Game Under Episode 4

Before getting into the news of the week Tom and Phil go over all the latest GTA5 news and focus on the evolution of the popular franchise

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GTA Special
0:07 GTA Through the Ages
24:15 We Watch the Latest Trailer

Introduction
37:22 Welcome to the Show!
39:45 One Last GTA Thing: Odin Sphere and how it is like GTA.

News
50:05 Eternal Darkness Sequel
58:19 3D Mario Coming by October
1:00:57 Respawn on Durango Only

YakuzaKillzONE Minute
1:06:48 Killzone and PS4 Controller
1:08:47 Yakuza Restaurant Shoot-out

Game Impressions
1:11:40 Dyad
1:35:18 Resistance 3

Transcript
Phil: The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And that's what gave us DMA, which was the DMA, which is the company that has become Rockstar North.

DMA stands for doesn't mean anything. And they made games like Lemmings. Which was great. Probably one of the top ten games of all time, I'm guessing.

Tom: Yeah, I played the hell out of the shareware version of that.

Phil: That was made by Dave Jones, who went on to make Crackdown and then APB, the failed online MMO, basically.

Phil: It actually isn't that failed.

Phil: I mean, it's still surviving right now.

Phil: It's just his company failed.

Phil: Real time or whatever it was called.

Phil: And then they went on and made Grand Theft Auto and

Phil: And of course, this is also a Dave Jones project.

Phil: It was the only GTA not set in the USA with their expansion with the London set for the second game.

Phil: And then they stumbled along and made the Ngame Body Harvest, which is really the prelude before Grand Theft Auto

Phil: This was a game where you could hijack vehicles, get in and out, perform violence.

Phil: So it was basically like a third person isometric type view.

Phil: Not as pronounced, truly isometric, not top down like the early GTAs, but you could run around, hijack cars and basically just do what you want.

Phil: And God said, let there be light.

Phil: And there was light.

Phil: And this brings us into Grand Theft Auto

Phil: This was a game that at Ethat year, most gaming journalists said that they were there and they saw Halo, and that's what they were excited about.

Phil: And then Rockstar Take-Two had this little tiny stroll up to the side for Grand Theft Auto that no one paid any attention to.

Phil: Grand Theft Auto of course, had the silent protagonist Claude and really just completely revolutionized the gameplay.

Phil: Will Wright famously said that he played it and he was like, oh, wait, so I can basically get into any car I want.

Phil: I can be an ambulance driver.

Phil: I can be a firefighter.

Phil: I can be a taxi driver.

Phil: I can walk around.

Phil: I can do what I want.

Tom: And murder prostitutes, don't forget.

Phil: Murder prostitutes, taking money back.

Phil: I mean, just probably, I mean, just a great game.

Phil: And then a year later, they released Vice City and, of course, San Andreas.

Phil: They're two great works.

Phil: Vice City and San Andreas, yeah, I like San Andreas best.

Phil: It does have a game ending bug in the original PlayStation release of it, which is what stopped me from beating that game.

Tom: That's your excuse anyway.

Phil: That is my excuse.

Phil: Have you beaten San Andreas?

Tom: Oh, yeah.

Phil: Okay, the mission where you were in San Francisco and you have to fly the little planes around and blow up three dudes' vehicles.

Phil: What format did you play that on and how did you go in that mission?

Tom: PSand this was many, many years ago, so I have absolutely no idea.

Tom: I do remember though that I deliberately avoided getting the game ending bug.

Phil: Oh, really?

Tom: Yeah, I knew about it before playing, so that probably helped.

Phil: Yeah, well, the bummer thing is that that mission comes early in the game, fairly early in the game.

Phil: I mean, you do have to get up to San Fierro, but I tried it and I failed at it.

Phil: I'm like, okay, whatever.

Phil: It's just a pointless little side mission.

Phil: It doesn't matter.

Phil: I went on with the complete rest of the game, you know, going to Vegas, the whole thing.

Phil: I was probably at that point hours into the game, and basically it's like the last icon on your map, so you have to beat it before they'll unlock the final San Andreas levels, and I tried everything.

Phil: I tried just playing it to death.

Phil: I probably played it for like two weeks straight.

