Hosts: Lance, Chris and Gloria.

In this weeks episode we discuss what everyone else in the world is talking about, Qwikster! Also AIDS. Plus Lance and Chris go at it over a specific game and things get heated. All that plus our top 3 games of all time! Enjoy!

INSERT WITTY COMMENT HERE.

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Hosts: Peter and Brad.

Have you ever wanted to see two major companies go for the kill, Mortal Kombat style? Our coverage of the ongoing fight between Apple and Samsung does just that. We also cover Google+ coming out of the field trial, a study that will change your preconceived notion of texting, an emergency room you can take your damaged phone to and an upcoming Zombie game unlike any you have ever played before. This episode also marks the show’s 6 months of being ‘on-air’. Give it a listen and tell all your friends.

Within the science fiction/horror genre there are many sub-genres that people identify with. Whether it be zombies, vampires, time travel or (my personal favourite) robots, each sub culture has their own mythology, insight that it brings to the human existence, and smash hits that make the genre what it is today. For example, with vampires there is the very specific mythology of sucking blood, fearing sunlight and being immortal. Because said immortality is obtained by killing others, it makes us think about the price that people will pay to stay young. Its big blockbuster is Dracula. There are dozens of these subcategories, but the one I want to talk about today is cloning. This genre has been vastly overlooked, which is a damn shame in my opinion. There is so much one could do with it and yet it is still mostly ignored, like the sad red-headed middle child in a sci-fi family.

To say that the subject hasn’t been explored would be a lie. There are a ton of movies that incorporate cloning into their plots. After all, the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park were clones. Technically Invasion of the Body Snatchers is about clones, although I’d personally put it under the alien invasion genre. Movies like The Fifth Element, Star Wars, The Prestige and even Austin Powers 2 all include cloning in one way or another. Other movies like Blade Runner, Stepford Wives, and Battlestar Galactica (which is a show, but whatever) share similar themes with cloning movies, but alas they are about robot copies and not literal clones. When it comes down to it, I wouldn’t classify any of the things I just listed as “clone movies” though because they all lack the in-depth look at what the social or moral implications of cloning are.

There are movies that are specifically about cloning, but most are disappointingly inadequate. The Island and The 6th Day use cloning as an excuse to make bad action movies. I haven’t seen Multiplicity, but it looks like a cheesy rom-com, that doesn’t delve into the heart of the subject. In fact, the only movie I can think of that deals with the real-world applications of cloning in an interesting way is one that is mostly unheard of called Never Let Me Go. If you haven’t seen it, go check it out. Be warned though, it’s fucking depressing.

Now to the heart of the matter! Clones should get waaaaay more attention than they do! Think about it: the idea of a different class of people that are technically human, but because of the way they were produced are considered non-human, is strikingly reminiscent of racism issues. What about the idea of having an exact copy of oneself somewhere out there? That’s pretty eerie. And what about free will? Should clones have it, or be slaves to their original? There are so many interesting ways you can take the clone subject.

So once again I pose the question: why is this dynamic subject so unexplored? Maybe it’s a technical thing. I understand that from a movie-making stand point it’s tedious to replicate the same person in one shot. However, with the advancement in CGI one wouldn’t think technical problems of this kind would kill this category of sci-fi… Or maybe it’s never taken off because a lot of the issues that come up with cloning also arise in sentient-robot types of movies. But when you think about it, that’s way less interesting! After all, we have the technology to clone people RIGHT NOW! Super robots that are indistinguishable from people are not going to happen for a fucking long time. So give me clones, god damn it!

I seriously think we should get some creative-types working on this lack of cloning right away. Or am just wrong? Is there an important cloning movie that I’m missing? Can you think of any other reasons why clones haven’t captured the imagination of the general public? Any other comments or questions? Write them below, or send me an email.

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Alright I know these posts aren’t supposed to be my personnel Q/A to the internet but here it goes anyway.

Should I buy a fight stick? But first context.

Anyone that has been listening to the Bonus-Level podcast knows of my fighting game fixation. I’ve gone to tournaments met Pros, and friends of mine run casual tourney’s all the time. I love the fighting game community and the crazy technical lingo that comes out while people are spectating. It makes me feel like I’m in some sort of alternate world where everyone speaks in some crazy moon speech but it’s all still awesome. A couple months back I went to Montréal with some friends for MAT IIV (Montréal annual tournament 7). Games like Super Street Fighter 4, Mortal Kombat 9 and Marvel Vs Capcom 3 were all there. And aside from a minor mishap involving my friends buying a TV for our hotel and returning right before we left we had a blast.

The experience was amazing! I never knew I could get so Hype (defined below) over some of these fights. I drew a lot of comparisons between the ways I would get during a sporting event. Like being possessed you find yourself yelling and saying things you normally would never say. I guess that’s the power of crowds and the momentum they carry. The rush of watching fights live and seeing the utter glee of the winner and the complete disdain for life for the loser is glorious. The only comparison that can come close is when I watched a stream of EVO 2011.

EVO is the Stanley cup, world cup and Superbowl of fighting games, the culmination of the best fighters. We hooked up the stream to a TV to get the best quality along with an increase in size. We were passing around a couple beers and for a couple hours we did nothing but watch some high level fighting game play. This idea of watching fighting games like you would any other sport sounds amazing, and I kind of wish more places implemented it.

So with all this fighting games I’ve been watching I’ve decided to enter T12 (The Toronto 12th Annual Fighting Gaming Championship). Though I know I’ll scrub out and get bodied (both defined below), I still it will be a whole lot of fun.

But the one question I pose to you all -
Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.
Definations:

Get Hype: To obtain an excitement that borders the unreal; if one says they are hype, then they are NOT HYPE ENOUGH
Scrub Out: Lose in the first round because you just ain’t good
Bodied: To be metaphorically shoved in a body bag because your opponent beat you savagely

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Hosts: Lance and Justin.

On our third and final beta episode of “Pop Culture and Pilates,” we discuss the bizarre turn of events that happen when a middle aged man in China takes a bath with eels. Sarah Palin’s one night stand with Glen Rice and subsequent coke binge gets an astute analysis. Lance proves that his obsession with the Yankees and Yankee Stadium knows no bounds.

Hosts: Lance, Chris and Gloria.

In this weeks episode we discuss how Nintendo is trying to stay Nintendo, XBox Live everywhere, Sony trying to take away your rights, HD Remakes, Shadow Complex 2, Lance gives a book recommendation that no one wants to hear all that and we discuss our Top 4 games of all time on this weeks Bonus Level Radio.

Hosts: Peter and Brad.

Zombie insects, alcohol and an angry co-host prevented this episode from getting recorded last week but it’s all for your benefit. Check out the first episode of the new SBTC that has been retooled and rearranged for your listening pleasure. This weeks show is full of Fisher Price iPhone cases, a phenomenon that is taking over your phone while you are asleep, we reveal the release date for iOS 5 and the iPhone 5 and much, much more.

Hosts: Chris, Matt and Gloria.

Hey Everybody so this week we’ve lost our fearless leader Lance but fear not as Chris, Gloria and Matt take an in-depth and somewhat silly look at Heinrich Boll’s “The Clown”. A story taking place in Post WW2 Germany and how one man (The Clown) deals with how Germany moves forward but without remembering the horrible atrocities they committed during WW2. A great listen in my opinion. Check back in another month of Paperweights to hear our riveting discussion.

Our next book was chosen by Gloria! Here it is, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.

September is back to school month, and if any of you are like me, than you are grudgingly entering your second week of monotony. Is it just me or did the summer feel like a hazy dream? Honestly, I’m in shock that it’s already over. But that’s not what this article is about! I need advice from you people! How the hell does one balance the time and effort it takes to be a nerd and have a real life? I just can’t figure it out…

I’m entering my third year of university and as an English major. On top of having 15 hours of class, I’m supposed to be reading approximately two and a half (or sometimes more) novels a week. I also have a job where I get about 25-30 hours per week. Plus I have friends who are not nerdy, and therefore are not cool with watching me play video games while we hang out. When you factor sleeping into the equation, I have very little time for my favourite nerdy pastimes, and I don’t like it!

When trying to find a solution to this problem, I thought I’d look at my most successful nerdy friends and see how they balance real life and geek life. The first example I bring to the table is someone I’m sure most of you are familiar with: Chris Demelo. He plays video games quite a bit, and yet still finds the time to go to work AND jerk off in his basement… How does he do it? Well, I like to think I know D-Bag pretty well, and after much consideration I think he does it in two ways. Firstly, by having only nerdy friends, so they can play together. Secondly, by ignoring people on the weekdays, so as to have some alone time. As much as I’d like to ignore everyone and get my gaming on, I don’t think I could do it. It feels too anti-social for me. Plus there’s no way my roommate would let me stay at home and play Zelda when all our friends are doing something fun. And as for getting rid of my non-nerdy friends, I like them too much. So Demelo’s strategy is not for me.

Next I thought about my friends Ryan and Phil. They have lives, and game a crap-ton! What’s their secret, you ask? Well I figured it out, and it’s a method that doesn’t work for me either. Cutting down on sleep… sometimes to the point of not sleeping at all on certain nights. Every once and a while I don’t mind pulling an all-nighter, but lack of sleep on a regular basis is a fate worse than death (at least for me). I love sleeping! If I had my way I’d hibernate for 4 months of the year… So as much as I love my geeky lifestyle, I doubt I’d be able to enjoy it without my 8 hours a night.

