinocchio.

Nathaniel also has issues with a monstrous whale name Monstro.

There is tons of fridge horror in this movie.

The Pinocchio podcast diverges into Caligula.

Is it bad if no one cares?  Is it fun if it’s not bad?

Is this the best Disney movie to put on the list?

And now we’re discussing the theological implications of earning your soul.

And now we’re discussing the philosophical implications of self-reflection.

And now Jonathan’s discussing an only-vaguely related scientific study.

Remember how we asked which Disney movie might be better suited for the list?

Jonathan totally fails at remembering Hercules.

Nathaniel’s got plenty of other recommendations.  Jonathan thinks Pinocchio‘s apt.

We try to find a moral in Snow White.

Jonathan explains why Winnie the Pooh doesn’t make the list, despite his personal feelings.

Nathaniel gave his all. And not anywhere near the vitriol he teased off mic.

Somehow Danny Devito and James Woods bother Nathaniel, but not Robin Williams and Gilbert Gottfried.

Pinocchio is placed, and Nathaniel and Jonathan match up more often than either might like to admit.

Next week is not any of the movies Jonathan mentions, nor is it season 4 of Arrested Development.

You Might Wanna Know: (Stuff we just found out about, and maybe you want to know about too.)

• How Long to Beat: For those who need to know how much entertainment their dollar buys.
• Rain: Have we talked about Rain?  Because games like this are why I’ll likely end up with a PS4.
• Spy Party: The paid beta has finally launched.
• State of Decay: Open-world zombie game with trust mechanics and permanent character death.
• Select Your Hero: Art!

Short News:

• Konami’s Pre-E3 Not-Really-A-Press-Conference Online Streaming Event
  • Kiefer Sutherland will be the voice of Snake in MGSV.
  • Dracula is the main character of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2.
  • Pro Evolution Soccer 2014 gets a new engine.
  • And that’s it.  Maybe there’ll be more at the Big 3′s conferences?
• Microsoft lays out all the information about how the XBone will work:
  • You can lend your games to a friend.  Once.
  • You can give your games away.  Once.
  • You can only sell your games to approved retailers.
  • Publishers get to make the decision if you even get to sell your game.
  • The XBone has to validate your games daily if you’re at home.
  • The XBone will validate your games hourly if you’re elsewhere.

Games:

• Two of the hosts have completed Tomb Raider.  One host hasn’t but will.  A review episode is forthcoming.
• Jonathan recommends you go buy Humble Bundle 8 in the couple of days you have left after this episode drops.
• Alex bought the new strategy game from the developers who created R.U.S.E.: Wargame: AirLand Battle.
• Sam is tolerating the freemium aspects of Tetris Blitz, and was caught in a weak moment when he bought Chrono Trigger on Android.
• Jonathan has completed and rated Stealth Bastard Deluxe:
  • The plot is understated, but clever.
  • The level design is tight and interesting.
  • The controls are simple and well-tuned.
  • The stealth is pretty much pitch perfect.
  • There’s plenty of reason to go back for multiple playthroughs.
  • There are lots of community levels available.
  • It’s ten bucks.  Seventeen if you buy the DLC.
  • Rating: Classic
• Alex also manages to sneak in a discussion of Blood Bowl: Star Coach, much to Sam’s chagrin.

Topic:

You may have seen our E3 Bingo post.  Join us!  We’ll give you a bingo card, and it’ll be fun!

For the episode, the guys pick a couple of predictions each, both pie-in-the-sky and somewhat likely.

Alex:

1. There’ll be a new game show game on the XBone in the same vein as 1 vs. 100.
2. Sony & Valve will announce a Steam partnership of some kind.

Jonathan:

1. Retro will release a new Metroid game in the style of Metroid: Hunters.
2. Sim City will unironically be announced for consoles.

Sam:

1. A proper Final Fantasy Tactics sequel will be announced for PS4.
2. At least 10 of the 15 XBone exlusives will be existing IP.

How’d we do?  We’ll have to find out next week.

Mouchette – October 26, 1967

Director: Robert Bresson
Producer: Anatole Dauman
Writer: Robert Bresson
Actors: Nadine Nortier, Jean-Claude Guilbert, Maria Cardinal, Paul Hebert
Distributor: UGC / CFDC

The course of the conversation:

The guys have trouble figuring out how to start the show, so they talk about listener feedback instead.

Jonathan gets into the philosophy of the podcast.

Apologies if we bash your favorite movie, but only kind of.

Back to Mouchette!  Yay!

Nathaniel’s pretentious-o-meter reacts badly to this movie.

Skipping the format to talk about something interesting.

Nathaniel’s been doing it wrong all this time.

Nathaniel can’t relate to Mouchette as a character.  Jonathan disagrees.

Michael feels the film fails at its message.  Jonathan disagrees.

It’s difficult to write clever show notes when the discussion is all about suicide and rape.

Jonathan relates Mouchette to The West Wing.  What?

Objectively, Mouchette’s life isn’t that bad.  In her own head, it is that bad.

Jonathan deviates into talking about The Searchers and Blazing Saddles.

Nathaniel wanted the rest of the movie to match the last fifteen minutes.  Jonathan disagrees.

Perhaps each viewer’s own conclusion is the point, not the story itself.

Do you really need to understand in order to care?

Most suicide stories force a message.  Mouchette asks what message you see.

“It’s just a cry for help.”  Isn’t that enough?  Why not?

The List: How ridiculous is it that we’re comparing Mouchette to Finding Nemo?

Here at The Way of the Game, we usually host a show where we talk about our predictions for E3, but we’ve decided to do something a little bit different this year.  With everything that’s happening, we’ve got a big list o’ predictions, from the already-confirmed to the pie-in-the-sky.  It’s too much, in fact, to do any sort of justice in an hour-long podcast.  Instead, we’re going to post the list here, and then we’re going to invite you to play E3 Bingo with us.  Sure, other sites do this, but who says we can’t get in on the fun?

Even better, what we’ll do is send you a randomized bingo card that you can play along on.  We’ve got more predictions than fit on a card, so everybody should get a unique card they can play along on.  Let us know that you want to play in the comments, on Twitter, via email, whatever, and we’ll set you up.

Already Confirmed

1. Aisha Tyler brings the sass back to the Ubisoft conference.

2. Every PS4 game will have Vita remote play.

3. New Halo game will have cross-platform play.

Basically Confirmed

4. Mirror’s Edge 2.

5. No more points. MS Points, that is.

6. Idiot male returns to the Ubisoft conference, too.

7. Valve’s official Steam Box revealed.

8. The Walking Dead 1.5 is revealed in full.  No Walking Dead 2.

Pretty Confident About These

9. At least 10 of the 15 XBone exclusives will be existing IP.

10. Price cuts for PS3, 360, Vita, and Wii U.

11. Still no straight answers on the used market for next-gen.

12. No Zelda game this year.

13. Naughty Dog gives us new IP, not Uncharted 4.

14. RIP Star Wars 1313.

15. Ubisoft continues its trend of “Best Publisher Press Conference.”

16. Camilla Luddington (played Lara Croft) will show up at a Squeenix event.

17. The Xbox One section of Microsoft’s conference begins and ends with an FPS.

Definitely Probable

18. Halo 5 announced.

19. At least 5 of Microsoft’s 15 XBone exclusives are time delays, not true exclusives.

20. The PS4 also looks like a DVD player.

21. Final Fantasy Versus XIII is rebranded Final Fantasy XV.

22. Fallout 4.

23. Xbox – $599, $399 with 2-year contract

24. PS3 – $399, $499 with free year of PS+

25. Fortnite announced for next-gen systems.

26. Sim City announced for consoles.

27. Xbox-exclusive new IPs include at least one MOBA.

Just Spitballing

28. The Last Guardian is given a release date.

29. Metal Gear Solid 5 is a timed XBone exclusive.

30. Uncharted 4 announced, but not produced by Naughty Dog.

31. Sony & Steam announce a partnership.

32. Of the new Xbox-exclusive new IPs, only one will be a strategy game.

Shots in the Dark

33. Cliffy B is a surprise guest.  For Sony.

34. New 360 form factor.  No new PS3.

35. Portal 3.

A Gamer Can Dream

36. Metroid game from Retro, Hunters style.

37. Half-Life 3 is a Steam Box “launch” title.

38. 1 vs. 100 returns.

We’d also love to hear your own predictions for E3.  What’d we miss?  What’ll catch us completely off guard, but you knew all along?  If it’s good, you might even see it show up on a bingo card!

Gaerma is the grand winner (and only entrant) of the Don’t Starve giveaway.

Sam gives us his take on the XBone, and it’s not terribly positive, although Alex has some new feelings about it.

Molyneux’s “social experiment,” Curiosity, has finished, there’s a winner, and the winner will be a god (for a while).

Sam may still be unpacking, but he’s got 5 of his 6 consoles unpacked and set up.

Alex makes inconsiderate comparisons when talking about Knytt Underground.

Jonathan makes similar, but more appropriate, comparisons for Stealth Bastard Deluxe.

Next week we’ll stop revisiting topics that one or another host missed out on!

Star Wars – May 25, 1977

Director: George Lucas
Producer: Gary Kurtz
Writer: George Lucas
Actors: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Peter Cushing, Alec Guinness
Distributor: 20th Century Fox

The course of the conversation:

May the Fourth and Revenge of the Sixth.  Ouch.

Star Wars.  Not A New Hope.  Not Episode 4.

We’re going to limit our discussion to just this movie.  (No, we’re not.)

Three geeks like Star Wars.  Stop the presses!

Perhaps immaturity accounts for thinking A New Hope was a slow movie.

Darths & Droids: Where Jonathan read about the alternate take on Han’s Kessel run.

As geeks, do we do Star Wars a disservice by trying to make everything in the movie perfect?

The rest of the trilogy makes it easy to forget where Han Solo starts as a character.

Mark Hamill was the actor Luke Skywalker needed.

Leia is the strongest character, and Carrie Fisher plays it very well.

Vader’s the bad guy you remember.  Tarquin is the real villain of the film.

Despite saying that, the guys spend ten minutes talking about Vader.

Vader is the active use of the Force.

So much of the universe is implied in this first film, and it’s fascinating.  Later films get more explicit with the universe, and some of the wonder is lost.

One of the potential troubles with the Special Edition additions is that it loses the build up of suspense and context that make the later reveals so interesting.

Nathaniel disses George Lucas.

Did George Lucas become a slave of his own success?

Han Solo is the prime creator of satisfying character tension in the story.

Thank you, Ralph McQuarrie.

And credit to Lucas for letting Ralph McQuarrie do what he do.

An X-Wing would probably be pointless in space, but it looks perfect.

What’s your favorite Star Wars ship?

We apologize to Trekkers on behalf of Nathaniel.

Podcast compensation is discussed.

The Rule of Cool turned to 11.

It doesn’t make sense, but you don’t really care, do you?

Did Star Wars unite geek culture?  Or did it unite us all?

“I like Star War better!”  Dammit!

The hosts all try to convince themselves that they didn’t just fanboy out on this movie.

The hosts diverge into talking about Lord of the Rings out of order.

There’s after-credits bonus content if you want to hear Nathaniel agonize over his placement.

We basically skip the usual format this week to talk about the reveal of the Xbox One.

TV, TV, TV, TV, sports, sports, TV, sports, sports, sports, Call of Duty.

Did Microsoft present anything at all that we want?  Does Microsoft care if they presented anything at all that we want?

Is this the natural evolution of the home console?

Is Kaz Hirai laughing with glee and derision?

Next week we’ll talk about games again.

The general theme is that you’re a demigod bent on bringing those worlds under your control. They’re called shards, and if I may indulge in my D&D background a bit, think of them as isolated islands of terrain floating in the astral plane. You’re able to choose a shard that you’d like to conquer, and then you go there and set about hiring a champion or two to do it for you. Even though you’re the demigod, you’re not actually doing anything directly à la Populous[a] or anything like that. Your champions are your eyes, ears, and muscle, and you’ll be controlling them for much of your quest for domination.

There are four champions to choose from. Warriors are gods of the battlefield, becoming more powerful with every level. Commander champions take a different tack, boosting their followers rather than themselves with their special abilities. Wizards plague enemies with long-range artillery and support magic. Scout champions have decent ranged attacks and bonuses for exploring lands. Your champion will need an entourage of units accompanying him to be successful, and they can range from peasants to hydras.

The shard is split up into several provinces, and you only own one at the outset. It has your stronghold, which is your base of operations. To conquer a shard, you’ll have to defend your stronghold and defeat the stronghold of the local lord, which amounts to a computer opponent that’s playing the same game you are. Every turn, you’ll be able to move your champion around the map, revealing provinces hidden by the fog of war, and electing to make upgrades to your stronghold to supply your hero with troops, equipment, and spells.

A fair bit of economic savvy will be needed in this game. You’re given a hefty chunk of gold and gems (magical currency) at the start, but those funds will evaporate quickly if you’re not careful. Stronghold upgrades cost money, your units need to get paid, your equipment doesn’t grow on trees, and some units will want to take their cut from battle spoils before you get yours. I’ve run short on gold many times, forcing me to push to take on tough fights to bring provinces under my control in order to keep the war machine going. Provinces also have a happiness meter, and if it falls too low, they’ll revolt and have to be put down again.

Combat will be very familiar to players of Heroes of Might & Magic, or for that matter, any turn-based strategy game. You deploy your forces on the edge of a battlefield overlaid [c]with a hexagonal grid, the enemy does the same, you approach each other and try to take out the enemy before the enemy takes you out. Everything is simply laid out, and it’s possible to see how much damage you’ll do before you actually land the blow. There are also morale and fatigue systems to exploit and a wide range of terrain to negotiate during battles.

It’s not all about combat, though. In Eador: Masters of the Broken World, you can elect to explore provinces under your control. Just because you own a province doesn’t mean you’ve uncovered all its secrets. Spending a turn to explore can uncover new fights or rare finds that can boost your money, loot, and experience. If you manage to max out a province’s exploration meter, the province gives you more money per turn.

My complaints are few. In the first tutorial shard, you’re introduced to your character, and it’s explained that you’re a young adult who has been whisked away by this mysterious figure who paid a heap of gold to your parents to take you off their hands. That’s fine and all, but it was jarring to see my character appear as an aged wizard in battles and on the world map. I understand that I appear as the generic wizard character, and I can overlook it, but I can’t imagine it would have taken much to make my appearance more fitting to the character.

The GUI is stellar, though I did find a few bugs still lurking in the system that caused crashes (they’re avoidable enough that it didn’t influence my rating). It’s easy to hop from any screen to any other screen. You can quickly check out your character’s action, your stronghold’s building queue, your hero’s inventory, garrisons, and so on.

A very pleasant surprise is that despite the fact that Snowbird Games is a Russian studio, the English translation is excellent. There are no language problems here, and in fact, the dialogue between your character and one of the other main characters in the game is very natural and conversational. Likewise, the manual is a very easy read.

All in all, I’d have to give Eador: Masters of the Broken World a buy, especially at the price of $20. It does what it does well, and it provides infinite gameplay and a very decent challenge.

Some Like It Hot – March 29, 1959

Director: Billy Wilder
Producer: Billy Wilder
Writers: Billy Wilder, I. A. L. Diamond
Actors: Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, George Raft, Joe E. Brown, Pat O’Brien
Distributor: United Artists

The course of the conversation:

We continue to be unable to stick to the movies we announce.

The puppy test is in full effect.

Jack Lemmon.  Respect.

Jonathan finally gets a clear idea of what the word “grounded” means.

Bert may be wacky, but you laugh at Ernie.

Tony Curtis seems to be either overshadowed or carrying the entire scene.

Some of the slower bits, while necessary, may keep this from being a regular viewer.

