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0:00:37 Intro
0:01:12 Trademark Banter
0:04:15 Red Dead Redemption: Undead First Impressions
0:04:50 Resident Evil: Revelations and discussion on back-tracking
0:12:20 Police Quest
0:17:15 Pirate's Booty
0:21:00 Normal
0:21:30 Ladders in Video Games
0:23:20 Metro: Last Light Final Thoughts
0:26:30 What's worse? Bad enemy AI or bad Ally AI?
Feature Number One
0:39:10 Next Gen Graphics?
News
0:59:44 Xbox One Update (What if Sony does the same thing?)
1:01:55 MLB The Show. Outrage.
1:06:06 Blizzard is Melting
1:11:50 Sonic Mario Galaxy
1:13:30 Warren Spector is a Clown (and Wolfenstein 3D trivia)
First Impressions
1:17:40 Costume Quest (and parental advice)
1:19:00 Great Intros in Games
1:21:40 Septerra Core [sic]
1:25:25 To the Moon
1:38:10 Autism
1:42:30 Proteus
YakuzaKillzONE Minute
1:50:10 Wii U Version is an "experiment"
Deadly Premonition Special (Spoiler Free)
1:55:47 Tom Gets Sucked In
Transcript:
Phil: Welcome to The Game Under Podcast.
Phil: This week, we'll be going over the week's news, giving hands-on impressions of Half-Life, yes, Half-Life, the PC original, Costume Quest, Metro To the Moon, Proteus and Metro Last Light, as well as a couple of featured conversations about next-gen graphics and Deadly Premonition.
Tom: Did you forget Resident Evil Revelations, or was I just not listening?
Phil: And Resident Evil Revelations.
Tom: So says Tom and Phil.
Tom: Hello and welcome to episode of The Game Under Podcast.
Tom: On this episode, we will be discussing a great breadth of games that are now totally irrelevant.
Tom: We're back to our old school style of discussing what you do not care about, but apart from that, we'll also be discussing Xbox One, which by this point, you probably also don't care about.
Tom: Next-gen graphics, which you also probably don't care about, and Deadly Premonition, which you probably do actually care about if there's any justice in the world.
Tom: So shall I just step straight into the impressions?
Phil: Well, of course, we can't do that because we've got to have some trademark banter first.
Tom: That's true.
Phil: That's true.
Phil: I went on a very rare holiday yesterday.
Phil: I went over to the coast.
Phil: For reasons we won't go into here, I was stumbling around the street wearing shoes without socks.
Tom: I'm guessing this has something to do with purple drank.
Phil: No, this time it wasn't.
Phil: But I was like, I need to buy socks.
Phil: So I went into the grocery store where they didn't have any socks.
Phil: I went into the newsagent, no socks.
Phil: So I went into a surf apparel store.
Tom: Can I just ask, were you wearing shoes or were you just in bare feet?
Phil: I was wearing shoes, but I didn't pack in...
Tom: That just kind of destroys the whole story.
Tom: I mean, the intro, the image it conjures up is you stumbling around barefoot in some coastal town somewhere.
Phil: Beachside community.
Phil: So, no, I was walking around and I didn't pack socks because I didn't actually pack any clothes until the last seconds before I left my house.
Phil: And I couldn't find any white socks, so I was just like, well, I'm sure there are some in the car or I can buy some when I get there.
Phil: So I got there.
Tom: Do you generally have random socks in your car?
Phil: Well, in California, it's a habit to pack walking shoes and socks in your car in case you're driving home from work and there's an earthquake and you have to walk for a great distance.
Phil: So part of your in-car earthquake kit is socks and shoes.
Phil: And I don't live in California anymore.
Phil: So I walk into this surf shop, and I ask the clerk behind the counter, I say, I know this is a bit of a stretch, but do you have any socks here?
Phil: And he's all, socks?
Phil: I'm all, yeah, socks.
Phil: He's all like, well, what do you mean?
Tom: Board socks?
Phil: I said, you know, for your feet, they go in between your feet and your shoes.
Phil: He's like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, we got socks back there in the back corner.
Tom: See, now that's, if they hadn't had any socks, confusion might have been understandable.
Tom: But the fact that they actually did was selling socks.
Phil: Yes.
Tom: Didn't understand what you were asking.
Phil: Right.
Tom: Foggles the mind.
Phil: I said, I know it's a stretch, but do you sell any socks?
Phil: He's all, what?
Phil: You know, and I had to describe to him the concept of socks.
Phil: And then he's like, oh, yeah, socks.
Phil: Yeah.
Tom: Maybe there's some sort of surf-related slang for socks.
Phil: Well, that's what I was wondering.
Phil: It's like there's a piece of equipment for surfing that is sock, you know, they call them socks, you know, like something you put on the fins and they're like, but then they'd have those as well.
Tom: Yeah, exactly.
Tom: Well, there are those rubber things you can put on your feet that give you extra grip.
Phil: Right, right.
Tom: But if he was thinking that, he should have known what it was as well.
Phil: And said, yeah, man, yeah, totally, dude, we got socks over there.
Phil: He wouldn't sound like that because I was in Australia.
Phil: Yeah, he might have.
Phil: Also, since we're in the banter section, I get to say whatever I want.
Phil: I just put in Red Dead Redemption Undead.
Phil: And that is hilarious.
Phil: It's basically giving the House of the Dead overkill treatment to Red Dead Redemption.
Phil: So it's so far so good.
Tom: And it works?
Phil: Oh, totally, totally.
Phil: And it's done with a lot of humor, you know, as you would have to do that.
Phil: But, you know, speaking of horror games, you were going to give us some final thoughts on Resident Evil Revelations for PC home console, right?
Tom: Indeed, I was.
Tom: And I'm basically just going to be repeating what I said in the first podcast.
Tom: But why not?
Tom: So from what I've played, which is basically Resident Evil so it's one game, but I'm happy to say this is the best Resident Evil game since Resident Evil easily, in terms of single player.
Tom: As I was getting at in the first impressions of Revelations, the pacing really is just excellent.
Tom: They use the ammo absolutely perfectly to put a tempo to the gameplay, to give it a flow, and the rate that they introduce new enemies also works quite well.
Tom: There is a bit of backtracking, but it's generally here where they reuse new enemies you might have come across or introduce new ones.
Tom: With the new enemies, you can't necessarily just fight them the same way you fought old ones.
Tom: So when you're moving through older environments and backtracking, because of the fact that you've got to approach the enemies differently, it makes the environments feel interesting, despite you having moved through them before.
Tom: So it really is just an excellent package.
Tom: The story is...
Tom: Once again, I would have to say this is probably the best Resident Evil story, and it is a Resident Evil story, so who the hell cares, right?
Tom: But it is hilarious.
Tom: It hits all the right notes.
Tom: It's extremely funny, and it's also got random political comments just shoved in there that are so ridiculously blatant.
Phil: From character.
Tom: Exactly, exactly.
Phil: One thing you said there before you get on to the rest of it is that in backtracking in a game, I've never encountered positive backtracking in a game, but you said in this instance, it's made fresh with the introduction of new enemies, right?
Phil: So you're going back through those same environments.
Tom: There's a lot of backtracking in Resident Evil and to a degree, at certain points as well.
Tom: So did it bother you in then?
Phil: No, I don't remember that at all.
Phil: The most recent game I played was
Phil: Obviously, we played it together online.
Phil: Where's the backtracking in that?
Tom: No, there is a bit of backtracking.
Tom: For example, in the swamp mission, where you're on a boat, you've got to go from area to area.
Tom: That's what I would class as backtracking, because you've always got to go back to the same point.
Phil: No, see, I was talking about, like, really bad backtracking, like in Halo
Tom: It's worse than that.
Tom: It is worse than that.
Tom: It's worse than that.
Tom: It's not on, like, say, Metroid Prime level of backtracking, where you're very, very often moving through the same areas.
Tom: But it's a notch above that, but it's also a notch below something like Resident Evil
Tom: So I would say we're definitely getting into the territory where it would be annoying you.
Tom: But I think it wouldn't be as annoying as it would be in many games because of how they do change things up more than they do in something like Metroid Prime, where you're often just fighting the same enemies as you go through the same areas.
Phil: I could totally handle that.
Phil: I mean, as long as it...
Phil: Because the environments in these games are generally so generic anyway, as long as it's fresh enemies, I think in Halo they had you backtrack through a large section of the game which was basically a copy and pasted level over and over and over again.
Phil: But they didn't introduce any new enemies.
Phil: You're basically just fighting the same guys that you fought on the way there.
Phil: And there's nothing worse than that, except perhaps just coming back through an area with no enemies at all, just seeing the dead enemies that you killed prior.
Phil: So, okay, well, that sounds pretty good.
Tom: Yep, and the other thing I wanted to cover is, and this is an issue, I was saying that it basically had the look of a PlayStation game, right?
Tom: An original PlayStation game.
Phil: Right, I remember you saying that.
Tom: And I stand by that statement.
Tom: But I would say, having watched some videos of it on YouTube, this is not an issue with the DS, though a couple of things might be.
Tom: There's a really, absolutely hilariously bad water effect when you're underwater, which is basically taken directly out of the original Metal Gear Solid when you're underwater.
Tom: It does the same distortion.
Tom: No better than that whatsoever.
Tom: But apart from that, looking at videos on YouTube, it looks excellent.
Tom: It's got none of these problems with it being very two-dimensional in look, even on YouTube videos, where you obviously don't have a D effect.
Tom: So as far as I can see, this is an issue with a lot of HD remakes, where because they're basically applying a high resolution than what the game was made for, you're then losing a lot of basically things that obscure what you're looking at.
Tom: So you get to see all the flaws.
Tom: Now, even if you're doing what you're doing with Revelations where they have redone a lot of the textures and remodel a lot of the areas so that it does look better, you're still effectively taking what is a lower fidelity image and attempting to transmit it at a higher fidelity than what it was originally intended for.
Tom: And this is a problem in any medium full stop.
Tom: For example, if you go back and look at an old episode of Dr.
Tom: Who, a lot of the things that look incredibly stupid, such as details on the costumes and all that sort of thing, are there because the original broadcast was done at such a low quality, they didn't bother getting rid of this sort of thing.
Tom: And by the same token, in broadcasts of that nature, with the remastering, you do get things that would have looked worse in the original broadcast than they look now that have been digitally restored so they look better.
Tom: But at the same time, you're effectively taking what was the overall aesthetic, and you're altering it to the point where you lose its intentions.
Phil: You said you can see all the floors, so at least it's better than Wolfenstein, because in that game there were no floors or ceilings.
Phil: There were just walls.
Tom: Yeah, I see what you did there.
Phil: See what I did there?
Phil: And also, if you look at faulty towers as well, they have walls that shake.
Phil: The sets were so terrible, and it's only when you buy...
Phil: For original broadcasts, you never would have picked up on any of that.
Tom: Or even on VHS, it's harder to see.
Phil: Exactly, right, because it's so muddy and whatnot.
Phil: That might be an argument for...
Phil: There's a lot of people that say, you shouldn't colorize films or digitally upgrade them.
Phil: And certainly, you look at a movie like ET and that's certainly the case.
Phil: But maybe in some of these, if you can just take care of some of the physical things that were wrong in the world, that were only being detected or not being detected because of the low tech, maybe that is a point where it would be appropriate to pretty them up.
Phil: Keep the originals, of course, but maybe on a collector's DVD, have the visually upgraded content as well.
Tom: That's what I would like to see, in fact, on these sort of remakes, is actually include the vanilla original version of The Game for comparison.
Tom: I would personally be quite interested if they were to do something like that, but that probably would not have a great deal of appeal to most people.
Phil: Oh, I was going to say that this week I downloaded Police Quest, the Sierra game, and the first one, at least, comes with either a remade version or the original version.
Phil: And, of course, I'm just playing the version, and that's great.
Phil: But I do like the inclusion of the other version.
Phil: It's always nice to have the choice.
Phil: And I think with any of these kinds of restorations, like with ET or whatever, if you're going to release it, as with Star Wars, if you're going to release a remade version of it, that's great.
Phil: Do whatever you want, but always include the original, so people can appreciate that if they want to.
Tom: I think the Monkey Island games have also done that with their remastered director's cuts or whatever they call them.
Tom: They also include the option to turn that off.
Phil: That's great.
Phil: That's good.
Phil: That's respectful.
Phil: Yeah.
Tom: Exactly.
Tom: And the only thing is, this could be done fine, I would say, but I'm not sure it applies so easily to console games, because with PC games, you can alter a lot of options, right?
Tom: You can basically have the game technically presented however you want it to, and if it's well-optimized, the same aesthetic is going to be there.
Tom: And what I'm thinking is maybe console games, they master it too specifically so that if you alter it, even when you're remaking stuff, it results in something that is not completely true to the original, because I came across the exact same sorts of issues with a lack of two-dimensionality, flatness, and weightlessness in the MDKHD version.
Tom: And looking at videos of stuff like ICO in HD and Shadow of the Colossus, and other HD remakes, this seems to be a common problem that I've come across, whereas you can take a really old computer game, you can play D in HD, and it's still going to look great, and still going to look like the original intention.
Phil: Absolutely.
Phil: Yep.
Phil: And to that point, our friend Derek from Canada, he always rails against the Super Mario All-Stars cart, the cart that came with the Super Nintendo, that has the remastered Mario Brothers games through in the Super Mario World style.
Phil: And then of course, this was re-released a couple of years ago for the Wii as well.
Phil: And like that's an example where, you know, I grew up with the SNES version of those games.
Phil: So I didn't see a problem with it, but someone who likes the original versions is, you know, they should get to play the original versions if they want.
Phil: That's something where you could include it.
Phil: And he makes the same argument with Final Fantasy
Phil: So I grew up with the GBA version of it, but he played the NES version of it.
Phil: So he thinks that the GBA version is an anathema.
Phil: I think that the NES version is unplayable, but both of them should be available to someone who buys a game whenever it's remade.
Phil: Yeah.
Phil: And we can get into this more.
Phil: We're going to have a Deadly Premonition special at the end of this podcast, where there's a director's cut of that game, and I've got a little bit more to say about this kind of thing in that segment as well.
Tom: You finally discovered what special is.
Phil: Yes, yes, I have.
Phil: And that all shall be revealed later in the podcast.
Tom: So now, I believe it is your turn.
Phil: Oh, that's it for Resident Evil Revelations?
Tom: Well, I mean, there's not much more to say, is there?
Tom: It's excellent.
Tom: And we also had the...
Tom: No, let's say one final thing is an interesting thing I found in it.
Tom: This game has quite a few references to Metal Gear Solid.
Tom: And there was another one which I've completely forgotten about.
Tom: So we're just going to go for the water distortion one.
Tom: At one point, the two protagonists of the game have to scuba dive down to a sunken ship.
Tom: And the introduction to this is straight out of Metal Gear Solid.
Tom: You know, the great scene where Snake is swimming through the water to Mos Eisley or wherever he was going?
Phil: I think Mos Eisley...
Phil: Isn't that in Star Wars?
Tom: Probably.
Tom: See, it's called something like Shadow Moses.
Tom: Shadow Moses.
Phil: Okay, yeah.
Tom: You can see how I was easily confused.
Tom: But are you familiar with that scene where he's scuba diving in there?
Phil: At the start of the game?
Tom: Yeah.
Phil: Yeah, of course.
Phil: I've tried to play the game like four or five times.
Tom: Yeah, so they've basically got that scene in there, which was pretty cool, I thought.
Tom: So just the final thing to end on, in an amazing example of Resident Evil stupidity.
Tom: So you're on this sunken ship, right?
Tom: And what's the first thing that you need to do?
Tom: What's the first thing you want to do on a sunken ship, full of water?
Phil: Well, I try and find the captain of the pirate ship and find his booty, and then open up his chest and get the gold doubloons and then rise to the surface and then buy a Ferrari.
Tom: No, that was close, though.