Phil: I tried cheats that would, you know, slow down the clock, speed up your playing.

Phil: I couldn't beat it at all, which is the greatest shame, because it was up to that point my favorite GTA era.

Phil: Now, of course, in that time, there were also two other lesser played GTA games, Vice City Stories and Liberty City Stories, primarily released on the PSP and then later released on the PS

Phil: Did you play those ones?

Tom: No, I did not.

Phil: Yeah, those were really my favorites.

Phil: My favorite GTA game is Vice City Stories, the one that features Phil Collins.

Tom: So you like to eat more than San Andreas?

Phil: Yes, I do.

Phil: It was the last one they released, and it uses the same engine and everything else.

Phil: And it was really the high point of the GTA series.

Phil: Being from Los Angeles, obviously, I like the San Andreas game for many, many reasons and the soundtrack and all the rest of it.

Phil: But Vice City Stories was really them understanding completely what it was that they were doing.

Phil: And it was the last game they made on that engine and the best game I found in a GTA series.

Tom: I've got a reputation for being a lot more focused than the console games.

Phil: Yeah, very much so.

Phil: And that's because, of course, they were released on the PSP initially.

Phil: They had the UMD, so they're a lot tighter and a lot less flab.

Phil: God saw the light was good and he separated the light from the darkness.

Phil: So, then you have GTA IV.

Phil: And, I mean, it's amazing when you go back and play GTA IV now, like, Niko's using a feature phone, not a smartphone, you know.

Phil: It does seem like an age ago.

Phil: They radically changed the driving in that game.

Tom: Yeah, they made it a lot heavier and less arcade-y.

Tom: It's still very arcade-y, but yeah.

Phil: Yeah, which initially I choked at, but eventually grew to love.

Phil: What are your thoughts, capsule summary of GTA IV?

Tom: Well, as a GTA game, I think it is a complete and utter % failure.

Tom: Now, the thing is, what they were doing, as far as I can see, is they basically realised, okay, our mechanics in GTA, the shooting, the driving and everything, are all basically a load of crap, right?

Tom: There's nothing particularly good about how cars feel to drive in the old GTA games, and the shooting was absolutely horrible, right?

Phil: I completely disagree.

Phil: I found the driving...

Phil: I mean, it wasn't burnout quality.

Tom: No, no, no, I'm saying in the old ones.

Phil: No, I'm talking about the old ones.

Phil: In the old ones, I mean, like, it wasn't like Sleeping Dogs quality, where it is on the standard of a burnout, right?

Phil: But it was still enjoyable.

Phil: I mean, they had the great physics.

Phil: That's where I learned how that if a cop car is in front of you, you basically just tap, you know, the rear near the trunk, and it will spin out.

Tom: I'm not saying it wasn't enjoyable to drive.

Tom: I just mean that there wasn't a great amount of depth to it, right?

Tom: It was a very simple system that was designed around getting the most fun of it from not just the simple joy of driving, but what you were doing, right?

Tom: So you could play around with the physics, et cetera.

Tom: All the cars sort of felt the same except for some sports cars.

Phil: No, no, no.

Phil: The sports cars felt light, right, as a sports car does, and flighty, and if you went too fast around a corner, you'd flip out.

Phil: The heavier cars, the older cars, like the station wagons, had poorer control and felt heavier.

Phil: If you had an armoured car, you knew you were driving an armoured car, you'd be spitting out exhaust and be slow and heavy.

Tom: Yeah.

Phil: I mean, I thought it showed a pretty nuanced demonstration of different automobiles.

Tom: But that's the thing.

Tom: It's got like several archetypes in it, right?

Tom: It's got...

Phil: It's got about four archetypes.

Tom: But there's much more than four different cars in there, right?

Tom: Yeah.

Tom: So, once again, take this as a slight exaggeration, what I'm saying, because I don't disagree with what you said there.

Tom: But in GTA IV, they took that to a much higher level, where most of the games felt...

Tom: Most of the cars felt very different, even within their own class of cars, right?

Tom: So there were sedans and hatchbacks, just normal cars that felt quite different.

Tom: And there was a big difference in most of the sports cars, et cetera, right?

Tom: You don't think so?

Phil: No, I do think so.

Phil: I felt that in GTA IV...

