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Episodes Interviews

EAR Episode 120: A Conversation With Denis Dyack & Robert Khoo

None of us on the show really know how any episode will ever turn out beforehand. Sometimes we go into the studio ready for a great show and come away realizing we never touched on near half of what we wanted to. Sometimes we aren’t happy with our interviews (no fault at all of our guests) because we’ll either forget to ask certain questions or, of course, I’ll screw it up and hang up on our guests.

Tonight, however, wasn’t one of those episode. Talking with Denis Dyack for me, personally, was a thrill. He’s been involved in some of my favorite (seriously, I’m a fan) games and, honestly, the man really likes to talk about his games and the industry in general. We cover a lot of ground with him regarding Too Human, DLC, 4-Player Co-Op, and sequels. Plus, Denis tells us what he thinks of Evil Avatar.

After that, it’s the further continuation of our celebration of PAX as we talk to Robert Khoo, where we find out that, not only does he enjoy Evil Avatar Radio, he actually listens to each episode. Thank you, Robert. Also during our chat with Mr. Khoo, we ask him more about the PAX split in 2010 (he drops a hint or two during the show), and how he got involved with Penny Arcade along with how PAX actually came to be.

It’s a fun and very informative episode of Evil Avatar Radio. Hope you like it. And we’ll see you at PAX.

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EAR Episode 119: Extra Content

This will start to become the norm for us. Doing an extra show in the week gives us an opportunity to catch up on news we missed during the regular show, talk about newly released games, and hit the bigger stories that may have happened just one day after the main show.

Obviously with having a release like Too Human out there right after the main show, we had to use this time to talk about our time with the game. Plus, you know, we’ve got Denis Dyack on the show Monday along with Robert Khoo – we aren’t going to have much time for anything else.  We also talk about WAR & WoW, and the battle of the opening cinematics between the two, plus we go into the jam-packed fall release schedule, and we don’t even touch November. There’s a brief touch back on Monday’s show as we go back into talking about food – of the fried kind, the new PS3 bundle announced along with it’s odd little friend, the chatpad-thingy, and Microsoft’s desire to “rock the vote”.

It’s a short show, only about 65 minutes, and we hope you enjoy it.

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Episodes Interviews

EAR Episode 119: A Conversation With Jonathan Coulton

We really enjoyed this episode of Evil Avatar Radio and we hope you will too. Although, it’s always fun getting to talk to Jonathan Coulton. Turns out, like me, he’s a fan of pinball. So much so that we’ve actually invited him out to Shorty’s one night during PAX for some pinball & beer. He seems pretty open to the idea. Oh, that and letting me introduce him on stage at PAX as well. Here’s hoping anyway.

Seriously, it’s a fun interview and Jonathan does confirm that he will be the final performance at PAX on Friday night. He also tells us about what he’s currently working on, his involvement with Portal 2, and one of the most amazing things he’s ever eaten.

Also in this episode, we hit a few news notes of the week and talk about game demos (Force Unleashed & FFXIII), Castle Crashers, Everquest, Mega Man, Warhammer, & the issue of DRM.

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EAR Episode 118: A Conversation With Jonathan Blow

It happens every so often for us. We’ll get a developer (and on the rarest occasions, a PR person) who doesn’t hide from us. They have something to say and they can say it without feeling like their hands are tied. The creator of Braid, Jonathan Blow, has no reason to hide during this episode of Evil Avatar Radio. In fact, with how well the game is doing, he has every reason to be pretty proud of what he’s done. Not to mention that the game itself is pretty awesome. And well…it’s also pretty.

We spend about an hour talking to Jonathan who tells us quite a bit about himself and how Braid came to be. Everything from pricing to inspiration to conception and rejection of the game, it’s almost everything you ever wanted to know – all without spoilers.

After our chat with Jonathan we then move our focus once again to this year’s PAX and talk with Moe Fwacky, the Cross Country Super Trip organizer. We catch up with him since we spoke with him last year and find out what it’s like and what it takes to travel across the country to the gamers mecca that is the Penny Arcade Expo.

As a show note, you can expect another episode of Evil Avatar Radio to come out by the end of the week.

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EAR Episode 117: “Sorry It Doesn’t Look Like A Butthole”

We love August. Ever since last year when it brought a few EvAv’ers together at PAX, we’ve looked forward to doing it again, and finally, August is here. And with it, just like last year, we’ve kicked off a month long celebration of the Penny Arcade Expo with the first of four interviews. This episode brings us Kristin Lindsay (her 5th appearance on the show) to talk to us about the Enforcers of PAX and she answers every question asked to her. In keeping with tradition, I also hang up on her.