Tom: What the first thing you have to do is turn on the electricity.
Phil: Ha ha ha!
Phil: In an under ship, in a boat under the water.
Phil: You're gonna zap yourself.
Tom: Yep.
Tom: Exactly.
Phil: Okay, now we really are done.
Phil: I'm closing the book on Resident Evil Revelations.
Tom: That's a perfect note to end on.
Tom: You can't end on a better note than that anyway.
Phil: It's closed.
Phil: Well, that was a final thought.
Phil: Here's a first impression.
Phil: I played Half-Life for the PC, but essentially for the first time this week, and I'm liking it.
Phil: I'm actually liking it.
Phil: I'm surprised by how many things are brought over to the sequel.
Tom: I was expecting you to say, I'm surprised by how much you hate it.
Phil: No, no, no.
Phil: I mean, the first part of the game is really terrible when you're in the nuclear research lab and you're just basically trying to get out of it.
Phil: And the worst part about it is not the controls or the visuals or anything like that.
Phil: The problem is basically just learning what the controls are, right?
Phil: And learning that you are capable of crouching and jumping.
Tom: Did they tell you how to do all that in the tutorial?
Phil: What tutorial?
Tom: There's a tutorial.
Tom: Didn't you do the tutorial?
Phil: No.
Tom: Okay, there's a tutorial on the main menu that's called tutorial or something.
Phil: No, no, no.
Phil: I always skip the prologue to books, and I always skip the tutorials whenever I can.
Phil: So I probably would have enjoyed this game a bit more if I knew how to crouch and use equipment and things like that.
Tom: Yeah, you should.
Tom: The tutorial was better than the game from what I played of the game, but continue.
Phil: Well, I'm using Wasdy with a mouse because there's no other option, unfortunately.
Phil: And so, but like I was saying, I'm surprised by how many things are brought over from the sequel.
Phil: And in the same way that playing Crackdown diminished my respect for Infamous, playing Half-Life diminishes my respect for Half-Life significantly because all the things I thought were wondrous and original that were in the sequel actually were just ripped straight from the first game.
Phil: And it basically makes the second game an HD upgrade.
Phil: So in the first one, they have the in-engine cutscenes where you can walk around, which I thought was the first...
Phil: You know, I thought that was the first for Half-Life
Tom: No.
Phil: Again, hugely...
Tom: I was just telling you in...
Phil: I know, but...
Tom: Just like a few weeks ago, this.
Phil: I was telling you.
Phil: I thought you were talking about Half-Life though.
Tom: No.
Phil: The enemies, like the ceiling watsies, the things that have their mucus trails down in the ground that you can use to pick you up, those are in it.
Phil: I can see the appeal of the game at the time.
Phil: I mean, it was basically like an office simulator, not office the productivity software, but being in an office.
Phil: After having games like Doom and Quake being set in these unrealistic worlds, being able to blow shit up in an office environment is pretty cool.
Phil: It has generous auto-saving, and like the sequel, it starts on a train, and I think this is kind of a message to the player that this is going to be a linear game, so you're going to be on tracks pretty much for this entire game.
Phil: It's a bit easy.
Phil: The most difficult thing about the game so far has been the level design and figuring out where to go next.
Tom: And there's no difficulty option or anything?
Phil: I don't know.
Phil: I'm playing it on normal.
Phil: So I usually play on normal.
Tom: If there isn't normal, there's presumably a difficulty option that includes hard.
Phil: Right.
Phil: That's what I meant.
Phil: So I have a question for you that you can think about, and I'm going to make a comment.
Phil: So the question to think about is ladders.
Phil: Has any game done them well?
Phil: Has any game done ladders well?
Phil: And now, while you think about that, I will just say, first person platforming.
Phil: I mean, stop it.
Phil: Stop it.
Phil: Stop it.
Phil: Especially with was-the-only controls.
Phil: Stop making me jump up on crates and then jump from a crate to a crate over a pit of toxic waste, for example.
Phil: Or try and traverse a narrow crossbeam.
Phil: Just stop it.
Phil: Game developers, stop making me do platforming moves in first person.
Phil: It's ridiculous, it's stupid, and it most definitely is not fun.
Phil: So I have my own opinions on the matter, but have ladders ever been done properly in a game?
Tom: Well, I'm going to go for a game that did do first person platforming well, but also did ladders quite well, and that is Mirror's Edge.
Phil: Ah, you know, I have two games listed here for games that did ladders well, and Mirror's Edge is one of them.
Tom: Excellent.
Phil: So, kudos, right?
Tom: Yeah, exactly.
Tom: What's the other one, though, is the question?
Phil: Well, the other one is Riddick, Chronicles of Riddick for the original Xbox.
Phil: It was re-released for the PlayStation and Xbox
Phil: Now, it's a first-person action game.
Tom: Also on PC.
Phil: And it is a first-person action game, but when you go to a ladder, it moves back into the third person, right?
Phil: Which is perfect.
Phil: Just pull the camera back, as opposed to pushing forward and then pushing up, and then keep pushing forward, and then you're going up the ladder, and then you're going down the ladder, and then...
Phil: Okay, well, that was my first impressions of Half-Life.
Phil: Do you have any more first impressions, or are we going to move on to final thoughts in a couple of games?
Tom: I have got no first impressions whatsoever, so we're going to move straight into my final thoughts of Last Line, which is about to make me lie when I finish talking about it.
Tom: So as we know, we heard me talking about this last week, mainly about the problems with the AI and whatnot, and how excellent it looked.
Phil: Oh, you thought it looked excellent?
Tom: Yeah.
Tom: These last lines.
Phil: Okay, okay.
Phil: Cool.
Phil: Keep going, because I did play Metro this week.
Tom: I know where you were trying to go with that.
Phil: Yeah.
Tom: But this is the last line.
Tom: So a while ago, I was talking about the problems with the AI and also with the gunplay, to agree, but I can't remember if I said that basically the lightness of the gunplay ended up being beneficial to the gameplay because it resulted in a high focus on stealth, and it made the, when you did get into a fight, very fast and punchy.
Tom: So that ended up working well.
Tom: I can't remember if I said that in the last one, but just in case.
Phil: You did.
Tom: So I'm saying it now then.
Tom: So the other thing about this is the AI does not get any better.
Tom: It stays this bad throughout.
Tom: And the other thing I was saying was how excellent when you're up the top.
Tom: And once again, this was too long ago for me to remember what the hell I said.
Tom: So I'm just going to assume I do not say this.
Tom: So the best thing about this game is the way it uses ammunition and filters.
Tom: And whenever you go into a polluted area or above ground where everything is irradiated, you've got to wear a gas mask.
Tom: Now, you have to regularly change your gas mask filters because they somehow magically get inundated with radiation and whatnot in a matter of a few minutes.
Tom: So every few minutes, while you're also concentrating on fighting, you've got to be changing your gas mask filters, which means you've got to be scavenging the environment, looking for gas mask filters, as well as ammo, which is reasonably limited in certain areas, while you're also fighting off monsters.
Tom: So it results in this very good and probably quite original compared to many first person shooters that might have a focus on limited ammo and an extreme sense of survival because of the gas mask mechanic, where if you're not doing something that is more sort of objective-based and loot-based, where you're looking for items, you will end up dying.
Phil: I found the gas mask thing to kind of harken back to a game that we've both played, which is The Thing.
Phil: I mean, really, you know, it really does add to the game.
Phil: I'm surprised that more games haven't done this kind of thing, other than it is supremely annoying, but it does put you into a different state of mind in terms of giving you a limited amount of time to achieve an objective.
Phil: Usually that's highly annoying, particularly when it's a countdown.
Phil: When it's arbitrary and they put a counter up in the top corner, like you've got only two minutes to escape this burning building or whatever.
Tom: Yeah, that is just annoying and intrusive.
Phil: That's just annoying, but if it's more like, you know, here's a gas tank, you can only breathe for a certain amount of time.
Phil: We're not going to put a counter on the screen, but you know, you got to keep moving.
Tom: Just to clarify, this is not a game about petrol sniffing.
Phil: Oh.
Phil: I won't make any jokes.
Phil: This is The Game Under Podcast, folks.
Tom: You just did make the joke accidentally.
Phil: I didn't actually.
Tom: You said gas tank.
Phil: Okay, so what is worse in the game?
Phil: Bad enemy AI or bad ally AI?
Tom: It would depend on the game.
Tom: Here, the bad AI, if the gas masks and ammo was better balanced throughout the whole game, it wouldn't be an issue whatsoever.
Tom: I think you can get away with...
Tom: It depends on how the allies are used as well.
Tom: Let's look at Metro
Tom: There's quite a few moments with allies as there is in Last Light.
Tom: Now, in Last Light, the allies, at least on Hard, are just completely useless.
Tom: They're % irrelevant to what you're doing.
Tom: They don't really damage the enemies much, and the enemies basically ignore them completely.
Tom: In Metro the allies can actually kill the monsters, at least on the Ranger difficulty, where the enemies are weaker and weapons do more damage.
Tom: So during these sections, you can actually basically just let the AI wander around doing most of the dirty work for you, which I would say results in the same sense of boredom and easiness that is an issue with the AI in Last Light.
Tom: But in Last Light, you can compensate for that with the amount of ammo you give to the player and the amount of filters.
Tom: But they don't balance that well the whole time.
Tom: For example, the final climax of Last Light is a section where you're basically given the help of one of the characters in the game who gives you superpowers or something to that effect, which helps you see where enemies are and that sort of thing.
Tom: So this is basically meant to be a big empowering moment in the game where for the rest of the game, they've been making you feel very weak for the most part through giving you a small amount of ammo and a small amount of filters.
Tom: But they use so many filters and so much ammo during this section that it completely takes away from the effect that the superpowers you receive have.
Tom: So instead of feeling empowered by what makes sense in the story and would be effective, you've basically just got a shitload of ammo and filters.
Tom: I think I amassed something like almost minutes of free filter time, and I had hundreds upon hundreds of bullets, which probably doesn't sound like that much compared to most shooters.
Tom: But here, if you've got over bullets, or even if you've got bullets, that is a ridiculous amount of ammo.
Phil: So instead of giving you true superpowers, they basically just turn the knob?
Tom: Well, they gave you true superpowers to a degree while also giving you so much ammo and filters that was basically more effective than the superpowers.
Tom: So the superpowers therefore had no impact on what you were doing.
Tom: Now, there is one rather dangerous problem with the limited amount of filters though, and that is the automatic checkpointing system that you come across mid-game.
Tom: So if you get to a certain area within the level, it autosaves.
Tom: Now, the issue is if you've got, say, let's say seconds left on your filter and you're desperately searching for another filter for an extra minute or two of air.
Tom: Now, if in your searches you accidentally move far ahead in the level, it's going to autosave there, and you could get to a point where you autosave and you've got like seconds of airtime left.
Tom: So when you die, you're going to spawn there again, and you might be seconds away from getting to the nearest filter.
Tom: So you're then effectively completely stuck, and there's no way out of it, and you simply got to restart the entire level.
Tom: And this almost happened to me in one stage.
Tom: I got lost in one of the levels.
Tom: Then I got to the end of the level after going through about minutes of my filters wandering around, attempting to find where the hell I was going.
Tom: And the end of the level was you hop on a raft, and the raft slowly floats away.
Tom: So at this stage, my filter had run out, and I was choking to death.
Tom: But luckily, I managed to not choke completely to death before the level ended.
Tom: And miraculously, as the next level started, I was not dead.
Tom: So if I had just been a few seconds slower, I would have been stuck in a loop, because it auto-saves as you hop on the raft.
Tom: So I would have gone on the raft, then died.
Tom: Then it would have reloaded on the raft, and I would have died again.
Phil: I love when games glitch to your favour.
Tom: Yeah.
Phil: Particularly in boss fights.
Tom: Yeah.
Tom: Well, this was actually directly following a boss fight, because I found the raft and thought, well, the mini-boss, I found the raft and thought, okay, I'm fine.
Tom: Then a giant......shrimp climbs out of the swamp, and I have to get out of there.
Tom: Otherwise, I would have been perfectly fine.
Phil: Was it a king prawn?
Tom: No.
Tom: It was a mutated king prawn, shall we say.
Phil: Right on.
Tom: Yeah.
Tom: So, just a final thing on this is, just on the fact that Ranger mode was not included.
Tom: Once again, now having played Ranger mode in apart from the reason that I've said previously, the thing that is just so good about it is, and I did probably go into this bit, but just to reemphasize it and take it in a slightly new direction, the lack of HUD completely changes the experience of the better.
Tom: So, to check how much ammo you've got, you've got to count how many shots you've fired.
Tom: You can check how much total ammo you've got by bringing up your journal, but you don't know how much is in your clip.
Tom: So, you've got to learn how much ammo each gun can use in their clip.
Tom: And so, you might be involved in a firefight, then you sneak off, and you've got to quickly open your journal to check how much ammo you have.
Tom: Apart from that, another thing is that you have otherwise, but it's the same sense of tactility that is so strong in the game, that is emphasized so good with Ranger mode, is you've got a torch, which you use very often, and it works on a battery.
Tom: So, to recharge the battery, you've got to take out your universal hand pump charger, and you've got to manually pump it up on the PC by basically spamming left click.
Tom: But it makes it a very tactile, a lot of hands-on experience.
Tom: It makes it extremely immersive.
Tom: So, if you remove the HUD and make it that, if you want to aim, you've got to look through the sights of your gun.
Tom: And if you want to check the ammo, you've got to look at your journal, and if you want to see how much time you've got left on your filters, you've got to look on your watch.
Tom: It makes it an extremely immersive experience, and it's a shame that this was not available to people to begin with in last lives.
Phil: Well, now, this is the, I think these are the guys that said that they didn't include it because it was a retail exclusive, right?
Tom: Well, it's not a retail exclusive.
Tom: It is, you pre-order it and you get it for free.
Tom: Otherwise, it's a paid DLC.
Phil: And I think, oh, really?
Phil: I thought they were going to give it to everyone for free after a certain point.
Tom: No, that was
Tom: They gave it to everyone for free.
Tom: Yeah, I don't think that's what they're giving this to people for free.
Phil: That sucks.
Phil: That is poor.
Phil: That is, you know, when I do rail against DLC, that's taking something out of a game that should have been there before, right?
Tom: And I mean, the thing is, if it was just an extremely hard mode, it would bother me less.
Tom: But the thing is, it is pretty much the best way to experience the game.
Tom: It fits perfectly with the narrative and the setting and the atmosphere, and it just completely changes the experience of playing the game, and mostly for the better.
Tom: So it makes it even worse than if it was just a hard mode.
Phil: I do suppose, though, that the people that like playing it on that level would have pre-ordered it anyway, perhaps.
Tom: Maybe, maybe.
Tom: Okay, so before we move on from last slide, despite all of its flaws, and here's the thing, in the first time we were discussing it, you said some guy gave it a out of
Tom: I can't remember what site they were for.
Tom: But looking back on having finished it, if you did not get into the atmosphere, and if you were playing it on something even easier than hard, I mean, it could easily come across as being worse than mediocre because the AI is so poor, and if you then got no challenge when you're fighting the monsters as well, it's just going to be boring wandering through a setting that is of a very niche appeal, and it ticks all the boxes for what people are annoyed by at the moment in first person shooter.
Tom: It is basically % gray, and it does have major flaws in it, so a out of I can easily see.
Tom: But this has basically become probably one of my favorite series now, and off air a while ago, you said to me this would be a hard game to review.
Tom: Now, I found it rather easy to review, but what I did find challenging about it was it was quite hard to score, because you could very easily make an argument for it being getting a score like a or a or something in that sort of area.
Tom: So I was wondering what your reason for saying it was a hard game to score was.
Phil: Well, I figured it would probably be a hard game to score and review, because it's got a really deep, complex backstory, an interesting presentation, an interesting story.
