Category: Episodes

There’s no excuse for our behavior at the following link.

Superfast show for you this week – superfast in IGC time, at least.  The bald spot in our news readers and the inevitable spread separating one host’s Mass Effect progress from another’s contributed to the hard cap on our run time.  There were also conflicts with More Important People who wanted our recording space.   There’s stuff in here we figure’s worth listening to, but I can tell you now that we’re saving our breath for next week’s show.  For tonight, alls we got is the hour-forty-five in front of you.

Regarding this week’s studio: having been turned away from each of our previous spaces for one reason or another we decided, reluctantly, to schlep out to the trailer farm behind our theater.  There, at the perimeter of a moss-choked wood, sits a disused telemarketing building.  It’s an evil place, but we really had no where else to set up shop.  I’m sure you’ll hear the keening spirits of former call-center workers and at one point, the howling of a werewolf.  So yeah…last minute change of venue makes the show sound like shit.  Sorry.

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Enjoy!

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It’s totally not Scott’s fault that we screwed up the title of this episode.

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

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

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

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Our most not-exactly-recent episode can be found at the following link.

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

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

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There’s still hope for an indulgence at the following link.

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

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

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We interrupt your show at the following link.

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

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

And then there’s Left 4 Dead 2.

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We wanted to breathe smoke at the following link.

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

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

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We aspire to feature parity at the following link.

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

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

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We finish with a counter-clockwise swirl at the following link.

Much of last week’s fury has now cooled into a smooth malaise.  We’re well aware of some lingering tension in the industry, since we’re foremost among the people who harbor it, but what we’d prefer at the moment is to get ahead of the news instead of living perpetually behind it.  Or, more specifically, to look forward from what we’re most upset about today to what we most hope to love in the immediate future.  I can’t say we’ve done an especially good job on that and, judging by what’s happened in the news since this recording, next week could easily be more of the same.

Whatever the season of our discontent, we’re still mighty happy about what we’ve got in our disk trays and hard drives.  Borderlands is an abiding pleasure, I’m enjoying my time as an apostle in the church of Torchlight, and Arjay has discovered the unexpected pleasures of Tekken 6.  With the exception of my powerful need for Dragon Age and Arjay’s refusal to act like a sonofabitch to people he doesn’t know, things couldn’t be better.

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We’re of two minds in this week’s episode.  Decide which is our right one at the following link.

In terms of content, this episode may seem a little behind the moment.  You might also notice an ebb in our pace where you’d normally expect the flow.  This recording took place immediately after our time with Naughty Dog – which was a lengthy piece, and intense.  This is the reason we chose to bring the interview to a close so soon, and the interview was the reason for this late posting – we thought it best to give each room to breathe.  We had planned to revisit Uncharted 2 here, but that seemed unnecessary somehow.

I was unusually excited for our PC-dedicated friends last week, so much of the news being relevant to them, and there being so many reasons to own a good computer right now.  Hell, Torchlight alone may be enough to justify the existence of the Windows platform. But I think we’d be lucky if the powerful good done by Runic balances even a portion of the shameless con being delivered in Modern Warfare 2.  I’m not sure who’s to blame for that, and I honestly can’t remember having been so angry, but I hope we made it worth your time to find out why.

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Our plot devices are locked and loaded behind the following link.

Uncharted the Second is said to be the best time you can have with your Playstation 3 this season, and it’s in running for best of the year.  I won’t dispute that in this space, and at the time of this recording, we were in no position to dispute it on the show, since each of the hosts is at a different point along the path to completion.  At the time of this writing, however, we’re prepared to modify a great many of those opinions.  Which way they go we’ll keep saved for another day.

A lot of listener mail and a little slow-motion back-and-forth with the forum-goers makes us weigh in on the heavy side this week.  Of course there’s more to be said now than we have time to say, and plenty more to be played than we have words to describe, so it’s going to take a firm hand to keep our rambling in check.  Any clue where we might come by one of those?

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