Phil: I mean, if you were driving a Mercedes Coupe, you really felt like you were driving a Mercedes Coupe.

Tom: So that's what I'm saying, is they took the elements of the older GTAs and turned them up to right?

Tom: So they took what we had, four archetypes for all the cars in the entire game, right?

Tom: And they then applied that to making each car feel unique and different.

Tom: And this applied to...

Tom: So then they changed the shooting.

Tom: They made it a much more traditional sort of shooting thing.

Tom: And they also changed the mission design, trying to make the mission sort of play out more as you would expect a normal shooter to, right, as well.

Phil: How do you...

Phil: What do you mean?

Tom: So as opposed to in GTA, the old GTAs, where you basically went somewhere and there was a huge amount of people to shoot, and you just shot them all.

Tom: Here you have like a level to move through, and you have to go from cover to cover, and that sort of thing.

Tom: And the missions were also more...

Tom: The pacing was more nuanced, right?

Phil: That is a great insight, because yeah, in the old GTA s, it was more of an open world type.

Phil: We're going to drop enemies on this open world map, go.

Phil: But in Grand Theft Auto IV, they actually designed the shooting situations, like the famous museum heist, or the scene at the...

Phil: I think it was like an iron smelting plant or something like that, where you were playing it as you would a proper shooter.

Tom: Yeah.

Tom: And the thing is, though, the thing I think that they just missed here was they had all these core elements that were actually pretty good, right, and improved from the previous games, but I didn't really feel like they brought them together to form the one cohesive experience, which is what the older GTA games were just incredible at.

Tom: They took all these small elements and more limited elements than in GTA and just made this unbelievably engaging and enjoyable experience out of them.

Tom: Here, I thought they didn't really bring them together to form that whole cohesive whole, which was basically my major problem with GTA apart from the story where they basically attempted to move from doing ridiculous parody to satire, where they didn't just want to make fun of a Mafia story.

Tom: They wanted to also give you the feeling of experiencing a good Mafia story while also making fun of it.

Tom: And maybe after their experience with Red Dead Redemption and the like, at the stage they did this with GTA they just did not have the skills to pull that off whatsoever.

Phil: Yeah, I think you're right.

Phil: I mean, Red Dead Redemption obviously showed a level of maturing that they had not yet reached with GTA

Phil: You almost, from an outsider's perspective, because the Hauser brothers are so silent, you almost think about, well, is it one Hauser who wants to be Scorsese and one Hauser who wants to be Mad Magazine?

Tom: Yeah.

Phil: You know, and then they're constantly fighting.

Phil: But I think at the same time, that's what makes GTA so appealing.

Phil: And it has from the very beginning.

Phil: I mean, right from the start, GTA it is both a notion of this is a very violent and, you know, to some tastes offensive game, but it's also Mad Magazine.

Phil: Yeah.

Phil: So I think that may be what makes it special.

Phil: And so when you take a game like Red Dead Redemption, yeah, it's going to appeal to more mature tastes, but you've got to wonder if it's turning off the younger set who might want more of the Mad Magazine type stuff.

Phil: Yeah.

Phil: And creating space for franchises like Saints Row.

Phil: In Grand Theft Auto IV, I did not...

Phil: I mean, I was addicted to the game twice because I played it for great periods of time, like years apart.

Phil: And I really was addicted to it, which means I must have liked it.

Phil: I'd sit down in Nico's apartment and watch the TV shows, you know, watch Ricky Gervais and, you know, the animated cartoons and stuff like that.

Phil: But the things that make it my least favorite Grand Theft Auto game is probably the aspects of they played out the missions way too much.

Phil: Like, you were doing missions for that guy in the Italian restaurant for way too long.

Phil: And at a certain point, it's like, okay, I've done like five missions for this guy.

Phil: And every time he says, if you do this one thing for me, then I'll tell you what you need to know.

Phil: And it's like, you, at this point, you're a high level assassin.

Phil: You could basically just grab this guy, take him over to the, you know, the woodchipper and get the information you want for him as opposed to going out and killing people and putting yourself in risk of getting arrested.

Phil: And that just happened mission after mission after mission with these small fish telling you, hey, just do this one more thing for me and I'll tell you what you need to know.