Phil: It's got a deeper philosophical thing than almost any other game going on in this back world.
Phil: But then the gameplay is seemingly rote, and then nothing really revolutionary.
Phil: And also, this is like the second or third game in the series at this point.
Tom: The second.
Phil: So, I don't know, second games in the series are kind of hard because they're sticking to the core material, and they're trying to introduce new things.
Phil: And there are notable exceptions, but generally the second game is kind of awkward, so that's probably what I was saying there.
Phil: And the same sort of thing that I was struggling with with Tomb Raider, where it's a game with a pretty good story, and technically proficient, and looks great, but it lacks the, you know, in that situation, the character I couldn't connect with.
Phil: So, yeah, that's probably what I was coming up with.
Tom: Well, they do do some interesting things with the gameplay, as I said, with the ammo management and the filters, which does make it a more sort of unique experience, but having played they've definitely attempted to make it more mainstream.
Tom: So, it probably would have actually been easier to approach, having known more about the original.
Tom: But the thing I found challenging about Scrawlion was the same thing with Tomb Raider, is mechanically it is perfect, or at least almost perfect.
Tom: Mechanically, it's perfectly fine, but there's more significant issues, significant technical issues that you can get into.
Tom: But the thing is the same with Tomb Raider.
Tom: Despite the major problems I had with it, I still found it an enthralling experience.
Tom: It was the same here.
Tom: So it's hard to store it where on the one hand, you're thinking technically I could easily give this something like a out of or a yet at the same time, I am enjoying it so much for other reasons.
Tom: So then you've got to basically decide whether you're going to go with your fanboyism or not.
Tom: And I went with my fanboyism.
Phil: In talking about these two games, Tomb Raider and Metro Last Light, obviously these games were both spectacular visually, which brings us to our next feature after our musical interlude here.
Phil: We're going to be talking about next-gen graphics.
Tom: Well, this was actually inspired by me playing Metro which was released in and I believe it still possibly holds the crown of being the most taxing PC game available.
Tom: Now, this is despite the fact that it does not look particularly good technically whatsoever.
Tom: Now, you went-
Phil: Yeah, I agree.
Phil: I gave it a quick spin this week, and I mean, there's gotta be something I can do with the settings to make it better.
Phil: I did some peripheral research with it, but coming from a console environment, I'm just used to slapping in the game and having it look great.
Phil: There's any settings I need to change, or if I'm basically stuck with what I've got.
Tom: Well, the only thing that I've been able to alter with messing around the settings compared to watching people playing on the max settings is the anti-aliasing.
Tom: Apart from that, if I had to turn that down for an improvement in frame rate, which did affect the visuals, apart from that, I think if you lower not the texture filtering, the general settings, I affected the resolution of the textures, though you would expect the texture filtering to do that.
Tom: Apart from that, even when lowering the settings a bit, it looks pretty similar with what I'm playing as people playing on the max settings with advanced PhysX on, so I think...
Phil: It's jaggy as hell.
Tom: Well, here's the thing, how far did you play?
Phil: Oh, I only played enough to have a take on the graphics.
Tom: Okay, because the opening looks absolutely abysmal.
Tom: About minutes.
Phil: Yeah, probably about minutes.
Phil: I was in the bloody metro station, and I gotta say, the game sucks you in immediately with its atmosphere.
Phil: I was in the metro station, then I went up, then I'm running around the snow killing a bunch of people.
Tom: Well, here's the thing about it.
Tom: The opening looks terrible, because everything is very sort of, not just jaggy, but it looks kind of low res, right?
Tom: You zoom in on a resolution, it looks absolutely awful.
Tom: It's terrible.
Tom: But what you'll notice there, even there, is the richness of the shadows is very high.
Tom: The shadows look better than in many games.
Tom: And once you continue playing, you're gonna very quickly find out why the environments and the people look so awful.
Tom: And the reason for that is the effects are absolutely incredible.
Tom: So when you get further in the game, you can be using a pistol, and you zoom in, or rather you look through the sights of the pistol, you fire a few shots off.
Tom: There's gonna be so much smoke that you cannot see where you're firing.
Tom: You throw a grenade, there is a ridiculous amount of smoke.
Tom: If you end up involved in a large gun battle, you can end up being pretty much blocking out % of a corridor or more with the amount of smoke.
Tom: So the reason the environments look so awful is so that they can run these extremely good effects.
Tom: It's not just that they're extreme in how much smoke there is, the smoke also looks really good.
Tom: So the reason that the environments won't look absolutely awful is so that they can have the effects running to such a high degree, I would say.
Phil: If I get asked, then okay, so people have said to me in the past, we don't need better graphics, how can anything possibly look better than this?
Phil: And I always go to, you know, we need more powerful computing because we have better AI, destructible environments.
Phil: So for example, in Tomb Raider, you know, you have a shotgun that can shoot and destroy some timber, but not all timber, so I was stuck in a shanty and there was a guy on the roof of the shanty, and according to the rules of the game, I should have been able to use my shotgun to shoot through the roof and kill him, right?
Phil: But it wasn't, it was selective.
Phil: Now, what you are perhaps indicating to me is that in this game, you know, the graphics look like garbage because the effects are so great, and obviously if we have better processors and better graphics cards and true next-gen graphics, you won't have any of these compromises.
Tom: Yeah, well, that's the thing.
Tom: This is why is an excellent example because the effects are comparable to the effects in Last Light.
Tom: They do look a lot more primitive and gamey, but the effect they have on the atmosphere is about equal.
Tom: So if you were to take the graphics of the effects of and you put them in Last Light, the atmosphere wouldn't change too significantly.
Tom: But in Last Light, despite having even better effects, though there is generally less smoke going around, but if you do have Advanced PhysX on and DirectX then you do end up with a similar amount of chaos, but I didn't have those on.
Tom: While also having the same level of effects, you also have the environments being of of better than the vast majority of games this generation.
Tom: So you've then got the two, which does make a difference to the atmosphere.
Tom: So it's not going to affect the gameplay, but it does affect your experience of playing the game, because it really does help to further you, immerse you in the world.
Phil: Because it's tricking you, it's doing things that is tricking your mind into accepting this as reality.
Tom: That's right, that's right.
Phil: And you may not pick up on it immediately, but your brain is going...
Phil: Like the shadows is one of the best ways, really, to do this, because it's not like playing a game, looking at your shadow.
Tom: That's right.
Phil: But the shadow is there, and your brain is seeing it on some level, and that's adding to the credibility of the world.
Tom: Yeah, and that's one of the big difference areas between Last Light and is, in fact, the shadows.
Tom: They're not that much more rich in Last Light, but because the environments around them in the light look so much better when you're up close to them, in you only get this great sense of contrast and juxtaposition when you're looking at lights in the distance.
Tom: So you might emerge from a shadow, and you could see down a train tunnel, a lit up area of the train tunnel, and you think, okay, that's an amazing contrast, and it immerses you in the world.
Tom: In Last Light, you get this effect close up as well.
Tom: You might be in a shadow, and right next to you, there's a light on a bench.
Tom: And because that bench doesn't look like a really low res and ugly texture, which it had to, for the processing power and technology of the time to be able to illustrate the excellent lighting and shadows, because now the bench looks just as good as the Long Range we did in you then have no disconnect between what you're saying.
Tom: So there's no point in Last Light, for the vast majority of it, where there's something that stands out to you and you think, okay, I'm playing a game.
Phil: And there are effects, there are visual effects that are subtle that you don't see, that your mind's eye is seeing.
Phil: But then there are other visual effects from this and last gen that baffled me as to why they include them.
Phil: Now, I know why they include them.
Phil: You can think of camera effects, right?
Phil: So like rain, right?
Phil: It's raining in a game and it looks like you're now looking, it's like it's raining on your TV.
Tom: Which by the way is used to excellent effects in Last Sight in thanks to the gas masks.
Phil: Oh, okay.
Tom: So it works there.
Phil: There's an actual usage, right.
Phil: What's the other one?
Phil: The one that you always say that dude uses in, so flares, right?
Phil: Solar flares.
Phil: Solar flares, yeah.
Phil: Light flares, bloom, you know.
Phil: These are all things that tell you, oh yeah, that's right, this is an artificial experience.
Phil: So.
Tom: Well, we won't be seeing them go away.
Tom: And Last Sight does use a lot of bloom lighting, but the difference is.
Phil: You're seeing a lot less bloom these days.
Tom: Yeah, that is true.
Tom: But it's, well, I think you see a lot of bloom still, but it's used to create more realistic effects.
Phil: Used appropriately, as opposed to, this is a part of the Unreal Engine right on.
Tom: So let's just put it on.
Phil: So under Tomb Raider, when I'm playing games on my PC now, particularly games that are released this year, like Tomb Raider, I'm like, okay, well, this, I mean, this is obviously next-gen graphics, right?
Phil: This is what I'm gonna be seeing on the PlayStation or the Xbox One, and I'm like totally satisfied that I have it now on my computer.
Phil: So I mean, I kind of feel like, I think I said at some point, probably insulted a bunch of people, that I'd be an idiot if I bought Bioshock Infinite on any platform other than the PC, which is kind of how I've been for the last year.
Phil: If something's available on the PC, you should really actually get it on the PC if you can.
Phil: I mean, you're gonna be using an Xbox controller.
Phil: It's gonna look great.
Phil: You're not gonna have to worry about load times.
Phil: So, you know, I mean, but in saying that now, and then it is tough.
Phil: I go back and I'll play console games like Sleeping Dogs, which I prior to it looked great.
Phil: And I'm like, eh, this actually doesn't look too good.
Phil: Or even, and that is a great looking game.
Phil: But then you're looking at games like Kingdoms of Amalor, which don't have good graphics.
Phil: I mean, the graphics, I guess, actually are, quote, good, but not great.
Phil: And they look bloody terrible, or Dragon Age.
Phil: And now I'm not like someone who has to have the greatest visual fidelity, because I do play a lot of old games, as we've said before.
Tom: Same here.
Phil: But when it's the current gen, and it's competing with the PC platform...
Tom: It's jarring.
Phil: Yes, it is.
Tom: Because you're already immersed in games that are coming out, or have recently come out, that are of a higher graphical fidelity.
Tom: So you're expecting that, because it's from the same generation, right?
Phil: Right.
Tom: So I mean, when I got back to playing PSgames, the first thing I did was put in Killzone which is one of the best looking PSgames, without doubt.
Tom: And my first reaction to it was quite literally, okay, this looks good for a PSgame.
Tom: Which you would not be, and at the same time, by the way, I'd just been playing a lot of PSand Wii games, which I wasn't immediately able to accept the fidelity, so.
Phil: Well, after playing Cursed Mountain, having your eye poked with a stick looks good.
Tom: Yeah, well, I had actually just recently played Cursed Mountain, so, but I was expecting, because the PSis current gen, and I just played ports of current gen games, that has been Tomb Raider and Last Light, something similar, right?
Tom: So, it's, yeah, it's completely a psychological thing, basically.
Phil: Killzone is a first party game, too, and that's the other thing.
Phil: You have different standards for Naughty Dog and Guerrilla Games and stuff like that.
Phil: Now, just a quick thing.
Phil: I actually think Resistance looks better than Killzone
Phil: I was not impressed with the graphics on Killzone but this, yeah, I wasn't.
Phil: But I'll have to play more, and I'll let you know in a future Killzone Minute.
Tom: In terms of art style or technique?
Phil: No, no, just technique.
Tom: Really?
Phil: Technical, yeah.
Tom: Okay, fair enough.
Phil: Once they got out of the cut scenes, it was like, not a, again, not bad, not even good, I mean, it still looks great, but again, we could just be talking about the same thing again because I just played a really high fidelity PC game in between.
Tom: Possibly.
Tom: I know, because from what I saw of the beginning, and it could be I need to go and look at some of the more environmental areas, but it's all perfectly clean.
Tom: You know, there's no major flaws sticking out in it, from what I remember.
Tom: But yeah, so the other interesting thing about this though is, when you're watching videos of Tomb Raider on PC, or let's say, if you're watching video of the PSversion of Killzone it doesn't look that impressive.
Tom: Now, so a lot of people have been saying, you know, Next Gen is going to be a pretty boring leap, right?
Tom: And I believe I've said this as well.
Phil: Yep, and I've said it as well, because you can only go from SD to HD once.
Tom: Was not a leap whatsoever for me, by the way, which is probably just because I've been playing PC games in HD since time immemorial.
Tom: But anyway, watching most videos of games, Next Gen games, let's just call them Next Gen games, so current gen games on PC, they don't look much better.
Tom: But when you're actually playing them because of the differences in what the visuals achieve, it completely changes the experience.
Tom: So it does then feel like it is a leap from generation to generation, and it is perfectly satisfying.
Tom: So after actually playing Tomb Raider and Last Light and games of that nature, I would have to say I would be perfectly happy with console games if they are no better looking than that.
Tom: Because even though if you're watching them in video and you're thinking, okay, this just looks like a vaguely upscaled PSgame, when you're actually playing them, it changes the experience quite significantly.
Phil: Post-launch, if that middle era of gaming is basically what I was playing Tomb Raider on, which is high-level PC gaming, right?
Phil: If that's what the consoles are able to provide, I'm totally fine with that, you know.
Phil: It matters not that we're already there.
Tom: Well, you expect to be there because the next gen is about to come out.
Tom: So the difference is we both play on PC, which is generally a bit ahead.
Tom: So this would be the case in most generation changes.
Phil: Right, but the difference is, I mean, there was a time when PC games were not ahead of the consoles.
Phil: So, for example, when the Dreamcast came out, it was ahead of the PC, right?
Phil: Yeah, so it's a funny time, and the other thing that I thought was interesting was that basically I don't understand why the Wii U isn't being used right now.
Phil: I guess it all comes down to install base, because it is the most powerful console available right now.
Phil: That's inarguable, right?
Tom: Yep, absolutely.
Phil: So why isn't it getting more of these HD games?
Phil: Why wasn't Tomb Raider brought out for the Wii U?
Tom: Well, this the only...
Tom: It makes no sense, because it's got a video card that is somewhat equivalent to mine.
Tom: I have no problem playing these games in a resolution higher than p.
Tom: Now, you would expect, of course, that equivalent hardware on the console should equal more power to the developers, because they know what they're developing for.
Tom: So they should have no problem achieving more with that hardware than what you would need on PC.
Tom: So the only logical explanation is in store-bases.
Tom: The A games, when they were asked, why isn't Metro Last Light on the Wii U, they said it's very intensive on the CPU.
Tom: And the Wii U possibly, I think, doesn't have a particularly powerful CPU, so maybe that is an issue with some games.
Tom: But then you've got Burnout, which looks quite close to the PC version and significantly better than the console version, so you've got to call bullshit on that.
Tom: And A games have no fucking idea what they're doing when it comes to optimization.
Tom: So...
Phil: Oh, come on.
Tom: They don't.
Phil: They know more than me and you.
Tom: That's, yeah, they know more than me and you, and yet they still have created a game that looks like Metro that is currently the most hardware taxing game available.
Phil: I think probably what the reality is is you don't want to give, you never ever want to give a business reason to the press.
Tom: Yeah.
Phil: Right?
Tom: Yeah.
Phil: No one's ever going to say, why didn't you bring us over to Wii U?
Phil: Because we'd lose money if we did.
Tom: Yeah.
Phil: Next question.
Phil: Why would you lose money?
Phil: There aren't enough people who would buy our type of game who own Wii U's.
Tom: Yeah.
Phil: Who don't already have a PC.
Tom: So the last point of discussion on this would be to go back to your thing about the gameplay in Tomb Raider, where some sorts of wood you can shoot with a shotgun, some you can't.
Tom: Now, a lot of this, I would say, is being held back because of the console versions of the games.