Lastly I thought about my brothers. Games are their lives, and they still go to school and hang out with their friends all the time. Surely their strategy is a winner, right? Sadly not. Neither of them have employment; they don’t need it because they both still live at home. Of course they have time for gaming, it’s basically their jobs! And as much as I’d like to quit and devote my life to mastering FPS’s, I don’t really want to be evicted from my apartment. So basically I’m screwed.

That’s right. I’m just fucked when it comes to leading a healthy, balanced, geeky lifestyle. There’s no way to do it. Disagree? Write your tips in the comments section or send me an email.

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I just want to start by saying that I’m a diehard zombie fan. I’ve watched every zombie movie from the Romero trilogy, to 28 Days (and Weeks) Later, to Return of the Night of the Living Dead: Necropolis. I own the Necronomicon, World War Z and the Zombie Survival guide. I’ve played practically every Resident Evil game including the god awful gun survivor series. Suffice to say Zombies are my favourite horror trope. Zombies are the perfect cannon fodder and can really make you feel like a super hero when you’re taking on hoards of them. They also have the eerie ability to remind us of people and society, as they are a mindless hoard bent on nothing but consuming and giving nothing back (capitalism anyone?). So, with all my devotion to zombies I found it odd that I didn’t enjoy the zombie maps in Call of Duty: World at War and Call of Duty Black Ops.

When you look at it, from the onset it’s wave based (like Gears of War Horde Mode), building barracks and defences (like The Last Stand), and lastly zombie survival (like Left 4 Dead). All these things amalgamated together should be an amazing concept, but alas, playing with my brother left me feeling annoyed, bored and often times wondering why I wasn’t enjoying blowing off zombie’s heads. Further thinking about it led me to really breakdown what other zombie’s games give me that COD zombies neglect. Keep in mind the other games aren’t perfect but they do hit what I believe is the benchmark for zombie games.

When fighting zombies I expect never to let my guard down. I should always be tense and ready for action. If zombie movies have taught me anything, it is that they will pop out just when you least expect it. Just when you think it’s all sunshine and happy endings, one stray zombie will bite somebody leading to emotional rollercoaster with the characters. 28 Days Later did this best when Brendan Gleeson’s character got zombie blood in his eye from a single drop and the other protagonists are suddenly moved from salvation to misery in a matter of minutes. Left 4 Dead to my knowledge has got closest to this with the A.I Director that changes the amount and types of zombies the survivors must faced based on their progress. Every game follows the same map but there is a multitude of variation on how you approach it. COD’s zombies have waves of pre-written code. You know right after finishing a couple rounds that there is no variation and the only thing that will help you is memorization. Zombie dogs will always show up X amount of times and you’ll always get a big wave after wave Y. It becomes boring and predictable.

My next issue is that when battling the undead you expect them to die (un-die?) like the undead. Facial deformation and missing limbs are a must. The feel of knowing your bullet is causing them one hell of a bad day makes yours just a little brighter. Left 4 Dead, Dead Rising and Techland’s new game Dead Island do this great. Dead Island specifically is well above everyone else to date. In it you can break zombie’s arms until all they’re doing is snapping at you with flailing limbs. The level of damage you can do to the zombies in this game is incredible and all the damage has a real world effects, as though it were a real human body. COD zombies do have a level of zombie deformation, but no bullet I fired really sent a zombie back or even caused a shutter. It felt more like an old school RPG with me ticking off life points from a hit box until the zombie fell. Without that tactile feel what’s the difference between shooting zombies and any other enemy type in a game? NONE.

When pulverizing the living-disabled, I expect to be scared, tense or frightened. I never expect to be completely useless. In all zombie games you maybe low on ammo and health, but you’re never low on hope or at least a last ditch effort to beat down them zombies. Left 4 Dead has the infinite ammo on the basic pistol, Dead Rising does it by making everything a weapon, and even Resident Evil 4 did it with giving you the ability to strike zombies. COD leaves you with no ammo once you’ve squandered it and unless you’re playing with friends, once you’re down you’re out. There’s no effective defence against them.

I hope these reasons are enough to justify my dislike for COD’s zombies. If you ruin what makes shooting zombies fun, I think you’re just missing the point. Hopefully the people at Treyarch will take a lesson with their next COD: cash grab: zombie edition.

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Hosts: Lance and Justin.

Welcome to the second episode of “Pop Culture and Pilates.” On this episode Lance mispronounces several words..AGAIN. Justin divulges that he’s had a lifelong obsession with Scary Spice and that he hates Eddie Murphy. Justice Coin, a commemorative coin that features the World Trade Center on one side and Seal Team 6 on the other accompanied by the words, “You can run but you can’t hide,” is also discussed.

Hosts: Lance, Chris, Gloria and the crew of Local No. 12.

In this weeks episode we interview some of the members of Local Number 12. They are the makers of the fabulous game Meta Game that has all of gamedom talking about. Click here to read our review of it. They join us for the first half of the episode to discuss the game, how they made it and the trials and tribulations of getting a new game made. They are a fantastic group of people and we couldn’t have been happier to have them on.

Besides the interview we discuss the weeks news! Which includes Dragon Quest X information, a first look at the 3DS’ first dongle, the success of price cuts, all that and much more! Plus our number 5 games of all time!

It’s kind of amazing how fast the years flew by. I can remember exactly where I was that faithful day. Frankly I’m not sure if I want to remember all that happened and constantly talk about it. I of course am talking about how twelve years ago today the Dreamcast was released. The great last system from Sega. What? Think I was going to talk about something else?

Also, three days ago the first beta episode of Pop Culture and Pilates was released. Coincidence? Probably. In any case everyone should take a listen to the show and let us know what you think. We had a blast making it and are looking forward to making its sequels. Please have a listen it’s only 25 minutes and kicks ass.

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Ed. Note – The writer has received this non-retail starter deck free of charge from the distributer.

Hey everybody I know ya’ll was expecting another Save Point or Noble Failure but this week I got something special in the mail.

I received a deck of cards from the fine people over Local No 12 an assortment of Designers and Technologists. There motivated to create elegantly designed and culturally smart games for whatever platform seems appropriate. The game in question is Meta Game, a card game about video game debate.

There are two types of cards, one of actual video games and a smaller set of Comparison cards. Comparison cards ask a question about which game is better at one specific thing, like which game gives the player more freedom, or which game deserves more respect then it gets. The rules have you challenge somebody else to debate which video game card is more deserving of the comparison card. You’re to debate for 2 minutes each against one other and any assortment on bystander judges is to decide the winner.

the crew of Local No 12

I received the game before the long weekend and brought it up to cottage with a bunch of friends. My intent was to have my friends and I play it and get more of a feel for the game. Now my friends are nerds in their own right but none have taken to video games the way I have so hearing them discuss the merit of videos that most of them haven’t played was a really interesting prospect.

At one point two of my friends argued for well beyond their time which game was more meditative. The Sims or Farmville. And considering the one that played Sims has never played Farmville and vice versa for the one who played Farmville. The argument went to really odd places. At first introduction Meta Game had people trying to sound highly intelligent about the game they were debating. But as the game progressed people understood that all you had to do was convince judges of our peers and not have to be technically “right” about everything.

The Deck that I got was a starter set but apparently there’s more out there. Hopefully once this game becomes an actually product more cards will be added. Since the only complaint I could see was the limited number of game and comparison cards that I had. The one really nice thing about Meta Game is its easy implementation as it can be played anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour. This leads to games happening anywhere and everywhere. All of which allowed everybody to say there peace, no matter how insane there point was.

The amazing people over at Local No 12 put together a rather successful kickstarter campaign and it’s said that production of the real sets will start sometime in September 2011. To find more about them check out the links below. I implore you to check out this game that’s not a video game but talks about them in a serious but still enjoyable way.

Follow @colleenmacklin, @jofsharp, @zimmermaneric, and @localno12 on Twitter for more updates.

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Hosts: Lance and Justin

When we started the Bonus Level Lounge we promised it would be used as a testing ground for new shows. This is one of those new shows. Pop Culture and Pilates is the brain child of both Justin and myself as a way of doing a show about the things we already talk about. So please take a listen and give us your feedback! What did you like? What did you hate? We want to know as we still consider this show in beta and would love to have our audience help shape it!

So in this weeks episode we talk a lot about music. What bands fans are most likely bangable, what’s going on with Kings of Leon, whether or not Lady Gaga’s latest stunt was embarrassing and a planet thats made out of diamonds. We also start what we believe will be an ongoing series discussing crappy bands with really cool names. Have one? Send us an email!

Hosts: Lance, Gloria and Trent.

In this weeks episode Chris is away on assignment so we are joined by the youngster Trent. We chat about the explosive popularity of Call of Duty, the ending of Team Bondi, Portal 2′s surprising Success and Lance speaks about his hatred of Comcast. All that and much more on this weeks show!

Hosts: Peter and Brad.

The SBTC crew gives out a giant ear full of amazing tablet and smartphone news this week. We discuss the potential after effects of HP dropping the Touchpad to $99 and what it will mean for the competitors of Apple and how one Goliath of an online store may have the potential to give Apple a run for their money in the tablet space. We also cover an amazing new use for your iPad, where the best place to NOT buy said iPad, as well as the shocking punch to the jejunum the Department of Justice gave to AT&T this week. All this and much more on a bround greaking episode of Saved by the Cell.

Go is an abstract strategy board game for two players. It’s an eastern asian board game that I’ve heard erroneously described as Japanese Chess (Go was introduced to the west through Japan). Nolan Bushnell being a big fan of the game named Atari after a move from Go.