Phil: And it's like, no, I mean, it just got tedious.

Phil: So the other thing I really didn't like about it was the whole feature phone stuff with girlfriends calling you up and your cousin calling you up and the rest of it.

Phil: I mean, you could ignore it, but you couldn't ignore it.

Tom: It's GTA, so you've got to be interested in everything that's going on.

Tom: So you can't just ignore a feature in GTA, especially if it's been shoved in your face.

Tom: You're compelled to look into it, right?

Phil: Right.

Phil: And so it was with...

Phil: And that was a failing of more of the characters, right?

Phil: So when you had that FBI, CIA bitch, double agent calling you up, wanting to go bowling or whatever, she wasn't a compelling character.

Phil: She wasn't scully.

Phil: She wasn't something interesting.

Phil: Now, when Brucey came along, it was like, yeah, every time Brucey called, I was up for it.

Phil: I'm like, yeah, man, let's go.

Phil: Let's go steal some helicopters or whatever the fuck it is you want to do because he was a cool character.

Phil: But that was few and far between.

Phil: So it wasn't for me that...

Phil: My favorite Grand Theft Auto IV Euro game is Lost in the Damned.

Phil: And I think that if people are going in to play Grand Theft Auto V, they really are doing themselves a disservice if they don't first play Lost in the Damned and Gay Tony.

Phil: These games can be beaten in to hours.

Phil: And they really will set you up for a evolution that's occurred at Rockstar North that you may not be aware of.

Phil: Because of the shortness, basically what happens in Lost in the Damned and Gay Tony is they interweave the story of a biker and a security guy for a bar.

Phil: It's not called a bumper.

Phil: What are they called?

Phil: Bouncer.

Tom: Bouncer.

Phil: Right.

Phil: In Gay Tony, you play the role of a bouncer for a guy who owns nightclubs.

Phil: Gay Tony.

Phil: You don't play as Gay Tony.

Phil: And in Lost in the Damned, you're basically playing a guy who is in a, you know, a Hells Angel type motorcycle gang whose leader has recently come back from jail.

Phil: You've been in charge.

Phil: The leader's come back from jail, and he's trying to relinquish control over the group in subtle ways.

Phil: So you're trying to play deference to this guy because you love and respect him, but at the same time, the leader is kind of a fuck up, and he's trying to basically undoing all the progress that you've done.

Phil: At first, when I played Lost in the Dam, I was repulsed by the content.

Phil: I am not a member...

Phil: No, no, Lost in the Dam.

Phil: Yeah, because I'm not a member of a biker gang, and I find them typically...

Phil: I know this is a shock to most of our listeners, but I'm not a member of a biker gang, like the Thinks or the Hells Angels, and I find what those groups do to be mostly repulsive.

Tom: I'm offended by this, as a member of a biker gang.

Phil: You would probably like Lost in the Dam right off the bat, but for me, these were the truest characters that have ever been portrayed in video gaming, other than some of the characters that you see in games like Enslaved.

Phil: I mean, these were real people.

Phil: You were living in a real setting.

Phil: It doesn't glamorize violence, and it was just a real evolution for Rockstar.

Phil: Gay Tony went back basically in response to the Saints Row franchise and embraced all the craziness that was missing from Grand Theft Auto but present in Grand Theft Auto San Andreas and...

Tom: By City.

Phil: By City.

Phil: But they also include some, I mean, amazing shooter sequences.

Phil: There are some first-person or third-person shooting sequences in Gay Tony that rival Call of Duty at its highest level, where you're going through shooting up office buildings or retail locations, taking cover.

Phil: It's just a really amazing thing.

Phil: And then another thing that Gay Tony added...

Tom: We really like saying things are as good as or better than Call of Duty on this podcast.

Phil: We are.

Phil: I mean, basically, I think on our website where we post our reviews, we should just change our scoring mechanism to...

Tom: We're saying as good as or better than Call of Duty.

Phil: Exactly.

Phil: And then at the end of each level in Gay Tony, they do like a Ninja Gaiden thing where they will rank your performance, like how many secrets you found and the time you beat it in or like the end of a Doom level.

Tom: Yeah.

Phil: And I can see that coming back.

Phil: So how does all of this inform Grand Theft Auto V?