Marilyn Monroe is exactly what the movie needed, and not just in the film itself.

We diverge into talking about actors and actresses who only have looks to sustain them.

Jonathan tells a story about angering his mother.

Chris Farley and Marilyn Monroe are compared.

Here’s why the movie was filmed in black and white.

Kansas couldn’t handle it.

Jonathan apologizes to Kansas on behalf of Colorado.

Nathaniel apologizes to Kansas on behalf of Kansas.

Lots of symbolism in bed-wear.

But wait, there’s more!

Is this a screwball comedy?  Do we yet know what a screwball comedy is?

Nathaniel makes a sure and “simple” decision.

Jonathan risks the wrath of Brando and De Niro to gain the favor of Stanwyck and Lemmon.

Michael shuffles his list like a deck of cards and gives more credit to John Wayne.

Jonathan flip flops on his vote for Michael’s movie, bumping Twelve Angry Men in favor of Blazing Saddles.

So I’m rewatching the Xbox One reveal video for a few reasons.

First, I was covering the event for work, but while that was happening, there were a million of other things going on like the recovery from the Oklahoma tornado, so my attention was split a few dozen ways. I want to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

Secondly, I want to make sure to have a good recording so we can splice cuts into the upcoming show #170.

Last, but perhaps most importantly, I want to confirm there were as few games showcased as I remember.

Right at the top of the event, Microsoft Interactive Business President Don Mattrick revealed the mission statement for the new Xbox One: to provide an all-in-one entertainment system that integrates gaming, TV, and other entertainment options. In that respect, I have to say it’s mission accomplished.

The new Xbox One has some neat features. The ability to switch nearly instantaneously between movie, game, and Internet apps is very cool. Skyping with a friend while I’m gaming or watching a video certainly sounds cool. Having interactive features with my TV programs like fantasy sports updates while a game is underway is a really neat gimmick. The Xbox certainly seems to use its eight gigs of RAM to good use.

The Xbox One looks very boxy. Without having measurements available, I’d say it’s about a foot deep, 15 inches wide and perhaps two and a half inches tall, definitely closer in dimension (and perhaps density) to the first Xbox. The front of the system is nearly without adornment, with a slot for a Blu-Ray drive on the left and a single Xbox logo on the right.

The Kinect has been upgraded, but perhaps not to the same degree as the console itself. Voice commands are quickly recognized and body recognition resolution is improved, but I’m not seeing a huge leap of quality from the dust-covered Kinect resting in front of my living room TV. It’s an interesting move that the Kinect apparently isn’t optional any more.

It’s nearly halfway through the hour-long event that the first honest game is mentioned, and it’s not Microsoft making the announcement. It’s an EA rep who says that EA and Microsoft are embarking on a new strategic partnership. That can mean a lot of things, but coming from the publishing monstrosity that has locked down the NFL license year after year and currently has a stranglehold on all core Star Wars titles, it caused more than a few shudders. The usual suspects show up like Madden, UFC and FIFA, but it’s interesting that NBA Live is coming out of hibernation after several consecutive years of 2K beatdowns.

Microsoft Studios head Phil Spencer follows up EA to show off what they’ve been up to, which amounts to Forza 5 and a new IP called Quantum Break, which looks to merge live action drama with time-shifting gameplay. There’s not a lot more information about Quantum Break except that it involves a large ship instantaneously jumping forward several hundred feet to smash into a bridge.

After about eleven minutes of game information, the unveil event shifts back to television. A new Halo TV series is revealed that involves Steven Spielberg and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell shows up to announce a partnership with Microsoft. Details are again scant, except that Goodell repeats the fact that fantasy teams can be updated in real time, and that information is going to be available through the Xbox One.

Then there’s a little bit of promise at the very end about a new game that involves Activision, but it’s COD: Ghosts. Guess what. Shit blows up. There are guns, knives and dogs involved. Only it looks better now.

And that’s it. It seems like the Microsoft event is over by the time it starts.

So let’s get into the positive things about the event before I start voicing doubts. The hardware works. It provides instant switching between multiple applications. Microsoft is making deals with big players like the NFL and EA. It’s aiming to be the all-in-one entertainment box. As I said at the start, it looks like it’s going to deliver that. And, unlike the PS4 reveal, there was an actual console to actually see.

I want games.

Yes, I know there will be games for the Xbox One. Many more games will be unveiled at E3.

Sony promised to deliver gamers a next-gen gaming experience, and despite what you may think of the games that were shown off, there were a hell of a lot of them compared to what was shown at the Microsoft conference. There was also a strong push for indie developers at the Sony presser, and there’s no doubt that’s where the gaming industry momentum is.

Lastly, as we admitted in episode 168, all of the hosts at The Way of the Game are immune to the “hey, it’ll work with your cable” argument. We’ve all cut the cord. So have millions of other Americans who are looking at their cable bills with a more critical eye.

So from my perspective, I think Microsoft’s missing the boat. The Xbox One is an impressive piece of hardware. It switches between apps durn fast. And it will undoubtedly sell a lot of units. But if I’m looking at this from a financial standpoint, I’m thinking I’m not only going to have to shell out for a new console and a continued membership for Xbox Live, I’d have to also add a cable subscription, an NFL Sunday Ticket and God knows what else to take full advantage of the Xbox One. That’s not to mention that the Xbox One’s stance on used games is still unclear.

Before that, though, Sam tells us about his new internet service, and Alex tells us about previews of XCOM: The Bureau.

Sam is actually still playing Uncharted 2, rather than having finished it like I might’ve written in the show notes last week.  He has, though, completed Candy Box, and has also played his first Zynga game, What’s the Phrase?

Alex is in the beta for Card Hunter, and it’s exactly what he thought it was going to be and that’s great news.  He’s also been playing Monaco, and so long as you don’t mind throwing stealth out the window, you’ll have a great time playing it with friends.

All Jonathan talks about this week is Bioshock Infinite, and he doesn’t have particularly good things to say about it.  This isn’t because the game is particularly bad, but more because the media surrounding the game made it out to be something far greater than it really is.

The Holmberg’s official rating for Bioshock Infinite: Rent it.

The Searchers – March 13, 1956

Director: John Ford
Producer: Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney
Writers: Frank S. Nugent
Actors: John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Vera Miles, Ward Bond, Natalie Wood
Distributor: Warner Bros.

The course of the conversation:

I’ll fill this in soon.

News: EA gets exclusive rights to the Star Wars license from Disney.  Gamers everywhere weep.

Games:  Jonathan fell down the rabbit holes that are Frog Fractions and Candy Box.  Both are free browser games that explore the history of gaming through utter randomness.  Sam has beaten Uncharted 2: Electric Boogaloo, and he likes that they fixed some stuff, but dislikes quite a bit more.  Alex has played next to nothing this week.

Topic:  Microsoft will be giving us details of their next console on May 21st, so we thought we’d talk a bit about what we expect to see and what we want to see.  We derail at the start talking about how we’re not likely to even want the next Xbox, but we eventually get back on track and pretend to be interested.  Cable TV integration, social gaming, the future of Xbox Live; what do you think we’re going to see?

Man With a Movie Camera – January 8, 1929

Director: Dziga Vertov
Writers: Dziga Vertov
Cinematography: Mikhail Kaufman

The course of the conversation:

We actually watched a silent movie we said we’d watch.

Nathaniel makes a reference from The Ring.  Jonathan doesn’t get it.

Michael quotes Nietzsche and stares into the abyss.

Jonathan is still processing.

Let’s define our terms.

Scare quotes!

A movie doesn’t need to protest to be political.

The movie has an agenda, but it feels subtle.

So much of the movie feels modern, but at the time, Vertov put out a month-long disclaimer to warn the audience that things were going to get weird.

The host’s lack of knowledge becomes an issue with understanding this film.

Quentin Tarantino would love this movie.

Appreciation for this film may be lost as we lose the physical process of moviemaking.

Live birth, side-boob, front-boob, dancing crawfish.

These are just people, living their lives, and how would that have appeared to people afraid of the Commies?

Is this movie sugar-coating Stalinist Russia, or successfully giving a taste of a day-in-the-life despite what bad things might’ve been going on?

From a social point of view, we’re glad this movie exists.

Nathaniel made his decision easily.  Michael had trouble, but didn’t rank it high.  Jonathan feels there’s a lot of technique to deconstruct and learn from.

Your hosts announce their next movie, The Searchers, with confidence, because they’re pulling a double-feature week.

The Lady Eve – February 25, 1941

Director: Preston Sturges
Producer: Paul Jones, Buddy G. DeSylvia
Writers: Preston Sturges
Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda
Distributor: Paramount Pictures

The course of the conversation:

The guys have difficulty getting into this conversation, blame the chicken.

Michael gets deep.

Just what is screwball comedy?

They might as well just call it testicular torsion.

Clever casting reveals more character details than you’d think.

Clever writing reveals more intimacy than any amount of nudity.

Barbara Stanwyck is a lioness stalking a slab of beef.

Somehow Jonathan brings in violence in video games.

Jonathan impersonates Hitler in neither Swedish nor German.

“Who’s John?” “Romeo’s sister.” “Wait, what?”

An honest rube is a somehow better than conning a con.

Should screwball comedies be on the list?

Is the screwball comedy the revival of “women’s films”?

Nathaniel’s not quite sure why he likes The Awful Truth so much more than The Lady Eve.

When Michael says a movie’s going to stay somewhere on his list? Don’t believe him.

Jonathan continues to lose touch with why Finding Nemo is so high on his list.

The hosts contribute their own movies to the list: Moon, 12 Angry Men, and The Blues Brothers.

Jonathan feels weird about Roger Ebert’s passing.

Living Russia is not a depressing movie at all.  Ignore everything Jonathan says.

The guys have decided to quit living in sin.

Monaco will be purchased on 360, when it’s finally released.

The word “Edge” is now no longer trademarked.

The Bureau: XCOM Declassified was only hinted at when we recorded the show.

Alex picked up Playstation Plus, Malicious, Disgaea 3, Sins of a Solar Empire, and Midway Arcade Classics.

Sam has finished Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, and Resident Evil 6, and has given up on a 1999 run through Bioshock Infinite.

Jonathan’s playing Don’t Starve, Darksidersed Revengeance, and gets to talk about Ridiculous Fishing but not Fish Out of Water.

The Metagame is tabled for a while, as Sam is clearly the Prognosticator Extraordinaire, and also the guys aren’t giving the game the attention it needs to actually be interesting.

On the Waterfront – July 28, 1954

Director: Elia Kazan
Producer: Sam Spiegel
Writers: Budd Schulberg
Actors: Marlon Brando, Eva Marie Saint, Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb
Distributor: Columbia Pictures

The course of the conversation:

Jonathan’s biggest exposure to Brando.

We’re going to be adults about the boobs.

Nathaniel dislikes modern Oscar fodder.

Ripped from the headlines!

Parallels can be drawn to Elia Kazan’s testimony in front of HUAC, but probably not enough to spend too much time on it.

Jonathan has a terrible memory.

The difficulty of making the movie.

Nathaniel doesn’t know if he would have made that decision.

Mark Wahlberg would be Terry Malloy in a modern-day remake.

We go into the priest.

The priest is the only one who could play the moral compass in this story.

Edie is the one who forces Terry to act.

The redemption of America.

Lee J. Cobb plays reprehensible so damn well.

Nathaniel is terrified of Gene Hackman.

It’s the little ones you’ve gotta worry about.

Eva Marie Saint gives a good performance, up until the script lets her down.

In our theoretical, modern-day remake, Edie would hopefully get a fuller character.

John Turturro is not John Leguizamo.

We’re glad that On the Waterfront came so quickly after Raging Bull.

The juxtaposition of the “Charlie” scene in On the Waterfront and the “Charlie” scene in Raging Bull is genius.

Context is everything.

Leonard Bernstein’s score was so overwhelming.  And not in a good way.

The drama button and Skrillex.  Either might be better.

Dear Internet: Please give us a version of this movie without the weird sound decisions.

Score-writing guy.

Jonathan and Nathaniel place the movie high on their lists, but it’s Michael who has a surprising casualty.

Jonathan manages to screw up the closing of this show, too.  It’s like a disease or something.

Platform: Xbox 360, PS3, PC, Mac

Developer: Irrational Games

Publisher: 2K Games

Genre: 1st Person Shooter

Rating:

• The Producer: Buy It
• The Moose: Rent It

The Third Man – September 2, 1949

Director: Carol Reed
Producer: Carol Reed, Alexander Korda, David O. Selznick
Writers: Graham Greene
Actors: Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles, Trevor Howard
Distributor: British Lion Films

The course of the conversation:

Yeah, we didn’t watch Napoleon, again.  Keep an eye on the show notes.

Jonathan talks about business for a bit.

Jonathan also gives a history lesson about the Production Code.

All that talk about the code?  The Third Man is foreign and has nothing to do with it.

It’s another first for Jonathan.  Maybe.

All zither, all the time.

Nathaniel doesn’t like that he only connected with Anna. Michael and Jonathan argue that that’s the point.

Some movies needed to be watched a second time. This might be one of those.

Bruce Willis is not dead.

It’s not quite mustache twirling…

Never work with animals or small children.

We abandon any attempts at structure.

Unnecessary salacious trivia time!

Turns out, we’ve already watched a David O. Selsnick film.

There’s plenty of clever touches in this movie.

Noir is not a genre of trench coats and jazz bars; noir is a genre of it’s time.

There was an end, but no resolution.

We bust out the list.

I don’t really like this movie.  Oh wait, I really like this movie.

Michael makes a fairly easy choice.  Nathaniel and Jonathan make all sorts of changes.

Life is a message board, and firsts have been claimed.

Nathaniel’s third choice for his movie to include will shock you.

Michael picks a movie that’s gonna require a bigger boat.

Jonathan picked three movies, hedging his bet against someone taking one, and no one took any of them.

The guys moon over Moon.

Marlo Brando is De Niro’s tender side?  What?

De Niro Tenders.

News:  Microsoft’s new Xbox is going to feature DVR capabilities; 100% of WotG’s hosts have no use for it.  When focus testing The Last of Us, Naughty Dog had to specifically request female gamers be included in the testing.  And Skyrim has effectively un-capped character levels, because we all needed an excuse to lose more time in that game.

Games:  Jonathan tricks Alex into thinking he got early access to Injustice: Gods Among Us, but what he really played was the free iOS version of the new fighting game.  Alex and Sam explore JRPG goodness in the form of Hyperdimension Neptunia and Ni No Kuni.  And both Jonathan and Sam have put time now into Bioshock Infinite, and while they’re both stunned by the visuals and the world, they find the gameplay to be a bit dated.

Topic:  And while we’re on the subject of Bioshock Infinite‘s gameplay, is it fair to ask the question “Is it even necessary?”  Walt Williams and Jeffrey Yohalem, writers for Spec Ops: The Line and Far Cry 3 respectively, talked recently at GDC about the use of violence in games and making it more than just filler.  Moreover, how do you make a death meaningful in a game where the player kills dozens, if not hundreds, of people?  The guys take up these questions and see where they lead.

Metagame:  Defiance finally earned an aggregate score of 67, leaving the host’s average scores completely untouched.

• The first feed is just podcast episodes; movies and games.
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The home page will always aggregate all our content, but the we’ve broken it all up into categories (and seasons for WotG) for your browsing pleasure.  That should make it easy to get just the content you want, when you want it.  Enjoy!

Singin’ in the Rain – March 27, 1952

Director: Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen
Producer: Arthur Freed
Writers: Betty Comden, Adolph Green
Actors: Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor, Debbie Reynolds, Jean Hagen, Millard Mitchell
Distributor: Metro-Goldwyn-Myer

The course of the conversation:

Let’s try this again.