For me this is a hard article to write because I’m not recommending a specific app as I am recommending apps that play a specific game. I love Go. It’s the type of game that I will never ever be good at. I will spend the rest of my life attempting to be mediocre at it. But that’s ok. It’s much more than wins and losses. It’s about wrapping your head around strategy and psychological advantages. It’s about life itself.

Ok that’s pretentious as crap. It isn’t life at all. But I can see that Buddist-like viewpoint of the game. One day I’m going to get a fancy real life version of the game and play with actual humans. Until then these apps have challenging AI’s that I am learning from and that matters most to me.

I’m planning on attending PAX East this next year and one of the things I’m hoping to do is either pick up a nice copy of Go or at least meet some other fans of this game.

It should also be noted that there are more possible moves in Go than there are atoms in the universe. One of the key reasons why there hasn’t been a Deep Blue of Go. And yes I watched that whole video. It was fascinating as all hell to me.

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This weekend I was talking about books with my friends and somehow we started talking about the Star Wars novels. As those of you who listen to Paperweights may know (so not many of you…), I am an English major and therefore am a giant snob when it comes to the fiction I read. So naturally I started to rip into the friend who owned them, telling them that their literary tastes were worse than people who read Twilight. At least that had the decency to be an original story… Right?

But later that night when I was getting ready for bed I couldn’t stop thinking about why I was such a bitch about those books. Why was I so stuck up when it came to novels of that kind? By that kind I mean novels based on über nerdy sagas, such as the books based on Halo, Magic the Gathering, Starcraft, or Star Trek. Don’t get me wrong, I love all of those games, movies and shows, but somehow the idea of reading a novel based on that stuff was too much for me. I just couldn’t get behind it. What the hell is my problem?

Maybe the reason those books are the bane of my existence are that they’re pretty much fan fictions that are published. After all, it’s not part of the real story. Or is it? The authors would have to get permission to use the characters and stuff, and if the owners of whatever series it was based on didn’t think that they were being true to the “real” story, they could just deny the use of their copyrighted material. In fact, I’m pretty sure that a lot of these books are commissioned by the makers of the original material to try and flesh out the story for more dedicated fans. So obviously this isn’t the case… So I can’t hate these books for being glorified fan fiction.

The next reason that pops into my mind for why these novels are skeezy is that realistically they’re just the creators of the series trying to rake in some more money. They assume that nerds will buy anything that has the name of their respective obsession on it, and just pump out some garbage to make a quick buck. This, however, might not be the case either. I tried to find out exactly how much the average Starcraft book makes compared to other memorabilia, without much success. I have a feeling that the reason I couldn’t find out how much money these books made is because they didn’t really make much at all. Granted I didn’t look very hard, since it is 1AM and I want to go to bed, but still. If they were fairly lucrative I assume that fact would be easy to find, would it not? Some of these books make a decent amount of money, that’s for sure. After all, the first Halo book sold over a million copies. I don’t think that is the general rule though. So if the profits from these are marginal than they must be labours of love, which makes me think that maybe I can’t hate them for the money they make either. Damn.

I think what it comes down to is that I’m just a fiction snob, and need to stop being so hard on the people who read and write these books. After all, I’ve never read one before, so who am I to be biased towards them? And as someone who occasionally writes short stories, I should understand how writing about something you know (whether it be a video game or your life experiences) is a lot easier than coming up with something “original”. I feel like we all know someone with a book like this lying around their house somewhere, and maybe (if you’re like me) we shouldn’t judge them because of it, and maybe open our minds to the possibility that they might be decent additions to the stories we already love. So on that note, I’m shopping around for a book that falls into this genre. If you have any suggestions send me an email.

Read more articles from Gloria

Some of you may remember that awhile back the PlayStation Network went down for a couple of months, due to some hackers and weak internal security. Well once PSN was back online, Playstation saw fit to buy their fans love back by giving away some games for download. This is how I acquired Infamous, developed by Sucker Punch Studios. You play as Cole McGrath a parkour mailman that inadvertently acquires the ability to manipulate electricity, the same blast that gives Cole his power also kills about 10,000 people and cripples and quarantines the city you reside in.

It’s a sandbox/super hero game but Cole is not limited to just running through the streets. Much better then Faith from Mirror’s Edge he can scale most buildings, unfortunately he can’t fly. But between most buildings are cables connecting them to other buildings so he can ski along these cables via his electrical powers.

His powers themselves let him fire a variation of Electrical blasts, all types of video game trope weapons like sniper rifle, rocket launcher and machine gun. His abilities develop as some progress offering him improvements on old abilities and new ones throughout.

Infamous is a game that doesn’t seem to push any boundaries or make any watershed moments. Just solid gameplay within a sandbox world. The world that you’re tossed into has tons of crime for you to clean up as the government seals the city off from the outside world and it’s up to you to either help or hinder the cities recovery. You see this game like so many others was built with moral choices. Some examples, there’s a giant garbage man that’s about to launch a gas tank at you. You can either A destroy the gas tank from a distance but kill all the innocent civilians nearby. Or B takes the gas tank head on and looses half your health.

Now usually I think most moral choice systems are internally busted because there’s no middle ground. Your either as Yahtzee put it Mother Teresa or a Baby eater. Infamous falls into this same trap also but does something not many other moral choice games do by making you suffer for doing the right thing. Most of the choices in the game that involve doing the right thing cause Cole pain in some way. This is a change from games like Star Wars KOTOR or Fallout 3 when doing good or evil you’re rewarded either way. While in Infamous all you get are points pushing you towards divinity. Sure they assist in good related abilities but they don’t offer a short term goal to sate you with immediately. One could say that good actions themselves are Coles only reward at times. Not since Fable 2 tattered Spire scene has a game offered negatives for doing the right thing.

Now I’m not saying Infamous is perfect in this regard. As it still is boiled down to a handful of choices that determine your outcome making your smaller good or bad actions meaningless. Also the good and bad ending could literally be palette swaps of each other with Cole sneering more. There are things done right and hopefully my bigger moral choice games can take a nod.

One other thing that stood out for me was the end game of Infamous. You’re drawn into a final battle with Kessler a mad man that has killed your love interest in the game, made your best friend Zeke betray you and as you find out gave you your powers and started the incident in the city. When you defeat Kessler he lies dying in your arms and he tells you that he is Cole that has come back through time, ok please keep reading it makes sense in the next paragraph well kind of.

You see Kessler/Cole got his Electrical powers later in life; he married and had a family. Then a monster called the beast shows up and begins destroying America. Instead of standing and fighting, Kessler runs with his family till the best catches up to him and kills his family. Spurned by grief Kessler some how goes back in time to accelerate present Cole’s abilities as well as kill the women he loves and turn his best friend against him. To Kessler the end justifies the means, his logic suggest that if he remove all the things that kept  Cole from facing the beast to begin with he could save the U.S and the world. At the cost of everyone Kessler/Cole hold/held dear.

It’s a twisted but elegant logic that allows a man to forsake his own happiness for the greater good. It brought up a very interesting idea. Does the end justify the means or was Kessler so distraught that he saw this insane scenario as the only possible choice.

Read more articles from Chris

Hosts: Lance, Chris and Gloria.

This week’s episode was very nearly called GameStop Sucks for reasons we explain on the show. I’ve heard stories about Gamestop and every one of them always seemed like the inmates were running the asylum. This kind of proves it to me. We also discuss how EA’s Origin maybe glorified spyware or not and how EA is pulling out the big guns in the war of words in the modern warfare war. Plus I get all emotional over some guy resigning his job. All that and more on this weeks Bonus Level Radio.

Been a very strange week. We had an Earthquake here in Virginia and if you believe the news we are now preparing for the worst hurricane in the history of the universe. Regardless of the hyberpole if you live on the coast be smart. I’ve been through a half dozen hurricanes or so and they can be fun. As long as you live inland.

Read more articles from Lance

Hosts: Peter and Brad.

HP’s fire sale of the Touchpad has made it the hottest dead product of the week especially with the very real hope of an Android port now that the system dump from that Android 2.2.1 has found its way into the hands of developers. Even though the East Coast was getting rocked with earthquakes and bracing for an impending hurricane the SBTC crew brings you all the mobile news you need to survive any natural disaster. We cover a lot of Blackberry stories, we discuss why your WalkMan from 1990 is now relevant, how you can turn the frustrated tosses of your cell phone into a sport. Saved by the Cell also shares how it single-handedly made the Android Market a better place.

As anyone who listens to BLR on a semi-regular basis knows, I don’t have the opportunity to play video games as much as I would like. So when I do get hold of something I can play, I tend to binge-play it and until I realize that I haven’t slept in two days. Given these facts, you’d think with my recent procurement of a DS and Pokémon White that today I would be writing about how I’ve stopped going to work because I haven’t been able to put my DS down. This is not the case.

I’ve had the game for a week now and have played it once. For thirty minutes. That’s it. I’m still on Route 1. And for some reason I just can’t motivate myself to play any more of it. I have some theories as to why I can’t jump back on the Pokémon band wagon, which I hope that some of you may be able to relate to.

First I must mention that the last Pokémon game in the franchise I played was Gold and Silver, which I played when it first came out. I was 12 years old. Last summer I decided to replay Blue after finding it in a used video game store, and still had the same rush of addiction when playing it. I almost completed the Pokedex and everything… I just couldn’t find a friend who still owned a Gameboy, link cable and Red in order to trade the exclusives. It was pretty heart breaking, but thankfully it also broke my obsession, so that in September I could be a proper student.
Since Silver and Gold there have been 11 new Pokémon games and over 300 additional Pokémon added to the list of things I need to capture. That, needless to say, is pretty daunting. I know that realistically it shouldn’t be. After all, you don’t need to be an expert on each Pokémon; you just need to catch them. This just gives you more opportunity to explore the Pokémon world and experiment with your line up, right?