Tom: There's no reason that this would not be technically possible on the PC, but the reason they can't do that on PC is because it's going to affect how they have to design all the levels, because they're then basically going to have to go through and completely redesign the levels, because what they've currently got is, sorry, what they will be doing is, they've got certain things that can be destroyed and things that can't, so that you don't end up, say, shooting a hole in the floor and falling to your death.
Tom: And so they're going to be approaching it from the power of the consoles, knowing what they're able to do with the consoles as far as gameplay is concerned.
Tom: So they're not going to be considering doing a more complex thing, because they know they're not going to be able to do it on where they're going to be expecting the vast majority of the sales.
Tom: So you would expect that sort of thing to be being approached from a more complex perspective come next generation.
Phil: Yeah, I don't want to blame the consoles for that, though.
Phil: I just think that that would actually just make the game design more complex, because now if you have a weapon that can destroy all timber.
Phil: And they did the same thing with the thing, the zipline, right, it can only go into the spongy type rock.
Phil: If you go into all types of rock, then, you know.
Tom: Well, that's probably also an aesthetic choice, so that we don't have her abseiling into a hard rock and dying, and also being killed instantly.
Phil: Well, they have her dying in every other way, so I don't see that as a problem.
Phil: Before we go on to the news, I think we're pretty much done with next-gen graphics, right?
Tom: I believe so.
Tom: Oh, wait, no, one other fascinating thing is the fact that I am able to run these games on my computer.
Tom: This still just boggles my mind that I've got a video card that I bought five years ago that was not top-of-the-range, though is apparently still a fine choice because I was looking on eBay just out of interest, and these are going for like $on eBay, and I paid, I think, $or $for it at the time.
Phil: I think you know what you need to do.
Tom: Yeah, but this is the point.
Phil: You can get a pretty good video card for $
Phil: Just flip that bit.
Tom: Yeah, but no, no.
Tom: But it's not worth it, though.
Tom: It's not worth the effort because here's the thing.
Tom: If I was to go up to playing games at p, yes, I would probably need to do that.
Tom: But at a resolution higher than p, I'm currently able to play next-generation games at equivalent to pretty much what they would be looking like on next-generation consoles.
Tom: That is just completely and utterly mind-blowing to me.
Phil: Okay, well, does News have a song this week?
Tom: Yes, it does.
Phil: It does.
Phil: Then we're gonna play the News song right now and come back with the News.
Tom: It's time for News, so please do listen.
Tom: Allow our enlightenment to freely glisten as we tell you what you should think from the Xbox One to the kitchen sink.
Tom: So says Tom and Phil.
Phil: Okay, that was the News song.
Phil: And I have a story to tell, but let's just talk about the Xbox One.
Phil: It's been a week.
Phil: Has anything changed for you?
Phil: Yep, and my only question is, what if Sony does the same thing in terms of the checking in from periodically?
Phil: And if you don't check in periodically, you won't be able to play your games.
Phil: What if Sony does the same thing?
Phil: I mean, do you sit out the console generation?
Tom: You're forgetting the Wii U.
Phil: Besides the Wii U?
Tom: Well, I would consider it.
Tom: The answer is yes, I would, except for the fact that there's a large chance that if I am going to buy a console, I will eventually be peer pressured by a couple of people into buying a PSfor Killzone, despite these issues.
Phil: And FIFA.
Tom: Yeah, well, no one's peer pressuring me to buy FIFA.
Tom: That's my own obsession.
Phil: Oh, I think our listeners would be peer pressuring you.
Phil: I think they missed the FIFA talk.
Tom: But I can withstand their peer pressure, but I might eventually be talked into it thanks to Killzone, but otherwise my answer is yes, I would also be boycotting the PS
Phil: I was a Wii gamer for a very long time, just going with the Wii and the
Phil: If Sony requires periodic check-in the way Microsoft does, I'm pretty sure I would just go with PC and Wii U.
Phil: So, because my whole thing is I don't want to not be able to play these games in the future, and both companies have demonstrated that a lack of commitment to caring over the games.
Phil: Now, case in point, here's my story.
Phil: Gather around everyone.
Tom: And yet, you cut me off on my hardware thing and just moved straight into the song.
Phil: This story is very important.
Phil: I bought MLB to show.
Phil: It's a baseball game, right?
Phil: Baseball is probably the closest thing I have to a religion.
Phil: And Major League Baseball to show is a PlayStation Vita PSP exclusive.
Phil: I paid full price for it, $$American dollars, imported it, it's right here, it's in my hand right now.
Phil: So last night, I'm like, okay, I want to try and play it online.
Phil: So of course, there's an update.
Phil: So I download a megabyte update.
Phil: That's entirely acceptable.
Tom: Yep.
Phil: It takes over an hour.
Phil: But that's that's Sony stupid network.
Tom: Yeah, right.
Phil: It's probably directly connected to a somewhere in Tokyo.
Phil: Right.
Tom: Yeah.
Tom: Well, they don't like upgrading their office equipment in Tokyo.
Phil: Why?
Tom: Have you not seen they still use faxes?
Phil: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tom: Yeah.
Phil: Right.
Phil: Right.
Phil: Yeah.
Phil: Faxes are an integral part.
Tom: And old heaters and old air conditions, air conditions and all that sort of thing.
Phil: So I download the megabyte update.
Phil: That's fine.
Phil: Takes a long time.
Phil: In fact, it takes more time than it would have just to play a game or two.
Phil: And then I connect to the...
Phil: I go multiplayer, connect to the PSN, and it's all, okay, go ahead and activate your online pass.
Phil: I'm like, that's weird.
Phil: I didn't know Sony was doing online passes.
Phil: But doesn't matter me because I've paid full retail for a brand new game.
Phil: Right?
Tom: I can see where this is going.
Phil: I don't think you can.
Phil: I put in the code.
Phil: And it says, oh, thank you for your code.
Phil: We now need to activate your code and you need to download this file to activate your code.
Phil: Do you wish to guess how large the file they wish for me to download to activate my online code?
Tom: gigabytes.
Phil: gigabytes.
Tom: So I was actually close then.
Tom: I have a ridiculously over-the-top joke answer was actually megabytes less.
Phil: So I pay $a month for gigabytes, and they want me to spend a third of it on activating this online code.
Tom: How is this even possible?
Phil: Because what they're really doing is the update wasn't really an update.
Phil: The update is like something to fix something, and that's fine, right?
Phil: And then the gig is going to be all of the bugs that they're fixing with the online multiplayer, getting around cheats and everything else.
Tom: That actually sounds like you're downloading the entire online multiplayer.
Phil: Yes, exactly.
Phil: Exactly.
Phil: They may not have put it on the disk because they were afraid of people hacking around it, so you actually have to download the online multiplayer, gig.
Phil: So I'm screwed.
Phil: I will never be able to play this online.
Phil: And there's a couple of guys I know who live in the US that would want to play this game with me.
Phil: I'm not going to be spending a third of my internet allocation on a video game.
Tom: And because it's Sony's terrible system and it's an update, you wouldn't even be able to download it like one gigabyte at a month.
Phil: No, because by that time, they'll turn off the servers for multiplayer, which they do.
Phil: After months, they turn off the...
Tom: With most updates, you can't do anything at the same time.
Tom: You're locked in there.
Phil: It's not like Unvalve.
Phil: So that's my story.
Tom: That is absolutely atrocious.
Phil: Yeah, I was outraged.
Phil: I am outraged.
Phil: And you know what else?
Phil: It used to look good, but now it doesn't look good anymore.
Tom: So it's just completely useless.
Phil: And there's no good baseball games on the PC, so I'm screwed.
Tom: You'll have to get an old one.
Phil: I'm going to go with this next story first, even though it's your turn, because this is a story that I'm probably more interested in.
Phil: We are, after all, in the news section.
Phil: Activision has rebooted development of its next MMO.
Phil: So you may know that they've been working on this MMO to replace or augment WoW for about six years.
Phil: And it's called Titan.
Phil: So they basically laid off all of the staff, except for the key design staff, or reassigned them elsewhere.
Phil: This is a game that was playable in
Phil: They've been making it since...
Phil: Well, they've been making it for six years.
Phil: What the hell?
Phil: It was playable in and now they're starting from scratch.
Tom: Are the services up or have they pulled them down?
Phil: Well, it's never been accessible to the public.
Tom: So, in a closed beta?
Phil: No, not even that.
Phil: When I say playable, I mean behind closed doors.
Phil: Oh, okay.
Phil: Reporters have played it, and they're never going to get rid of WoW.
Phil: They'll always have it in the background, kind of like EverQuest sort of thing.
Phil: But this was supposed to be the replacement for WoW, to generate new business, but WoW has been first plateauing and now dropping.
Phil: And I just...
Phil: What's going on?
Tom: Obviously, they've made something shit, and they continue to playability for whatever reason, but they've now realized it's shit and have, instead of scrapping the idea, have decided to start from scratch.
Tom: How long was it in development before it was playable, by the way?
Phil: Do you know?
Phil: Oh, well, let's see.
Phil: Two years ago, it was playable, so four years.
Tom: Okay, because the other thing to consider is that the MMO landscape is changing.
Tom: Surely, Western developers are now taking notice that you can't just make an MMO, and it's going to be an instant World of Warcraft.
Tom: And while this is Blizzard, this was probably started off as a project in the same sense, not necessarily to complement World of Warcraft, but to attempt to get some similar ridiculous, completely unlikely amount of success.
Tom: And maybe after the Star Wars MMO has failed, and a long list of other ones have failed, they've realized, well, we're not actually going to achieve this, so we need to approach it from a different angle.
Phil: There was ever only one successful MMO, and that was WoW, right?
Tom: Only one successful Western MMO.
Phil: Western MMO that people pay monthly subscriptions to, and that was WoW.
Phil: And basically, what I think they were expecting is that, okay, well, there's going to be like % to % of people who are going to stick with WoW for the rest of their lives, and that's fine.
Phil: We'll keep providing services for them.
Phil: But we have this -member customer service staff.
Phil: We have all these servers.
Phil: And then the new game that most people will move over to is going to be Titan.
Phil: And I think they now know that people are not going to pay a monthly subscription for an MMO anymore if it's not WoW.
Tom: Yeah.
Phil: So, yeah, I guess...
Phil: I mean, I guess a complete reboot is better than launching a failure.
Tom: Why even bother?
Tom: Is the real question here.
Tom: WoW might have gone down over the years, but it is still hugely successful.
Tom: This just seems like a waste of money and effort.
Phil: Well, for these publicly traded companies, growth is key, right?
Phil: They have to show increases in growth and new things, and that's why they signed up Bungie for their new game and everything else.
Phil: But...
Tom: And that could be it, because each expansion to World of Warcraft has been consecutively less successful.
Tom: So, they've probably given up on that.
Tom: They've finally realized they can't really add much more to it, that people are going to be interested in paying for.
Tom: Because the thing is, if you've been playing it for like years, or however long, if you've been there since the beginning, you're not necessarily going to be that interested in new content.
Tom: You're going to be interested in just becoming more and more of a badass in the world and getting involved in the community.
Tom: And if you're a new user and there's already hours worth of content, what's the point of releasing more?
Tom: There's not going to be appeal to the current users or to new users because they've already got so many expansions that they can already be buying.
Phil: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right.
Phil: I think basically what they're doing...
Phil: This game will never come out at this point.
Phil: This is them killing it.
Phil: Because they're admitting that we're not going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on this and have the game fail.
Phil: So we're basically ending development of this game.
Phil: Wow, you know what?
Phil: I bet it comes out as a free to play and they'll do the microtransaction thing.
Tom: Yeah, and then it'll be gone soon after.
Phil: Yeah, that's working for Dota but you really got to wonder if the sheen is coming off of Blizzard.
Phil: I mean, Dota is eating their lunch, taking away people from StarCraft
Phil: Diablo was a fiasco.
Tom: Can you underestimate how successful Dota is though?
Tom: It might be taking people away from StarCraft, but it's also getting a huge amount of people, especially in Asia.
Phil: Dota is great, but Dota is vile, and that's what I'm saying.
Phil: Dota is eating everyone's lunch right now.
Phil: It's the most played game.
Phil: Anyway, enough about that.
Phil: What else have you got?
Tom: There's really only two things, and we'll go with the short and quick one.
Tom: That is the Sonic Mario Galaxy.
Tom: Now, there's really nothing much to say about this.
Tom: I just wanted to say one quick thing on the launch trailer, and you can add to this afterwards if you have anything else to say, and that is, have you seen the grass in this?
Phil: No, but I've seen the trees.
Tom: Okay, well, the grass, it looks extremely good, except for the fact this is % fake turf.
Tom: It's not even good fake turf.
Tom: It is the most plastic-looking, crappiest fake turf you could possibly come across.
Tom: That's what it looks like.
Tom: And I assume it's meant to look like actual grass, but it doesn't whatsoever.
Phil: Well, fake grass, some of that fake grass doesn't look pretty good these days.
Tom: Yeah, but this is the worst-looking fake turf.
Phil: So it looks like astroturf?
Tom: Yeah, it's just awful.
Tom: It looks just terrible.
Phil: Well, I know the trees look like they're ripped out directly from Mario
Phil: They've got those spheres that are bundled up on each other.
Tom: Yeah.
Phil: So I think we've hit all the high points there.
Tom: Yeah, I believe so.
Phil: So there's a new Sonic game.
Phil: It's called Lost World.
Phil: This is the Lost World game, right?
Tom: Yep.
Phil: Yeah, and looks a lot like Super Mario Galaxy.
Tom: Looks exactly like Super Mario Galaxy, except at a fast pace.
Tom: And more linear, of course.
Phil: I'm already too good Sonic games in the whole.
Phil: I still haven't played Generations or Colors, both of which are supposed to be good.
Tom: Well, I tell you what else is supposed to be good, and that is Sonic and that is awful.
Phil: Yeah, I don't know.
Phil: I don't want to really get into the whole Sonic thing.
Tom: We don't need to.
Tom: I just wanted to say that.
Phil: Alright, what else have you got?
Tom: Speaking about other terrible things, Warren Specter, who has become something of the moral conscience of the industry recently, decided to also comment on the new Wolfenstein game.
Tom: And I'll just read his quote here.
Tom: It's all terrible, so it really doesn't matter which part I read aloud, but we'll just go with the most concise part.
Tom: Did the world really need another Wolfenstein game?
Tom: Do we need generically dark monochromatic FPS?
Tom: Kill the Nazi giant robot game?
Tom: Ah, no, the world did not.
Tom: I'm so tired of stuff like this.
Phil: I mean, did the world really need another Epic Mickey game?
Tom: Exactly.
Phil: With bad camera?
Tom: Yeah.
Phil: I mean, this guy is such a fraud.
Phil: I mean, basically, he's done Wing Commander, Ultima, System Shock, Deus Ex, Thief, and Epic Mickey.
Phil: Now, sure, there are some gems in there, right?
Phil: But this is since
Phil: I mean, this is a long period, and who knows how much he had to play with this, but his recent output hasn't been great.
Phil: And, I mean, I'm sorry, I didn't also know that he has to...
Phil: He's apparently contractually obligated to play every video game that comes out to completion.
Tom: I think that's probably the issue.
Tom: This is why he's so bitter, is that he's forced to play every single game released, and the worst part is he was probably forced to play Epic Mickey.
Tom: But...
Phil: Yeah, after it had been made for him, right?
Tom: Yeah, exactly.
Tom: But the most ridiculous thing about the comments he's making and has made is they're all so ridiculously hypocritical.
Tom: So, in this same rant, he goes in to say, and given the Venomaine Disney epic, Mickey Bappy, with no concern...
Phil: Oh, Jesus, let it go.
Tom: With no concern for how hard the team worked.
Tom: I don't think I need any lectures about that, and that is about the lack of new IPs and whatnot.
Tom: Now, wasn't one of the criticisms aimed at epic Mickey was that it was generic and dark.
Phil: And had a bad camera.