A very conventional movie pokes fun at very conventional movies.

Jonathan admits his total lack of musical knowledge while criticizing the musical numbers.

We still have to compare it to Raging Bull.

Jonathan has trouble explaining the kind of context in which he wants his musical numbers to be presented.

Cat beat box break.

That Michael Bay movie made perfect sense… said no one ever.

Favorite scenes.

Four packs of cigarettes a day is not a habit, it’s a problem.

Gene Kelly’s done it better.  Gene Kelly’s doing it better right now.  Gene Kelly will do it better again.

Jonathan refers to White Christmas again.

“Beautiful Girl” was a terrible number.

We’re not so sure this should be a top ten movie on so many lists.

Of course, it’s going to be in our top ten for a while.

Little nepotiz.

Nadia is probably singing “Good Morning” right now.

Whatever happened to tap dancing?

SingInception.

We didn’t fix it in post.

Singin’ in the Rain is placed on the list.

Jonathan’s already forgotten why he liked Finding Nemo so much.

Jonathan’s found his first paradox movie.

Nominations for additions to the list: Jonathan, Moon; Nathaniel, Blues Brothers; Michael, Twelve Angry Men.

We announce a bunch of movies for next week that we don’t actually watch.  As always, check the start of the show notes.

We start the show by discussing the demise of LucasArts.  Is it really something worth mourning or is the geekosphere reacting out of nostalgia?  We hope everyone who lost their job finds new and wonderful employment elsewhere, but we haven’t actually spent much money on a LucasArts game in a long time.

We also discuss how Sega Europe was forced to acknowledge that footage used in trailers for Aliens: Colonial Marines was misleading.  Alex doesn’t really care, because even the footage in the trailers failed to sell him on the game.  Jonathan gets it, but does a poor job explaining why.

Alex has completed Bioshock Infinite.  It’s made him forget just how much he loved Bioshock.  Relic gets discussed as Alex’s non-video-game game, basically an updated take on the board game Talisman set in the 40K universe.  Alex also met a younger version of himself while he was out of town last week.

Jonathan wants to know who wants to play Terraria with him.  It’s on 360 and PS3 now, and he’s down to get the game if anyone else is playing.  He also gets in his own non-video-game game by talking about the tabletop RPG Microscope; it’s very much a story game, but it’s a really interesting story game.  Jonathan’s also played some games provided free via Playstation Plus: The Cave, which may suffer from Jonathan’s favorite recent complaint, tonal inconsistencies; and Closure, a clever puzzle game that plays with light and shadow.

Finally, we wrap up the show with the MetaGame.  Defiance does not yet have a Metacritic score, and so we skip to our alternate game, Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge.  Jonathan does really well this week, only two points off the aggregate score of 71.  Alex and Sam picked numbers close, though, and so not much has changed on the leaderboard.  For the next round, we pick Injustice: Gods Among Us: Jonathan guesses 89, Alex 84, and Sam 80.

As Defiance still doesn’t have a Metacritic score as of release, let’s ask this question: do you like the Metagame?  Let us know in the comments below.

Finding Nemo – May 30, 2003

Director: Andrew Stanton
Producer: Graham Walters
Writers: Andrew Stanton, Bob Peterson, David Reynolds
Voice Actors: Albert Brooks, Ellen DeGeneres, Alexander Gould
Studio: Pixar
Distributor: Walt Disney

The course of the conversation:

Take two!

Jonathan’s not actually a professional.

There are no unimportant conversations about Space Jam.

Oh yeah, Finding Nemo really is that good.

Classy bodily humor.

Yup.  The animation is incredible.

Nathaniel hates Ellen.  (No, not really.)

Nathaniel hits on the Internet.

Stop covering your face, Jonathan.

Is this the first time Pixar decided to rip our hearts out?

Kids can handle “adult” topics.

Pixar has an amazing ability to create horrible children.

The Pixar Effect

Would you replace Finding Nemo with any other Pixar film?

It might be the funniest of the Pixar pantheon.

We spoil the surprise plot of Brave by talking about how Pixar successfully avoided spoiling the surprise plot of Brave.

Nathaniel and Jonathan make the same pick.  Again.

All singing.  All dancing.  Talk about genre whiplash.

Back Seat Producers Mentions: 1

DmC: Devil May Cry – Jonathan gave this one a try.  It has some clever touches, but overall fails to hold his interest as both the gameplay and the story feel like nothing new.

FTL: Faster Than Light – Jonathan’s also still not sure about the mothership in FTL.  He took Luke’s advice, and still comes away from it feeling like the gameplay shift may not exactly work.  He fully admits that this may be a result of his inexperience with Rogue-likes, and also admits he’ll continue playing.

Assassin’s Creed 3: Wolfpack – Alex has a different take from Sam on AC3′s Wolfpack mode.  He feels it doesn’t support the gameplay claims it makes, and he wishes it were more like the competitive multiplayer.

Forza: Horizon – Sam learns the shocking truth that the ability to go around corners may be just as important as the ability to go fast in a straight line.  Also, he learns he needs to control his thumbs better.

Android: Netrunner – Sam also brings to the table an analog game, Fantasy Flight’s popular living card game.

Bioshock Infinite: No Subtitle – Jonathan has played the first hour, and Alex has played quite a bit more than that.  Jonathan was pretty hooked right up to the point where the shooting began, while Alex is learning to love the game he was given, rather than trying to play the game he wants.

In the MetaGame, we run into a bit of a conundrum as Army of Two: Devil’s Cartel was not only the first multi-platform game we’ve used, but it’s also the first game that didn’t have a MetaCritic score on the day of release.  We pull it together, though, and Sam, disappointingly, shows he’s got a gift for gauging game reviewers.

Sam scores a point this round, Jonathan scores two, and Alex takes the title of “Most Wrong” with a score of 16.  Luke’s guest guess placed him just ahead of Alex with 15 points.

The Averages: Sam at 4, Jonathan at 7, and Alex drops to third with 10.

Next round: Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge, a game that’s already out for the WiiU, and is actually coming out for 360 and PS3 next week, but was chosen because there’s literally nothing scheduled to drop the week of April 7th.  All the hosts are within a point of each other in their picks.  It’ll be a quick round.

King Kong – March 2, 1933

Directors: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack

Producers: David O. Selznick, Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack
Writers: James Ashmore, Creelman, Ruth Rose
Actors: Fay Wray, Bruce Cabot, Robert Armstrong
Studio/Distributor: RKO Radio Pictures

The course of the conversation:

“Did you like the movie?” is a complicated question.

It’s historic, it’s iconic, it captures imaginations, but does it hold up?

What acting?

Fay Wray’s eyebrows act their hearts out.

 Can we get any indication that Denham is a human being?

How do we define what makes a good acting performance?

Peter Jackson versus Merian Cooper: Fight!

Is this Kong really about unrequited love?

When we’re done with the Time list, we find another list to take on.

Kong’s lasting impact.

The racism of the time.

What holds our interest now?

Nobody wants to watch Avatar.

The art of film.

Childlike awesomeness.

Revisiting “for its time.”

The production code is discussed.

Michael finds more to chew on in Kong.

Nathaniel comes to his senses concerning Sherlock Jr.

Jonathan sticks with the hint he gave earlier.

Back Seat Producers Mentions: 1

After some reminiscing, we jump into game talk.

We start with a first-hand account of the SimCity debacle.  Luke tolerated a lot of the server issues, right until they rolled back his city.  Luke will be voting with his dollars in the future.

Luke also shares his experience with the culture shock that occurs when you jump into ranked matches in League of Legends, which killed his enthusiasm for that game, too.

It’s okay, though, because Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm is successfully scratching his online strategy itch.

Sam finally broke out some WolfPack in Assassin’s Creed 3, and things get crazy.  Just as Alex says, the single-player may be lousy, but the multiplayer still sells the game.

Sam has also picked up Forza: Horizon, which features a version of Colorado that Jonathan can’t (or won’t) corroborate.

Jonathan’s been playing Faster Than Light, and the final boss is a bit of a shock.  That said, he’s still ridiculously addicted to it.

In the MetaGame, Gears of War: Judgement helped to bring the scores closer together.  The game scored a 70 on release day, five, seven, and nine points lower than Alex, Jonathan, and Sam’s guesses, respectively.

Luke joins the game this week, as we anticipate the multimedia Syfy experience, Defiance.  He guesses 57, Jonathan goes for 60, Sam takes 65, and Alex goes big with 75.

Next week we’ll find out how Army of Two: Devil’s Cartel plays out.  Feel free to join in in the comments below.

Raging Bull – December 19, 1980

Directors: Martin Scorsese
Producers: Robert Chartoff, Irwin Winkler
Writers: Paul Schrader, Mardik Martin, Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro
Actors:  Robert De Niro, Cathy Moriarty, Joe Pesci
Studio/Distributor: United Artists

The course of the conversation:

No evening should ever start with Red Sonja.

An amazing movie, but can we call it “enjoyable?”

Holy hell, De Niro is committed.

Stolen from Rocky?

Is Joe Pesci ever not Joe Pesci?

Cathy Moriarty: great performance, but she looked the same age through the entire movie.

Creepy? Romantic? Both?

A debate about infidelity ensues.

Is Joey responsible for Jake’s fall, or for keeping him from falling?

The happy years are in color, but nobody cares.

The music and sound styles get discussed.

Sweet, sweet, bloody Hershey’s syrup.

In your medical opinion….

Jonathan discovers he’s a liar.

Lots of yelling.

The lists appear, and the guests aren’t allowed to vote.

Back Seat Producers reference: 1 (it’s subtle)

Now, I’m no stranger to strategy guides.  I played many a JRPG in my youth, and got the strategy guide along with the title to ease my way along.  My last strategy guide was for a recent JRPG, a big hardcover book, with a stylized format almost an inch thick.

First, the book itself.  The book is made of high quality stationary, and has a big picture of the protagonist, Prophet, on the cover.  Once I wrangled it out of the packaging, it flopped around a bit.  I wasn’t sure what to think.

That changed when I settled in to play Crysis 3 with the book next to me.

The book’s soft stationary and non-rigid cover fixed the largest problem I had with my last, not-to-be-named strategy guide; the hardcover book would randomly close on its own.  The Crysis 3 guide can sit, unattended, open on the cushion next to me.  It sits, patiently waiting for you to turn the page.  It’s relaxed, knowing that your style of play may take more time per page than others.

Before I get to the content of the book, some background about me and the Crysis franchise first.  I’ve not played the first title, and the second was something I enjoyed quite a bit.  I lacked some background on the setting, though, and the second game was a bit hard to follow due to my lack of knowledge.  The book in my hands took care of that though.

The first section of the BradyGames guide summarizes the happenings in the Crysis universe.  It details the rise of the squid-like alien Ceph; the humans involved in the story; and their totally sweet Nanosuits.

I skimmed the controls section (as I had played the game before, and many other shooters at that), but still found some content interesting around the Nanosuit upgrades, which are summarized in four easy-to-read tables.  It helped me pick out a combat suite for my playthrough quite nicely.

A neat summary of enemies was next.  I had issues telling enemies apart in the game.  Skimming this gave details about weak spots, weapons used, and locations throughout the game.

I read through the weapon section, though.  The fiction around each of the guns, as well as the “dot-table” for describing strengths and weaknesses, was intriguing.  I’m a sucker for a good setting, and it gave me pause and helped me take advantage of a few of the weapons I’d left unused so far.

In the walkthrough section, the real meat of the book, I noticed there are two separate playthroughs; one for the Sam Fisher / Solid Snake folks, and one for those of us who favor the Rambo / Schwarzenegger approach to problem solving.  I took care to read through both.

I’m usually cautious about running into spoilers in these books.  Have no fear folks, this strategy guide glosses over the major points of the story and doesn’t show detailed maps of single-palyer areas.  The descriptions of the areas you traverse are covered with still frames and an easy-to-follow narrative.

The stealth walkthrough focuses on an almost pacifist approach, with tips for getting through certain areas with many of the enemies unharmed.  The action playthrough, however, revels in every opportunity to dispatch as many of your enemies as possible with extreme prejudice, using fists, arrows, bullets, and high explosives.  These two walkthroughs gave me a reason to play through a few troublesome areas again.  I found myself saying, “Hey, there is a tunnel over there” more times than I’m proud to admit.  That said, it added a layer of replayability to Crysis 3 that I hadn’t anticipated.

The last section of the guide focuses on the multiplayer content.  I’m not a big fan of competitive multiplayer, but the toughest barrier to entry is getting to know the maps.  Here is where the guide shines; it has detailed overviews of the game types, maps of the areas, and tactics for getting the most out of your time spent chasing others around a closed arena.  It also details the many modules you work with in multiplayer.

In summary, this guide may not have added strategy to my rather boorish approach to shooters, but it did add replayability.  It showed me the places I had overlooked in my mad quest to recover all my precious arrows.  It gave me some alternate ways to get around the areas that had caused me frustration.  The details on weapon types and uses helped me get the most out of my equipment, which would have helped a lot in my first few hours as the K-Volt isn’t the greatest for taking down soldiers.  Who knew?

All in all, the book lowers the barrier to entry for multiplayer, adds richness of content to Prophet’s story, and gave me a reason to play Crysis 3 again.  So if you’ll excuse me, I have some new hiding places to try out.  That Predator bow won’t fire itself.

First, we ask for your opinion about using Kickstarter (or IndieGoGo) to get WotG into the PC gaming space.  Would you contribute, or would you hate us for asking for money?  Or maybe neither?

We’ve got ideas for stuff we can give to contributors, ways that contributors can guide the content of the podcast, and you’d also be able to make Sam suffer.  The Kickstarter would fund a PC for Jonathan, and Sam has pledged to match whatever is contributed to build himself a PC as well.  The whole podcast would be PC-ready, and you’ll get a ton of content out of us as well.

Let us know what you think in the comments, on the Twitter feed, or in the forums (we promise to check them).

Now, back to the real show.

News:

• The New York Public Library is conducting a critical reading of Spec Ops: The Line, which may inspire a third show here on the WotG network.
• The situation with SimCity was bad when we recorded last week, but then it got much, much, very much worse.  Maybe things will have improved between recording this episode and today?
• A Danish news channel mistakenly used a screenshot from Assassin’s Creed in a report about Syria.

Games:

• Unfinished Swan – Jonathan thinks the art style is stunning in places, and it may have a deeper, more poignant meaning than it was initially given credit for.
• Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance – Sam’s continuing to play and has run into the Kojima moment, where he was reminded that, yup, this is still a Metal Gear game.
• Valkyria Chronicles – Alex has long envied PS3 owners their ability to play this game, but he may have discovered that he envied them too long.
• Wide Sky – Just another game about a hedgehog latching a rope to clouds, flinging himself about the landscape, and breaking floating orbs.
• Witcher 2 – Alex has given this another try, and it’s got its hooks in him this time around.

Metacritic Game:

God of War: Ascension scored an 80 on release day, giving Jonathan a score of 12, Alex a score of 8, and Sam an appalling score of 1.

Jonathan insists that Round 3 be Army of Two: Devil’s Cartel, rather than the much anticipated Bioshock Infinite.  Bioshock Infinite will almost assuredly be the better game, but Army of Two will give a more interesting potential range of scores, as shown by the guesses the hosts make.  Jonathan doesn’t have much faith: 65.  Sam has even less: 62.  Alex, on the other hand, expects some co-op love: 79.

The Awful Truth – October 21, 1937

Directors: Leo McCarey

Producers: Leo McCarey
Writers: Viña Delmar, Sidney Buchman
Actors: Irene Dunne, Cary Grant
Studio/Distributor: Columbia Pictures

The course of the conversation:

The Sex Clock is teased.

To be screwball or not to be.