Wrong, bitches! With approximately 650 Pokémon there is no conceivable way that I could ever sort out which Pokémon do what, how they evolve and where is the best place to find them. This terrifying number makes me cringe at the thought of having to build some sort of Pokedex. Even more than cringe, it pretty much makes me give up on it all together, which gets rid of half of the game’s objective, and any re-playability after you’ve beat the elite four… if they still have that in this generation. I think that Game Freak had a feeling that this would be the attitude of many players, and (according to my research) they’ve made it so that only their new 156 Pokémon created for this version can be caught. Somehow this fact only makes me angrier. I can’t catch and play with the original 150 Pokémon I grew to love as a child? Fucking bullshit! I want a Psyduck, god damnit! This decision makes all of my former Pokéknowledge obsolete. If Game Freak feels like there might be too many Pokémon for one trainer to catch maybe they should STOP FUCKING MAKING MORE POKÉMON! Phew, that felt good. Seriously though, just stop. The new ones aren’t all that cool anyways.

Despite my rant, I do have other reasons for disliking the new game other than the plethora of new Pokémon. My first is that Game Freak is really trying to make the Pokémon world a nice place to be. I know that sounds crazy, but hear me out! You remember how in the first couple games you have an asshole from the same town as you, who becomes your rival throughout the game? Remember how you guys battle it out throughout your adventure, and when you finally pummel him into the ground at the end of the elite four you feel like a rock star? Well in White you don’t have a rival; you have two friends with whom you battle it out for fun. FOR FUN!? Are you fucking kidding me? That takes away all the emotional drive for you to really kick these kids to the curb! It lowers the stakes, and I don’t like it. After all, there’s nothing wrong with some competition, especially in a game where you pit monsters against each other until they pass out. I can’t see myself doing that to a friend’s Pokémon… It just seems cruel. In my opinion a real rival is necessary in a game like this.

As for niceness, the Mom in this game REALLY creeps me out. Your first Pokémon battle is in your room, and needless to say, you completely trash the place. After doing so, you decide to mess it up even more, and battle someone else in your room. Meanwhile your mother is downstairs, listening to this ruckus, and instead of coming up in a furry, she instead waits for you to come down, and offers to clean up after you. Are you kidding me? If this was my mom, she’d come storming in with a frying pan and go Princess Peach on me. I know this incident is completely irrelevant to the rest of the game, but it just didn’t sit right with me… Like I said, Game Freak is trying waaaay too hard to make this place a utopia.

My next complaint is about the graphics. They’re trying to make it more 3-dimensional by giving the houses and stuff more depth. My opinion? Save it for the 3DS, I don’t give a shit about depth perception. That’s really all I have to say about that.

I guess my main concern with the whole game is that it just makes me long for the original ones. It might just be me being an old curmudgeon and talking about how everything was better in the old days, but I can’t shake the feeling. I’m still attempting to work through the game, and who know, maybe I’ll start to like it once I’ve played more. But that’s what’s on my mind this particular Wednesday, so that’s what you goons get to read about. If you think I’m wrong, or have any tips to get me through the rest of the game, please comment!

Read more articles from Gloria

Hey it’s been awhile since I’ve done one of these but what the hell not like anyone reads them anyway. So I played through Mirrors Edge the 2008 DICE developed first person parkour game. The game arrived to mix reviews, some enjoyed the opened environments and unique gameplay, while others raged at its trial and error gameplay as well as short game length. Though scoring an 81% on Metacritic game sales weren’t what EA predicated and the games future installments has been spoken about year in and year out with no sign of Mirror’s Edge 2 on the way. I picked it up from a local blockbuster that was going out of business for 3 dollars.

The entire premise of the game follows Faith she’s a runner, a person who scales buildings and act as an urban mountain climber. Faith is set in a not too distant future city where the 1984 dystopian Society is in full effect. Information is controlled by the government and the runners who are hunted by authorities are the only ones that can offer freedom to the city. Or at least that’s what the game asks you to believe. I myself couldn’t find how the regular day people lived in the city and for all I knew they were as happy as a pig in shit. The game does a poor job fleshing out the world since you go on maybe one delivery job till you’re pulled into a murder investigation (involving your sister who’s a cop, INTRIGUE) and a city wide cover up that you must unravel.

I think the game could have really benefited from you actually going on these information delivery missions and get a feeling for why this world is so need of runners to begin with. The game visuals still hold up for a 08 release, the city on the outset is nothing but pristine white aside surfaces and objects that are climbable that are bright red. Once you venture inside buildings your eyes are bombarded by hallways and offices of primary colors like bright oranges and blues. The use of color makes the game feel very distinct and the contrast between any of primaries and the alabaster white left me visually sated.

But all this mean very little when you’re never invested into the world. In-between missions your shown cut scenes that have the art style of poorly drawn Saturday morning cartoon. The game could have done with staying in the first person perspective throughout all cut scenes and it might have lent a better sense of flow instead of taking you out of the action.

Flow for me seemed to be the biggest problem with Mirror’s Edge, the game charges you with running, jumping and sliding in a stream of precise movements. The unfortunate part is its so god damn easy to tap button a quarter of second to late and go falling to your death. The margin for error is so small, that a little grace for failure could have gone a long way. On top of the annoying trial and error, check pointing is also sparsely uses correctly.

Imagine that you’re jumping to and fro, sliding under pipes and barely making it to the end of run when you accidently tap the button that makes you release your hold on a ledge. You plummet at incredible speeds, the sound of the wind reaching screeching gets your blood pumping. Then the screen goes black. You’re then loaded back before the entire run of acrobatic movements. This kills the flow, and for a game about momentum you sure do run into a lot of hard stops along the way.

You’re also given a limited combat system when taking on cops, security guards and swat. Most of the time you can just run passed but them but some are put directly in your line. You can counter anyone of their strikes once you get close enough and you’re given the option to use the enemy’s weapon or simply dismiss it. I really liked this idea but near the end of the game it seemed like the game was forcing you into more scenarios where gunning was the obvious way out. Something like this may have just been implemented to suffice some quota for guns in games to make sure they can advertise it on the back of the box. The cool thing about the guns is there is no counter to know how many bullets you have left and once a magazine is spent all you can do is discard the gun. The game actually has no HUD (heads up display) aside from a white dot in the middle of the screen, the aesthetic choice added to the already visual appeal of Mirrors edge.

All this being said future interactions and fine tuning could have made this much more then what it became. I’m not sure if it’s just that a game where a female lead has a normal body and doesn’t (always) require gunplay just can’t break into the mainstream or perhaps the games inherently steep learning curve had something to do with it.

More Noble Failures…
Fable 2
Nier
The Thing

Read more articles from Chris

Hosts: Lance, Chris and Gloria.

This week we discuss the unexpected expected worldwide price drop of the PS3 and the importance of the timing of it. The Activision/EA battle is really starting to heat up. EA to artificially limit the sales of The Old Republic for what they hope is good reasons. We also manage to insult just about every nationality possible along the way!

[Ed. Note - Lance's Mic died shortly after this episode finished. It was a good mic that everyone should salute. That being said it died before our traditional opening could be recorded so don't expect one.]

This weeks wallpapers maybe a tad heavy in one subject manner but at least it is one awesome subject manner.

We had a great week around here. If you haven’t listened to either Saved By The Cell or Bonus Level Radio this week you are missing out on some amazing stuff. I’ve also seen what’s on tap for next week and it’s going to be killer!

Read more articles from Lance

Hosts: Peter and Brad.

This week had the most interesting turn of events in the mobile world of any we have covered so far. Google buys Motorola, HP kills WebOS and AT&T leaks some truth about building out their LTE network. We also cover some shocking medical revelations regarding the use of cell phones that could effect your health and the health of your unborn children. As usual Peter’s loose grasp of the English language gives Brad ammo for some funny moments. We also cover a really cool game for the iOS and Android platforms as well as promote @anderwebs ADW Launcher EX for Android, a home replacement app that every Android user should have. Check this episode out to catch up on all the latest smartphone and tablet news.

Lately, it seems a lot of my posts have a strange tendency to be more retrospective than I would like. I promise this isn’t my intent and I am not sitting here shaking my fist in the air saying ‘C’Mon Video Gameland!’ or anything of the sort. Next week will be a positive piece I promise.

When I was younger I played a crap ton of JRPGs. They were my bread and butter of gaming. Long adventures with great characters that I could sink my teeth into. To me, they were interactive books. But overtime I moved away from them and nowadays I don’t even play them. I thought about this and wondered why? After much thought I figured it out.

Time. I don’t have the time for them. But not in the way you are thinking.

See when games were on cartridges they had the drawback of limited memory but the benefit of no loading times. Loading times are terrible. It’s like having the FBI and Interpol warning in-between every scene in a movie with no way of skipping them. We’ve come to accept them and developers do everything they can to minimize them. A necessary evil in modern gaming. Or so we think.

The last few traditional JRPGs I’ve played, play in the similar mold that Final Fantasy 7 pioneered. You wonder the overworld talking to people and when a random encounter happens the screen goes all swirly followed by a close up of the antagonist with some calculated camera moves revealing the entire battle. To me this is a loading screen and lasts about 20 to 30 seconds. Then you have a battle that takes about 2-5 minutes. And when you are finished your characters dance while you have a victory camera and the game loads back in the area you just were. Another 20-30 seconds sometimes.