Not something I’m proud of, but then again, I hung up on an astronaut, so I think it’s catching on.

After the show…well, you should download it. Jeremy and James go back and forth on the subject of DLC (or in this case, SDK) and its relation to developers versus publishers. This discussion then goes on to spawn all sorts of further talk in, around, and outside of the subject matter.

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EAR Episode 116 Part 2: Pick Your Own Title

Welcome…to Part 2.

We don’t have a title for this show because, honestly, there was just too many to pick from (“Snake”, “This is a Stealth Mission”, “Why is Starbuck Calling Me?”, “Tom Clancy’s Teletubbies”, “You’re Derailing My Thread” among others). You guys do that part and tell us what to call it if you want. What we do know, however, is that we start off this part of episode 116 with an odd message. Plus, during the show we noticed some of you got the same thing as well. Jeremy tells us of his first experience with his PS3, his not so great experience with MGS3, and his little pet peeve of the difference between a PC & a PC running Windows.

Our discussion of Little Big Planet, or Daniels love of games that let you create your own content, leads us into talk (more James than us) of wanting less of the single player experience, even when dealing with single player games. You’ll understand it better when you hear it. The discussion then turns to innovation vs. profit when we talk about the recent situation with Activision.  Finally, we end the show with more complaints of Rainbow Six Vegas 2 (I know, we just can’t let it go, but you should hear how we end up at this point).

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EAR Episode 116 Part 1: “Nukemware”

Remember when I said that you should tune into this episode because you never know what will happen? Yeah, well, we didn’t know either and this is the kind of episode you get. One split into two parts. In the first half of this first part we talk about Alan Wake, FFXIII on the PC, and I desperately try to find the Tron 2 footage from Comic Con. In the second half, we go around the room finding out that Daniel really likes his Dwarf Fortress and James, he really loves his MMO’s….a lot.

This is one of the shortest episodes we’ve ever done before, but keep in mind that it’s only the first part. There is no after show. There was, but it’s lost to the ages. If you happened to stick around and listen to the cam feed congrats, because that piece of audio will never be heard from again.

We’ll be back with Part 2 later on this week.

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E3 Episodes

EAR Episode 115: The E3 Show

This episode is full. We simply can’t fit anymore into it. And yet we still didn’t get out everything we wanted to talk about. E3 may be small, but the information we get out of it is enough to fill nearly three hours. It’s a full plate and we go over all the big news from the week that was. Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, and the games as well including Borderlands, Sonic, Op. Flashpoint 2, Empire Total War, Killzone 2, Halo Wars, MK Vs. DC, H.A.W.X., Far Cry 2, MAG, and so very much more. Bapenguin even calls in and gives us the info of games he got to play on the last day of E3, plus he and I personally (and by name) thank everyone who donated to get us out there.

The episode is stacked and the episode after the episode is running over with info as well. James goes over his new PC build and all the MMO’s he’s loaded into the thing and WWII Online is discussed  leading us into our discussion of the Too Human demo. Plus, we can’t go without talking of The Dark Knight – spoiler-free, of course.

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EAR Episode E3: The Third Day

We’re tired. Again. And again we sat down and tried to punch out a quick episode telling you about everything we saw today, but this mini-episode is close to 45 minutes long. So yeah, we failed that. But, I think you’ll enjoy this go round as we saw a ton more games than we have previous days and had some hands on time with a lot of them as well. We talk about Far Cry 2, H.A.W.X., Brothers In Arms, Fallout 3, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, The Witcher: Enhanced Edition, LEGO Batman, Project Origin, MK vs. DC (we liked it), and we also got to see The Who, in concert (for free), at a Rock Band party.

It was a jam packed day and this episode is jam packed full of news and totally foul language.

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EAR Episode E3: The Second Day

We’re tired. We knew that going in and we figured this would be a quick episode. We were wrong and again (as you’ll find out from listening), my estimate was way off. It’s the second day of E3 and Nick and I are back with our thoughts of what took place during the day and we run down some of the other games we took a look at as well. We start off with Nintendo, and I’ll tell you now – we weren’t happy. At all. But as the day went on we completely forgot about Nintendo (as they seem to have done with gamers) and actually managed to save what was left of the day by checking out more games. We got closer looks at Operation Flashpoint 2, Sonic Unleashed, Mad World, Left 4 Dead, Rock Band 2, and a few others as well.

We talk about them all and a whole lot more in this mini-episode of Evil Avatar Radio.

Tomorrow is the final full day for me here at E3 and we’re going to one again try and knock out another show for you at the end of the day tomorrow. We still have lots more to look at and talk about, so check back again tomorrow for Day 3.

