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Episodes

The Old News Episode

Recent opinion can be found at this link.

Rest assured, despite this episode’s title, our conversation is very much about the here and now – except where it isn’t, in which case it’s just show and tell.  It’s hard not to find yourself rooted to the moment during the week of GDC, browser-refreshing your way through the day looking for headlines from the people who make the news, and forum commentary from the people who analyze it.

But it’s just as hard not to live a little bit in the future, as well – the future that’s far more than suggested by developers, but is often nearly insisted upon.  They tell us wonderful stories about both harsh and ideal circumstances, and we’re ready to believe nearly anything they want us to about how we’ll be experiencing the games of tomorrow.  There are simple untruths, like anywhere, but the delivery is so earnest and optimistic you’ll forgive us for being somewhat transported.

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Episodes

The Combined Episodes

Two-for-one IGC available at this link.

We’re offering both of our most recent recordings together this week, but at the usual low price of two hours of your time.  There’s some continuation between the two acts, but the combination had everything to do with our schedule, and little to do with the content.  In fact, the two performances vary quite a bit in tone – as much as we could make them do without diverting the subject away from games.  But games are what we like, so whether it’s high-spirits and big groups or something more subdued,  we clearly have something to say on the matter.

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Episodes

The Watch Out! Episode

New episode available for single- and multi-player here.

Recent cooperative opportunities have honestly exceeded our expectations.  Halo Wars may not be your genre bag, exactly (it isn’t really ours, either), but the quality of its multiplayer simply isn’t in question.  Wherever possible, this game should set the example for how to knit two players together in pursuit of a campaign or story line.  Having made that claim, we’d also like to acknowledge HAWX and RE5 for like efforts recently, and point out that we’ve got at least as much to say on their behalf later in the week.

The Watchmen have come and gone, now, and no matter what your relationship to either the film or the book, you’re likely to have an opinion on the translation.  A strong one.  We hadn’t planned to speak our minds on the subject, but that went right out the window one short moment after Scott asked if I wanted to talk about it and I said “no”.  The subject is isolated at the end of the program for anyone unwilling to expose themselves to spoilers.

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Episodes Interviews

The Nolan North Episode

The everyman hero is available at this link.

We did a very simple thing for the first of this week’s episodes: we invited voice actor Nolan North along for a chat and allowed him to completely steal our show.  You’re most likely familiar with his work as Nathan Drake, The titular Prince of Persia, or more recently as Sgt. Forge in Halo Wars.  His credits, however, are extensive, and we won’t choke this space with links or bios that are best left described by the man himself.

We don’t have any of what you usually come ’round for this episode, as it’s a solid hour of interview.  But if, like us, you’ve enjoyed as many things on Nolan’s imdb page as we have, you’re sure to enjoy yourself nonetheless.

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Episodes

The Ways To Be Cool Episode

Step 1: Click on this link.

Cool is something we’d clearly like to have more of, but it never occurred to us that putting together a list would help at all.  Maybe this was the problem all along.  The only way we could think to be cool this week was to deliver unsolicited opinions on your Killzone and your Halo Wars, with a guest host and a little bit of local color applied for effect.

We’d also like to invite you into a conversation that would have best been held in the studio the first time around.  Jeremy has twice reminded us how much we miss the arcade scene of our youth, and how much we regret the loss of the arcades we had assumed to be in our future as adults.  His restoration of a recently-acquired cocktail-table Space Invaders prompted a comparison of our “desert island” category favorites, and we realized this discussion deserved to be held amongst our listeners as well.  We demand that you contribute, and that you illuminate the inevitable flaws in our positions.

Furthermore, Jeremy, with the help of his daughter and the support of Chuck E. Cheese, seems to have struck upon a lovely idea for the salvation of token-subsidized gameplay.  Maybe this sort of thing is too dependent on nostalgia, and maybe paying quarters into a game we already own isn’t such a great idea, but it wouldn’t be the first hare-brained notion that made us happy despite all reason.  But who wouldn’t be happy with a flight stick and a gyroscopic games platform?

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Episodes

The Bad Explanation Episode

Another confused mess is available at this link.

The show has been spread thin since our last episode.  This time, like so many other times, it’s completely my fault.  I’ve been sick from a kind of horrifying something that I ate near the beginning of the week, and that put me right out of the mood to record a show or to play a game, or even to sit up straight and eat a food or two.  I had only just recovered my senses by the time of this session, and I’m sure that’s going to be clear.

Even if everyone’s physical and mental well-being had been at a healthy level, it’s unlikely we would have done any better discussing Noby Noby Boy.  Clearly this is not the sort of thing that should be discussed without a hookah in the room, or – more realistically – without everyone present having played the game.  Maybe we worked a bit too hard to pick up what Scott was putting down (to no avail), but Jeremy and I both found as much funny in the trying as we would have in the understanding.