Phil: Basically, in Grand Theft Auto IV, they had the three different stories.

Phil: They showed them intertwining, and it was brilliant.

Phil: I mean, you go back to that museum heist and you play it in the first game as Niko.

Phil: You play it in the second game as the biker.

Phil: You play it in the third game as the gay Tony bouncer dude.

Phil: And they have all of the same scenes, but from a different angle in a Tarantino kind of way.

Phil: And it's brilliant, and they know it's brilliant.

Phil: Grand Theft Auto IV would have been a much better game if they had had hours of Niko, hours of Lost in the Damned, and hours of gay Tony.

Phil: And that's what it looks like what we're getting with Grand Theft Auto V.

Phil: Yeah.

Phil: You did not play either of those expansions, right?

Tom: No, I did not.

Tom: GTA IV put me off playing any other GTA IV games.

Phil: Well, what if I were to tell you that there were games available that were like GTA IV, but a third of the length, way more intense, contained better gameplay, better characters and better story and dialogue?

Tom: Well, what if I tell you that I bought the complete GTA pack on Steam for $for this very purpose?

Phil: And what if I were to tell you that you should probably play them sooner rather than later?

Tom: I would say if they're about hours each, that's probably not going to happen anytime soon.

Phil: So, God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it.

Phil: And so it was...

Phil: Which brings us to GTA Chinatown Wars, a game that stands out by itself as an island.

Phil: Released initially for the DS, eventually it came out for the PSP and then the iPhone.

Phil: My two favorite GTA games are Lost in the Damned and Chinatown Wars.

Phil: It has an Asian-American protagonist.

Phil: And it's really a great game.

Phil: It's basically like an Asian drug dealer.

Phil: I love that game.

Phil: I think it's amazing.

Phil: In fact, just thinking about it right now wants me to go back and play it.

Tom: And this didn't do too well, though.

Tom: And you've got this theory that Asian protagonists don't sell well, right?

Phil: Well, non-white protagonists don't sell.

Tom: Okay, so black ones are fine and Latinos are not fine.

Tom: I mean, black and Latinos are not fine either.

Tom: Is what you're saying.

Phil: I think in the Rockstar world, they understand that if they set a game outside of the United States of America, it will not sell.

Phil: And if they have a protagonist that is not European, that it will not sell.

Tom: So explain San Andreas to me.

Phil: Yeah, I mean, that's the exception, obviously.

Phil: I mean, San Andreas came at a point where the PlayStation had the maximal install base and off the back of two incredibly successful video games.

Phil: I mean, people were not going to buy San Andreas just because it had a black protagonist.

Phil: And also in Western culture, he was playing a hip hop type character.

Phil: You know what I'm saying?

Phil: Which is widely accepted by the greater community.

Phil: If he were a black college professor, I'm not quite sure that it would have sold as well.

Phil: In fact, Vice City Stories...

Tom: I'm not sure if Grant Tessaloto were the whites.

Tom: College professor is the main character.

Phil: It would have sold as well either.

Phil: Vice City Stories, you play the part of an African American also, but he's a member of the military.

Phil: So, I don't know.

Phil: People say all the time, why don't they do a GTA in London?

Phil: Why don't they do a GTA in Paris?

Phil: Why don't they do a GTA in Budapest or whatever?

Phil: It's just not going to happen.

Phil: Which brings us up to Malachi.

Phil: Behold, I will corrupt your seed and spread dung on your face.

Tom: Faces.

Phil: Faces, sorry.

Phil: I got that wrong.

Tom: I don't mean to correct you on knowledge of the Bible, as you are the preacher.

Phil: And so the question is, will Grand Theft Auto V corrupt your seed?

Tom: Yes.

Phil: And will it spread dung on your face?

Tom: Undoubtedly.

Phil: Actually, it was Saints Row that spread dung on your face.

Phil: They had the sewage trucks.

Phil: So do you want to watch the GTA V trailer?

Phil: You haven't seen it before, right?

Tom: Correct.

Phil: So are you ready to watch it?

Tom: I'm ready to watch it.

Tom: I don't want to watch it, but I'm going to watch it for the sake of the podcast.

Phil: All right.

Tom: So do I need to click on one of these people?