The hosts pretty much agree that it’s a bit slow, but still enjoyable.

Why’s it on the list?

We apologize to all of our listeners who are Judd Apatow fans.

Plot synopsis, and a cat mauls a courtroom.

We apologize to all of our listeners who are French.

Cary Grant kind of phones it in.

The beauty and danger of Improv.

Should we really be saying, “For it’s time…”?

We come back to the Sex Clock.

Oh, Irene Dunne….

Everything is worth the Sex Clock payoff!

There are plenty of ways to imply sex.

History lesson, kids.

We apologize to all of our listeners.  All of them.

What’s with the egg nog?

Awards information!

Rankings happen!

Michael waffles.  Mmmmm, waffles.

Should we add our own recommendations to the list?

We also discuss expectations that EA’s digital sales are expected to surpass physical sales, news released in the same week where SimCity shows some ugly problems with the digital, online-only model.  (It should be noted that this episode was recorded before things really got ugly with SimCity, so opinions may change in the next episode.)

We try to keep the games section light this week.  Alex is trying out a new virtual trainer in the form of the Nike+ “game,” Sam discovers that he’s playing the love child of Metal Gear Solid and Bayonetta, and Jonathan gets deeper than intended into player agency and emotional manipulation in Spec Ops: The Line.

In the topic, we try to tie together a couple of related items.  In the first item, 58% of American adults (or at least 58% of roughly 3,000 adults surveyed) believe in a correlation between video games and violence.  Alex and Sam are dismayed by some of the other statistics revealed by this study, while Jonathan digs into the heart of the study and finds it may not all be doom and gloom.

In the second item, a noted expert on the subject of games and violence argues that there’s a lot more work to be done before a clear line can be drawn.  Moreover, he expresses concern that politics and tragedy harm the scientific process, leading to results and assumptions that may not be borne out by the data, but that are hard to overcome once engrained in the public consciousness.  His full paper (focused on the recent Supreme Court ruling, rather than the Sandy Hook tragedy) can be found here.

Finally, we return to the Metacritic Game (Metagame? Critic Poker? Name That Score? Yeah, we still need a name for this).  There won’t be a final rating for God of War: Ascension until next week, but we stick with the War theme and make our predictions for Gears of War: Judgement.  Alex bets 85, Sam guess 89, and Jonathan picks the middle ground at 87.  Next week, we’ll actually have a score to mock one another with!

City of God – May 18, 2002

Directors: Fernando Meirelles, Kátia Lund
Producers: Andrea Barata Ribiero, Mauricio Andrade Ramos, Elisa Tolomelli, Walter Salles
Writers: Bráulio Mantovani
Actors: Alexandre Rodrigues, Alice Braga, Leandro Firmino, Phellipe Haagensen, Seu Jorge
Studio: O2 Filmes, Globo Filmes, StudioCanal, Wild Bunch
Distributor: Miramax Films and Buena Vista International

The course of the conversation:

We’re happy to be podcasting! But this movie isn’t exactly happy.

Movie information is given.

Man, this movie is tiring.  But it’s handled well.

The cycle of violence.

Over the rainbow performances?

Jonathan complains and then takes it back.

Can Chekov’s gun be too subtle?

What happened to Rocket?  Do we care?

Somebody brought a camera to a gun fight.

Is it cowardice or a different kind of bravery?

Who’s the main character of this film?

Cinematography discussion.

Despite being a movie revolving around children, the movie is not for children.

Bananas make another plot appearance.

Your hosts have no idea how this movie relates to the modern day City of God.

More depressing trivia!

Choices are made. Battle lines are drawn.  Whiplash is suffered.

We announce a movie we’re not actually going to watch yet.

We apologize to all of our listeners who are fans of Napoleon.

Corniness is averted.

Back Seat Producers mentions: 0

Before we get started on games, Alex talks about how The News and The Podcast intersected in his life.

Jonathan, meanwhile, announces the release of a new podcast, We Just Watched a Movie.  Join us as we watch the movies on Time’s All-TIME 100 Movies list (plus a few more), and then rank them against one another.  We’ve set up separate feeds for the two podcasts, which you can find in the links on the right, or you can stay subscribed to the main feed and continue to get everything we release.  Either way, we hope you enjoy it.

In the meat of the episode this week, we finally talk about games we’ve been playing.

• Sam gives us a treatise on the Resistance series.
• Alex gets emotional about Journey.
• Jonathan dislikes weird inconsistencies in The Last Story.
• Alex hates on the update process of the PS3.
• Alex fails to understand what’s going on in White Knight Chronicles 2.
• Sam has also completed Crysis 3, and has good things to say about that.
• Alex talks about Banner Saga: Factions, a PC strategy game with clever mechanics.
• Jonathan wraps up with a quick plug for Pixel People,
• a quick warning about Early Bird,
• and a quick complaint about Spec Ops: The Line.

Finally, we introduce a new game!  We’re still looking for a good name, but we’re placing wagers on the Metacritic score for upcoming new releases.  We’re picking games a couple weeks out, and then we’ll follow up and see who got closest.  Lowest score at the end of X number of weeks wins!

This week, we take a stab at God of War: Ascension.  Be sure to give us your predictions in the comments below.

First, a couple of shout-outs.  Thanks to Christina Ellis for beating us to the AFI list with her podcast Watching 100 Movies, and thus forcing us to find new, equally interesting ground to cover.

Thanks also to Back Seat Producers for inspiring me to want to talk about movies, too, and also for giving me a format to steal shamelessly.

This show pulls its movie list from the All-TIME 100 Movies list, as well as the 20 additions made last year, and the 10 Greatest Movies of the Millennium.  As it stands, that leaves us with 133 movies to watch (there are two trilogies, and two two-parters on the list), and likely 130 episodes (we’ll each be recommending a movie for inclusion on the list).

If you’d like to keep tabs with us and track your process, as well, we’re tracking the movies we’ve covered with a list on iCheckMovies.  (Here’s an iCheckMovies list with the complete list on it.) In case of potential scheduling issues, we’re filling out the list as we go along. We hope you’re ready for the long haul, folks!

Without further ado, then, let us begin!

 Sherlock Jr. – April 21, 1924

Directors: Buster Keaton, Fatty Arbuckle (uncredited)
Producers: Joseph M. Schenck, Buster Keaton
Writers: Clyde Bruckman, Jean Havez, Joseph A. Mitchell
Actors: Buster Keaton, Kathryn McGuire, Ward Crane
Distributor: Metro Pictures Corporation

The course of the conversation:

Why are we doing this?

We’re using the Time All-TIME 100 Movies list (plus some extras).

The Buster Keaton Scale.

Forget Chuck Norris.  Buster Keaton is the man!

Plot synopsis.

No clue how to make babies.

Spoilers should be assumed.  There will likely be no further warnings.

“For the time” gets discussed.

Buster Keaton is devoted to his work.

Should we discuss acting?  Nathaniel says, “Yes!”

Bugs Bunny and Buster Keaton

Devotion to the craft of filmmaking, all for a gag.

And the French arrives.

Other black-and-white, silent movies.

Back Seat Producers mentions: 1

In the weeks to follow, we will rank the movies on the list, but with only one available….

Next week: City of God, a 2002 crime drama.

In future weeks, we’ll want you to leave your own ranked lists in the comments below.  For now, let us know what movie you think deserves to be on the list, but isn’t.

There are three tables in this pack: Clone Wars, Empire Strikes Back and Boba Fett.

Clone Wars is based off the cartoon, and deals with the adventures of Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano. It’s a loop table, much like Zen Studios’ previous Iron Man or Spider-Man tables. It’s probably most similar to Spider-Man, in that the loops are positioned in an odd, asymmetrical fashion. Clone Wars is also by far the most straightforward of the three tables. What you see is what you get; the wide left and right loops spell out “COUNCIL,” and if you get the words lit up, you activate a mission for the opportunity for big points.

The Empire table is trickier. First, it’s very much a traditional table; loop lanes on the outside, ramps on the inside, an array of targets on the far center and lots of open space in the middle.

The thing that makes Empire amazing is that nearly every major event in the movie has been made into a mode, and those modes are easy to start. With a few carefully placed shots in the center, you can start a “scene.” The first one involves you making shots to retrieve Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber to kill the Wampa. Then there’s another that involves you hitting an Imperial probe droid spinner to fulfill that scene of the movie. There are about a dozen or so scenes to fulfill, and each one comes with signature lines from the movie, albeit with different voice actors supplying those lines.

The Boba Fett table is magic. In this table, you’re playing the bounty hunter, and you’re simply trying to get paid. Careful shots in the middle lanes will light up the words “Empire” or “Hutts.” Once they’re fully lit, the faction will offer you a choice of bounties. You’ll choose your bounty, Darth Vader will emphasize there will be no disintegrations, you’ll make your shots and then hit a loop to call Boba Fett’s ship, Slave I, to the table. The ship will hover and sway in the middle of the table, challenging you to shoot a ball up the ship’s ramp for the bounty payoff. Unlike the Empire table, it actually sounds like Boba Fett’s voice is used on this table.

Yes, the voice acting isn’t EXACTLY right, but it’s pretty close. Even so, the John Williams scores make up for it, and the sound effects are directly from the films. Every lightsaber swipe and blaster is perfect.

This is a pack of tables that I think is actually a steal at $10/800 MSP. This is a no-brainer. This is pinball perfection meets Star Wars. Best of all, this isn’t the last of the Star Wars tables. Zen Studios has seven more coming. It’s going to be a good year.

Alex blew his game discussion possibilities in the WotG One Shot last weekend, so he’s rather quiet this go round.  Jonathan talks up Kerbal Space Program, just in case Matt the Cancer Merchant didn’t sell you on the concept.  And Sam talks about a bunch of games he purchased, but hasn’t yet played.

Then I suppose we can talk about the PS4.  Specs are discussed.  Price is prognosticated.  Threats of defection are made.  And a challenge is thrown down.  Enjoy!

Alex discusses a new Xbox Live Arcade game called Arcadecraft, gets tactical with Skulls of the Shogun, and delves into the debacle that is Aliens Colonial Marines. Things get funky. Morals get reversed. Skulls get eaten.

Okay, not really.  Alex was sick and Sam was briefly thrown back to the stone age, resulting in no opportunity to actually record a “proper” episode.  Instead, this week Jonathan sits down with his co-hosts for a soon to be dropping movie podcast, We Just Watched a Movie.

Michael’s been on the show before, and at the time, he hadn’t yet finished Batman: Arkham City, so we start there.  The conversation then basically just wanders for an hour, covering Final Fantasy, the 32-/64-bit era, difficulty levels, horror games, The Walking Dead, the BBC, Heavy Rain vs. Shenmue, the necessity of boredom, Uncharted, Prince of Persia, the next generation of consoles, and PCs in the living room.

Alex has also recorded a short episode.  We’ll release that a little later today as consolation for the late release.  Next week, hopefully fewer illnesses and total town technology outages.

Be careful, though.  One child can only win two pageants in a row before being retired, which means you may want to take a dip in the gene pool to make sure your next kid is a winner, too.  Have more kids than you can afford, and Child Services will start taking them away.

If that sounds like your kind of slightly-twisted fun, be sure to back Matt’s Kickstarter to see the game made.

And, as is tradition with guests we have on the show, Matt also gives us his Top Ten.  It’s like he and Jonathan were separated at birth.

10. Kerbal Space Program
9. Professor Layton and the Curious Village
8. Mass Effect 2
7. Shadow of the Colossus
6. Journey
5. Civilization 4
4. Fallout 3
3. Sim City
2. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
1. Braid

The WotGs are back!  It was a great year for gaming, so let’s just jump right in.

First off, thanks to those who contributed their Games of the Year to the cast:  Scott Dunphy, Scott Wachter, Tim, Paul, Darrell (probably misspelled that; sorry, bud), Tony and Holden.

Now, our picks.

The Molyneux

• Papo & Yo
• Steel Battalion
• Lollipop Chainsaw

The Brink

• Quantum Conundrum
• Armored Core V
• Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City

Darksidered

• Transformers: Fall of Cybertron
• Far Cry 3
• Max Payne 3

Biggest Disappointment

• Assassin’s Creed 3
• Armored Core V & Steel Battalion
• Mass Effect 3

The El Shaddai

• Asura’s Wrath
• Asura’s Wrath
• Max Payne 3

Biggest Time Sink

• Borderlands 2 (58 hours)
• Ghost Recon Future Soldier (113 hours)
• Borderlands 2 (108 hours)

Most Addictive

• Infinite Runners
• Need for Speed: Most Wanted
• Dishonored

Best New IP

• Journey
• Dishonored
• Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

Continues to Impress

• Saints Row: The Third
• Assassin’s Creed multiplayer
• Skyrim

Made Just For Me

• Mark of the Ninja
• Ghost Recon Future Soldier
• Borderlands 2

Best Throwback

• Rock Band Blitz
• XCOM: Enemy Unknown
• Metal Gear Solid: HD Collection

Best Story

• The Walking Dead
• XCOM
• Mass Effect 3

Best Character

• Handsome Jack, Borderlands 2
• Vaas, Far Cry 3
• Legion, Mass Effect 3

Host’s Random Pick for Distinction

• Spaceteam
• Faster Than Light
• Journey

Hosts’ Game of the Year

• The Walking Dead
• Borderlands 2
• Borderlands 2

The Way of the Game Game of the Year: Borderlands 2

• Dead Island: Riptide special collectible is sociopath fodder.
• In related news: Square Enix kills Hitman-themed assassinate-your-friends “game” after just a few hours.
• EA’s SimCity EULA includes a threat to ban players from all EA games for not reporting bugs.  [Between recording and releasing the show, EA has backtracked and modified the EULA.]

Games:

• Jonathan has completed Mass Effect 2.  He thinks maybe people complaining about Mass Effect 3′s ending simply forgot the endings of the first two games.
• Alex has found that very little is actually better with Kinect, but he refuses to simply disconnect it.
• Alex has also found that gamifying his life is awesome.
• Sam busts out a couple of big DLCs: Dragonborn for Skyrim, and Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt for Borderlands 2.
• Jonathan tries to get Sam to talk about Journey again, but Sam plays coy.

Topic:

We’ve already discussed gamer entitlement before, but the guy who asked the White House to stop the distribution of the new Devil May Cry game isn’t entitled, he’s nuts.

The sentiment behind the petition, though, has gotten Alex thinking: when he complains about, say, Far Cry 3 diverging too much from Far Cry 2, is he a part of the problem?  What exactly do we expect from our sequels, and what makes one “right” and another “wrong?”

In games this week, Jonathan has made a critical determination about Mass Effect 2, and dissuades Sam from downloading Pandemic for iOS while trying to actually tell him it might be worth his time.  Sam, meanwhile, decided to punish himself with more Assassin’s Creed 3, and none of us is sure why.  Finally, Alex is still trying to recapture the glory days of earlier basketball games, but NBA 2K13 doesn’t quite stack up.

In our topic this week, we take a look at some of the games of 2013 that we want, and some of the games of 2013 that we didn’t know we wanted until we started researching for this episode.  Two of them involve witches.

Our side-bet for the year is a bit of a twist on last year’s.  Rather than pick the future Game of the Year, we’re picking the game that’s most likely to disappoint us.  Let’s call it the “Prove Us Wrong” prediction.  Sam chooses MGS: Revengeance (it hurts just typing that “word”), Jonathan worries about Remember Me, and Alex thinks Tomb Raider will be a pointless Lara Croft torture simulator.

Games:

Jonathan:

• Mass Effect 2 – Playing the series continues, and the most immediate difference is that everything in this game is huge.  Second, it may have stopped being an RPG, and transformed into a 3PS with RPG elements.
• Spaceteam – A free iOS-based party game of yelling at one another and pressing random buttons.  It sounds weird, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun.