Tom: Yeah, but forget the bad camera, because I don't think he's complaining about the bad camera, or rather the camera of Wolfenstein, but those were two criticisms that were regularly aimed at epic Mickey, which are two criticisms he is aiming at Wolfenstein.
Phil: Yeah, exactly.
Phil: He's saying, given the Venom aimed at Disney epic Mickey by people with no concern to how hard the team worked, I don't need any lectures about it.
Phil: So he's saying that developers work hard so we shouldn't criticize them.
Phil: Oh, do we really need another Wolfenstein game?
Tom: Yeah.
Phil: Yeah, idiot.
Phil: Speaking of Castle Wolfenstein, I was reminded this week Castle Wolfenstein was the first game released on the Apple.
Phil: The first Castle Wolfenstein game was released on Apple II by Silas Warner.
Phil: The id guys loved that game because they all came up with the Apple II.
Phil: So when they decided to make...
Phil: Carmack came up with the engine for Castle Wolfenstein, and they were like, oh, it would be great if we could set it in the Wolfenstein world.
Phil: And then they found out that Silas Warner had gone bankrupt and had relinquished the rights to Wolfenstein.
Phil: So they were able to just pick it up off the ground, not pay the guy a penny, and that's where you got Wolfenstein D.
Phil: Is that incredible or what?
Tom: Indeed.
Tom: I think someone's been reading Masters of Doom recently.
Phil: Yes, I have been reading Masters of Doom.
Phil: I can't put it down.
Phil: Well, that's all for news.
Phil: It's been a light week for news, and this is pretty clear.
Phil: I mean, we're coming up on Eso everyone's kind of keeping their cards close to their chest.
Phil: So at this point, we'll exit news, and I'm going to give first impressions of a game I started this week called Costume Quest, the game from Double Fine.
Phil: This is a JRPG, and this is a part of their initial, you know, basically foray into the digital distribution world.
Phil: They did stacking, and so Costume Quest is nothing at all what I was expecting.
Tom: What were you expecting?
Phil: I was expecting a cute JRPG, and basically what I'm looking at here looks like something you could play through a browser.
Phil: It looks like a Flash game.
Phil: This is the thing with some of these arty games, right?
Phil: It's just that, like, with some of these small arty games that have a single concept behind them, which is the concept behind Costume Quest, is that it's a Halloween JRPG, which makes perfect sense, right?
Tom: Yep, that's a cool idea.
Phil: Going from door to door, you trick or you treat, you get in a battle, you get rewards, you move under the next door.
Phil: You know, I mean, you've got the grinding built in right there, you've got the turn-based battles.
Tom: And a variety of monsters.
Phil: A variety of monsters, and cute kids.
Tom: And loot.
Phil: Yeah, and cute kids stepping out into the world and finding out that there's dangers out there, and leaving home, and the parents aren't around, and all the rest of it.
Phil: It's terrible.
Phil: I mean, it's not terrible, but it's just so...
Phil: It's such a letdown, because it could have been a really great JRPG.
Phil: And instead, what I'm finding with a lot of these art games is, you know, I don't have kids, you don't have kids, but we've seen sitcoms with kids in them.
Phil: And basically...
Tom: So we're basically experts.
Phil: Experts, I think we're fair to say.
Phil: Essentially parents.
Phil: As it were.
Phil: And you know, when...
Phil: You know how you see some people's fridges and they're covered with their kid's art?
Phil: You know?
Phil: That's when I'm starting to think about these artsy games, because you're like, oh, look at what you've done.
Phil: It's so different and good.
Phil: But they don't stand up past minutes of gameplay.
Phil: Like, once you've seen the initial concept and the execution of the concept, it really doesn't hold up to be something that you want to continue engaging in.
Phil: And I think a lot of the pocket reviews that you read for these is like, oh, it's so innovative, it's so creative.
Phil: Okay, but is it any friggin good?
Phil: And this game is not good.
Phil: From a gameplay perspective, this is not a good game.
Phil: This is like an iPhone game.
Phil: This is something that would have been great on a smartphone, where you can play it for a few minutes, and it's just a disposable, meaningless game.
Phil: But I was caught up in it for the first few minutes.
Phil: I was like, oh, this is kind of cute.
Phil: This is kind of cool.
Phil: And then it just doesn't last.
Tom: I must say, though, that, and I haven't played this, I'm still interested in playing.
Tom: I must say, though, that is probably my reaction to a great deal of AAA titles.
Tom: The first well, actually, that's not true, because generally a lot of AAA titles have an absolutely abysmal first hour.
Tom: But past that first hour, quite often I'm interested for about minutes, then get rather bored.
Phil: That was my experience with Darkstalkers.
Phil: I went into that game not expecting anything at all, and it has the best intro, right?
Phil: It just has this amazing, mind-blowing intro, which I'm not going to spoil, even though it's the first minutes of the game, because it has such an impact.
Phil: Because it is something that you are not expecting at all.
Phil: Based on the cover art of the game or any screenshots you've seen.
Phil: Same with Homefront, the game from THQ about the North Koreans invading the United States.
Phil: It has one of the best intros ever.
Phil: And then it just, you know, from there, it's not a bad game.
Phil: It was just like a half-life ripoff.
Phil: So it did prompt me to wonder if a Westerner or a Western company had ever made a good JRPG.
Tom: Well, we're about to talk about one that might fit that description aesthetically, but on a deeper level, I would like to take a moment to mention one of my favorite games, which is the cult classic Scepterra Kor.
Phil: I think you mean Scepterra Kor, Legacy of the Creator.
Tom: That is correct.
Tom: That is correct.
Tom: And I won't actually go into any detail about it.
Tom: I'll just say it was so good that it made me make a GeoCities fansite for it back in the day.
Tom: That's how awesome it was.
Phil: This was published by Monolith.
Phil: And developed by Valkyrie Studios.
Tom: But it's not the Monolith.
Tom: There were two Monoliths at the time, I believe.
Phil: Yeah, there are two Monoliths.
Phil: And there still are, I think.
Phil: Just like these two avalanches.
Phil: But this was developed by Valkyrie Studios.
Phil: Are those guys got anything at all to do with Valkyrie Chronicles?
Tom: I do not think so.
Phil: Yeah, you're quite right.
Phil: I just checked on that.
Phil: No, yeah, you're right.
Phil: Sorry for wasting everyone's time.
Phil: So, what was so special about September Core?
Tom: Well, it played quite differently to many Western RPGs.
Tom: And it was basically a turn-based battle system.
Tom: But one of the major differences was a card-based summoning system.
Tom: So you would go around collecting these cards, and depending on the cards you combine, you could summon different spells and different creatures.
Tom: I can't remember if you could summon creatures or not, actually, but you could summon different spells and different buffs and things like that in the battle.
Tom: So it was quite an interesting battle system.
Tom: The story was quite excellent, and it was a very interesting concept.
Tom: Basically, there are these several different plates of the world above one another, and they're all based on class.
Tom: So you start off at the bottom, which is the rubbish dump for the upper classes and middle classes, and all the rubbish gets dumped down there.
Tom: And in quite like a JRPG style story, it starts out with, and once again, I can't remember the details, but it starts out with a pretty simple premise that then becomes about saving the world and whatnot.
Tom: So it actually is quite JRPG-like, which made it very unique for a Western RPG.
Phil: Have you played many of these card-type games before?
Phil: I mean, I can think of a couple of them, but obviously the most obvious one that comes to mind is Baton Ketos.
Tom: No, I haven't played that many.
Phil: Or Baton Ketos.
Tom: That's Japanese too, right?
Phil: Yeah, but it was developed by Monolith also.
Tom: That's an interesting coincidence.
Phil: And Tri-Crescendo.
Phil: Yeah, so, I mean, a spectral...
Phil: God, I'm thinking about two different games right now.
Phil: I can't even think of their names, but the card-based thing has always had tremendous appeal to me.
Phil: In terms of battle and whatnot, so...
Phil: So, your fan site, is it still up?
Tom: No, I'm not sure if it was ever posted live.
Tom: I may have just made it and never posted it live.
Phil: That's really sad.
Tom: It was an awesome site though.
Phil: I bet it was.
Phil: Did it have a podcast?
Tom: No, sadly.
Tom: That's why I didn't make it live, obviously.
Tom: That's what it was missing.
Phil: That's what it was missing.
Phil: And years later, you've come to remedy that.
Tom: That's right, exactly.
Phil: Scepteracore lives through this podcast.
Tom: Yep.
Tom: We're now renaming the site scepteracorelegacyofthecreator.net.
Phil: Scepteracast.
Phil: I think we could probably do a side podcast about this game once I've played it.
Tom: Absolutely.
Phil: I mean, we've obviously proven to everyone that as long as we both played a game, we can talk for it about, you know, two hours a week.
Tom: Easily, easily.
Tom: And that's when we're cutting out most of what we're saying.
Phil: Yep.
Phil: So is that it about Scepteracast?
Tom: Yep, that's it.
Phil: All right.
Phil: So the other JRPG that has a Western heritage, albeit Canadian...
Tom: If you could even call them Western...
Phil: .
Phil: would be To the Moon.
Tom: Yes, indeed.
Tom: And this is, of course, not actually a JRPG, but it looks like a JRPG as it was made in RPG Maker.
Tom: And early on, there is a scene in which you're going around with a couple of children, and they come across a squirrel, and it goes into a turn-based battle, basically pointing out, making fun of the whole aesthetic of the game.
Tom: And this is one of the major problems I had with the game, was this sort of humor in it.
Tom: It was basically non-stop nerd-style jokes, and the two main characters were constantly making meme-related and whatnot wisecracks, which generally fell rather flat to me because the writing is really awful.
Tom: It's the sort of writing you would expect to find someone posting in a forum where they're writing a short story about the people on the forum, and they're just basically referencing random jokes, and it's awful.
Phil: Yeah, so it's kind of like insider fanfic, but there's no fans yet.
Phil: Well, I've actually outdone that.
Phil: I think on YouTube somewhere, I did a parody of the VG Press podcast, which would have to be the most insider thing ever.
Phil: So I am guilty of having done something like this.
Tom: That was awesome, though.
Tom: That was quite accurate.
Phil: Because you were in it.
Phil: Okay, so To the Moon, it was made with RPG Maker, but it's not a JRPG.
Tom: No, I'm not sure how you would describe it exactly.
Tom: I think the closest genre it would probably fit to is point-and-click adventure game, but it's not really point-and-click adventure game.
Tom: The gameplay basically consists of you pixel-hunting these mementos.
Tom: So there's things scattered around the environment that are relevant to the person in question's menus, which we'll get to in a minute.
Tom: Person in question's memories.
Tom: So you find, say, five of these, which is then enough for you to break a force field around a memory link, which lets you jump onto the next memory.
Tom: So that's the majority of the gameplay, is literally you just pixel hunting.
Tom: Now, the rest of the gameplay, however, is sliding puzzles.
Tom: Yes, you heard that correctly, sliding puzzles, in the most banal sense of what this could possibly be.
Tom: This is not like A Virus Named Tom, which takes tile flipping and makes it into something incredibly awesome.
Tom: This is incredibly boring, simple tile sliding, tile flipping, sorry, puzzles.
Tom: And every single puzzle can be solved incredibly easily.
Tom: There's actually a formula to solving the puzzles.
Tom: On the bottom left-hand corner of the board, you can flip several of the tiles at once, not just along their own pane of tiles.
Tom: Now, each puzzle you can instantly work out how it's going to be solved by simply working out if you're going to have to flip them diagonally.
Tom: And once you figure that out, then the rest of the puzzle becomes blatantly obvious.
Tom: So it's basically no more challenge than the pixel hunting whatsoever, and it's just as boring.
Tom: So there's really nothing positive to say about it puzzle-wise, sorry, gameplay-wise.
Tom: And in fact, the worst thing about it is you move around by clicking where you have to go.
Phil: Ooh, I hate that.
Tom: Yep.
Tom: And this is a way to make this not so bad that most games that are reasonable do.
Tom: The best thing, of course, is you can toggle movement on.
Tom: So you press the button once, and you're constantly moving in the direction you're pointing.
Tom: The second way to alleviate this being an incredible pain in the arse is you can hold down the left mouse button, and they move until you stop holding it down.
Tom: Or if you're just going to be a major annoying dickhead, what you do is you can click a long way off the screen, like around a corner, and they navigate around that corner, right?
Tom: Often if you click around the corner, they won't move there, so you've got to move to where the corner is, then click to where you would have clicked originally.
Tom: And you can't hold it down or anything like that, so it's basically the worst way you could possibly do this sort of navigation system.
Tom: Yeah.
Phil: So you finished this game, or is this the first impression of this game?
Tom: No, I finished this.
Tom: It's only about, I think I finished it about three and a half hours.
Tom: So it's a short game.
Tom: Now, despite all that, I immensely enjoyed it after a certain point.
Tom: After I got past the fact that, okay, the writing is going to be awful.
Tom: The gameplay is awful.
Tom: I was enjoying it once I could get past those two rather important facts, given that it is a story-based game.
Tom: And the reason for this is, despite the writing, as far as the dialogue being concerned, being horrible, the composition of the story is actually excellent.
Tom: It is extremely well done.
Tom: The story is you're playing as one of two, I think you could probably call them technicians, perhaps, but they're also involved in medicine.
Tom: So let's call them doctor technicians.
Tom: That's a new term I just coined right then and there.
Tom: So...
Phil: Doctortion.
Tom: Yeah, exactly.
Tom: So these doctortions go to people who have hired their company to basically, when they're dying, go to their deathbed and program in their final wish.
Tom: So, for example, this guy that they're going to now...
Phil: Is this a major spoiler?
Tom: No, it's not.
Phil: OK, because I have had this game spoiled for me already.
Tom: OK, this isn't a major spoiler.
Tom: You find out this from the very beginning.
Tom: Maybe you find out after you've walked into the house.
Tom: It's right at the beginning.
Phil: OK, so you program into the thing what your last wish is.
Tom: That's right.
Phil: And then...
Tom: And then they live it out, presumably, which I won't say whether this happens or not.
Tom: So that's the basic concept of the story.
Tom: How this is illustrated as far as the composition of the story is to create this new memory in this dying person.
Tom: You've got to go through the person in question's memories from childhood to adult, except they don't do it in chronological order.
Tom: So you're basically exploring this person's memories, and this is how the story is told, and it is done.
Phil: That sounds painful.
Tom: It's done very well, though.
Tom: I was expecting it to be awful and done very poorly, but it's done very well.
Tom: The issues mainly are to do with the gameplay and the writing, but the actual story is illustrated excellently.
Tom: And the other thing is the music is very good as well.
Tom: The worst thing about the music, though, is it's very poor quality MIDI sounds.
Phil: That's fine.
Tom: Yeah.
Tom: That apparently bothers Zelda fans a great deal, but I've got no problem with that.
Tom: In case you were thinking this would be some amazing orchestral score, it's not.
Tom: But the music itself follows the story very well and sets the scene nicely.
Tom: Except, and this is the thing I found in The Walking Dead as well at the end, don't stick in vocal tracks into your game when the rest of your entire soundtrack has been vocalist music.
Tom: It is jarring and it is stupid and it is just incredibly retarded.
Phil: There's great presence for that in Yakuza, for example, since we haven't mentioned that yet this year.
Tom: Yakuza doesn't have just one vocal track.
Tom: They generally work it in there a little more cleverly.
Phil: In JRPGs though, like in Final Fantasy VIII or whatever, you have these great songs and then you have these credit songs.
Tom: But this wasn't a credit song.
Tom: This was before the ending to illustrate a point in the story.
Tom: And if you're doing it in that way, it becomes just incredibly over the top.
Tom: And to me, it wasn't effective at all.
Tom: Just to get back to something not quite so specific, as I was saying, the story is excellent.
Tom: So this raises an interesting question to me because it's hard to talk about a game like this because all you can really basically say without spoiling something, unless we were going to do a spoiler cast as we did with Spec Ops The Line, is that the story is excellent.