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EAR Episode E3: The First Day

So you thought there’d be no episode of Evil Avatar Radio tonight, huh? Well, you’re right. In it’s common form, there isn’t, but Nick and I decided to sit down and talk about the day and our thoughts of the whole thing. Honestly, it isn’t really anything you don’t already know if you’ve been keeping up with the great coverage on the site, but if you’re looking for our opinions and thoughts well…here they are. It’s a mini-episode, even though it runs nearly an hour in proper form.

Day two will be a long one for us. Not sure if we’ll get another show under us during all that we have lined up, but we’re going to try and give it a shot.

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E3 Episodes

EAR Episode 114: “Pre-E3: Bad Company”

So, what did we learn from this episode of Evil Avatar Radio? Well, right out of the gate we learned that watching G4 for E3 coverage is actually a bad idea. Speaking of E3, we talked to Bapenguin & AgtFox about the upcoming event itself and ran down the list of meetings and appointments scheduled for myself and the Bapster (that was fun to say outloud, actually) as he and I head off to LA next week. Also in this episode we hear a lot about Battlefield: Bad Company. In fact, it’s a subject that just can’t seem to stay away during the show. And we learn that it’s not that bad of a game and may well warrant the full price of admission. But I still haven’t played it yet.

After the show it’s all PC talk as we go into the situation James had with his recent build. Actually, he hasn’t even begun to build yet thanks to a problem during shipping.  Jeremy continues playing Diablo 2 (just as he was doing during the show itself) and we’re joined by our producer, Kevin, who brings us good news (he finally played Portal) and bad news (he isn’t making it to PAX).

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EAR Episode 113: “Cow Death Knights With Boobies”

Given the news over the weekend, it should come as no surprise to you what we’d be talking about in this episode of Evil Avatar Radio. Right out of the gate we go into discussion of Diablo 3 and then further into news gathered from the WWI about, well…WoW – hence the title of the show.

We also hear from Daniel & James on their time spent with Battlefield: Bad Company. I was expecting what I heard from Daniel on the topic, but was surprised to hear of James’ experience with the title. In the second hour we talk about Sony’s attempt at Xbox Live-ish functionality with the 2.4 update to the PS3, the possible price cut to the Premium Xbox 360 that somehow leads us into discussion of consoles vs. PC, and Jeremy tells us about his new toy.

I should warn you now…when the show ends proper, we jump quite quickly into talking about GTA4, specifically spoiler territory if you are still avoiding it. We also make mention of Bill’s departure along with XP from store shelves, James’ new build, and his potty mouth (former) workplace.

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EAR Episode 112: “The Trust Bank”

“The Trust Bank” – for gamers, the amount of trust they hold for a developer’s latest project. If it’s been good before, we trust it’ll be good again. It’s brought up during our discussion of Call Of Duty: World At War. Our trust bank’s for Treyarch aren’t near to the amount of trust in the bank’s we have for Infinity Ward. Same goes for Sega in our thoughts on Sonic Unleashed.

We spend a bit of time discussing those games but in honor of Ticket To Ride’s debut on XBLA this week, we comb over our childhood in search of other classic games we’d like to see show up in digital form. While we do nail some gems in the list, nothing comes close to Hungry Hungry Hippos. Button mashing at its finest.

Also in this episode we welcome Ten19 to the program to tell us of the updates dished out during the week in the MMO world, we talk of reviewers and the interesting relationship they have with publishers, plus we take a look at Limbo Of The Lost and see just how much you can cram into a game without actually doing anything yourself.

From there we head to the depths of the studio and talk about completely random things. Seriously, it’s totally random stuff. There’s web design, health issues, Fireball Island, pigeons, and Leonard Nimoy. Like I said….random.

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EAR Episode 111: “Love Is Blooming In My Pants”

If that show title doesn’t get you to listen, well then we give up. Oh sure, other titles presented themselves, all spoken by our special guest for this episode, David Hayter. But then he busts out with that line and all of us in the studio looked at each other just knowing. Not only that, but you guys in the chat room picked up on it as well. Glad to see you’re catching on.

Speaking with David was a great thrill. Listen as he talks to us about voice acting, how he got started and what it’s been like, plus his screen writing career where he tells us of his time with the first two X-Men films and he drops plenty of info on his latest work, “Watchmen”. Listen also to Rogue Hunter call in and practically wet himself as David says his name as Snake and TrackZero and David share Canadian memories.

We pretty much spend the entire first hour talking to David with the second hour spent more on Metal Gear Solid 4, a mention of (NDA), and an interesting little game revealed to us by Jeremy- MMORPG Tycoon.

After it’s all said and done, we take time in the after show to come down off the high of speaking with David and continue our talk about MGS4 – this time without the restraint of the FCC.

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