When we had 1X CD-Rom or DVD-Rom drives we accepted this as a trick the developers did so we wouldn’t see a black loading screen. It was cinematic and fancy and new. And for the next decade JRPGs generally emulated this as they didn’t want to lose the battle system and didn’t want to show loading screens.

The battle is gameplay and I don’t mind how long the actual battle it takes. As Final Fantasy 13 proved you can’t take away this essential element of JRPGs. You need random encounters as that’s part of the games basic gameplay. Without them the game’s linear progression is even more obvious and dull. The battles give you some semblance of control over your characters in JRPGs.

My problem here is the fancy camera moves and the wasted time setting up the monster you are fighting. We are expected to grind hundreds if not thousands of these battles through the course of the game. If each battle has one minute of loading and you fight 1000 battles, that’s almost sixteen hours you spend watching load screens. I don’t have that kind of time. It annoyed me to no end as 15 year old playing FF7 when I was trying to get somewhere and a level 3 Imp would attack me. Towards the end of the game I was so much more powerful that Cloud would just have to fart at the damn thing and it would die. The battle itself would last less than the loading screens. I accepted this because Final Fantasy 7 was radical and the technology of the time was limited.

But when I played Final Fantasy 4 on my DS and it did the same thing with the fancy camera moves I was beyond annoyed. Why was I waiting to battle? Why is anything loading on a cartridge? I had forgotten about this fact until I started writing this article up. It made me wonder if the camera moves aren’t there to hide the loading but are in fact just there. Not every battle is an epic fight. They aren’t all boss battles. So why have these sweeping moves on everything?

It’s just a waste of the gamers time, time I no longer have.

Previously on Lance’s Musings….
Multiplayers Other Meaning
Five Downloadable Games You Should Own And That Chicks Dig
Homogeneous Gaming
Oh What The Hell Is This Crap?
Intervention Con Panel
Bored.
Bazingas
They Came At Us From Behind!
We Need A Jaws
The Kim Bauer Annoyance
N4G Sucks. Accept it.

Read more articles from Lance

So I’ve decided to put together this new series where twice a month I’ll talk about a game I’m playing/played and how they did something unique, amazing or fucking horrible. The idea is to encapsulate ideas that push the medium forwards or in some cases, backwards. I already have the next 3 months plotted out (in my head at least), but I’ll be taking suggestions from the audience for anything you guys think deserves to be recognized in a game. Also a heads up that if I do talk about a game in these segments, there will be SPOILERS. So ye be warned, tread carefully.

Now for your viewing pleasure my very first Save Point S1EP1 Bastion.

Hey everybody! I cleared Bastion a couple days back and man I’m really pissed it’s already over. Bastion is a XBLA game that follows the adventures of a silent protagonist known to the characters in the game as “the Kid”. You awake a world that’s been torn asunder by “the Calamity” which is a disaster that turned the world into floating platforms. The Bastion itself is the last holdout and your home base for the game.

Now the main hook of the game comes from the wise old man Rucks, who narrates the entire game. Fortunately he does not do it in the cliché way you expect him to. It’s built very intuitively with thousands of lines of dialogue, from explaining why you are smashing rates to saying which pair of items you’re carrying, and little line explaining the combo’s effectiveness. The Narrator has a gravel-y, yet soothing voice that carries you through the story, along with some fantastic original tracks (I bought the soundtrack and so should you, here).

The game has a great 16bit SNES/hand drawn aesthetic that will hold up for years to come. Much akin to Legend of Zelda it builds a world that is fantastical but somewhat relatable. Rucks is constantly telling you about the world prior to the Calamity and I’m not sure if it’s just the sound of his voice or the great writing but you really get the urge to see all these amazing things and people for yourself.

This brings me to one of the great things that this game does that most other games fail to do. There are challenge missions that come on your world map that are called proving grounds where you are forced to use a specific weapon (war machete, dual revolvers) along with other challenge missions called Who Knows Where located in the Bastion. These missions are completely extra and never have to be attempted. But if you do
attempt them you’re treated to the Narrator giving you back-story about characters you meet in the game and their motivations. By the end of each Who Knows Where (there’s 3 so far) the character of each one is given weight and substance and even though they may be the antagonist you can understand how they arrived at the place they are .Finishing the proving grounds fleshes out more of the world, talking about the people that used that weapon of choice.

Even between loading screens you are given a little bit of text further explaining a scene just to give you more context without coming off to heavy handed by Rucks just telling you.

I really like the use of character history to make you do these challenge missions. Specifically because it makes you utilize all the game gives you instead of becoming sick of playing once the main story is done. One of my favorite games of all time, Batman Arkam Asylum, actually fails in this aspect. It’s a great game that I love to death but the extra challenge missions left more combat with no story point. I’m not sure if this speaks more to me as a gamer but I feel you definitely need some story push at times to get through some of the same combat you’ve been doing for X amount of hours. I hope more games will include more story nuggets in their additional challenge rooms.

Read more articles from Chris

Hosts: Lance, Chris, JJJ, Derek, Eric, Justin and Owen.

On this weeks brand show we are going to interview the crew from Dirty Rectangles and learn more about what it’s like to be an Indie game maker. It’s a lengthy interview but worthwhile to anyone with that independent spirt.

Also we will discuss the demise of Team Bondi. How EA believes the Wii U won’t be a transitional device. The increasing calls for Nintendo to hop into the cell market. GameFly becoming even more like Netflix. John Cena vs CM Punk. We will also continue our top 10 list as we countdown to episode 100! All that and much more on this weeks Bonus Level Radio!

This week gives us our first appearance of the Battle Toads here on wallpaper Friday plus some new hotness I recently got into. If you haven’t had a chance to listen to to this weeks show you should take some time and listen to it. It’s easily one of our best that we’ve ever done and it was such a treat to talk to someone who actually gets paid for making games.

Read more articles from Lance

Hosts: Peter and Brad.

Have you ever fallen down but been unable to get up or get help? We discuss this senario and the new 9-1-1 feature that will allow you to SMS and MMS for help. Have you ever wanted a child’s hand to hold as an iPhone case while you are playing Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. 3 on said iPhone? We also discuss how Chinese smugglers stole a scene right out of the Dark Knight to import Apple products. All this and more in a hilarious episode filled with Peter’s incorrect turns of phrase.

I posted the above video in my G+ stream yesterday with no intention of writing a whole Thursday post about it. On it’s surface it was a cute tech demo of a game that I wish existed. But I kept thinking about it and I realized that it was much more than I initially thought. It was co-operative gaming like I’ve never seen it.

Most co-op games are pretty similar in that you are playing your game/character/army alongside your friends. You travel the game world individually attempting to achieve the same goal. Or you are in control separate game entities fighting alongside each other. Generally speaking, though, you are playing a solo game with a friend who is also playing a solo game together with you. This is a generality* but you get the picture.

The video above changed my entire perception on what a co-op game could be. Take another look at it. There are four players, two on each side. Each player isn’t in controller of only specific units, they have full control of any unit on their side. They work with each other separately and as one. They either work as a team or they will be overrun quickly. How many times have you played a multiplayer game only to have one jackass try to play the game like he is playing solo deathmatch? Only concerned about their stats? In the end screwing the entire team.

That’s why the Horde mode for Gears of War 2 or Battlefield 2′s Onslaught mode or even Left 4 Dead’s basic gameplay got me excited. You are FORCED to work together or die. True co-operative gaming as we know it. But is that all co-op can be?

At gamings earliest stages parallels can be drawn to film. Early on film had no ‘laguange’. Most early films emulated plays or other story telling mediums. They had to, it was a completely new artform. Over time though, they discovered what worked and what didn’t work. Audiences become more sophiscated allowing filmakers to tell stories in non-linear ways or with jump cuts or just in more experimental ways. Film now has an established language to tell stories and we accept movies that only 20 years ago would’ve been lambasted for “structure problems”. (Want a good example? What is the timeline for The Dark Knight? Hours? Days? Weeks? Months? You have no clue but that doesn’t matter.)

Games are at a similar stage. Games started off emulating films or anime and have spent the last quarter century trying to become them. For a while, because of technical limitations, they were forced to come up with their own language and we reaped the benefit. But as soon as the technology caught up we started seeing more and more cinematic games and the innovation of new game types slowed down. Metal Gear Solid 4 isn’t so much of a game as a more successful version of Night Trap. Innovation has stagnated in gameplay. I would like to see that reversed and I think you can start with CO-OP.

The way we play CO-OP is rooted in how we first played games. Two controllers meant you can either play against or with each other by controlling different avatars. I was player 1, you were player 2. You played solo adventures but with a friend just as it always was before the virtual world came around.

But the video above got me thinking that maybe we’ve reached a time when that scheme could be changed. Maybe multiplayer gaming could mean not just multiple players playing but could come to mean one player being multiple people. That we could achieve true co-operative gaming. This kind of game would be strange at first and most likely the first iterations of it would fail hard.

But if the right developer came along and fully embraced the concept we all would reap the benefits of a brand new way of gaming. We are very individualistic people and this kind of game is rather communist in nature but it would require a different way of thinking. And I would welcome that.

*Definition of GENERALITY

Previously on Lance’s Musings….
Five Downloadable Games You Should Own And That Chicks Dig
Homogeneous Gaming
Oh What The Hell Is This Crap?
Intervention Con Panel
Bored.
Bazingas
They Came At Us From Behind!
We Need A Jaws
The Kim Bauer Annoyance
N4G Sucks. Accept it.

Read more articles from Lance

Hosts: Lance, Chris, Gloria and Matt.