Tom: If you actually go into too much detail, then it is going to spoil the story because of the way it is told.
Tom: So you can't really say more about it apart from the basic plot line, which is, have you heard any reviews about it?
Phil: Yes, I have.
Phil: I'm pretty familiar with it.
Phil: I think that most people came away from it with effusive praise for it, but saying, well, it's not really a game, but the story is so touching and moving, and I kind of know what the story is.
Tom: Yeah, and that's the thing that annoyed me about these reviews though, is because they didn't want to spoil the story, and you can't go into the details about the story too much without spoiling it, or without making it sound like it's utter crap.
Phil: Let me say that I have a pretty good idea of what the story is, and this is all in the context of listening to non-spoiler content about this game.
Phil: So this is just people making sounds about the game, and I've pretty much impugned exactly what it is this game is about.
Phil: So, you know.
Phil: But I mean, it must be pretty good.
Phil: I mean, it was made with RPG Maker, which is like, you and I, I actually have downloaded it and tried to make a game, because I have an idea for my own game.
Phil: But it, I mean, that must be the greatest part of it, is that someone who doesn't have any technical skills whatsoever, but just had a good story to tell, was able to make a commercial release and get that story out to people.
Tom: Yeah, absolutely.
Phil: I mean, I think that's the most remarkable thing about this.
Phil: Like, you don't even have to have the skills to make a Minecraft or, you know, any other kind of technically simple game.
Phil: This is just basically, you buy something off the internet for $and go to town with it.
Tom: Yeah, but here's the thing, just on that point that I was wondering about, is about these reviews that say, well, it's basically not a game.
Tom: If this was not a game, I would have absolutely despised it.
Tom: If this was a short film, it would have been okay, but it would have been, I mean, I wouldn't have cared about it because of the way it would have been told.
Tom: If this was a short story with this level of writing, even if the story composition was the same, I would have absolutely detested it.
Tom: I would have felt that this has been a complete and utter waste of my time.
Phil: Right, right.
Phil: Well, that's the hierarchy of storytelling, right?
Phil: I mean, if you're going to read it, it has to be of the highest level.
Phil: If you're going to watch it, it's going to have to be of a pretty good level.
Phil: If you're going to play it, well, you've got that interactivity that's offsetting everything else.
Phil: So in terms of the tiers of writing, I mean, you've got written word, screen performance, and then video game.
Phil: And then slot machine, below that.
Tom: Exactly.
Tom: And that's the thing.
Tom: I mean, even a simple thing as the moving from point to point completely alters the pacing of the story.
Tom: So, for example, let's say they're moving around collecting memories.
Tom: Now, in the vast majority of short stories, they're not going to depict this passage of time because the vast majority of writers are incredibly lazy and shit, so they're not going to attempt to do this.
Tom: And also because they're told you can't actually do this, you need to just focus on what is important to the story.
Tom: So what is important to the story is the things they're finding, right?
Tom: So they're going to just show the things that the characters involved are finding.
Tom: But if you do actually add the movement between the things that they're finding, it gives it much more emotional impact if you are not an exceptionally good writer.
Tom: So even just simple functional things like that can make what would be absolutely horrible in another medium actually very effective.
Phil: Right, yeah, that's a good point.
Tom: But that's probably pretty much it, except for one rather bizarre thing.
Tom: One of the characters in the game has autism.
Tom: Now, throughout the game, maybe this is something to do with the...
Phil: Wait, wait, it's a pixelated character.
Phil: How can it have autism?
Tom: Well, the character can, because it's the character.
Tom: I don't think characters are actually pixels, although they are, you know what I mean.
Phil: No, I don't.
Phil: I mean characters are...
Tom: So wait a minute, wait a minute.
Tom: So is Tomb Raider a woman?
Phil: No, she's a pixel.
Tom: So...
Phil: They're very attractive.
Tom: Let me start this again.
Phil: Almost distractingly so.
Phil: I've got to say in the first few...
Phil: Like in the first hour of Tomb Raider, I was like transfixed with the stunningness of Lara Croft.
Phil: And this has never happened to me before.
Tom: I was laughing at the camera angles the whole time.
Phil: Yeah, well, like especially when she has to like sidle up against a narrow cavern.
Phil: It's like, Jesus, come on.
Tom: That was hilarious.
Tom: That was hilarious.
Phil: Just turn this back a little bit.
Phil: So I don't know.
Phil: Go ahead.
Phil: Talk to me about pixels.
Tom: Yeah.
Tom: So let's say they've got pixel autism.
Tom: You're happy with that?
Phil: Well, pixels can't have autism.
Phil: Digital characters can't have autism.
Tom: No, no, no, no.
Tom: What I'm saying, this is not...
Tom: This is digital autism.
Phil: Like with fingers?
Tom: Yes.
Phil: Okay.
Phil: Then that's understandable.
Tom: Let's put it this way.
Tom: The characters are finger puppets and they've got digital autism.
Phil: I buy that.
Tom: Yeah.
Tom: So one of the characters has that.
Tom: And this...
Tom: I imagine many reviews would have avoided this as a spoiler, but it's basically once again visible from the very beginning of the game.
Tom: So one of the characters has autism.
Tom: Now, throughout the entire game, it's a running joke that no one knows what this is.
Tom: So that's fine.
Tom: That works fine.
Tom: But at the same time, there's this very overt and possibly not deliberate avoidance of calling it autism.
Tom: So I'm wondering if there's some sort of stigma attached to, well, of course, there is in most places, but even worse in Canada, some sort of stigma attached to Asperger's syndrome and autism, where using those terms is not politically correct in Canada.
Phil: No, I don't think so at all.
Phil: I think it's probably just saying this is a loose metaphor, like in Papo and Yo, that this is just a loose metaphor for what is going on, and this could be something, it could be anything.
Phil: It could be AIDS, it could be autism, it could be bipolar.
Tom: It's definitely autism.
Phil: Well, I don't think it's going to be...
Tom: No, what I'm saying is they literally say it is autism in the game, except they avoid using the term autism.
Tom: They use other medical terms to describe it.
Phil: Then you may well be correct.
Phil: I happen to think that autism in Asperger's is completely overused.
Phil: It's kind of like the ADD of the new millennium.
Phil: I mean, there are people that have autism that are off the hook.
Phil: You know what I'm saying?
Tom: Well, there's a very easy way to find out if someone actually does have autism, by the way, and that is observe how they move.
Phil: I thought you were going to say lock them in a room.
Tom: No, that might work too, though.
Tom: That might work too.
Phil: And then observe how they move.
Tom: Yeah.
Tom: Well, that is actually true, because the best way to do it is lock them in a room with a motion capture device, then observe how they move.
Phil: Yeah, I wasn't joking.
Phil: I mean, I've got this all planned out.
Phil: So, I mean, if I suspect someone has autism, I, you know...
Tom: Or immediately kidnap them.
Phil: Yeah, and I have a safe room, and we observe them, and then I help them out.
Phil: And I say, yeah, you got autism.
Phil: Or after a few weeks, I go, you know what?
Phil: You don't have autism.
Tom: And then you finally let them go.
Phil: On your way.
Phil: I think you're onto something there.
Phil: It's probably something politically correct in Canada.
Phil: So, is that all you have to say about The Moon?
Tom: Yes, it is, indeed.
Phil: Because it's interesting that the games here that you've chosen to talk about...
Phil: I have show notes.
Phil: The listeners don't have show notes.
Phil: The listeners don't have access to the show notes until after we publish the show.
Tom: It's probably mind-boggling for many people that are listening that could not imagine that we could possibly be using show notes.
Phil: But the thing is this, right?
Phil: We do publish the show notes after the show, and they are listening to the show now, so they do have access to the show notes at the same time as we do.
Tom: I didn't know we published the show notes.
Phil: Well, we put out the timeline.
Phil: You could skip ahead and see what we're about to talk to.
Phil: But I think this is...
Phil: We don't talk about segways in this show.
Phil: That's one of the preconditions, if you go back to episode one.
Phil: But we're going from To the Moon to a game called Proteus, and I don't know if you know, but Proteus is the name of the second largest moon of Neptune.
Tom: Amazing.
Tom: I was about to say, wouldn't it be awesome if we were going to a game set on the moon?
Phil: And we are.
Phil: The second largest moon of Neptune.
Phil: Proteus.
Tom: See now, I was constantly thinking of Proteus as in the South African Proteus.
Phil: Oh, the little flower?
Tom: Yep, and the rugby team.
Phil: That's Proteus.
Tom: Yeah.
Tom: I know it's a different thing, but you hear it, I heard it, and that's what I immediately thought of.
Tom: I'm not saying there's any logic to it.
Tom: But, yeah.
Tom: So here's another game that many would describe as not being a game.
Tom: And basically in Proteus, the gameplay consists of you exploring a very Minecraft-like environment.
Tom: And all you can do in it is basically explore and you can find these, and I won't say that actually because that basically is a spoiler, but you can explore the environment and watch how it changes with different seasons and with night and day.
Tom: And that's basically the entire game.
Phil: Well, the guy that made it actually said that he didn't consider it to be a game, right?
Phil: And then everyone latched on to that and was like, oh, see, the guy said it's not a game, it's not a game.
Phil: But what he was saying is the same thing that Will Wright said years ago about SimCity.
Phil: And that SimCity is not a game, it's a toy.
Phil: It's something you play with, it's not something that you beat or you win, there's not a score at the end.
Tom: Yeah, except this does actually have an ending.
Phil: And is the ending any good?
Tom: He just destroyed his own argument there.
Phil: Well, I was talking about Will Wright.
Phil: But there's no winning, right?
Tom: No, no.
Tom: You can just get to the end of the game and then you can start it again in a different environment.
Phil: Is it any good?
Tom: Yes, it is.
Tom: Very good.
Tom: And once again, the interactivity is why it is good.
Tom: So first of all, it is visually very well done.
Tom: It's, despite the fact that it looks like Minecraft very much, it's actually a very vibrant and believable environment, more so than in most games, in inverted commas.
Tom: It's a very believable environment.
Tom: You could imagine that this was a real random island that you stumbled across, with random wildlife going about their business and all that sort of thing.
Tom: This music is excellent.
Tom: It fits the mood perfectly and is very enjoyable and relaxing.
Tom: It lasts about minutes, which is a perfect length for it.
Tom: What?
Tom: Yeah, it's short.
Phil: minutes?
Tom: Yeah, but let me finish.
Tom: It lasts about minutes, which is the perfect amount of time for it.
Tom: As you say, it is very much like a toy.
Tom: It's a thing you interact with, not so much a game.
Tom: It's the sort of thing, because the island is randomly generated, I believe, or procedures generated.
Tom: You play it for about minutes or an hour, then you finish with that island.
Tom: You basically explored everything on that island, so that island is done with.
Tom: You finish that island, then you can come back to it a few days later when you're feeling like playing it, and you go and explore another island for about the same length of time.
Tom: So that amount of time fits it perfectly.
Tom: If it was longer, and it is the sort of game you would play in one session, so if it was longer, it would be too long.
Phil: This reminds me of a...
Phil: There's a Twitter account called The Game Police.
Phil: Are you familiar with them?
Tom: No.
Phil: With The Game Police, basically, they police games.
Phil: So, like, one of their tweets is, Think of the last game you played.
Phil: How would you describe it?
Phil: Did you sort of just go around a bit?
Phil: If so, perhaps it wasn't a game at all.
Phil: Another one is, It's normal to feel embarrassed, perhaps even violated, when you realize what you've been playing isn't a game, but please do report it.
Phil: Also, they have a long-standing warrant out for Nobby Nobby Boy.
Phil: Suspect is multicolored, and...
Tom: So, this is actually Steel Attacks.
Tom: Twitter.
Phil: Yeah, it could be.
Phil: But looking at the graphics of this, it reminds me of the TRS-obviously much more advanced than that.
Phil: I mean, when you're navigating through the world, can you actually make sense of it?
Phil: I mean, it's such a blobby mess.
Tom: Yep.
Tom: When you're actually playing it, it looks fine.
Tom: You can understand what everything is.
Tom: You might not be able to work out what a specific species is.
Tom: There are these sort of somewhat primate-looking small creatures going around.
Tom: I have no idea what they're meant to be.
Tom: But there are owls and crabs.
Tom: You can identify...
Phil: Owls and crabs?
Tom: No, owls and crabs.
Tom: Not owl crabs, unfortunately.
Phil: Is there a burro?
Tom: No.
Tom: Well, there might be.
Tom: There wasn't on the island I explored.
Tom: But once again, gone.
Phil: Is this thing free?
Tom: No, it is not free.
Tom: I paid $for it on a humble bundle because I wanted something to finish in as quickly as possible so I could make it for eight games for the month.
Tom: That was my motivation for playing it.
Phil: All right, are you done with this?
Tom: No, I'm not.
Phil: Can you recommend it to us?
Tom: Yes, I can.
Tom: And here's the thing.
Tom: Once again, if this was, and there are a lot of these sort of animations going around, if this was just an animation with this art style, once again, have much less impact.
Tom: Because the fact that you can explore it and easily experience the seasons in the version of real time that the game follows makes it much more engaging than if it was, say, a time lapse video where you have no control over your movement in the thing.
Tom: It's like if you want to compare if Google Maps was actually, didn't look like completely not a crap.
Tom: If Google Maps looked awesome, that is much more enjoyable moving around Google Maps yourself than if you were to, say, go and watch someone driving around on the street.
Tom: Which sounds like an incredibly backhanded compliment, but it is a genuine compliment.
Phil: I gotta say, I don't get it.
Tom: Yeah, I would not recommend this game for you.
Tom: But I would recommend it if you might be interested in it.
Tom: For what it is, it is excellent, but it's going to have low appeal to a lot of people.
Phil: Maybe if it were in a Vita or a handheld device, I just think, you know, it's kind of like the theatre in which I enjoy the game has a lot to do with it.
Phil: You know what I'm saying?
Tom: Well, you've always had these sort of games on PC.
Phil: That's true.
Tom: And this is a PC game, so...
Phil: Yeah, I could enjoy it on that level.
Tom: It's in the right environment.
Phil: And it'll turn up in a humble bundle at some point.
Tom: I bought it in a humble bundle.
Phil: Oh, well, there you go.
Tom: Which, by the way, included Thomas was here, so you wasted your money.
Phil: I did.
Phil: I wasted my money by supporting the developer.
Tom: Yeah.
Phil: Well, if that's all for Proteus...
Tom: It is indeed.
Phil: We have our trademark Yakuza Killzone Minute.
Tom: And now for the most long-awaited, so that all your fears may be abated.
Tom: Sometimes a minute can seem like an hour.
Tom: It's at these moments we utilize Yakuza Killzone's power.
Tom: So says Tom and Phil.
Phil: In which we spend one minute talking about both Yakuza and Killzone.
Phil: The Yakuza HD Collection, as we spoke about on previous shows, is coming to the Wii U.
Phil: Toshihiro Nagoshi said, this is an experiment.
Phil: He said, to be honest, we're not aiming to see if this will be a smash hit.
Phil: Our real intention is that we want to see how people respond.
Tom: Well, it is Sega, so they're obviously not going to be aiming for anything to be a smash hit.
Phil: That's true at this point.
Phil: He said that the Yakuza series was born and bred on PlayStation hardware.
Phil: And he said, we're not jumping ship to Nintendo.
Phil: Yakuza and are coming out on the Wii U, and this is what it is.
Phil: Which is what it is, means a cheap cash in.
Phil: Nintendo is desperate for titles, and we're going to give them a game we've already made.
Tom: Exactly, and it looks worse on the Wii U.
Phil: Yeah, I mean, and that's not subjective.
Phil: I mean, if you look at the actual HD screens from Wii U and PlayStation the Wii U ones are inferior.
Phil: So do you have anything on the Killzone front?
Tom: I got another thing on Yakuza.
Tom: In that, I think it might have been the same interview.