Alex:

• Far Cry 3 – After crafting a shark wallet underwater, suffering through a lousy tailing mission, and then photographing dead pirates, but only specifically dead pirates, Alex has Darksidered Far Cry 3.
• AssThree – Alex picked up Assassin’s Creed 3 for the multiplayer only (no, really, he gave the single-player disc to his neighbor), and finds he dominates the Animus.

Sam:

• The PS3 and Journey – Sam had a lousy time with the Sony UI, which seems to be standard fare, and then he was expecting something from Journey that it didn’t give him.
• X-COM – Alex has appeared in Sam’s X-COM game, and was horribly scarred by some Mutons, but Hands Holmberg saved the day from half the map away.
• Resistance: Fall of Man – Interesting weaponry mechanics and tougher-than-expected AI means Sam’s still enjoying this title.

The Apple discussion and the game talk ran longer than expected, so we’ll be saving our topic, a preview of 2013′s anticipated games, for next episode.  It’s not like anything decent is coming out this week anyway.

News:

Games:

Sidius Nova: a free, iOS 4x game crossed with Plants vs. Zombies.  It seems weird, but it’s cool.

Resident Evil 6: Sam tried so hard, but the rage must flow.

Endless Space: Another Civ-like game that’s captured Alex’s attention, and has him thinking about American foreign policy.

Fall of Cybertron: Jonathan explores his dislike of 3PSs, and takes his own big swig of Haterade.  OPTIMUS PRIME DOES NOT DO MENIAL CHORES!

Topic:

We make new year’s resolutions on the show today.  Well, Alex and Jonathan make new year’s resolutions, and Sam just steals them as his own.

What are your gaming goals for 2013?

A quick word about our Top Ten lists before we go on.  We believe, here at the Way of the Game, that what a person holds as their top games of all time can tell you a lot about who they are as a gamer, and give perspective when listening to the opinions they give about other games.  The games on our top ten lists represent our personal pinnacle of gaming goodness, and we seek out other games that can provide us with similar experiences.

Reevaluating our Top Tens is also an important exercise.  Not only have three years worth of game releases come and gone since our first Top Tens, but we have also grown as gamers.  Are our tastes now what they once were?  Were we initially influenced by nostalgia rather than quality?  And what do the changes we make say about us as gamers and as critics?

Also, nothing in the episode was topical, so we were able to record it in advance and take the holiday week off.  ;-)

Here are our old Top Tens.  For posterity, but to avoid spoilers, I’ll post our new Top Tens after the break.  And be sure to leave your own (new or revised) Top Ten list in the comments.

	Alex	Jonathan	Sam
10.	Culdcept Saga	Catherine	MGS 3: Snake Eater
9.	Pinball FX	Minecraft	Final Fantasy 6
8.	Unreal Tournament Multiplayer	Red Dead Redemption	Halo 3: ODST
7.	Metal Gear Solid	Saint's Row: The Third	Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
6.	Ghost Recon Future Soldier Multiplayer	Street Fighter 2	Skyrim
5.	AC: Brotherhood Multiplayer	Shadow of the Colossus	Bioshock
4.	Neverwinter Nights Aurora Toolset	Super Mario 3	Borderlands 2
3.	Catherine	Journey	Bastion
2.	1 vs. 100	Portal	Chrono Trigger
1.	Bioshock	Super Metroid	Final Fantasy Tactics

Sam talks about Resident Evil 6.  Alex talks up The Walking Dead.  They both wax poetic about XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

After that, the boys discuss the year’s “themes.”  Stealth done right, strategy’s not dead, and developers aren’t afraid to delay for quality.

We’ve start with an ongoing saga: the Bioshock Infinite Cover Controversy.  Ken Levine explains that if you think the cover isn’t aimed at you, you’re right.

On the other side, Naughty Dog refuses to cave to corporate pressure and makes the cover they want.

Meanwhile, you can now vote on reversible cover art for Bioshock Infinite, so maybe that will mollify complainers?  The poll closes December 19th.

Finally, Ubisoft has announced really bad news concerning Assassin’s Creed 3: it’s not just the fastest selling Assassin’s Creed ever, it’s the fastest-selling game Ubisoft has ever made.

Which brings us to games.  Sam’s been playing AssThree, and while he largely agrees with all the complains Jonathan has about the game, he still finds himself compelled to keep playing.

Jonathan jumped into the Wayback Machine this week, rediscovering Super Mario Bros 3 and Super Punch Out, and holy hell they’re both still really good.  Also, a bit more XCOM, where his team was butchered and Alex’s advice reveals his cold, heartless side.

Alex, meanwhile, has been playing Fallen Enchantress, a fantasy-based 4X game that puts Alex in mind of Civilization, except there’s no researching Pottery.

In our topic, we discuss The Walking Dead’s VGA GotY award, and the surprise that, while the ceremony itself is very SpikeTV, the awards might actually be legit.

Sam talks up Halo 4 and Dishonored, both of which he’s beaten, and both of which he enjoyed, although we still don’t understand why developers “fix” things that aren’t broken.

Jonathan and Alex argue about Need for Speed: Most Wanted for a bit, and then Jonathan tells stories of how Sam died in XCOM again.

Meanwhile, Alex has been playing Hitman Absolution and Far Cry 3.  One is a tightly focused and impressively realized game, the other chock full of incongruent mini games and side quests.

Finally, in our topic, we prognosticate about Entertainment Weekly’s Game of the Decade poll.  Keeping with our trend of being lousy prognosticators, we get it really wrong.

Platform: Xbox 360, PS3, PC, Mac

Developer: Gearbox Software

Publisher: 2K Games

Genre: 1st Person Shooter

Rating:

• The Holmberg: Buy It
• The Producer: Buy It
• The Moose: Buy It

Maury unleashes dance havoc on the world.

Consumer Alert: Don’t reset your Wii U (or any computer, really) during the firmware update.

Jonathan’s got another free iOS game to recommend: Hill Climb Racing.

Alex really digs the way Need for Speed: Most Wanted cuts through the BS and gets to the racing.

The rest of the games this week are repeats (Assassin’s Creed 3, Borderlands 2, Halo 4), but at least with AC3, we’re responding to listener comments.  Leave your own!

Finally, Alex introduces a new game based around Guiness’s Video Game World Records, but neither Sam nor Jonathan are much good at it.

Little Miss Sunshine, Toy Story 3, Star Wars: Episode 7: All written by the same guy.

Peter Molyneux asked for donations to buy new servers for Curiosity, which doesn’t make sense, because weren’t they going to charge $50,000 for DLC?

Speaking of Curiosity, Jonathan’s annoyed by it.

Speaking of annoyed, Sam hated the ending of Borderlands 2.

Speaking of first person shooters, Sam’s been liking Halo 4, but Alex finds it Mostly Harmless.

Speaking of mostly harmless, Sam is being the exact opposite of that in Dishonored.

Speaking of stabbing people in the back, Jonathan’s found Assassin’s Creed 3 to be disjointed and disappointing.

Mark of the Ninja, though, may just qualify as a Classic.

With the return of Alex, we also have the return of short news!

• Have players been trained not to improvise in games?  The Hitman developers are concerned, and the Dishonored developers say, “Yes.”
• In good news, 343 Industries will hand out lifetime bans for sexist and discriminatory behavior in Halo 4.  It’s about time.
• And in You’ve-got-to-be-kidding news, Microsoft offers to pay you 5¢ an hour to play Halo 4.

Games!

• Jonathan talks up About Love, Hate, & the Other Ones on iOS.
• Alex has killed all of his friends in XCOM: Enemy Unknown.
• Jonathan has some unkind things to say about Borderlands 2 (finally), and Alex and Sam disagree.
• Alex and Sam talk about Dishonored, and Jonathan gets motion sick.
• Finally, Sam tries to talk about Assassin’s Creed 3, but Jonathan knows more than Sam and wants to wait a week.

In our topic this week, we revisit the U.S. election and put forward our own presidential tickets for the consideration of the electorate.

• Alex gives us the Handsome Jack/Andrew Ryan ticket, who will put you to work, take your stuff, and then murder you.
• Jonathan puts forward FemShep/King of All Cosmos, who will unite the globe, destroy all the stars in the sky, and then end the universe.
• Sam back the Big Boss/Ezio Auditore regime, who will strengthen the intelligence service, stab you in the back, and then hide your body in an unpleasant location.

Listen to the candidates’ platforms, then leave a comment below with your vote, or send a tweet to @TWotG with the appropriate hashtag for your vote: #WotGJackRyan, #WotGShepKing, or #WotGBossEzio.  Come December, we’ll tabulate all the votes, debate the hanging chads, and determine who should REALLY lead the country for the next four years.

Alex isn’t with us this week, thanks to Sandy being newsworthy.

Jonathan’s games this week include Random Heroes, which he has some serious complaints about but keeps coming back to, Mark of the Ninja, which he’s very pleased to report his recommendation to pick this one up was sound, and Assassin’s Creed 3, which is still trying to force Desmond on us but early on seems to be a step up from Revelations.

Sam brings two games to the table: Borderlands 2, which turns out to be really difficult when you’re fighting enemies twelve levels higher than your character, and Dishonored, which he finds to be enjoyable but not necessarily up to par with Skyrim or Fallout.

In our topic this week, the hosts beat on a mid-core developer (what does that even mean?) who claims that “single-player is a gimmick.”  The guys point to arcade games, board and card games, and the evidence of the Top Tens to say, “Hmmmm… Maybe not.”

EA has apparently come to the conclusion that consumers won’t pay for crap. Who’d'a’thunk?  As obvious as this would seem to be, this leaves Alex wondering why people won’t pay for crap, but they will pay for stuff they might not even play, like the season pass for Halo 4.

In games this week, Jonathan has played more Borderlands 2, and the Mechromancer is officially exactly what he wanted.  He’s also played some Dishonored and thinks Alex is either wrong or picky about how the game looks (although he did play it on the PS3), but unfortunately something about the game makes him physically ill.  Alex, meanwhile, has gotten over the graphics complaints and found Dishonored to offer him a lot more options than he initially realized.  And Sam has picked up gauntlet of playing Spec Ops: The Line, and found that gauntlet to be quite heavy.

Finally, in the topic, we discuss Bitter Pill games: those games you suffered through on the promise of something good.  Some of these stories end well, some end poorly, and a few might surprise you.  Also, as promised, here’s Dara O’Briain, with one of the funniest bits about video games ever.  (It ties into the Metal Gear talk, really.)

One of those happenings?  SausageFest!  This year was quantifiably better than the first two combined, and you can keep the awesome rolling by donating.

News!  Seriously, don’t joke about having sex with 14-year olds.  Also, don’t pirate Halo 4 and expect to keep your Live account.  Finally, no need to worry about finding a match in League of Legends because EVERYONE IS PLAYING IT.

Games!  Sam talks up a couple of board games, Power Grid and Pandemic, as he hasn’t played anything other than Angry Birds and Temple Run all week.  Jonathan picked up an awesome Werewolf variant at Archon in the form of The Resistance, and also busted out some Anomaly: Warzone Earth after getting home from Saint Louis.  Alex might’ve talked about Dishonored some more, but couldn’t because X-COM got in the way.

In the topic, listener (and one-time contest winner) Joe recalls Alex’s discomfort with Spec Ops: The Line, and wonders if maybe that discomfort was the point.  Can games be intentionally not fun?  Should we appreciate a game whose average gameplay is part of the message?  Is the medium capable of such nuances, or does its very nature forever doom games to be escapist entertainment?

Prior to that, the hosts discuss the impending spectacle that is SausageFest.  If you don’t have the good fortune to be in St. Louis this weekend, but you’d still like to breast cancer research, please consider donating to a good cause.  This year, working on the assumption that people are fairly well aware of the risk of breast cancer, we’re donating the money to The Breast Cancer Research Foundation, where it will go directly to people searching for a cure.

In the short news, we start to talk about Sony suing Jerry Lambert for looking too much like Kevin Butler, but then fate intervenes.  We move on to discussing the exodus of CliffyB from Epic, and the doctors from Bioware, only to shift back to an argument about Bridgestone tires.  Finally, somebody at Infinity Ward is getting beat about the head and shoulders for inserting art into a Modern Warfare map that the Islamic gaming community found offensive.

In games, Alex has been doing inappropriate things to X-COM: Enemy Within ever since he laid his grubby hands on it.  He also had a brief flirtation with Dishonored, but muddy textures and a too-familiar plot drove him (quite willingly) into the arms of his dark X-COM mistress.

Sam and Jonathan have both been playing Borderlands 2 together.  You’ve heard Sam and Alex pontificate at length about the game, but now Jonathan gets his turn, and had this show been recorded prior to the release of the Mechromancer, his opinion might have been quite a bit different.  Jonathan is also playing Temple Run on the iPhone in ever spare moment he has, and Mark of the Ninja has impressed him deeply after only one level.

Sam wraps up the show with some none-video-game experiences from BigBadCon in Oakland.  Apparently, this is the indie gaming convention you want to go to if you want to get your indie gaming going.

But of course, Sam and Alex have things to say. Alex can feel the XCOM excitement in the marrow of his bones, but he has a problem with how the media is covering this sure-to-be-amazing tactical role-playing game. Specifically, he has a problem with how they insist on telling him how amazing it is.

Then the hosts delve into their current fascination: Borderlands 2. What is it about this game that has Sam and Alex already talking about it being a contender for the Way of the Game’s Game of the Year?

Sam has reached a new stage of maturity. He’s thought about it for a while, and he’s decided he can wait no more. He’s finally taking the plunge, like so many young men before.

He bought a PS3.

He explains why in this episode.

That thing we teased in the previous show notes? It should happen next week!

But sometimes we fail. Jonathan is settling into his new place, so he has a good excuse. Sam’s been traveling, so there’s that. And then there’s the fact that Sam and Alex have been waist-deep in cel shaded bullet shells in Borderlands 2.

Enough excuses. Jonathan & Alex start things off with some quick impressions about the impending launch of the Wii U and the iPhone 5. Then Alex delves into his opinions of Madden 13 (his favorite Madden ever) and the addicting Faster Than Light.

Then Sam & David aka Chibi aka “The Jackal” aka “The Plugmeister” jump in for a rousing discussion on art and graphics in video games. Sure, they’re necessary, but what are the considerations that must be taken when balancing resources between the art for a game and the systems that ARE the game? What are examples of excellent art direction and lousy art direction? Are we really going to nitpick between Final Fantasy VI and VII AGAIN?

Next episode, if our star charts are true, we’ll talk to people on the other side of the world about a little free-to-play browser game that should make fans of old school D&D and CCGs very, very happy.

So in quick news, we visit the controversy about Steam Greenlight’s $100 fee. Is it too much for indie game developers to handle? Does it accomplish what it’s trying to accomplish? What other options are out there?

We also talk about the idea of urban planning vis a vis Minecraft. Let’s hope they include plans for a fire department.

In our games section, Jonathan talks about his disappointment with Quantum Conundrum and his growing addiction to Super Hexagon. Sam spends more time with Juliet the Zombie Hunter from Lollipop Chainsaw, and Alex sips Red Dead Redemption like a fine brandy and espouses his new appreciation for game developers. Don’t pirate games, kids.

Then, in honor of the Holmberg’s anniversary, we dig into what we think are gaming’s best romances. Jonathan picks something from the current generation, Sam picks something from the past generation, and Alex thinks outside the box.

Next week: We’ve already done games AS art. Now we’ll talk about the art IN games.

• Steam Community is out of Beta!  Do we care?
• The U.S. Gamer population is declining!  Do we actually believe that?
• Metal Gear: Ground Zeroes has two hosts excited, but will Snake be Solid or Naked?