On this weeks Bonus Level Radio we were joined by a very special guest from Snowed In Studios, Matt! Matt works for this great indie company as their business development manager. We are extremely grateful that he took out time from his busy Sunday to answer more of our questions about his company. You can tell right off the bat they have something special going on up there and I for one can’t wait for an original IP from these guys.

Besides an awesome interview we also discussed how the EA vs Valve battle is really starting to heat up. The growing fear that the 3DS price cut may have bigger ramifications than initially thought. Bethesda suing the little guy and making us all sad in the process. And we break the news on a long awaited sequel. All that and we begin our countdown to triple digits on this weeks Bonus Level Radio!

Chris may have convinced me to try Minecraft. I’ve only heard great things from people about it. I’ve even heard people who run their own servers which I have no idea how to do. Next payday I might pick it up.

Read more articles from Lance

Hosts: Peter and Brad.

This episode was very close to being called SBTC20 to pay homage to a band who is also celebrating a special 20th event this year ( PJ20 ). This episode features some interesting stories regarding SMS messages that can take over your car, why the people that make Firefox (you know that web browser you loved before you switched to Chrome) are tying to make a mobile OS, we let you know who T-Mobile is dating now that she got dumped by Radio Shack last week. We also cover a shocking story that may stop you from telling those rude people who text throughout a movie in the theater to cut it out. This episode is jam packed with smartphone excitement. So you have to ask yourself, what would you do if you had an iPad head?

A short tale about my first Minecraft outing

Imagine the game that all of us who loved Lego always dreamed for.

I’ve been known to be pretty well versed with the video game industry. I play tones of games, follow developers on twitter, and read enough essays and columns about gaming to match the Leo Tolstoy combined works. I consider it my hobby, passion and something I’d never let go even as I become a responsible adult. Well for the most part.

I thought I was beyond the point of surprises and a small sense of cynicism had crept into me. Making me jaded to new games, and more akin to sifting through a sea of generic sewage for some true gems. Well about a year back I was astounded to stumble upon a small indie project from a one man team in Sweden. The man in question Markus “Notch” Persson had worked on other game projects but had decided to quit his job to dedicate all of his energy to put out Minecraft. A overnight success that through word of mouth over the net sold millions and landed him head of his very own video game studio.

Minecraft is a PC game from a first person perspective that puts you in a randomly generated world of nature all with a 8bit blocky look to it.  Be it huge forests, giant stone mountains or vast oceans, the world of Minecraft seems intimidating in size and scope. You’re not sure what to do but as you check your controls you realize you have a punch, so with no living things around I wailed on the first tree and after some deterioration it broke and an audible pop made me realized that I just acquired something. Checking my inventory I now had a piece of wood, the Mining had begun.

Fast forward 2 hours and a quick Google search for a tutorial later. And I had built my first home by crafting the items I collected into pick axes, shovels, torches and a bow and arrow. It was a modest home with Spartan furnishing, a decent start I thought till night fell.  I had first noticed that my torches were the only thing keeping the ever growing night from encroaching on my humble home. I barely noticed at first, still digging out of a little plot of land where I struck a stone vein.

Then I heard it, a creek and a moan. I spun quickly to face whatever it was. And out of the darkness came two man sized spiders. Though they startled me at first I being a seasoned gamer knew how to deal with this. Equipping my bow and arrow I launched my offensive at my enemy hoping to get back to my Mining. But to my utter shock they did not falter all that much and still continued their demonic march. They struck me and I ran back to where I had laid a torch earlier. The spiders pushed closer but heeded at the light of the torch. Ok I learned something new, monsters fear light a simple enough concept though I’d wish it were learned under less strenuous circumstances. With renewed vigor I continued my onslaught on those spiders and they eventually fell but not before a trio of skeletons with their own  bow and arrows, their aim was truer then mine so I decided a tactical was in order and hid in my house, knowing my sturdy structure would hold against their bombardment. It held and I watched from my doorway as they simply stood and waited.

I was weary but reassured as I knew sunrise would so approach and send these beasts back from whence they came. That’s when I heard the animalistic hiss and I knew I was in deep trouble. A green creature rose from the darkness that’s body reassembled a man sized phallus, it’s called a Creeper. It barreled past the skeletons and headed directly to my home. And boom.

Now in retrospect the noise sounded more of hissing from a stick of dynamite. Fitting as  it left a crater where the front of my house used to be. The skeletons pursued relentlessly and I was forced to abandon my home with nothing but a torch in hand. I thought it was all over, running toward a body of water, my enemies in tow.

Then the sweat relief of a sun rise hit me and my pursuers were ignited in a glorious flame which I reveled in.

I made a quick save and logged out the game. Starring perplexed at my computer screen I didn’t know what came over me but I knew I wanted more. So I logged back in and repaired my house and prepared for night fall.

Read more articles from Chris

Now that Captain America has come out, there won’t be another major comic book movie until May when Avengers comes out. Therefore I decided I would take the opportunity to look back at the four major comic movies that were released this year, and describe what my thoughts were on each and give them all a ranking compared to each other.  Just to clarify, I’m only looking at the super hero comic movies, and not the other comic related movies such as Conan (which isn’t out yet) and Transformers 3 (many of the plots (yes there actually are plots) and characters are taken from the comics), mainly because it would be the same as comparing Youngblood to Scott Pilgrim.  Are they both comics? Yes, but one is a manga inspired slice of life book with fighting, and the other is 90’s art and horrible scripting to the EXTREME!!!!! So while T3 has roots in the Marvel Comics from the 80’s, I am not counting it for the purposes of this article, though if you want to know my opinion on T3, just hit me up on Twitter @tiggerpete , and I’ll go way in depth.  Now on with the show.

Since I want my rankings to be a surprise, I will save it for last, and review the movies by order of release.  First up this year was Thor coinciding with Free Comic Book Day, and aside from pointless 3D, it did well in building the complex mythology and world of Asgard, and while there were some issues in how quickly the movie ended, it was solidly cast, and the relationship between Thor and Loki was easily my favorite part.  The negatives of the movie were that the third act was way too short, and to some the romantic subplot between Thor and Natalie Portman was a little underdeveloped and lacked weight, that said, the movie was witty, and from what little I know about Thor in the comics, they stayed pretty close to what made the character popular in the first place.

A few weeks after Thor, X-Men: First Class would come out.  Now this is either a prequel to the previous X-movies with terrible continuity (though if you ignore x-3 and Wolverine it actually syncs up quite well) or it’s a complete reboot of the movie x-universe.  Either way, it takes place in the 60’s and sort of does a revisionist history take on the Cuban Missile Crisis.  I’ll say it right now, Magneto is bad ass in this movie, the only way he could be any more badass is if he was played by Liam Neeson, but that’s beside the point.  While the characters that make up the team aren’t necessarily an all-star lineup, they fit well together and the movie is really about Charles and Eric anyway.  Now the villain is where this movie really shines as Kevin Bacon is one hell of a great antagonist, him and his Hellfire Club, I never knew Sebastian Shaw could kick that much ass.

Some negatives about x-men are the acting of January Jones as Emma Frost, and that it seemed all the minority characters either died or turned evil, though that observation was not originally mine, and given Darwin’s mutation, its not clear if he really died or not, as its possible he adapted into becoming pure energy or something, but you probably don’t care about that.

The week before my birthday in late June, Green Lantern was released to very negative reviews, in fact here are 4 movies with higher scores on Rotten Tomatoes that I would argue are far worse that Green Lantern, Transformers 3, that’s right, Bay-formers got better reviews, Mr. Popper’s Penguins, Hangover 2 (yeah that’s right, Hangover 2 which is copy and pasted from Hangover 1 with a few different jokes got better reviews), and Pirates 4.  Now I’m going to try and defend this movie as its DC’s only movie this year, and as a big fan of Green Lantern, I really wanted this movie to be great.

The biggest flaw with the whole movie is editing, some scenes feel out of order, some scenes seem lacking in transitions, and some of the acting is a little off (mostly Carol Farris, but she gets better halfway through) and the cgi is a little intrusive, but it was far better than it could have been.  Now positives, if you listened to Matt’s review of GL on a recent episode of Retcon Radio, you probably think there weren’t any positives at all, however I would invite Matt to suck it since the first movie to feature the Punisher sucked balls and this is miles ahead of that. Anyway, the positives are, they got Oa down really well, Hector Hammond was entertaining, pretty much all of the Ferris Air stuff was great, and although it differed from the comics, they blended Krona and Paralax into a fairly intimidating villain.

All in all, GL wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great either, it was merely average, which is still way better than last years’ Jonah Hex.  I am hoping they fix all of the minor issues that dragged GL down when they make GL2 (they’d better make GL2, or I’m gonna be pissed).

Last but not least (or is it?) coming out only a couple weeks ago, is Captain America: the First Avenger.  Cap is the second comic movie this year to also be a period piece taking place primarily during WW2, and is also well cast with Tommy Lee Jones stealing the show. It is well written, well acted and has numerous in-jokes and references to the famous moments from the original series in the golden age.  Not much to say about it really, Red Skull was great, so was Arnim Zola, and Cap was great as well.  One minor problem I guess, its really only a 2 hour trailer for the Avengers, but that’s only a minor gripe really.

Ranking time:

#4. Green Lantern (too many problems, and the other movies were really well done)

#3. Thor (good, but not good enough)

#2. Captain America (good if not great, but still not good enough to be #1)

#1. X-Men: First Class (possibly the best X-movie ever, if not already on par with X-2, just too good to not be #1)

Join me next time and I will detail my new acquisitions following the comic convention I’m going to this weekend, should be fun!

Read more articles from Pete

Hosts: Chris, Lance, Matt and Gloria.