Tom: Nagashi said, he was asked if there was any chance of Yakuza being available on DS in some form, or rather he said, sure, if you want a Yakuza game without people in it on the streets.
Phil: Brutal.
Phil: Oh my god, that is brutal.
Phil: Yeah.
Phil: Do you think, just quickly, do you think Yakuza would ever come to the Vita?
Phil: They didn't do a PSP game, I think.
Tom: With that comment, maybe that was the reason why they didn't do a PSP game, so maybe a Vita version might come around.
Phil: Yeah.
Phil: Well, we're just still hopeful for Yakuza coming to the west.
Tom: Now, as for Killzone, this is just a random short one.
Tom: This is basically, Guerrilla Games detailed how this downplay while you're downloading would work, so Michael van der Lout said, You're going to download a chunk of the game, get the menu in first level, and while you're playing the first level, we can start downloading the second in the background.
Tom: So that works exactly as we expect it to, and that is actually a pretty awesome feature.
Phil: Well, I see a big problem with this and one that you've overlooked, and that is this will be on PSN.
Tom: Oh, yes.
Phil: So just by downloading the developer logos and the start menu and the first level, you could quite easily get through that before the second level has been downloaded.
Tom: Well, you wouldn't be starting it until it says you download the first level and the menu.
Tom: So you have to have completed downloading the first level before you can start playing.
Phil: Right, but what I'm saying is you could start playing, beat the first level, and PSN would still be downloaded.
Tom: Of course, yeah, but that's the risk you take.
Tom: And that still seems like a pretty interesting feature to me, even if it does result in you playing the first level then getting stuck.
Tom: Being a veteran of Australian internet, I would be expecting that to happen.
Tom: So I would not be going into it expecting to be able to play the game from beginning to end as it downloads with Australian.
Phil: Well, at least you explain it.
Phil: And did I mention MLB the show?
Tom: Yes, you did.
Tom: And that's the other thing.
Tom: Actually, the best thing about this feature is it implies that perhaps now you will finally be able to continue downloading a game while playing another.
Tom: Or maybe this is just an issue I face.
Tom: But if I'm downloading a game, if I then open a game and play a game, the download immediately stops.
Phil: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Phil: It's terrible.
Phil: I mean, Sony needs a slap in the face on this whole internet thing.
Phil: It is just terrible.
Phil: So with that, we will move on, and we are going to, at this point, talk more about Deadly Premonition.
Tom: So the podcast has effectively ended for most people.
Phil: Well, just basically what I want to say is, we're not going to spoil anything, but we know that we've probably spent two hours on Deadly Premonition so far, and it is an ultra-niche title.
Phil: So if you are going to leave us at this point, we do thank you for listening, and again, we've been overwhelmed with the response that we've received from the show.
Phil: You can follow me on Twitter at Game Under Phil, and you can also come to gameunder.net to read Tom's past reviews.
Phil: We have a written word section, which is tremendous.
Phil: Tom's writing, of course, if you're listening to this podcast, you probably already know it is great.
Phil: And Tom, what's your latest review at laserleaming.com?
Tom: The Last Light review, I believe.
Phil: Oh, The Last Light review, which is a...
Phil: I reread that today, and it is a good review.
Phil: Even though we've talked about it here on the podcast, it's worth going and reading it most definitely.
Phil: So go to laserleaming.com and look that up.
Phil: And for those of you sticking around for Deadly Premonition, congratulations.
Phil: You are...
Phil: Just take off the velvet rope here.
Phil: You are now allowed to listen to us talk about the Deadly Premonition.
Tom: The final joke is most important, especially if what you desire must be important.
Tom: So let Game Under give you advice.
Tom: So the next game you play will be nice.
Tom: So says Tom and Phil.
Phil: So having bid a fond adieu to our non-Deadly Premonition listeners, and quite frankly, they're not the true listeners.
Phil: You are, dear listener, the one that's still listening here.
Phil: And right now we can say whatever we want because we know only the true followers of Phil Fogg, LG's and Tom Towers are listening.
Phil: This weekend, I observed the ending of Deadly Premonition and Director's Cut.
Phil: So I now have a full understanding of the alternate ending.
Tom: So the ending is different.
Phil: The ending has an alternate ending.
Phil: After the credits, there is something that changes.
Tom: OK, so it's not like they changed the final cut scene.
Phil: Sadly.
Phil: Yeah.
Phil: Sadly, there's no real alternate ending.
Phil: They basically just add something to the end, which I think I can say without spoiling the game, suggests a sequel.
Phil: Now, we know that no sequel has been announced.
Phil: We know that no sequel is certainly commercially viable.
Phil: So this Director's Cut was probably testing the waters to see if it were to be commercially viable.
Phil: I don't think there's going to be a Deadly Premonition sequel at all.
Tom: For example, what's another game you can think of that was extremely loved by a large amount of people that was bigger than this that suggested a sequel very explicitly in its ending?
Phil: Shenmue.
Tom: Yep.
Tom: And also Psychonauts as well.
Phil: Oh, okay.
Phil: So after the credits, they don't really change the ending.
Phil: They just give you additional information after the credits.
Phil: So I got to say, and then in the menu, there is a extras section.
Tom: Special section.
Phil: Yeah, I opened that up, and it is the same as in the original, which basically means you can listen to any song, you can watch any cut scene.
Phil: It's not anything extra at all.
Tom: That is awful.
Phil: Yeah, it's a pretty sad director's cut.
Phil: I mean, they improved the controls, they improved the combat, but beyond that, they really didn't add anything at all to this game other than giving you the false hope of a sequel.
Phil: And I'm not going to go into details as to what they say.
Phil: I'll leave that for you to see for yourself.
Phil: It doesn't diminish the original game.
Phil: If you haven't played it before, I mean, it has a tremendous ending, absolutely tremendous, one that will stick with you for years to come in terms of the impression that it makes.
Phil: But in terms of a director's cut and an alternate ending and all the rest of it, this game kind of fell down pretty far in terms of offering true fans anything extra.
Phil: I mean, when Resident Evil has a director's cut or something like that, you know, you have alternate costumes, you have alternate endings, extra levels, and Deadly Premonition really didn't offer anything other than this hint after the credits and a couple of additional HD cut scenes throughout the game.
Tom: That is a shame.
Phil: Yeah, it is a shame.
Tom: It's not too surprising given the budget of the game.
Tom: You couldn't really expect too much else, I would say.
Phil: Yeah, coming back to it years after, Sony obviously was the ones putting up the money for the release.
Phil: So, yeah, you couldn't have expected much.
Phil: And actually, we got so much more out of it, which was just an opportunity to replay the game.
Phil: So Velvet replayed it as soon as she got it, even though she was deep into other games and played hours essentially straight until she got to the end.
Phil: And I do intend to replay it myself as well.
Phil: And trophies, you get trophies.
Tom: But you had achievements, so it's the same.
Tom: So one disappointing thing about the extras though, hearing that is, what they could have presumably done without spending too much money is stick in some crappy making of or something along those lines.
Phil: Yeah, exactly.
Tom: Or concept art or bits of the script, that sort of random stuff.
Tom: It surely isn't going to cost much that they could have included.
Phil: Or a minute, fuck man, give me a minute interview with Swery.
Tom: Exactly.
Phil: Just sit the guy down in a room with a cup of coffee, you know, you can have some FK in his coffee, that's fine.
Phil: And just let me listen to the guy with a translator.
Phil: That would have been worth $a line.
Phil: You know, it's just so half-assed.
Tom: And that's what I had in my mind the whole time that I saw Special there, that it was going to include that sort of stuff.
Phil: Yeah, look, concept art, you already have the concept art, just digitize it.
Phil: You have the original script, include it as a PDF that if we put the disc in our PC that it can read the PDF for the script.
Phil: And a to minute interview with Swery.
Phil: Or round up the voice actors who obviously don't get paid or much work for anything.
Phil: They probably would have came in for bucks.
Phil: Talk to some of the voice actors.
Phil: Who wouldn't want to see York's voice actor or Emily's voice actor or Forrest Cason's voice actor or Woodman, George Woodman, you know?
Phil: Anyway, having said that, you're still playing the game.
Phil: You haven't got to the end of it.
Phil: You're playing it for the first time.
Tom: And I'm up to chapter
Tom: So I'm still...
Tom: That's probably about two-thirds of the way through.
Tom: So I've still got a while to go yet.
Tom: And I still haven't reviewed it.
Tom: So somewhere out there, there's an incredibly annoyed PR person.
Phil: Oh, I don't think so.
Phil: I mean, they've already gotten two hours of our podcast.
Tom: That is true.
Tom: That is true.
Tom: And so the longer I take, the more podcasts they'll be getting, going to be getting.
Phil: You should be totally emailing that dude, you know, letting him know that we are talking about this game at least one hour every week.
Tom: At the very least, I'll include that in my review email to him.
Tom: The first thing I like to say is there is no way this is a badly designed game.
Tom: I think the thing about it is, and this was probably a lot worse on the the mechanics are awful.
Tom: There's no getting around that fact.
Tom: And if the controls were worse on the this would have been just incredibly annoying.
Tom: What were the controls on the by the way?
Phil: Well, basically the same.
Phil: I mean, you're using the two sticks, you know, you're using button presses when needed, you know, just typical video game stuff.
Tom: So what was altered exactly?
Tom: Because you had said the controls are better.
Phil: Oh, the controls are better, not in terms of like the buttons you use or the sticks you use.
Phil: It's just basically, in terms of how you move through the environments, it's just being made a little bit easier.
Phil: They don't move the camera around as much, sort of thing.
Tom: Well, that in mind, this is the thing on the mechanics.
Tom: Except for the driving and the shooting, I don't think the mechanics are actually bad.
Tom: The running around, there's nothing wrong with that.
Tom: It's perfectly functional.
Tom: Driving itself is functional once you have upgraded your police car or got a better car than the default police car and jeep, which are just abysmally awful.
Phil: Exactly.
Tom: So the driving is fine.
Tom: It's just that the physics engine is ridiculous.
Tom: So every now and then, you're going to be driving with your car partly submerged in the asphalt.
Tom: You're going to be randomly jumping here and there.
Tom: And if you're driving a fast car, there's this hilarious thing that happens where it basically feels like the physics engine cannot keep up with the car.
Tom: So you're driving along, and you turn, and the car turns.
Tom: Then it starts skidding and just jumps around randomly or flips over, but not when you would expect it to.
Tom: So you might hit a jump, you drive over the jump, then a few meters after that, your car jumps in the air, that sort of thing, which is hilarious.
Tom: And you can say that the physics are bad, but the driving is perfectly functional.
Tom: The shooting is functional.
Tom: It's just not fun whatsoever, but perfectly functional.
Tom: So at this stage, I'm not sure how you can necessarily think that the game is poorly designed, except based on your first impression, because the pacing of the gameplay is actually excellent.
Phil: Yeah, it's very good.
Tom: They know when to put you in one of the survival horror sections, where you're going around killing people.
Tom: They know when to give you a soul, partly just going around talking to people.
Tom: And they also, though this is partly random based, but generally they also know when to make the side quests overtly obvious to you.
Tom: So if you're in a section of story that is mainly about downtime, you're going to be bumping into more people that are doing side quests because of the time of day that they've set that section of the game.
Tom: And maybe this was just completely serendipitous to how I was playing it though, but that's the impression I got.
Tom: But even if it's not, the pacing is excellent.
Tom: So design wise, I think it is actually a well designed game.
Tom: The thing about it is, it is not designed as you would expect most games to be.
Tom: So while the pacing is excellent, it doesn't follow traditional pacing.
Tom: If it was paced traditionally as a game like this would be, as you would expect a open world game with mission sections to be paced, you would expect more regularity in what you're doing.
Tom: So you wouldn't get longer sections where you're just driving around and you don't get to do a survival horror section for a long amount of time, and you wouldn't have to do a couple of them short in a row.
Tom: It would be a much more sort of formulaic and rhythmic pacing design, right?
Phil: Yeah, because I'm a different kind of game player, I really like to immerse myself in the character.
Phil: So it never occurred to me when I was driving around that, oh, I've been driving around for a long time without any sort of horror dungeon.
Tom: That's the thing, I think, because it does do that differently, and that is the reason that it does it, which I'll go into in a second.
Tom: But I think that's probably where a lot of people get hung up on it and where a lot of the bad reviews, apart from the first impressions, apart from those, I think a lot of people are going to have trouble appreciating because it does things so differently to other games.
Tom: Even the good things it does, it does them differently to how you would expect them to be done, even as they would be done in a Japanese game.
Tom: So people aren't going to have a point of reference, so they're going to come across it, and because it's different, they're not going to be able to appreciate it.
Phil: Well, I think a lot of people got hung up on the bad cutscenes, you know?
Phil: I mean, the voice acting isn't bad, but it sometimes is stilted.
Tom: Especially in the sidequests.
Phil: And the framing of the shots is poor.
Phil: And I think that that's what people are going to get hung up on as well.
Phil: But you know, it's an easy...
Phil: If you're moving too fast, it's an easy game to misinterpret, and I think that's what most critics got stuck with.
Phil: Because you know, the review cycle is so hurried, where you've got a game, you've got to review it, you've got to have the review out on the release date.
Phil: And if you're just going by first impressions or casual impressions, while you're listening to MPs, just to beat this game in hours, yeah, you're going to miss a lot.
Tom: And well, that's the thing, because the pacing is set up to basically simulate the passage of time as it is to York.
Tom: And it's done excellently.
Tom: The balancing of having it at three times speed works so perfectly.
Tom: And I can't think of a game that has done the passage of time so excellently to basically feel like you are going over a full day, where it's long enough that you can spend like an hour, and you think, OK, I've spent a significant amount of time in the game.
Tom: You might spend an hour in most other games of this nature, and you've basically gone through an entire day, right?
Tom: But here...
Phil: Or in some cases a week.
Tom: Yeah, exactly.
Tom: But you spend an hour here, and you've only gone through a third of the day, so it's still the same sort of weather conditions and the same...
Tom: the sun's in the same sort of position.
Tom: So it feels like you have actually only spent an hour real time, but it's not so bogged down.
Tom: Then you do another hour, and OK, so now it's another hour, so it's another third of the day, so it's evening.
Phil: It's not tiring, like some games.
Phil: Like some games make you feel like you've really actually lived a day in the life of this person.
Phil: But yeah, the pacing in this game in terms of the depiction of real time passing is entirely unprecedented.
Phil: I've never seen anything like it in a game.
Tom: And there was one minor problem I had with this was I didn't realize that cigarettes could pass time, so I was stuck for a long time, working on their stupid three-hour increments and wondering why the hell they didn't just include one hour so I could get to the goddamn time I needed to be at for the story.
Phil: And all you had to do was smoke.
Tom: Who knew?
Phil: Well, I didn't know either until Belvich pointed that out to me.
Tom: So the other thing, major thing, before we just go into random little tidbits that I wanted to talk about was, yeah, this is definitely not a Twin Peaks parody, now that I've played more of it.
Tom: So you were correct all along.
Phil: So disregard the prior podcast.
Tom: Well, no, in fact, do not disregard it, because here's the thing about the beginning.
Tom: It's not intentionally a Twin Peaks parody.
Tom: There's no doubt about that.
Tom: But the beginning of the game is, through sheer coincidence, a very accurate Twin Peaks parody in many of the things it does.
Tom: So intentions aside, it is still, at the beginning, a very effective Twin Peaks parody.
Tom: But after that, you get to know the characters more, and it becomes clearly apparent that it's not Twin Peaks parody.
Tom: And it just generally grows out of that.
Tom: So yeah.
Phil: Yeah, I mean, they have a log lady.
Phil: I mean, they have, you know, I mean, there are specific things.
Phil: And Swery says this has nothing to do with Twin Peaks, probably because that's what his lawyers told him to say.
Phil: But at a certain point, all of that doesn't matter.