Games!

• Jonathan:
  • Lost Cities
  • Quantum Conundrum
  • Rock Band Blitz
• Alex:
  • Final Fantasy XIII-2
  • Transformers: Fall of Cybertron
• Sam:
  • Transformers: Fall of Cybertron
  • Gamer Wedding with Pandemic and Power Grid

Topic!

Should a good game be punished because the developer is an ass, the publisher is evil, or the player base sucks?  By “punished”, we mean skipped, not played, boycotted in general.  By “the developer is an ass,” we mean they fail to properly test a patch before releasing it, find a game-save-destroying bug after releasing the patch, try to shift the blame for not fixing the bug onto a contract agreement they should have been aware of from the start, and then leaving the gamers affected to fend for themselves.

Be sure to let us know what you think!

You know, if I had my way, we’d have a video game that harkens back to that bygone era, where we had good, solid dice instead of buttons, where we were pummeled by monsters of our imagination instead of by the sheer weight of the pixels thrust into our sensory organs.

Oh wait… there’s Card Hunter. And it has a collectible card game, too.

Indie developer Blue Manchu is showing off Card Hunter at PAX, and it doesn’t take long to realize it’s the love child of Red Box D&D and Magic: The Gathering. To hear Blue Manchu describe it, it’s a free-to-play browser CCG that’s played on a battlefield that looks very much like a battlemat with cardboard monsters.

Each PC has a deck that dictates movement and attack, and those cards are generated automatically based on the PC’s equipment. A rusty sword might give you a lousy selection of cards, while magical weapons will make awesome cards come up with more regularity.

Adventures appear to be contained in modules that contain a certain number of battles. Blue Manchu says additional item cards can be earned simply by playing the game (though of course, I bet there are ways to pay for cards to be unlocked more quickly.) It’ll have multiplayer options as well.

Look for Card Hunter to come out before the end of the year.

__________________________________________________________

In the meat of the episode today, we pretty much just talk about games the whole time.  And by “we,” I actually pretty much just mean Jonathan.

First, though, Alex shares his initial thoughts on Madden, which are surprisingly positive considered past years.  He also gives us another book recommendation, Prince of Thorns, which is all about the bad guy.

Sam brings a couple more games to the table than Alex, one new and one old.  The old one, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, ended up causing a bit of obsessiveness in Sam, while the new one. Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, has Sam’s opinions mixed.

Jonathan has played through Journey again, and found even more reasons to love it than before.  He’s also signed up for Playstation Plus, which ought to keep his game appetite sated for a while.

The game, though, that dominates the podcast is one Alex was curious about last week, Papo & Yo.  Jonathan has some personal experience with the subject matter which inspired Papo & Yo, and he’s got a bit of a different perspective on how effective the game truly is at conveying its message.  Ultimately, he finds the game fundamentally flawed, but worth playing by anyone looking for a counterargument to Cristoph Hartmann’s idiocy, or who are simply interested in seeing games expand as an art form.

We will no doubt revisit this topic in the future.

Jonathan finished two games this week!  Stacking and N+ make it into the All Done pile.  Dust: An Elysian Tail gets nixed, though, based on a disappointing demo.

Alex busts out some Sleeping Dogs, and tells us about Papo & Yo, a game he won’t be able to actually play.

Sam’s plans to play Metal Gear Solid 3 collapse under the need to record this episode, but he’s got lots of Gen Con Virgin stories to share.  He’s returned, but he’s not the same.

In a brief news/topic hybrid, we rip on Christoph Hartmann for claiming that the only way games can produce unique genres and emotional games is if we have photorealistic graphics.  Journey, Shadow of the Colossus, Silent Hill 2, Bastion, Portal, and dozens of others would like to have a word with you, Christoph.

Finally, we wrap up with another installment of Identity Thief.  It turns out we are truly terrible at this game.

In news this week, an Olympic gymnast performs her routine to a musical Zelda medley and Valve makes Team Fortress 2 even more awesome.

In games this week, Jonathan has finished Dynamite Jack and The Act and recommends them both.  Alex ends his sabbatical and dives back into gaming with Ghost Recon, Symphony, and Nexus: The Jupiter Incident.  Sam busts out some sweet moves in Lollipop Chainsaw, and watches someone else play Metal Gear Solid 4.

In the topic, we decide to discuss something that won’t be contentious at all: the best game music.  Each of us picks three songs and then we discuss why it’s the best.  There are some surprises.  There are some fantastic choices.  There are some questionable choices.  Whatever you think about our favorites, what are yours?

Next week, Sam will no doubt have drunk Gen Con tales to relate.  Fun!

In games, Sam almost talks about the game that started this podcast, but he actually meant to talk about Arkham City.  Alex, prior to the start of his gaming sabbatical, has finished a game of Warlock: Masters of the Arcane, and he also picked up Final Fantasy XIII-2 for a song.  Jonathan found nothing interesting to say about Akai Katana, gives a brief preview of Splice, and then rips to shreds the ending of Outland.

In the topic, we discuss the proliferation of stat tracking options both in-game and out.  How much is too much?  Do you even care?

Then we bust out another game of Identity Thief, and it starts off strong, and finishes in shame.

Next week: gaming music!

First, as an ex-smoker, I can confidently report that gaming taps into the section of my brain once preoccupied by cigarettes. Smoking was something I did in between other things in my life. I’d smoke between classes. I’d smoke between waking up and my first chore of the day. I’d have a few smokes between arriving at home after work and dinner. Smoking was this pleasant pastime that had the unpleasant side effects of being horrible for my health, social life and wallet. So I quit smoking.

My gaming habit, however, has only become deeper ingrained in my life over the past several years. I get home, I fire up the PC for a few rounds of the latest strategy game. After dinner, I rally some online compadres for some fragging. On the weekends, I game to while away the day.

Now that I’m on my sabbatical, I’m getting urges to play. As the clock ticks towards the end of my day at work, I automatically think about what I can play once I get home. Then I jolt myself out of the daydream, cognizant that the purpose of the sabbatical is to NOT play, to NOT indulge in those urges.

Yet, of course, it’s impossible for me to separate from the gaming culture completely. I’m entrenched. I’ve made wonderful friends via the hobby. I have the podcast. I have the second job. There are eight game-related items on my desk right now, along with all the gaming posters I have plastered around my walls.

So, it’s a matter of dealing with the urges, and that’s a familiar feeling. It’s just like dealing with the urges to have a cigarette, to fill that in-between time with a pleasant pastime. And while I’m confident I’ll finish the sabbatical successfully, dammit, those urges keep coming. I was listening to a podcast about the Medici family’s schemes, and that made me think about how awesome it’d be to try to get back into Crusader Kings 2. Talking about what toppings I’d like on my pizza led me to think about Mario and Luigi.

Perhaps that sort of thinking isn’t just the result of my psychology; it could be just a symptom of the prevalence of gaming in today’s society. The more I hang out with the great cross-section of the gaming populace, the more I realize it truly spans all ages and both genders.

Anyway, other insights I’ve had is that just because I have more free time doesn’t mean I’m more productive. I have “side quests” in the works that I’ve not put one minute of time towards, despite how cool I think it’d be to pursue them. It makes me realize that my problem isn’t truly a matter of time or distraction; it’s about developing a system in which the side quests become a part of my everyday life.

Another thing I’ve come to realize is how much this gaming sabbatical is like fasting. I’ve never fasted, but this sabbatical happens to coincide with Ramadan, and the subject of fasting in Ramadan has come up in a few conversations with a good Muslim friend of mine. I’m not saying giving up games is in any way close to the fasting that Muslims do in the holy month, but I think both force the person out of their normal rhythm, and by doing so, allow them the chance to examine themselves and see what can be improved.

I’m honestly having fun with this. I’m getting a new perspective on things. I’m even flirting with the idea of taking a whole month off from gaming… next year.

News!

News: Battlefield 4 is leakannounced. The Internet goes, “Meh.”

Becca brings our first Wii game to the ‘cast in a while: Phineas & Ferb: Across the Second Dimension.  Sam’s still playing Kingdoms of Amalur and blah blah blah.  Alex has a couple free-to-play games: one’s good (Tribes Ascend) and one’s bad (Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes).  Also, Alex is playing more Ghost Recon and blah blah blah.

Longtime listeners of the podcast will recall our (Alex’s really) unhealthy fascination with gamer hookup site, GameCrush.  Now, there’s a new site for The Producer to obsess over: Shag a Gamer.

Finally, we introduce a new game to the show: Identity Thief!  One host picks a character.  The second host asks yes or no questions and has unlimited guesses.  The third host has only three chances to steal the identity of the character away.

In the news, all we have to talk about is the success of the Ouya Kickstarter.

In games, Jonathan found Armored Core V to be utterly incomprehensible.  Alex has rekindled his love for Brutal Legend and watched a whole lot of people play fighting games at Evo.  Sam continues to play Kingdoms of Amalur and brings some thoughts about MMOs.

Also this week, we discuss Peter Molyneux’s claim that Curiosity’s prize will be “life-changingly important.”  Should this bother us as much as it does?  Does this have the power to finally kill Peter Molyneux’s credibility?  Does Molyneux even have any credibility with you anymore?

Finally, we wrap up with our first entry into the Way of the Game’s Ten Commandments of Gaming: Thou shalt finish a game before buying another.

News!

Anyway, enough praise.

Jonathan talks a bit about Pocket Planes, the new horrendously wonderful time-sink from NimbleBit.  Alex played some of the new Steel Battalion, and pretty much can’t recommend it.  Also, more pinball is more awesome and that’s all you need to know.

Then we discuss Alex’s experiences at E3.  He’s got some stompy excitement, some understandable disappoints, and some interesting insights into what E3 is all about.

Next week?  Stuff.  Promise.

I don’t know if there is a term within the pinball lexicon for this type of game, but I’m going to coin one. World War Hulk is a “speller” table. It seems that every loop and target has a word associated with it, and in order to trigger an event, you have to hit the target or loop one time for each letter. The table deals with the World War Hulk crossover series in which Hulk is blasted off into space, spends some time with aliens, and comes back looking for some revenge. The story comes across as you play the table. If you start hitting the center “Arena” ramp, you’ll overhear various characters in the World War Hulk storyline talking about Hulk building an arena. Wolverine, Thing, Iron Man, and other superheroes make appearances. Overall, I’m not a big fan of speller tables, and I thought this one was a tad too yellow for my tastes, considering it’s a Hulk game. Also, Hulk is more erudite than I’ve ever heard him.

Fear Itself is another crossover table that emphasizes Thor, Captain America and Iron Man dealing with a new threat from Asgard, Serpent. I’m no comics scholar, so I’m not terribly familiar with the storyline. From what I’ve gathered from the table, Serpent apparently wants to scare people. There are some interesting things going on in the table. The ball drains on the extreme right and left of the table form a loop. Every now and then, magnets along that loop will activate, allowing the ball to travel along it just as if it were a regular loop. Magnets also come into play when you start a mode and you choose which of Serpent’s lieutenants to battle. In some modes, the ball will turn to stone and break apart if you hit the wrong targets.

The Avengers table is genius. At the very start of the game, you’ll have your choice of six balls to play, each one designed for a member of the Avengers squad. Cosmetics aside, your choice will also have an impact on gameplay. Black Widow gets score bonuses on missions, Captain America has a limited ball save, and so on. Every member of the team has their own ramp as well. Loki stands in the middle of it all. I haven’t gotten as far into the Avengers table as I’d like so far, but it’s definitely a blast to play. Also, I wound up playing this table just two days before I saw the Avengers movie (I don’t like noisy crowds, okay?), and I was surprised how the table took exact lines from the film.

The Infinity Gauntlet is by far and away my favorite table, perhaps of the entire Zen Pinball series. The first treat is for the eye. The ramps leading up to the large Infinity Gauntlet looming over the left side of the table glow with an ethereal light. Miniature suns hover over the bumpers, and each has a collection of planets in orbit around them. In the space behind the table, there’s a much larger glowing sun, as if the table were floating in space. Despite those graphical features, the table also has retro flourishes. The interior walls of the table look like they could have come from the side of an old school Asteroids cabinet, and the characters featured on the far wall look like they were drawn in the early 80s. Even the game’s sound effects and futuristic LED font hearken back to classic early arcade games like Sinistar.

The Infinity Gauntlet is a sniper table. The middle ground is open, and ramps and targets fringe the perimeter. There is a touch of Medieval Madness at work here, with players repeatedly knocking on the door of one of Thanos’ monuments to Mistress Death in order to gain another route to the Infinity Gauntlet.

The idea of the table is to collect the gems of the Infinity Gauntlet to defeat Thanos. If you hit the Gauntlet enough times, you’ll start a mode based on the theme of a particular gem: Time, Space, Reality, Mind, Soul, or Power. I don’t want to tell you exactly what happens in each of the modes, because most of them are truly joyous surprises that left me laughing and stretched my expectations of what is possible in a video pinball game.

I’ve played a lot of Zen Studio’s pinball tables. For me, Avengers and The Infinity Gauntlet are among the best tables they’ve produced. Marvel Pinball: Avengers Chronicles is on sale for $10 on PSN or 800 points on XBLA.

Rating: BUY IT!

Steel Battalion is the Icarus of the Xbox 360. Utilizing the latest gaming technology, it strives to reach new heights of immersion and control, only to ultimately fail due to the limitations of the very technology it uses to fly.

The original Steel Battalion for the Xbox required a behemoth controller to control giant robots in a Mechwarrior-type setting. You could excuse the gaming public for not wanting to shell out a few hundred bucks for a controller that could only play one game. When Capcom announced a Steel Battalion reboot that would use the Kinect sensor, something that millions of Xbox 360 gamers already had in their homes, it generated a lot of interest in mech-loving gamers like me. It looked promising. Previews showed Vertical Tanks (VTs, or “Veets”) trundling into battle in beach assaults while the player attempted to keep the enemy in their sights while keeping their crews in line under fire.

To a certain extent, Steel Battalion fulfills that promise.

It’s too bad the game didn’t indicate the real battle is with the Kinect sensor.

In Steel Battalion, you are Sergeant Powers, the commander of a VT. In the tutorial of the game, you are introduced to your foul-mouthed crew comprised of two gun techs and a communications specialist. You also get a nice, slow primer on the controls of your VT. There’s a lot to learn.

Swiping your hand in front of you effectively turns your head so you can see your fellow crew members. Holding both hands out towards the Kinect sensor switches your sight to the viewport of your VT, allowing you to see outside and giving you a good way of piloting your vehicle with your Xbox controller. There’s a periscope. There’s a damage control interface. There’s a monitor where you can access maps and external cameras. There’s a shutter for your viewport. Your cockpit is festooned with controls, and not only that, if you stand up in your seat, your character pops the top of the tank for a way to look around without all that armor in your way. It bears mentioning that Steel Battalion is a first-person game, and that means you’re stuck with whatever Powers himself can see.

The tutorial is nice, slow, methodical, and bloodless. Once you’re done with it, Steel Battalion immediately throws you into a meat grinder. You’re in an Omaha Beach-style amphibious assault. Fire is coming at you from everywhere. Your squad is screaming at you. The mine detector is going off. Every now and then, a shell will hit your tank and you’ll be out of the action for a few seconds just trying to get back in the swing of things.

And the battle with your Kinect begins.

Video games have been around for decades. In that time, control schemes have come about that most gamers can basically agree upon. We’re used to joysticks in our hands and buttons to press. We are not used to clumsy motion control schemes. I cannot tell you how many times I wanted to do one action and managed to fumble my way through three other non-desired functions before I finally did what I wanted. During the short tutorial, the motion controls were easy to accomplish. Under battle conditions, with incoming fire and squad members screaming, those same controls were nearly impossible.