Hey everybody so this week discussed Jane McGonigals Reality is Broken for Paperweights. the book deals with taking lessons from videos games and plugging them into real life. It was a unique read that for the first time in Paperweights history had all of us in agreement.

This is the one book that may have us coming back for a recap, since I think the entire cast is curious to try and implement McGonigal’s teachings into a real world setting. So download and listen to the episode and see if Lance, Gloria, Matt and me are crazy for liking this book.

Our next book was chosen by Matt. Here it is, The Clown by Heinrich Boll.

Hosts: Lance, Chris and Gloria.

This week we discuss the surprise price drop of the Nintendo 3DS and its fallout. Who will blink first in the epic showdown that is EA vs Valve and I ask who or what is the best video game villain and why? If the video game crunch is avoidable or not. Another game has the dreaded one save file implemention and if quality should justify a price hike. All that and more on this epic adventure we call Bonus Level Radio!

The news that the 3DS is dropping it’s price came as a shock but at the same time made a lot of sense. I don’t think the system is failing at all but are we seeing the end of handheld gaming as we knew it? Is it’s future in cell phones only? Does this scare or encourage Sony? I can’t wait till Sunday to fully tackle this.

So what’s your favorite wallpaper from this week?

Hosts: Peter, Brad and Stephanie.

Stephanie (The LG Girl) was a guest host at the Saved by the Cell round table this week for an excellent smartphone/tablet discussion. She was kind enough to answer a ton of questions we had about her amazing job and LG’s mobile devices. In this epic double LP of an episode we discuss topics including Android device returns, Radio Shack’s new mobile partnership, carriers’ commitment to getting Gingerbread pushed to handsets, an iPad you have to hear about to believe and much, much more.

Stephanie is on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. You can find more information about LG’s devices and products by going to www.lg.com/us/.

This past Sunday we bashed Microsoft pretty hard on their handling of their Indie Game service. While we gave some suggestions on how they could improve it we didn’t really complement them on their excellent support of downloadable titles overall. This has bugged the crap out of me because I truly do love these bite size games. So in response to my own criticisms I decided to give you five games that everyone who owns an XBox or PS3 should own (if they are on your system of choice that is).

5) A Kingdom of Keflings
I pretty much hate time management type games. I rather do the dishes than play games like Diner Dash. However Keflings is different. It skews the time management genre with a bit of the Populus God genre. The game takes place in a mythical kingdom and you are a giant super being. I played this game with my XBox Avatar so it really was ME being an even more super, super being. I could go on and on about the gameplay but I’ll break it down into a one sentence description that sounds way worse then it really is. The game is essentially an RTS where you have to build different buildings for different skills and mine different resources to achieve each development tree without the attacking forces. That’s right you have no enemy. The game is resource gathering and building buildings without an opponent. The game doesn’t end but when you have built everything in the game you don’t really feel compelled to continue. It’s a fun game that chicks dig.

4)Splosion Man
I’ve made my love of this game clear on numerous occasions. It’s a fantastic throw-back to the NES days of game design with modern twists. The artwork is fun. The level design simplistic yet varied. The sound design inspired (especially the music). The controls frustrating as all hell but never to point of throwing your controller at the wall. The best part of the game is how difficult it gets. The game gets so challenging that you have to be 8 years old or an adult virgin to beat it fully. Sounds like a drawback but in my mind that’s a feature. It’s a fun game that chicks dig.

3)Braid
Braid is a gamers game. You need to have a long time understanding of games to get all of the references in the game as well as the puzzles themselves. The game is Prince of Persia: Sands of Time PLUS Super Mario Bros PLUS the movie Memento. Story plays out like a children’s book but with surprising depth. The puzzles are difficult as all hell but not so bad if you play with a partner. That’s the real fun of the game. Even though it’s a single player game it’s hell of a lot of fun to play with a partner in the same room as you. Almost just as rewarding. (Side note here, I always felt this way and was happy to hear that Jane McGonigal said essentially the same thing in her book). If you haven’t played this game yet you should go and check it out. It’s a fun game that chicks dig.

2)Pac-Man C.E.
The original Pac-Man took the world by storm. The first video game superstar took the world by storm yet was sadly neglected for nearly a quarter a century. Oh sure his wife had a very successful spin-off semi-sequel but the original was left to have rehashes as his legacy. However that all changed with Pac-Man C.E. This is the first true sequel to Pac-Man and it’s addictive as all hell. The game takes the classic gameplay of Pac-Man and adds 25 years of game design philosophy. With dynamic changing levels and time limits that are difficult to achieve but close enough that you always believe you can hit it you keep coming back. The game was one of the first downloadable games I ever got and after 5 years I still go back to it. It’s a fun game that chicks dig.

1)Shadow Complex
I got a confession to make. It’s a big one too. I never played Super Metroid back in the day. I never owned it for my SNES and never played it at length. I would try it out every once and a while but it wasn’t a game I liked. Wasn’t my cup of tea. So when Shadow Complex came out and people kept saying that it is Super Metroid for this generation I didn’t even look at it. It wasn’t until Paul badgered me on the show to try it out that I did. Maybe because I am older and wiser now I got this style of game. The gameplay didn’t annoy me anymore. It grabbed me and I couldn’t put the game down. The games 2.5D environment and near future artwork was fantastic. The storyline is fun and not too complicated but still engaging. Backtracking is kept to a minimun but never feels forced when you do it. I love this game and find myself revisiting it almost once a year. It’s a fun game that chicks dig.

Previously on Lance’s Musings….
Homogeneous Gaming
Oh What The Hell Is This Crap?
Intervention Con Panel
Bored.
Bazingas
They Came At Us From Behind!
We Need A Jaws
The Kim Bauer Annoyance
N4G Sucks. Accept it.

Hosts: Martin and Matt.

That’s right it’s new comic Wednesday and we’re back again. I often wonder all Odin feels about comic books choosing his day or perhaps the All-Father is a computer reader himself. I guess with his lack of depth perception his choices of recreational fun are limited. This episode we swim in the shallow end of SDCC, by this time we’d expect you all to have gotten your news fill so we keep it light and fresh. Matt had a chance to check out Captain America and touches on some of his favorite hi-lights from yet another killer Marvel super hero movie. (We’re looking at you DC.) Speaking of Marvel we also touch on the subject pertaining to how large their balls actually are, this of course is in reference to their new promotion that targets DC’s latest cross-over. We spend a bit of time over in the indie world talking about Dwight MacPherson’s latest (or re-released) series from DC’s Zuda imprint, Sidewise. Also promoting the indie series Dead Future. That brings us to our next point. We here at Retcon Radio have a soft spot for Indie comics. If you or someone you love is doing an indie comic, tell them to stop. No seriously let us know, leave a comment or send us a note. We’d love to do some more indie coverage and your silence is only a disservice to yourself.

Hosts: Lance, Chris and Gloria.

This week we discuss the lackluster service that is XBLIG and ways that could improve it, Apple iOS users seemingly insatiable appetite for APPS, the dangers of planking at work, if games are advocating genocide, who really owns ModernWarfare3.com and much much more! Next week we begin the countdown to Episode 100!!!!

Hosts: Peter and Brad.

Angry Birds is so pervasive that bars are now participating in “Angry Hours”. Have those vile pigs stolen all the world’s happiness? We talk about how often Americans get new phones, how Apple might have prevented Jailbreaking of iOS devices and how the Canadian pop music sensation @Justin Bieber is using his fame to make the world a safer place. All this and more on the latest episode of Saved by the Cell.

So I’ve been giving some thought as to which relaunched titles I will be picking up, and I figured for the sake of journalistic integrity, I need to be fair and read every issue one, and give them all a fair chance to impress me, and I will drop them the moment they start to fail me.  I came upon this idea after realizing the hidden gems that a company publishes are almost never realized until they are cancelled due to low sales, or when they are given the spotlight by the comic press, even though critically acclaimed books still get cancelled due to low sales.  Well, it was that and my LCS (Krypton Comics in Omaha, NE) was having a deal where you save 25% off the cover if you order all 52 issue ones, and that was a deal that gave me an excuse to read all of them, and maybe I’ll like some of the ones nobody else seems to care about.  To let you know just what I will be putting myself through, I suppose I should break down just what the titles are going to be, so I will be going over all 52 books, and giving a brief idea of what my thoughts are on each.

——————————————-

Justice League of America- big 7 JLA, reminds me of what the Morrison JLA did in the late 90’s, hope this does the same

Wonder Woman-probably a continuation of the JMS Wonder Woman storyline

Aquaman- been waiting for an Aquaman book since Brightest Day, and written by Geoff Johns no less

Flash- love the Flash, looks to still be a Barry Allen book

The Fury of Firestorm- another book I’ve looked forward to since Brightest Day ended, written by Gail Simone, I’ve been hearing some awesome things about it

Savage Hawkman- I’ve never been a Hawkman guy, and Brightest Day didn’t really change my mind, still, I’m curious about this one

Green Arrow- that’s my jam son, same writer as before, plus Jurgens on art? Should be great

Justice League International- Oh hell yeah, been wanting this since Generation Lost ended, hopefully they keep the character development from previous storylines, because Booster Gold is way more interesting now than he was as a goofy clown in the original JLI, with Jurgens writing, I think he’ll still be the more mature Booster that dates back to 52, and Geoff Johns involvement.

Mister Terrific- haven’t heard much about this one, frankly the character has always been a little boring to me, but this being the first JSA member mentioned without any JSA books, it may flesh out what happened to the JSA in the DCnU

Captain Atom- might be interesting, never been much of a Cap fan, but I liked some of the character in Gen. Lost

DC Universe Presents- not sure of what to think of this one, looks like a showcase for c-list characters that can’t carry their own titles, might be fun

Green Lantern- written by Geoff Johns, need I say more?

