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Season 9, Episode 52

We’re going out to the coast, getting together, and having a few laughs at the following link.

While it may be a day late we’re still putting on the Christmas tunes and having a jolly old time on the show looking back again at 2015. Nate’s joining us this time and we’re talking about what he liked most from the year. We also talk about Steam and the underwhelming sale season (along with the almost as underwhelming security breach).

This is our last episode. Of 2015, anyway. This puts us right around episode 400 and closes out season 9. As we always do at the end of a season we want to thank all of you who still listen, call in, write to us, and join us live in the chat room from time to time. We do this for you. It’s fun for us and we do it even when an audience isn’t around, but the public part of this – the radio show, the streams – it’s all done for all of you and we cannot thank you enough for your support over the past 9 seasons. We hope you’ll continue that support into season 10…yeah, it’ll be nearly 10 years since we began this little show back in 2007 (the dates are a bit strange but our anniversary happens every February).

Thanks for listening. Thanks for everything. And we’ll see you in the new year.

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Episodes

Season 9, Episode 51

We’re doing the usual end of the year thing at the following link.

So this year had a few standouts in gaming. I never thought Destiny would bring me back like it did and City Skylines was a gigantic surprise. But even with the good we got, the bad was heavily outweighed and, for me, by one single game.

It is likely very obvious my love for the Batman Arkham games and this year’s Arkham Knight was to be the final slice of one extremely delicious cake. But, as it turns out, the cake was a lie. One of if not THE biggest disappointment of 2015. If you played it on PC, of course. You folks on the console got out of it, but those of us on PC still to this day have issues playing that game. It was a massive failure and surpassed the failure of the year before, Assassin’s Creed Unity. It will become the benchmark by which all broken games out of the box will compare. And that really is the big disappointment here. They released 2 prior games in the series to PC without issue and then this one – the one marketed as the last and biggest and best – this is the one they drop the ball with. With one single game, they ruined MY 2015.

Here’s hoping, perhaps, that yours was better.

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Episodes

Season 9, Episode 50

We’ve been here before at the following link.

I’m not a very smart person. There’s evidence of that every week on our show. No more so than this week’s episode when I tell my epiphany of finally seeing the pattern. I’m still not sure how I feel about it, honestly. I’m writing this on Sunday and I’ve spent almost all of today going back and forth between Just Cause 3, Destiny, and Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. In two of those games, I’m doing pretty much the same thing while in one of them, I just keep doing the same thing over and over. I’m currently having more fun in JC3 than I am in either of the other games. This is to be expected, however, since Destiny is just a weekly loot run and hoping for the best, while Assassin’s Creed is the more boring alternate of JC3 – London looks nice but it doesn’t blow up very well.

Then again, nothing blows up as well as Just Cause 3.

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Episodes

Season 9, Episode 49

We’re asking for the envelope please at the following link.

There’s a lot of game companies that get a lot of bad reputations. EA, for example, had their logo transform into a swastika. There was once a pretty obscene one for Steam back in the day as well. Ubisoft, Sony, Microsoft…they’ve all had their share of hate from the community over the years and the trend will continue, I’m sure. But I can’t think of a single company, not one of those previously mentioned or left out, that can top the outright asshole dickery of Konami and their relationship with Kojima. Like, I knew it was bad, but nothing like the level it was revealed during the Game Awards last week. I don’t think there is a ladder tall enough or a rope long enough for them to climb out of the hole they have dug themselves in with the gaming community. I mean, they were already in a hole, but damn…whatever floor they stood on just fell out from under them and became a bottomless pit of unforgiveness.

On the other side of the coin, however, and to bring up something positive cause everyone always says the bad news gets more talk (and it does), I tip my hat to Nintendo. A company seemingly without competition. Whose sales this year haven’t been great but have released some great games. And a company who experienced a tragedy and took the time to mourn, grieve, and pay their respects while letting their community do the same.

Two companies at opposite ends of the spectrum. One, the lowest of the low. The other on the highest pedestal – not with sales or campaigns or deals or systems, but respect, love, and admiration. Dear every other game company out there, when the time comes, don’t be a Konami….be a Nintendo.

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Episodes

Season 9, Episode 48

We’re turning the spigot at the following link.

Over the holiday weekend here in the US, I was buying movies left and right on sale. But only if it was easily identifiable that the movie also came with a digital copy. My digital library of films has grown considerably over the year since I started doing this and now, I don’t even think twice if I see that I’m only buying the physical copy. I want both, and it annoys the hell out of me when both are available but the physical doesn’t come with the digital.

Which also made me think about the gaming side of things. How come this isn’t a thing? Why don’t I get a copy of the game digitally when I buy a physical copy of the game? We didn’t spend nearly enough time on the topic, but it’s one I still scratch my head over. Especially now since, also during the holiday weekend, I upgraded my PS4’s hard drive. I should mention that this move was based mostly on laziness which I explain in the show, but that, combined with the movie thinking, is what got me on the topic over the weekend. Something else that bugged me is why everything physical got a huge discount this weekend, but the digital counterparts stayed rock steady at the highest price possible?

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a few clouds outside that need yelling at.