JonCole

I've been watching Veronica Mars on Netflix Instant View... really an excellent, well-made show that's worth watching if you never did the first time around. It's amazing what they can do with what can be boiled down to a story about high school kids. I've also been watching Justice League Unlimited on DVD... not a whole lot to report that you couldn't guess yourself, I just think it deserves to be mentioned as a legit, comic-based animated series in the league of Batman: Animated Series. There are plenty of jokes and themes clearly targeted to adults rather than kids, so you don't have to be too worried about being bogged down in silly stuff.

Is this the same article that the guy commented on how "charmingly garrulous" the Giant Bombcast guys are?

I feel like a total jackass in liking the end of Assassin's Creed 2. Sure, I don't think it's a particularly powerful plot mechanism, but I don't really feel like it removes the stakes from the game as much as anyone else seems to. I kind of dig the ridiculous, sci-fi umbrella that all this falls under, though I do agree in the assertion that it'd be nice to get these kinds of games without those underpinnings. Does anyone agree with me at all in not really minding it all so much? Off the top of my head, I remember the Giant Bomb guys expressing some enthusiasm over the overarching plot, but it seems like this hindsight blowback leaves me without a lot of allies in this.

Eh, people play fast and loose with the coast shorthand. It seems that anything in PST can be considered West Coast and anything in EST can be considered East Coast. And c'mon, Montreal isn't so bad. I just visited a little while ago and almost everyone I met there was pretty nice. I also went to this sweet market downtown that had some amazing gelato and produce. Then again, my impression of Montreal might just be so bright because Americans are generally such assholes.

Montreal is still considered East coast, right?

I heard Overlord was good, but I also heard it's not incredibly rewarding to play out of the regular cycle of the game.

East Coast is the BEAST Coast. Anyways, really awesome 'cast. I was very happy to hear the comment on CastMedium mentioned on the show; you made it so I didn't have to rant on my own site about the differences between talking about experiencing games versus reviewing games.

I hesitate to use the word completed to describe what state I've reached in Burnout Paradise; I think finished might be a little more appropriate. I love this goddamn game, but I can't help but find it a bit repetitive without delving too deep into the social elements of the game (which I'm clearly LTTP for). So, after grabbing my Burnout license, I think it's going to get taken off the stack and placed in my game storage boxes.

Plug: We made a CastMedium podblast for Inception which has quickly become one of our most downloaded episodes... I had a ton of fun with it. We covered a couple of big theories and dove into some of the film's mechanics when I could convince the guys to stop spinning their interpretations of the plot. Anyways, it comes in at a nearly unreasonable 50 minutes but it seems like people have enjoyed it. Check it out: http://www.castmedium.com/2010/07/22/castmedium-podcast-inception-podblast-07-22-10/

I literally have no interest in this.

Ah, yes, Audible is the Amazon-owned audiobook service that seems to get the lion's share of business here in the states. Also, thanks for the recommendation! I never actually checked out that series for some terrible reason, so this is a great excuse to finally get to it.

Does anyone use Audible around here? I have three credits banked and I'm about to go on a roadtrip, so any suggestions would be lovely.

75% off THQ PC Games - http://store.thq.com/ Notable DOWII: Chaos Rising - $7.50 Metro 2033 - $12.50 Space Asshole - $5 Edit: Just thought it was also worth mentioning that some of these games can be registered on Steam... the list of games are here: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7480-WUSF-3601 I just got Metro 2033 and after waiting a couple minutes for the confirmation email, I entered the activation code on Steam and it worked just fine. Damn good price!

Lovecraft.

Man, totally agree with everyone you said about ODST. Different guns in cutscenes were annoying, the city was massively underrated, the ending was underwhelming though I was glad there was no "boss"... right on the money. I'm getting to the same point as you with my backlog, though I haven't finished as many games. I'm looking at my pile of shame and seeing a handful of long ass games that I simply won't be able to get through fast... it's just a matter of picking one and going. The good thing about your choice of Fallout is that you can pretty much choose how long you want to spend with it. Burning through the main story could probably take you less than 10 hours, but you can obviously spend way longer if you so choose.

This has been confirmed by Joystiq. 4 games by 4 smaller teams within Double Fine. I'm pumped, because this means I'm more likely to check out their games which haven't totally appealed to me in the past. Here's the link: http://www.joystiq.com/2010/07/15/double-fines-next-projects-four-smaller-games/

The form factor looks great for me. And I love digital distribution, despite the fact that I'm still a little cautious about having Sony be the single channel to acquire content. The biggest problem is price, for me. We don't have that promise of 10 free games here, in fact most bundles only include one or two games. Beyond that, the product is significantly more expensive than the PSP-3000. I'd love to have a PSP Go because it looks like it'd actually fit in my pocket, but price is a huge issue.

I think it's worded that way to get clicks, but I also don't think it's a stretch to label it that way. Sure, Tim didn't say "Kotick is a total prick", but he did say "He could do it this way, instead of doing it like a total prick [like he is currently doing]".

I totally agree with your last point and that's what sets Bioshock apart from Singularity, for me. While no game that I know of synthesizes all of the disparate elements in a web of different ways, Bioshock 1/2 make the biggest push towards that goal. For the second point, I honestly find fighting mutants at least marginally more exciting than the standard fare in a game like Modern Warfare 2 or even slightly more intelligent guys in the first half of Crysis. The real median between those two and what I consider the AAA enemy type would be those from Gears of War or Halo, because there are a fairly small set of differing enemies that actually do have separate behaviors but overlapping abilities. The Grunts, Jackals, and Elites can all fire a plasma pistol at me, but an Elite is more armored and can duck-roll, Jackals are only exposed at their backs and feet, and Grunts come in packs of several that can overrun you.

Just beat Crackdown 2, propelling me over the 30,000 gamerscore milestone. Beating games is fun and superficially rewarding, yay. Back on topic, though, I had a pretty good time with Crackdown 2, but it seems like a lot of the things they improved from the first game were traded for a whole new set of small problems that make the endgame especially obnoxious. Either way, I'd still recommend it to people who enjoyed the first one and kind of want to revisit a more relevant version.

I recently started playing this game and was wondering if anyone else was too. I was initially turned off from the game because it seemed like a bandwagon Eastern European/Old-Timey/Bullettime situation, which it... actually kind of is. But strangely enough, emulating games like Bioshock can be done well and I feel like Singularity does that and more. It's set in present time, but in a world where the Soviet Union discovered this new element that has practically unlimited power. Experimentation with that element both won them the Cold War but resulted in a major catastrophe at the testing facility. Throughout the game you get to explore some of fruits of this technology which ultimately feel like plasmids from Bioshock, but center around time travel. For instance, you can age enemy soldiers to dust or reverse-age plants into sprouts. The big hook is that through your time traveling, you get the chance to alter the past and change your present. For instance, saving a person can change the whole timeline, or you can do something as mundane as break into a building in the past that isn't accessible in the present. Anyways, I'm not much of a pitch man, but those are kind of the basics of the game and I'd encourage people to check it out... I'm having a lot of fun so far. Anyone else have impressions?

Hope that isn't too unreadable.

I beat Singularity. Now I'm working on Dead Space and Crackdown 2.

Yeah, Brayko really seemed like a... Mega Man-esque challenge in that you really, really had to identify patterns, scope the environment, and use it in a vary particular way to your advantage. It's kind of frustrating when the game poses conflict to you as multifaceted, then presents a boss that forces you to use one facet.