That’s the first level. The second level starts slowly, with an extended dialogue between your crew members as you watch some of your comrades in arms between missions. Of course, an attack comes, and all hell breaks loose. You get your mission: go outside your VT and basically flip a switch. Doing that requires putting alternating fists out to “crawl” your way to the switch while you’re under fire.

Folks, it’s a motion-controlled Dragon’s Lair. After a few deaths, I figured out how to beat the second level, and it has nothing to do with tanks, aim, or resource management. You start your tank, you advance five steps, you alternate fists and then put both fists down. That might have been acceptable gameplay in the laser disc games of the 80s. It doesn’t work here.

I was looking forward to Steel Battalion. The first few missions reduced my opinion of the game from “anticipated” to “quirky.” The fifth mission made me give up.

I’m clearing the streets of enemy forces. I’m fighting the whole way, my crew is banged up, I’m low on ammo. Then an enemy soldier pops the top of my VT and starts struggling with one of my crew members. The rest of my crew tells me, “shoot that guy!”

I instinctively turn my joysticks to look up: The turret turns.
I pop my hands out: My viewpoint retreats from the viewport.
I use my joysticks: The turret turns, and my viewpoint goes back to the viewport.
I pop my hands out: My viewpoint retreats from the viewport.
I swipe my hand to switch my internal view: I engage my periscope.
I swipe my hands up: I stow the periscope.
I swipe my hand to switch my internal view: I engage the map monitor.
I swipe my hand: I stow the map monitor.
I swipe my hand to switch my internal view: I engage the map monitor.
I swipe my hand: I stow the map monitor.
I swipe my hand to switch my internal view: I engage the map monitor.
I hear gurgling sounds.
I hear my squad despair.
I swipe my hand and finally switch my internal view to see my communications officer slumped in the VT in a bloody mess.

Screw this game.

Rating: SKIP IT!

Jonathan discusses his trouble getting into God of War: Ghost of Sparta.  Alex geeks out about controlling his Xbox from his iPod.  Sam rages against the obtuseness of Max Payne 3.  Scott wishes he had nuke tanks in Anomaly Warzone.

Regarding E3, Jonathan wishes it would focus or die.  Alex holds that you can’t change it, so you might as well revel in it.  Sam and Scott seem to have more reasonable opinions.

Finally, we end the show with an impromptu Wingman.  Say you have five minutes to come up with a podcast topic and guest host; which video game character do you grab off the internet?

Games Jonathan Played:

• The Walking Dead – an interesting, if cel-shaded, take on zombies and point-and-click adventures.
• Dragon’s Dogma – what Alex thought about Skyrim, Jonathan thinks about Dragon’s Dogma.
• New World Colony – Catan crossed with Risk, and Jonathan’s impressed.

Games Alex Played:

• Crusader Kings 2 – well worth the sale price, maybe not so good at full price.

Games Sam Played:

• Max Payne 3 – once you accept what Max is laying down, the game gets good.
• Ghost Recon: Future Soldier – hear what happens when your pitted against you buddies.

E3 Time: We discuss the good and bad of the Big 3 press conferences, throw in some publisher smack talk for good measure, and lay bare just how bad we are at making predictions.

Next week, we’ve got two, count ‘em! TWO! people on the show who actually attended E3, one of whom is pulling a Jack Kerouac and going on the road, but for games instead of drugs.

Among the Sleep!

Frivolous lawsuit dropped!

Jonathan plays SkullPogo!

Hemisphere‘s breaks Sam’s brain!

Alex enjoys Dragon’s Dogma!

Sam and Alex recon Ghosts!

Max Payne is dark!

E3 Predictions get ridiculous!

See you next week!

Jonathan starts the show by immediately plunging the dagger into Sam’s heart by pointing out that he is the first victim of Episode 108, in which we predicted what will be THE TOP GAME of 2012. Longtime listeners will be glad to know we brought back both the “Explicit Hammer” and the “Quack” from dormancy.

Alex hustles together some quick news:
Starfox & Metroid Crossover?
Sony announces Bullet Run
Judge recommends ban on imports of new Xbox 360s.

Sam talks a little about the game that is sucking Rhode Island’s life blood dry for months, Kingdoms of Amalur(aramadingdong). Alex is probably, at this very second, tweaking his guns in Ghost Recon: Future Soldier or wishing he was. Jonathan remarks that his time for playing games will probably suffer due to his hunt for a house.

Then Alex introduces a new game: Video Game Unemployment Office. Because video game characters need jobs too.

That’s it for this week. Stay tuned for our E3 pre-show next week!

It’s the same way for me in Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. I have gadgets that allow me to see through walls. With that information, my teammates and I should be able to effectively kill/maim/capture whatever thingamabob happens to be the objective. Yet, no matter how well I think I have planted my sensor, what I’ve overlooked is that the whole time, there’s some jerk right behind me with a suppressed pistol aimed at my head. Or, more commonly, a guy 100 yards away who managed to get a lucky headshot with his LMG. Despite that, I keep coming back for more. I tell myself that with just a little more practice, with a little more thought, I’ll rock the house.

GRFS is a smart man’s Call of Duty. It’s a game of stealth and ambush. However, it’s also a game of intelligence.

In the campaign, you and three other Ghosts will go from one international hellhole to another tracking down an arms shipment. I haven’t beaten the campaign mode yet, but it’s easily on par with other Ghost Recons. However, it’s not like it’s going to wow you with excellent characters or dramatic plot twists. Your Ghosts aren’t Gears; they don’t reveal a lot about themselves during the mission. While you’re in the field, the Ghosts are methodical killers focused on their work. You get a little of their personality during cutscenes, but even then, they don’t extend far beyond their mission personas.

Future soldiers have gadgets. Optical camouflage can make you nearly invisible. Visors can give you X-ray vision. Grenades can point out enemies rather than detonate. Drones can give soldiers a bird’s eye view of a battlefield. Much of the gameplay in GRFS is focused on finding and ambushing the enemy.

In addition to the see-the-enemy, mark-the-enemy gameplay seen in Battlefield 3, Splinter Cell: Conviction and other games, there’s a new mechanic in GRFS that synchronizes your team’s shots. Many times in the campaign, you’ll want to stay as silent as possible to avoid triggering an alarm. As the group leader, you can highlight enemies in your HUD. Your teammates (human or AI) can then line up those marked enemies, and at the leader’s command, the entire team can fire simultaneously. If no enemies see or hear the takedown, then the Ghosts can continue without a problem.

If there’s one frustrating part of the campaign mode, it’s when you’re in diamond formation. When the Ghosts need to escort a VIP out of a hot zone, they’ll form up in a diamond, facing out, and shoot their way out. That’s when the game turns into an on-rails shooter. The lead man will be stuck with a pistol as he drags the VIP out while everyone else has their own targets to shoot. If you’re playing campaign co-op, you might hate these parts of the game. If one guy in your team doesn’t take out his targets, he’ll be killed, and that’s game over with the option to reload the last checkpoint. However, these diamond formation moments are few and far between, and they look genuinely awesome.

There are several modes to choose from in multiplayer. The one everyone seemed to be playing before release was Conflict mode, which was included in the beta. You’re dumped in a map with a ton of terrain and given a variety of objectives to meet. Meeting objectives results in points, and the team with the highest number of points by the end of the game wins.

The map design is excellent. There is never a moment when you’ll be far from cover. The maps may not be as huge as Battlefield’s, but there’s plenty of ground to cover and plenty of hiding places. In fact, there may be TOO many places to hide. Even the tightest chokepoint seems to have at least four approaches. Locking down an area requires a lot of coordination with your teammates.

Ghost Recon: Future Soldier’s primary strength can also be its biggest weakness. The big selling point of the game is that you have a bunch of gadgets that help you find and kill the enemy. However, those gadgets are limited in number, and once you’ve used them, it’s tough to get more without dying and respawning. The level of cooperation needed to effectively accomplish your mission and use the intelligence assets available is formidable. You need to have a team with the right tools, a good idea of what to do, and the ability to do it under battle conditions. Without that network, the game devolves into a third-person Call of Duty; death comes quick, flanking occurs often and victory usually goes to the first person to pull the trigger.

The better you do and the smarter you play, the more XP you’ll earn. You’ll level up in three classes (soldier, engineer and scout) according to how you played each of them in a round. When you do, you’ll be awarded two attachment credits in that class, one for your Ghost version and one for your Bodark version (the Russian Ghosts). With those attachment credits, you can go into the game’s gunsmith mode and buy something new.

This might be the most addictive part of the game. It takes a while to unlock a new weapon for your class, but with the attachment credits, you can personalize whatever weapon you own to be more to your style. Want to increase the rate of fire on your shotgun? Buy a new match trigger for it. Want a red dot sight or a suppressor? In other games, you have to work with a weapon for a while to earn it. In Ghost Recon, all you have to do is level up once to earn a credit for it, and bam, it’s yours.

There’s a lot I haven’t tried yet. Ghost Recon’s Siege mode is supposed to be a lot like Counterstrike, where there are no respawns and an attacking side and a defending side. Guerilla mode is supposed to have a lot in common with Horde mode in Gears, only with kill streaks. I’ll get more into these things for the review.

For right now, Ghost Recon is my go-to game. It may be frustrating as hell. My wife may hate the words that come out of my mouth when, despite my best efforts, I am repeatedly and violently ventilated. It doesn’t matter. The chaotic gameplay CAN be tamed. It’s all a matter of keeping those balls in the air.

In our short news segment, we discuss the an ever-growing list of delays: Bioshock Infinite, Tomb Raider, the South Park RPG, potentially more.  Also, GameStop has entered the fake money exchange business as they’ve begun carrying Steam Wallet cards.  Finally, we also chat about Diablo 3 and the trouble it’s having, despite none of us playing it.

Michael talks about playing classic NES games on a site called Nintendo8.  I have no idea how long that site will last, but it’s interesting while it’s there.  He’s also got some thoughts on Skyrim and the recently announced Elder Scrolls Online, as well.

Jonathan’s played Asura’s Wrath, and wishes it were anything other than a video game, claiming it out El Shaddai’s El Shaddai.  He’s also got a couple hours into Xenoblades Chronicles.  That’s not enough time to decide if it’s the JRPG that’ll save all JRPGs, but it’s definitely the most interesting JRPG he’s played in a while.

Alex, as we all know, was out of town last week, and in his journeys, he discovered that his inner child is nine years old.  He’s also incredibly high on NBA 2K12, finding it to be significantly better than 2K11, and a compelling take on the basketball genre.  He’s also playing Warlock: Master of the Arcane, a turn-based strategy game on Steam, which is great except it’s missing multiplayer.

That’s about it for this episode.  Next week, Sam’s going to get a face full of shame!  You won’t want to miss it.

First though, Sam discusses Kingdom’s of Amalur, which he’s found to be intriguing, if a bit frustrating, and Mass Effect 3, which has succeeded in bringing out Hulk Sam.  Jonathan picked Skyrim back up for an incredibly awkward honeymoon, and has also been playing Word Stack on his phone, wherein you take words and stack them.

Headlines:

• Microsoft drops the 360′s price to $99 (with a two-year contract).
• A different way to consider ME3′s ending.
• It’s a dream team of RPG greats, for an iOS game.
• Video games are actively preventing violence in Africa.
• Star Wars: The Old Republic loses 400,000 subscribers.
• Ubisoft enlists gamers in marketing effort with a promise of more marketing.
• Raptr sets up a reward program for doing what you’d do anyway.

Next week, one of the hosts has to eat crow early!  I know I’m looking forward to it.

Rather than inundate our guests with our usual game-related ramblings, we ask what they’ve been playing, by way of introduction.  Alex has been playing Tell Tale Games’ new episodic title, The Walking Dead, and it’s amazing.  John has been trying to understand League of Legends, and it’s not so amazing.

We then move on to the topic which brought these august gentlemen to the show: if the next home consoles restrict the used market in some way, will this ultimately harm small independent media outlets like The Way of the Game?  Will we be less able to experience the breadth of games that listeners and readers demand, or will we be better situated to meet the needs of gamers who are also playing fewer games?

We want to extend a huge thank you to John and Alex.  They provided truly unique insights that can only come from people involved in the “mainstream” media.

Next week, there will be no Alexes on the show, and Sam has rage in his heart.  It ought to be fun!

Headlines!

• Game Informer debuts a new game on their podcast.  It sounds suspiciously similar to a WotG classic.
• Alex has one less reason to buy a PS3 now.
• The Liesure Suit Larry remake/reboot/upgrade/whatever has been successfully Kickstarted.
• Adam Sessler has left G4.  One host is happy, one is disappointed, one has never heard of the man.

Games!

• Sam has one game this week, and plays coy ’til the end, so here’s a spoiler: it’s Mass Effect 3.
• Alex gives us the lowdown on the Ghost Recon Future Soldier beta, and gripes about tutorials in Warhammer: Battle March.
• Jonathan breaks down why he didn’t enjoy Syndicate, why he really enjoyed BlazBlue Continuum Shift Extend, and why he’s looking forward to trying recipes from Gourmet Gaming.

Finally, we have a brief topic inspired by the announcement of the Arkham City Game of the Year edition.  Are GotY editions good or bad?  Are they simply enticing collections for people who weren’t interested the first time around, or are they a slap in the face to every early adopter?

Let us know what you think below!  Next week, the future of the podcast!

Your deck has agents, sites, and actions. Agents score points in a region commensurate with their power if left to their own devices for a certain amount of time. Sites do the same, but remain in a region. Their power can diminish depending on the strength of enemy sites placed in the same territory. Actions have a variety of powers, including the power to place memories back into your or your opponent’s hand, taking them out of the game altogether or even scoring points in regions directly.

The great constant in this game is time. A timer is constantly ticking away during the game, and everything you do takes a certain amount of time. Putting an agent or a site into play takes “half a day” (the game alternates between day and night icons and apparently considers each “a day.”) You only get cards in the middle of a “day.” Conflicts between agents take half a day as well.

So much like a true assassin, there’s a lot of timing involved here. If a big bad guy comes into play on your opponent’s side, and you know that it takes half a day for him to do anything, you might want to spring one of your agents on him at the last possible second in order to keep him out of the control of your opponent for the maximum amount of time.

At the end of a battle, you’re awarded a certain amount of currency with which you can buy more cards. You’re awarded more for winning, though, so you have a vested interest in making a winning deck of memories.

The Holmberg: Recollections’ timing mechanic is its most interesting feature, and its biggest downfall.  Yes, there are interesting opportunities for stopping a big play right at the last second, but there’s also a whole lot of waiting around.  Full days take at least a minute to cycle through, and when I sat down to time the rounds, I found that they get longer as the game passes.

I find this problematic for two reasons.  One, at the start of the game your cash flow is extremely slow; it takes half a day to earn one florin.  If you don’t have cheap cards right at the start, you’ll be stuck waiting, doing nothing.

Two, you only draw when a new day begins, so when you’re out of cards, you’re stuck waiting again.  Even better, the turns are longer, and the computer often has cards that wipe out all of your agents, so you stand a good chance of yet again doing nothing.  There’s nothing fun or strategic about waiting.

Those annihilation cards also remove from the game any sense of accomplishment.  I didn’t outplay my opponent; I was just lucky they didn’t pull the right cards.  Everything takes so long to resolve that you have no choice but to lay your cards out immediately, which plays right into the hands of a discard/counter setup.  I’ve seen no way to counter an action card, leaving you entirely at their mercy.

I’ll admit I’ve not tried multiplayer, but the only thing that makes the game bearable is the “fast-forward” button, which can’t work in multiplayer, so no thank you.

Finally, a word about the story: it’s incomprehensible. Do these card battles represent actual battles or subtler political clashes? The story can’t seem to decide.  Worse, it’s told in three-paragraph chunks that try to sound significant, but ultimately convey nothing.