Green Lantern Corps- I believe same team as before, not much different from last volume

Green Lantern the New Guardians- I think it’s a 7-color team book with Kyle in the lead, might be fun

Red Lanterns- not sure the rage corps can lead their own book, but it might be good for a storyline

Batman- its Batman.

Detective Comics- its Batman.

Batman and Robin- nice to see Damien get some time with his father, though I enjoyed the Dick/Damien relationship

Batman the Dark Knight- David Finch’s Bat book, if you liked the last one (whenever it came out) you’ll like this one

Birds of Prey-HOW CAN BOP EXIST WITHOUT ORACLE!!!!1111HJFJ LNGLNMHF. /KHC (sorry had a bit of nerdrage for a moment)

Catwoman- liked her in Gotham City Sirens, hoping her solo title will be good

Batgirl- I loved Stephanie Brown, her Batgirl was fun and interesting, throwing Babs back seems a huge step back for the character, erasing 20+ years of character development, but Gail Simone is writing, so I have a little hope

Batwoman-J. H. Williams’ book, about time it gets launched

Nightwing- again, a step back for the character, as well as a color change for his uniform, I think Nightwing looks better with blue not red, but nitpicking

Red Hood and the Outlaws- might be fun

Batwing- Batman Incorporated’s Batman in what looks like Egypt from the cover  (Pyramids in a desert) looks fun

Swamp Thing- never been a huge Swamp Thing guy, but I’m curious if it will be interesting to me

Animal Man- Jeff Lemire on Animal Man? Might be the best take on the character since Morrison, and that’s some high praise

Justice League Dark- stupid title, but it looks good, sort of a new Shadowpact

Demon Knights- it’s a Paul Cornell book, should be good, regardless of the subject

Frankenstein Agent of Shade- meh, but Jeff Lemire, might prove to be fun

Resurrection Man- Abnett and Lanning on Resurrection Man? Awesome

I, Vampire- not looking forward to this one, not very hopeful

Voodoo- once again, meh, might surprise me though

Legion Lost- time displaced Legionnaires? Should be fun

Legion of Super-Heroes- love me some Legion

Teen Titans- oh god the character designs, still Titans has been my team for a while with a few notable gaps due to an overall lack of quality, no telling if this leads to another gap

Static Shock- might be good, my hopes are pretty low though

Hawk and Dove-four words, Rob Liefeld on art, yeah

Stormwatch- another Paul Cornell book, looks interesting

Blackhawks- a WW2 book, or maybe a team from WW2 in modern times, not sure, but I’ve never been crazy about war books

Sgt. Rock and the Men of War- war anthology maybe? same thoughts as the last one, never been crazy about war books

All Star Western- Jimmy Palmiotti, as close to a Jonah Hex continuation as we’re going to get

Deathstroke- not sure on this one, I’ve liked Deathstroke before, but not in the last couple years

Grifter- a solo book for a wildstorm character I’m not too familiar with, still might be fun

Omac- meh, I repeat, meh

Suicide Squad- in the absence of Secret Six, this is where you get your Deadshot and King Shark fix

Blue Beetle- more Jaime, not sure if it’ll be as good as the last Blue Beetle series, but I’m hoping

Action Comics- Grant Morrison on Superman, need I say more?

Superman the Man of Tomorrow- George Perez on Superman, should be great

Supergirl- hate the new costume, or rather I hate the way the cape is, and the boots’ stupid knee things, but I mostly enjoy Supergirl, so unless her character is screwed around with, it should be good

Superboy- stupid unnecessary costume redesigns, what was so wrong with the jeans and logo t look? It worked and was elegant in its simplicity, still, I like Conner, so it might be good

————————————

I will be giving a review of each when they come out, and I will keep a tally of how many series I stick with.

Current score- DC-52, Me-0

Hosts: Lance, Chris and Gloria.

A few lines of code in Windows 8 has strongly implied that Redmonds next OS may play XBox games natively. NBC apparently thinks it’s weird for any male to play games over the age of 30. Sex isn’t as pleasing to a woman as….. Facebook Games? We ask the burning question is Yoshi Mario’s Pet, Friend or Slave? It was rumored last week but EA is all set to acquire PopCap for 750 million giving them a dominant position in the casual market. Space Invaders is soon to be coming to a theater near you, and Lance asks the panel what is the least likely game that could possibly be made into a movie? All that and much more on an amazing episode of Bonus Level Radio!!

People are really up in arms about Netflix’s price increase. While I’m not super happy about it myself the price of Netflix before was stupid cheap for what you got. The thing that shocks me is that there is no bundle deal for those of us who want both DVDs and streaming. As it is now my monthly price is under 12 bucks now it’s going to be around 18 so it’s a big increase. It even made front page news on CNN where I saw this quote that put it in perspective.

“The machines are still featuring people whining about Netflix’s fee hike. Meh,” wrote Alexis Madrigal of The Atlantic on Google+. “Look at the price of a car. Or college. Or a gallon of gasoline. Or lunch at Applebee’s. Or a movie ticket. People don’t calculate hourly entertainment value very well.”

Makes a lot of sense to me.

So what’s your favorite wallpaper from this week?

Hosts: Peter and Brad.

It started off as a slow week but GetJar really took it up a couple of notches with their public statement against Apple. While we’re not quite sure who their father is, they’ve made it quite clear it’s not Steve Jobs. Many other interesting and exciting topics are discussed and as always if you give us an hour each week, we will change your life forever.

When I was a kid everyone had a gaming console of some kind. Some (like me) had quite a few. Most everyone had at least an original Nintendo. This was a great time to be a kid gamer. Every time you went to a friend’s house to play it was not just an opportunity to gain social experience points in life but a chance to play their collection of games.

One of the benefits of the super popularity that was the original Nintendo was that everyone seemed to have one. Everyone also acquired a bunch of games too. This meant that after Peter’s younger brother whipped me in the eye with his controller after I trounced in Street Fighter 2 that we could move onto other unique games. Unique to me because he had them and I didn’t.

You see back then everyone seemingly had 10-15 games. Out of those you could expect to share five similar games with a friend. The rest would be unique to that individual. If they had crappy games I probably wouldn’t get along with them. But part of the joy (for me) of gaining social experience points was the different games everyone seemed to have. Since I lived and breathed gaming as a kid those unique and interesting games were a big draw for me as a kid (not the only one, I’m not that weird). One friend would have Off Road Racing, another Galaxy 5000, another Kings Knights, another Battletoads, another Final Fantasy, another Crystalis. I literally can go on and on and on. We’d do kids things but we’d also play games. I’d put some games in a plastic bag, hop on my scooter and scoot over to Peter or Aarons house for an afternoon of playing in someone else’s gameland.

I wonder if I have lost that though.

Here is a list of games I own for the 360 -

Assassins Creed 2
Bioshock
Bioshock 2
Blue Dragon
Borderlands
Call of Duty 4
Call of Duty World at War
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2
Call of Duty Black OPs
Dragons Age
Dragons Age 2
Fable 2
Fable 3
Fallout 3
Gears of War 2
Guitar Hero 2
Guitar Hero 3
Halo 3
The Last Remnant
Left 4 Dead
Mass Effect
Mass Effect 2
The Orange Box
Red Dead Redemption
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2
LA Noire
Portal 2
Assassins Creed Brotherhood
Battlefield Bad Company 2

Now look at your list of games. How many do we share in common? Among my friends, our game libraries are extremely similar. While it seemed that when I was a kid, my friends and I shared about 1 in 3 of the same games nowadays its more like 8 out of 10.

The benefit of my friends and I having the same games is obvious – online multiplayer. Most nights we hop on play a few rounds of whatever and have a good time. This is great. It reminds me of my younger days, grinding out social experience points by playing together and forming memories.

The drawback is that we all have to have a copy of the game. And games aren’t cheap. So we end up having less diverse libraries than we did a long time ago. Less individual gaming memories. We take less risks with our games. If a game looks promising but didn’t score 90 on metacritic and is coming out at the same time as a the next FPS murder simulator that everyone is playing I most likely will pass on it. Even though the game itself might be vastly enjoyable if not perfect.

Don’t take this the wrong way. I am not some old fart saying get off my internet lawn you rascals. Not at all. I think overall gaming is vastly superior now than it was when I was a kid. I am just worried that along the way we may have lost something we didn’t even know we had, diversity.

Previously on Lance’s Musings….
Oh What The Hell Is This Crap?
Intervention Con Panel
Bored.
Bazingas
They Came At Us From Behind!
We Need A Jaws
The Kim Bauer Annoyance
N4G Sucks. Accept it.

Hosts: Martin, Matt and Pete.

We had a chance to reunite with our long lost compatriot Peter Duling, though I still feel his name would be far cooler if spelled Dueling. I guess that goes against his nick name though, Tiggerpete. (stifled laugh) So as always we talk more DC and Pete talks over everyone else. I think at this point you come to expect that people and there is a sad empty feeling when he can’t join us these days.

Add to that rampant issues with connectivity to Skype and this is one the greatest episodes yet. Of course that may be due to the guest appearance at the end of the show by an unnamed female helping Matt stick it to the man once more. (Ewww sticky) I’m pretty sure we talked comics and even went over a list of titles that have yet to see the light of day. That all pales in comparison to the revelation we had when Pete revealed his dirty little secret. Will this dark secret rip the show apart or will Pete have to come to terms with his problem. Tune in and find out, same bat-time, same bat-place!