Phil: I'm just going to click back early on the timeline.

Phil: There you go.

Phil: And then we'll watch them in order.

Phil: First, the one is Michael.

Tom: So I'm top of the sky jogging.

Tom: Pilates.

Phil: Basically, we see a Tony Soprano type character living in Los Angeles.

Phil: Yep.

Phil: And he's got an upper middle class lifestyle.

Phil: He's miserable, even though he's rich and has everything.

Phil: You see cash trucks exploding.

Phil: He's talking to his therapist here.

Tom: And he's got a very small mouth and some sort of speech impediment.

Tom: And it looks like he's having a stroke when he speaks.

Phil: Oh my god, there's a shotgun, a bank heist, helicopters.

Phil: This is fucking awesome.

Phil: Oh, someone just got shot.

Phil: A jet and a plane and cops.

Tom: Cars exploding.

Phil: And the guy says, I think you need a therapist.

Tom: That guy looked rather unhealthy to me.

Phil: All right, we're going to pause here.

Phil: So we just watched the Michael trailer.

Phil: That was damn impressive.

Phil: How are you not impressed by that?

Tom: I'm not impressed by it.

Tom: I never said I wasn't impressed by it.

Phil: Don't you want to pre-order the game right now?

Tom: No.

Phil: Holy shit.

Phil: Did you see the jet?

Tom: No.

Phil: And the helicopters and the guy, the Tony Soprano and the therapist.

Phil: I think you have a violence problem.

Phil: Come on.

Tom: It looks good.

Tom: It looks good.

Phil: I want to take this game, put it in a syringe and inject it into my arm.

Phil: This looks amazing.

Tom: The thing that I take from this is the bizarre mouth of Michael.

Tom: That's the thing that stood out to me.

Phil: It's too small?

Tom: And the guy in the G-string.

Phil: I missed the guy in the G-string.

Tom: He jumped out of a window over a pop-flame.

Phil: That was the best part.

Tom: You go on about the cars exploding and shit like that.

Tom: If there was anything that would make you want to pre-order, it was that scene.

Phil: It's important to note, people at home, that Tom Towers' problem with Grand Theft Auto V is that Michael's mouth is too small and that he was distracted by the guy in the G-string.

Tom: No, that was the good part.

Tom: Oh, I'm sorry.

Phil: Yeah.

Phil: That was the good part.

Tom: And you had a reasonable bulge, you see.

Tom: My problem is, I'm just thinking that there might be an issue with the small mouth compared to the size of that bulge, by the way.

Phil: Okay, so on to the Franklin part of the trailer.

Phil: You ready?

Phil: One, two, three, click.

Phil: Here we go.

Phil: Franklin, African American.

Phil: Okay, we got some sirens here.

Phil: We see some Grove Street hoodies.

Phil: Guy gets shot with that.

Phil: It looks like an AK.

Tom: Yep.

Tom: I'm just waiting for someone to say, Oh, no, you didn't.

Phil: Yeah.

Phil: Oh, a Ferrari.

Phil: And cops, helicopters, strippers, butts.

Phil: And a lot of talking.

Phil: A lot of...

Tom: Well, black people talk a lot.

Tom: We all know that.

Phil: That's why Oprah was so successful.

Phil: Okay, now they're driving down an LA reservoir, Terminator style.

Phil: Guy gets shot in the head with a shotgun.

Phil: Shooting at a helicopter with a shotgun, that's not going to work.

Phil: It's clearly Grove Street.

Phil: They're in green.

Phil: Got an SUV going down the freeway, shooting at LAPD.

Phil: Guy in a white singlet, like CJ?

Tom: Yup.

Tom: That was less impressive than the first one.

Phil: Okay, so we'll pause there.

Phil: That was Franklin's trailer.

Phil: So, your impressions?

Tom: Disappointing.

Tom: I mean, that one was...

Tom: after the Franklin trailer, that's pretty damn boring.

Tom: It's a bunch of black people talking, then a strip club and a couple of police.

Tom: Right?

Tom: I mean, that's a major letdown after the first...

Phil: It is.

Phil: I was hoping for, like, a Will.i.am-type music video.