The Producer: You will get no argument from me about the meaningless story in the single-player campaign. It seems like a convenient way to introduce key characters from the Ezio saga and/or themed decks, but ultimately it isn’t worth reading.

Regarding cash flow at the start of the game, there are many cards that boost your income across all the doctrines. You can not only win with an all-agent deck or an all-site deck, it’s also possible to put an economic beatdown on your opponent.

Yes, the waiting between moves can be aggravating. I recently had a match against an opponent that seemed to be nothing but denial cards. He had sites with which to earn points, and all my agents were eliminated from play via action cards. It felt like an agonizingly slow death, but even so, the match probably lasted less than 10 minutes.

The luck factor, however, is the same with any other CCG. The idea is for your deck to have a better system than your opponent. The more cards you have, the more you can tweak and improve the way it plays.

Recollections is unique, intricate, and free. It’s definitely worth a try.

The Holmberg: You can win with all-sites or all-agents, but have you accomplished anything?

Based solely off the cards I’ve been able to buy playing for free, I’ve seen too few cards with interesting abilities allowing for very little in the way of compelling combos.  Magic may be luck-driven, but there’s skill in matching up and executing your various abilities.  No such system seems present in Recollections, and if I’ve got to drop cash on premium boosters in order to see the interesting cards, the game’s not free anymore.

Recollections is slow, poorly balanced, and ultimately frustrating.  It’s not worth your time.

Our short news is actually short this week as we discuss a lawsuit directed at Ubisoft regarding infringement of the Animus idea.

Games were light this this week, so much so that we talk about non-game stuff for a bit.  Sam’s into the new Doctor Who, Alex has found anime and manga for his iPod, and Jonathan’s exploring further ways to play board games online with Game Table Online.  In actual games, Sam’s got his hands on Magna Carta 2, Alex has started up Castlevania: Lords of Shadow fresh again, and Jonathan has played the demo of Fez and an iOS word game called Dabble.

Wrapping up the show, we have a headline-inspired topic.  A study finds that a significant chunk of the recent games industry downturn can be attributed to weak sales from Nintendo.  Is our hobby reliant on Nintendo for survival, or can Sony and Microsoft fill in the gaps should Nintendo go south?

First, though, games, and even Sam has something to contribute this week.  Sam put Shadows of the Damned in, and almost immediately wanted to take it back.  Alex and Jonathan may have convinced him to give it a second try, though.  Jonathan’s played more Mario Party 9, and also finally given Assassin’s Creed Recollections a try.  One’s more of the same, and one he doesn’t enjoy at all.  And Alex had an interesting Easter experience in Gears of War 3, and a great time with multiplayer Splinter Cell.

Headlines!

• Homeland Security wants to hack your Xbox!
• GTA V might launch in October!
• The PS3 might hit $200!
• Activision Blizzard might have to settle a lawsuit!
• Gamers are looking forward to Halo 4!
• Resident Evil 6 Platinum Edition is really expensive!

Finally, we wrap up the show with a topic discussion.  That’s right, folks!  Games, headlines, and a topic all within an hour!  It’s a ChristmasEaster Miracle!  What’s better for social network gaming?  Asynchronous or synchronous gameplay?  And can you really have a game that only includes one or the other anymore?

In our short news segment, we can thank Kickstarter for allowing the opportunity for Shadowrun to come back as a top-down, turn-based, 2D CRPG!  Alex is very excited.  Not so excited is Sam for the extended cut of Mass Effect 3′s ending coming this summer.  Finally, none of the hosts are excited for the possibility of a law requiring a warning label be affixed to every video game ever made.

The hosts have also been playing games this week!  Well, two of the hosts have.  Sam’s just been playing solitaire on his phone, which doesn’t really count.

Alex has gone old-school and picked up Final Fantasy X-2.  Not XIII-2.  X-2.  Yup, he’s playing Final Fantasy Dress-Up, and liking it.

Jonathan has spent some time this week with the new FIFA Street.  The trick controls and various modes are pretty awesome and deep, but figuring out how to play the basics of the game have got him a bit stumped.  Also this week, The Tribe has dropped as a new team for Hero Academy, and Jonathan continues to be impressed by the depth and variety each team brings to the game.

In our topic this week, it’s been reported that Obsidian missed out on a bonus for Fallout New Vegas because the game was one point short of an 85 on Metacritic.  Alex thinks this is a terrible way to hand out bonuses for a game because of the high degree of subjectivity involved in reviewing a game.  Jonathan and Sam think any metric for determining bonuses is going to extremely arbitrary, and Metacritic is as valid a method as any other.

Finally, we have another round of Star Wars Reverse Casting Call.  For this round, Alex has chosen Lando, Ben Kenobi, and Darth Maul as the characters to be cast.  He’s also chosen “fighting game characters” as his restriction.  It gets ugly, folks.

Games this week:

Jonathan has played Street Fighter X Tekken, and has nothing to say about it.  He got some more comments about Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, and he’s spent a bit of time with Mario Party 9.  That’s right!  The Wii makes an appearance!

Alex does inappropriate things with his Kinect and Tiger Woods 13.  He’s also got much (more) love for Armored Core V’s multiplayer, and no love for the single-player.  And then he and Sam rip into Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City.

Other than RE:ORC, Sam has been playing more Binary Domain, though he’s not sure why.  Perhaps it’s the scintillating conversation.  He also talks Mass Effect 3, but mostly as a lead-in to Joe.

Joe’s finished ME3, and has plenty to say about it.  He’s got (non-spoilery) thoughts on the game play, the universe, and (of course) the ending.  Then we wrap up the discussion with speculation about the “clarifying” DLC Bioware has promised.

Since teasing future topics hasn’t worked too well lately, I’m not going to make any promises about next week’s show, other than that it will be here.

‘Til then, have a great week!

All right, I admit that technically, Ridge Racer Unbounded doesn’t launch until the 30th, but let’s face facts here.  The “trailer” for Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13 is beyond boring.  I’m sure the prospect of gaining “access to Augusta National Golf Club’s Tournament practice facility” and an “authentic Green Jacket Presentation” are enough to get real golf fans giddy, but a) the video doesn’t really explain any of that, and b) panning shots of a video game golf course aren’t exactly compelling.

Warriors Orochi 3 also drops on Tuesday, but I could only find a Japanese version of the launch trailer.  That would have been fine if it had introduced any new or exciting elements to the Dynasty Warriors formula.  Unfortunately, it looks like Warriors Orochi 3 is going to be practically identical to every other game in the series ever.

So, we’re left with Ridge Racer Unbounded, which is an interesting game to me on two fronts.  First, I thought new Ridge Racer games were the exclusive domain of console launch days, but Unbounded is dropping for the 360 and PS3, and those systems have been out for years!  Second, there’s a shot of the track builder in the video that’s really piqued my interest.  Grid-based track design with tweakable stunts in a (vaguely) realistic, fully-destructible city environment?  Yeah.  All of a sudden this is on my watch list.

Anybody getting anything new this week, or is Mass Effect Mania still gripping the world?

We enjoyed the quick-hit headlines bit we did last week, so we’re making it a regular feature.  This week, the uncomfortably expensive collector’s edition of Steel Battalion, and Free-to-Play makes its first appearance on a portable console.  Can home consoles be far behind?

Alex has gotten his grubby hands on Armored Core V early, and he’s in for the multiplayer but has reservations recommending it as a single-player experience.  Draw Something also invades the podcast via Alex, though OMGPOP hadn’t been bought by Zynga when this episode was recorded, if that’s of any importance to you.  Finally, Assassin’s Creed Recollection has sunk its hidden blades deep into Alex’s psyche, and it doesn’t look to let go anytime soon.

Sam’s been playing more Binary Domain and more Mass Effect 2.  Along those lines, he also inflicts upon us an audio-unboxing worse than any that has come before it.  And, assuming he can ever break himself free from Mass Effect 3, Shadows of the Damned and Kingdoms of Amalur may make a moose-like appearance in a future episode.

Jonathan only has one game this week, thatgamecompany’s Journey, but it’s a doozy of a game.  In fact, in just one short week alone with the game, Journey has set itself up as the expression of everything that video games are capable of as an artistic medium.  Yeah, it’s like that.

We close out the episode with a topic which we touched on briefly in Episode 109: Would gaming benefit by separating multiplayer and single-player into standalone products?  The hosts all have fairly different takes on what that would mean.

Next week: is Metacritic a valid method of handing out bonuses?

I’ll be straight with you; I haven’t played Armored Core since the first one on PS2. I remember playing that and liking it, but for some reason the game never put its hooks in me to the point where I was eager to play the sequels. As I’ve said before on the show, I like my mechs “big and stompy” rather than “fast and skaty.” It’s for that reason that I especially enjoyed Chromehounds, and it’s because I enjoyed Chromehounds that I can recommend it to fans of that game… but not without some caveats.

The biggest point of similarity with Chromehounds is the game’s master interface. After you go through the short tutorials on how to move and shoot and dip your toes into the truly bewildering storyline (am I even on Earth? It looks like Earth, but I have yet to see a point of reference that would allow me to say for sure), you’ll be presented with a map with a selection of regions in which to take missions. Some missions are designated as Orders, though the point of those missions and who’s giving you the orders is a little fuzzy for me. Other missions are labeled Story, and that’s where you’re going to proceed with what storyline exists.

Once you take a mission, you’re presented with a sortie preparation room that’ll look very familiar to Chromehounds fans. You’ll even be able to place colored waypoints on the map for reference during the fight. Those waypoints are important, because you don’t get a map when you’re actually in your mech trying to get things done. Apparently PDAs and mechs can’t exist in the same universe.

As a last point of comparison, Chromehounds fans should know Armored Core V’s whole multiplayer emphasis on clans is pretty much the same. If you have a team, you’ll be able to easily invite them into missions and enjoy full chat capabilities. If you play with someone who’s not in your clan, you apparently can only chat with them by choosing messages among a menu of options (Advance, Infiltrate, Roger, that sort of thing; that’s also customizable, so you can tweak your messages as much as you want.)

That’s where the comparisons end. The missions in Armored Core V seem to be fast-paced infiltrations rather than slugfests over open ground. Some missions are timed, and there isn’t much time on the clock. In those cases, you have to go in very hard and fast to take out as many enemies as possible, preferably with a great plan and some judiciously placed waypoints.

Of course, mech customization is a must, and Armored Core V doesn’t disappoint. There are several different leg types ranging from reverse-articulated biped to tank treads. As you add weapon systems and parts, you’ll have to make sure you don’t exceed your power or weight limit or face performance penalties. The customization is deep, but not nearly as much a labor of love as that in Chromehounds.

The camera seems stuck in a third person mode behind your mech, the better to see all the nifty graphics of your thrusters blazing as you kick it into overdrive or the puffs of exhaust as you close the vents. I’ve been sticking with the fast bipedal build you start off with, and if I could compare the feel to anything, I’d say it’s a lot like a beefed up Space Harrier. There’s limited flight, and the mech can climb to the top of buildings by carefully jumping up the side in three-story leaps. You can also use the jump button to suddenly leap away from terrain like a damned giant robot ninja.

The heads up display gives you a quick, easy readout of your damage level, your energy level (which gets depleted very quickly in overdrive), your ammo levels and the lock-on status of your weapon systems. A click of the right stick will switch your mech from combat mode to scan mode, which will allow you to scan for waypoints, get detailed information about the vulnerabilities of your enemies, and even see targets hiding behind cover.

Which brings me to one of my big complaints: I have a giant mech that fires mega-powerful tank shells at high speed – and I can’t destroy a building? I know I’m nitpicking, but dammit, these appear to be normal, mostly air buildings, and none of my many weapons can SCRATCH them? Yet, there are also steel containers and vehicles that get torn apart like a house of cards if I so much as graze them with my shoulder? It unfortunately seems like there are only two types of placeable. One is indestructible, the other blows up if you look at it wrong.

I’m finding the whole storyline and setting to be incomprehensible. There’s obviously some sort of conflict going on in which a “Corporation” is involved, but what the corporation is fighting and why it matters has escaped me. There is zero exposition. There are two female protagonists, but in my experience with the game, so far I have yet to see them. One pilots a helicopter that carries the giant mech the other character pilots. You hear their voices, but there isn’t even the usual box-with-a-face-in-it pop-up that you see in RPGs. The characters might as well BE their vehicles.

So it’s really tough to give this the enthusiastic thumbs up I want to give. I feel I haven’t played the TRUE Armored Core V yet. I want to get a clan together first and see if we can derive some Chromehounds-style enjoyment out of it. There are territorial battles that I feel I’ll enjoy, but I haven’t been able to get a team capable of pulling them off yet. If you’re still on the fence, I don’t blame you. I’ll do a follow-up once I get a better feel for multiplayer. If you’re looking for a single-player experience, I don’t know if this is the title you should get.

Alex sneaks in a couple of news tidbits before letting the guys launch into game talk.  First off, PvP is apparently all that’s really holding up Diablo 3′s launch, so Blizzard has decided to just patch it in later so that everybody else can get their ARPG on.  Perhaps launching Diablo will help pick up the games’ industry as a whole, as NPD Group reported that February game sales were down 20% from last year.

Jonathan has pretty much forgotten everything he did last week.  However, over the weekend he picked up a couple of XBLA games, I Am Alive and Crystal Quest.  He’s only put a couple hours into I Am Alive, and it’s got some interesting concepts that might be awesome or might wear thin pretty quickly.  Crystal Quest has seen dozens of hours of play from Jonathan… fifteen years ago.  It’s a pick made purely for nostalgia’s sake.

Alex tells more stories from Shogun: Total War 2, complete with daring ninja attacks and dead in-laws.  Jonathan tries to compare Shogun stories to Civ stories, but fails as researching pottery never comes into play.  Alex has also put some time into Assassin’s Creed: Recollections, an iOS collectible card game.  Anyone who’s listened to the show for a while should immediately be able to guess what his opinion of the game is.

Sam this week tries to get ragey about Amazon’s shipping policies.  Unfortunately for him, Jonathan is well versed in said policies and knows Sam should have just been paying better attention.  Moreover, as both Jonathan and Alex both have retail experience, neither gives him much sympathy.  Sam’s lack of Mass Effect 3, though, has provided him an opportunity to play through Mass Effect 2 again, and also put some time into Binary Domain, and neither of those makes him ragey.

Speaking of ragey, Jonathan brings a topic this week that’s been driving up his blood pressure lately.  Gamer Entitlement:  Is it a real problem?  Is it something worth fighting?  Can we fight it?  And how?  The guys don’t really come up with any answers, but they try to get the conversation rolling.

I feel a bit sorry for the games releasing this week, as they’re still essentially competing with Mass Effect 3 for the attention of gamers everywhere.  That said, I’m looking forward to reading reviews on Silent Hill: Downpour.  I haven’t played any since Silent Hill 3, but my wife has always been a huge fan, so I keep an eye on new releases in the series to see if they’re worth pursuing.

Other releases this week include a new Naruto game (Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Storm Generations), a new Tales game (Tales of Graces f), a new Street game (FIFA Street), and a new game that inappropriately tries to leverage zombies.  I know zombies are the In Thing right now, and I’m sure there are plenty of cultural reasons why.  (My bet: zombies will always be monsters.  Outside of parody, you can’t really sparkle them up and make every high school girl squeal.)  However, zombies in Red Dead didn’t make much sense, zombies in Call of Duty didn’t make much sense, and zombies in Yakuza really doesn’t make any sense.

So, I’m definitely skipping Yakuza: Dead Souls, and anything else dropping this week will be a later-date purchase to be sure.  How about you all?  New games, or just more Reaper killing?