Phil: The setting doesn't matter.
Phil: You become Emily and York and Woodman and Kason and Thomas just start to fill the screen.
Phil: These characters are larger than whatever this game starts out to be.
Phil: These characters just envelop your entire being, really.
Phil: If that's not too much hyperbole, I'm right, right?
Tom: Well, I wouldn't necessarily go that far, but it is excellent.
Tom: But just the last thing on that note, for the record, by the way, once again, just so that I'm not drawn into any misinterpretation through your statement, once again, if this had in fact been a % Twin Peaks parody, I would have had no less respect for it whatsoever.
Tom: And you remember my satirical blogs from GameSpot, right?
Phil: Yep.
Tom: So those, for example, included probably some of the more work than I put into reviews.
Tom: So that's my opinion on satire.
Tom: I hold it in the same regard as original works.
Phil: Oh, yeah.
Phil: I mean, to say something like satire is a lesser work, absolutely not.
Phil: I was just saying that this Japanese dude, you know, probably wouldn't be capable with his lack of speaking English to pull off a good satire.
Phil: It was more like, oh, that's a cool setting.
Phil: Hey, I got an idea.
Phil: How about an FBI agent that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah?
Tom: Yeah, and that's absolutely what I think it is now having played more.
Phil: So in terms of the script, how did you find the dialogue?
Tom: Well, I've come to the conclusion that this is probably the best script of the generation.
Tom: I was going to say one of possibly the best comic scripts full stop in games, but...
Tom: But, but then I remembered a lot of games that I played, and that is certainly not true whatsoever.
Tom: And I think it's important to note that it's the best comic script of this generation for the reason that it is.
Tom: Now, I believe last time we discussed about how good the script was, yes?
Phil: Oh, absolutely.
Phil: I mean, you had only just started the game, but I was talking about the in-car dialogues, where he talked about movies from the s and s.
Tom: And the reason that it is so good, though, is because despite it being humorous, which is irrelevant because this would apply to a serious game as well, the reason that it is so good is because the dialogue is generally very natural and believable.
Tom: Now, with this generation and to a lesser degree the previous generation, but especially with this generation, writing has got better in inverted commas in gaming.
Tom: And I put it in inverted commas because this means that we've gone from amateur people doing writing to professionals of the lowest level.
Tom: So the professionals doing the writing of games today are well-educated, as in they're the sort of people who have read a lot of books on how to write and probably have done a few university degrees on writing as well.
Phil: Well, I mean, what has happened is that in video games in the past, the dialogue was written by the programmers, right?
Phil: The guys that did the graphics and everything else were the guys that wrote the story.
Tom: That's right.
Tom: It's amateur writers, even if they're professional.
Phil: And in addition to that, you've seen the decline of jobs for people who are writers.
Phil: I mean, newspapers, magazines have all been laying off people.
Phil: Books are generally only sold by known brands, right?
Phil: It's hard to break through if you're not a known brand or...
Phil: I'm not going to say what it is, okay?
Phil: or a minority.
Phil: So...
Tom: Or Tom Towers.
Phil: Or Tom Towers.
Phil: So, I mean, basically what you've seen is the move from the industry going from amateurs, and you've also seen people who used to make money writing having to take on jobs like gaming.
Phil: So you have seen an overall increase in the quality of writing in games.
Tom: But the thing is, the increase in the quality of writing in games, the level it has reached is the educated but untalented.
Tom: So every script is written exactly to the formula of not even what is fashionable at the time, but whatever class they have taken or book on writing they have read.
Tom: It is literally that awful.
Tom: So The Walking Dead, which is a reasonably well written game, and I am using this because I went to play The Walking Dead while playing Deadly Premonition.
Tom: So when you are reading the dialogue on The Walking Dead, you can see the exact formula they are using.
Tom: And when you are reading it and listening to it, it just screams this is a script because it is written following the rules of script writing.
Tom: So to get something that isn't utterly horrible crap, you need to actually progress beyond this level of professionalism.
Tom: Or you need to regress to amateurism, because if you got amateurs, you got a better chance of finding someone who is talented.
Tom: The reason for this is there might be many people talented writing games right now, but because of the level of professionalism that it is, they can't use their talent.
Tom: They've got to follow this formula, because it is what is % expected from them.
Tom: So they can't actually do what they think they might be doing, right?
Tom: But if you...
Phil: Well, slow that down.
Phil: Okay, so in video game writing right now, you've got people who are technically proficient, people who have studied how scripts are written.
Tom: Technically proficient, technically at the bottom level of being passable.
Phil: Technically trained.
Tom: Technically trained, but not proficient.
Phil: So you have people who are technically trained, people who maybe went to USC and did script writing and went to the video games program there.
Phil: But you are saying that there is a possibility that there are great writers in video gaming, but they have to stick to the basic format and formula.
Phil: You are saying this is too professional.
Tom: Well, it's too professional because it's at such a low professional level.
Tom: Because the other thing to consider in this is that a lot of people would be at an early point in their career, so they would be much under the thumb of what they are being told to do as well.
Tom: You look at the sort of more established people that are getting into games writing, and a lot of them are pretty much hacks, to put it kindly.
Tom: But you're getting the same level of work, because that's what's being expected of people.
Phil: And the standouts are people like Lorne Lanning from The Oddworld Games or Amy Henning from The Uncharted Games, where they could be writing TV series or movies or whatever, but they get more of a kick out of the creative process of being able to not only create characters through dialogue, but also create the actual characters.
Phil: Right?
Phil: I mean, Amy Henning, I mean, if given the choice of writing a script where you get to craft the character through dialogue, but you ultimately at the end of the day still have to deal with a director and an actor who are going to tell you their interpretation of your character.
Phil: That's where Amy Henning has the upper hand because she creates the character and she doesn't have to deal with a director because she's the creative director of the game.
Phil: And the actor is, you know, beyond the voice actor, all her, under her control as well.
Phil: So, yeah, I can see, definitely see the appeal, but I can only come up with two names in the whole sphere of gaming that is on that level.
Tom: Well, that's the point.
Tom: And those are in big games.
Tom: The other games that you find that have random snippets of good writing are stuff like Deadly Premonition, which is clearly a very low-budget job.
Tom: And that's the thing, because if you are below this level of professionalism, then the people involved are going to have more freedom.
Tom: And this is one of the reasons I enjoy playing random-budget adventure games.
Phil: Because they're flying under the radar.
Tom: And so they're free to do whatever they want, and they're also not attempting to be more professional.
Tom: So they're not trying to write a strip like this that is going to get them a job elsewhere, necessarily.
Phil: Exactly.
Phil: So they're writing what they want to.
Phil: This is their heart.
Phil: They're not writing this to get the attention of someone else so they can get a job.
Tom: That's right.
Tom: Exactly.
Tom: But there's also another aspect to it as well, and that is that with the amateurism, you can actually get a lot of unintentionally good writing.
Tom: Now, that might sound contradictory, but it is perfectly possible.
Tom: So for example, The Book of Unwritten Tales, which I would say is in terms of the writing, is probably better than the script in Deadly Premonition.
Tom: But Deadly Premonition deserves more kudos because it manages to draw so much humor out of the writing from the characters, not just as in it shoves in jokes that are amusing, which is really above the vast majority of games, full stop.
Tom: But the writing in The Book of Unwritten Tales is excellent, and the reason you could say it is unintentionally good, and this could be wrong, but it's the same with the voice acting.
Tom: It's got a lot of rhyming and repetition in it.
Tom: Now, of course, this is, if you are on the level of the professionalism that most games are, you're going to be going through an editing to remove any rhymes or any repetition as a rule.
Tom: This is going to result in you being unable to actually create an aesthetic where you want it to, and also it can interfere with the emotion that you're attempting to achieve because you might want to use repetition for a point.
Tom: So The Book of Unwritten Tales manages to achieve an aesthetic through the repetition.
Tom: But of course, you could of course say that this is, all the repetition and rhyming is simply because of bad writing, and just through luck, it manages to create a good aesthetic.
Tom: But to me, that doesn't end up mattering.
Tom: So you end up coming, even if it is through accident, good writing in lower budget stuff.
Tom: And this was the case in games from previous generations.
Tom: And the other reason to assume that it might not have been entirely intentional is that this was done away with in the sequels of the game, as was the excellent voice acting, which became incredibly generic.
Phil: So they probably hired...
Phil: This is the German point and click adventure.
Phil: They probably hired professionals for the sequels, right?
Phil: That's right, yeah.
Phil: As opposed to doing it themselves.
Phil: They're like, we'll focus on the engine, we'll focus on the game, we'll hire some people that actually know how to write, blah, blah, blah.
Tom: Yeah, or they could have simply hired a different translation firm.
Tom: And just last thing on this sort of thing.
Tom: Once again, another thing that is far ahead of even most triple-A high-budget games in voice acting in this game is the fact that they actually mix a lot of the dialogue to the scene that the people are in.
Tom: And this is because, as a rule, this is not done in Western voice acting, but is done in Japanese.
Tom: So I don't know if this was something that came across from Swery and the Japanese developers, but if you've got the characters in a big echo-y area, they've added reverb to the voices.
Tom: And if they're outside, there's no reverb and that sort of thing, which you do not find quite bizarrely, and I've never understood why this is the case.
Tom: You rarely find this in even very high-budget games and even films that are made in the West.
Phil: Yeah, so why don't they do the ambient-type recording, right?
Tom: Yeah, I do not know.
Tom: I don't understand why.
Phil: Next week, we'll record our podcast in a picnic playground-type setting just to demonstrate exactly how this works.
Phil: That is bizarre, though.
Phil: But now you point that out, that's absolutely right.
Phil: Like, when you're playing Gears of War, it doesn't matter if you're in a room or if you're out in the field.
Phil: They never actually change the audio to suit the setting that you're in.
Phil: Wow, mind-blowing.
Tom: Which is awesome.
Phil: So for listeners who have listened thus far into the podcast, your mind has been blown.
Phil: You have been rewarded for listening thus far.
Phil: For the most part, though, we haven't even been talking directly about Deadly Premonition.
Phil: That's true.
Tom: Well, I am actually going to say something directly related to Deadly Premonition.
Tom: And it's just a little thing.
Tom: And stuff like this which makes it so exceptionally good.
Tom: Now, I'm not going to use any character names, but I think we can say that someone gets murdered.
Tom: That's not a spoiler.
Phil: Characters get murdered throughout this game.
Tom: So the mother of one of the murdered characters is a complete mess.
Tom: They've gone around in...
Tom: They've descended into alcohol abuse and are delusional, right?
Phil: Well, I wouldn't say it's possible to abuse alcohol.
Tom: Well, this is an American game, not an Australian game.
Phil: Oh, that's true.
Tom: It's set in America, not in Australia.
Tom: So I went to visit them at one stage, you know, and I got a random side quest, so that's fine.
Tom: And it did a little bit of character development.
Tom: There was some absolutely terrible writing, because whenever the game attempts to be somewhat dramatic, the writing and the acting just goes out the window.
Tom: I should say melodramatic.
Tom: The writing and the acting just becomes hilariously awful.
Tom: But there was some character development there, so I thought, you know, that's okay.
Tom: So the side quests, they do add a little to the characters.
Tom: That's all right.
Tom: And they're fun to do sometimes.
Tom: But then I went back a while later, and there was no side quest there, but one of the character in question's best friends was there.
Tom: And so I thought, you know, that was cool as well.
Tom: So they're looking after them.
Tom: But they had in fact made them dinner, which I thought was, you know, it's not the sort of thing you would be expecting to find.
Tom: And I thought it was very effective and quite touching.
Phil: What?
Tom: So I was just randomly exploring the game world, right?
Tom: And the characters live out their own lives.
Phil: Yes, yes.
Phil: You can go probe on people.
Phil: You can go look in their windows, and this will unlock trophies or achievements.
Tom: And so you find this in many games, but they're just following the same...
Phil: Why were we?
Phil: You find this in many games?
Tom: Well, there are some games that do that sort of thing.
Tom: They've got an ecosystem with the characters and whatnot.
Phil: Well, there's certainly tons of games out there where the NPCs are living their own lives.
Tom: Yeah.
Phil: But I don't think to the extent, as in Deadly Premonition, where...
Tom: But that's what I'm saying.
Tom: This is what was so good about it.
Tom: So up until this point that I came across this, I was thinking, okay, so they do...
Tom: They go from their jobs and home and whatnot, so that's okay, but unspectacular.
Tom: But then I went here and there was, you know, an emotional thing relevant to the story that was taking place that I could have never stumbled across, but I did just from randomly exploring, which I thought was a pretty awesome detail to have in there.
Phil: That is, and that is what makes sidequesting so valuable in this game, unlike in any other game, because, you know, you're doing a random thing, and trust me, I think the interaction is going to be pretty random.
Phil: Did you get a trophy for that, incidentally, from seeing that scene?
Tom: No, because that wasn't a sidequest, that was just what the characters were doing as part of their own routine, unrelated to any sidequest.
Phil: By saying sidequest, I mean really like trophy hunting.
Tom: It's unrelated to that.
Phil: Yeah, because there are trophies for like, you know, spying on Emily when it's raining after at night.
Tom: I can imagine.
Phil: You're going to get a certain trophy for this or that because of things that you're observing at certain times.
Tom: Well, maybe there was a trophy and I just didn't stay around for long enough because as good as it was, my attention span wasn't long enough for me to wait for them to start eating it because they walk so slowly.
Phil: And as you can well imagine, I didn't do any of the perv side stuff in this game whatsoever because I just wanted to know what was going to happen next.
Tom: You just somehow know this fact.
Phil: Well, I read a lot.
Tom: Yeah, okay, sure.
Tom: Reading, that's what it was.
Phil: That's what it was.
Phil: Are we done with Deadly Premonition for this week?
Tom: No, no.
Phil: Whoa, what?
Tom: I'm just going to completely sidetrack once more on, once again, the same thing.
Tom: Now, on spying on people, this was pretty awesome.
Tom: Early on, there's a character involved, once again, completely unrelated to the story and to any side quest, so you would just be stumbling across them by accident.
Tom: You can go and talk to them and spy on them.
Tom: And if you do this, it's basically predicting what is going to happen in the story like hours later.
Phil: Really?
Tom: Which is awesome.
Phil: How do you know this?
Phil: The game's only hours long.
Tom: I've got to the point where this was basically leading up to this.
Tom: Whatever the result of, the final result of what is happening, this was clearly their way of saying this is going to happen.
Tom: And I won't go into more details on that because it is a spoiler.
Phil: Alright, well, so is that it, sir?
Tom: Yes, it is.
Phil: We are done?
Tom: Yes, we may now finish the podcast.
Phil: With Deadly Premonition, and we are done with The Game Under Podcast.
Phil: Again, if you weren't listening earlier, you can follow me on Twitter at Game Under Phil.
Phil: You can stream our show at gameunder.net, or you can subscribe to us on iTunes or through your RSS feed.
Phil: It's all at our website gameunder.net.
Phil: But I would really encourage you to go to our written word section, where we have some of Tom's reviews, and we're slowly getting up all of Tom's prior reviews for you to read and features.
Phil: I mean, you did a new thing recently.
Phil: You did a review of a film Torn Curtain.
Tom: Yep, that wasn't really recent.
Phil: Well, but I mean, it's recent in terms of the scale of history.
Phil: This was the first film that you've reviewed.
Phil: Correct.
Tom: And our first traditional written word content.
Phil: Yeah, that's a big deal.
Phil: So check that out, Torn Curtain.
Phil: And we appreciate our listeners.
Phil: So I'm Phil Fogg, LG's, you are?
Tom: Tom Towers, T's.
Phil: And a W?
Tom: Yes, yes, a W as well.
Phil: And E's.
Phil: And we've been here before.
Phil: So thank you for listening to The Game under.net podcast.
Phil: We appreciate your comments and we'll see you next week.
Tom: And it's actually only .