Phil: You know, the one where he's running and then he's, like, you know, in a car and he's on a bike and a helicopter and a jet plane.

Tom: I mean, you can't have Michael as the first one and then follow it up with something like that.

Phil: That's pretty poor.

Phil: I mean, how...

Phil: You know, the other thing is, how do you compete with Queen?

Phil: That should have been the end.

Tom: Yeah.

Phil: You know?

Phil: Okay, so overall...

Tom: Pacing-wise, that shortly would have been better at the end.

Tom: Just build up to that as the climax.

Phil: Yeah, I think so, but I think they're probably concerned about people leaving before the end.

Phil: So now we're going to go into Trevor.

Phil: Now, do you know anything about this trailer at all?

Tom: I know, before watching this, I knew nothing about any of the trailers.

Phil: Okay, so you're pumped about Michael, a little bit let down about Franklin.

Tom: Yeah.

Phil: So you've got to be excited about conflict.

Tom: I think they could have put it off if they had a much better rap soundtrack.

Tom: If you stick in some good rap there to set the scene better.

Tom: I mean, the music was just sort of like a continuation from the first trailer.

Phil: The music in the Franklin section was just basically generic background music, whereas with the Radio Gaga, it basically made you want to...

Tom: It fitted what was happening, it fitted the class.

Tom: I mean, you've got to have something to go with the environment.

Phil: Okay, so now we're going to go on to the third part of the trailer.

Phil: This is for someone called Trevor.

Phil: Trevor.

Phil: Looks like a baseball player.

Phil: He's got a baseball bat.

Tom: Playing baseball Yakuza style, I think.

Phil: Okay, so we're seeing a trailer park in Southern California.

Tom: Yeah.

Phil: And it seems like he's interacting with Michael.

Tom: Yeah.

Phil: Okay, a biplane.

Tom: Strangling old people.

Phil: He's got lots of punching and...

Tom: I'm liking the level of male partial nudity so far that I'm seeing.

Phil: Okay, we're back in LA now, and he's using a shotgun to blow up a large truck.

Phil: He's playing country music.

Phil: He's a little crazy guy.

Phil: He looks like the guy from Sling Blade.

Tom: You know, I think the reason they've put both these trailers last is that they're crap.

Phil: Yeah, that last one was poor.

Phil: I don't know why they did that.

Phil: That was poor.

Tom: Maybe they could have put it off.

Tom: Once again, the music choice is horrible.

Tom: They needed to go with something much more country and western than that.

Tom: That was like easy listening country and western, right?

Tom: You're going to hear that in a lift or something.

Tom: You're not going to hear that in a trailer park being blasted, right?

Phil: That was terrible.

Phil: And that is obviously the part that they're putting in to appeal to people who like GTA right?

Phil: I mean, that's going to be the crazy, wacky guy who's driving the biplanes and all the rest of it.

Phil: I would have much...

Phil: Okay, like the Michael character, the Tony Soprano-Maffiosa guy, that's like Rockstar's wheelhouse, right?

Phil: They own that.

Phil: They understand that.

Phil: They're basically that.

Phil: They're white people.

Phil: They get that, right?

Phil: The next character, that's fine.

Phil: I mean, they did a good job in San Andreas with that.

Phil: You know, that's fine.

Phil: They really didn't embarrass themselves there other than with the music selection.

Phil: But with the third one, why wouldn't you go back to the lost and the damned character or something like that, or the gay Tony bouncer guy, the Hispanic guy?

Tom: Wouldn't that be somewhat redundant, following Michael, going by what you said about these characters, given that they're more realistic, with more depth to them?

Tom: I mean, that's Michael, basically, as far as we can tell from this trailer, right?

Phil: I see what you're saying.

Phil: You're saying that because I don't want an arcadey character in my Grand Theft Auto, then if we just continue having prototypes of Michael, but different races, that doesn't really advance the game much, right?

Tom: Yeah.

Phil: No, I see your point.

Tom: I think the main problem is they failed to sell it so badly.

Phil: That was pathetic.

Phil: So we'll jump basically straight into the news that has come up about Grand Theft Auto

Phil: What do you got on that front, Tom?

Tom: Well, basically just one absolutely terrible and completely pointless and meaningless article by nintendoenthusiast.com.

Tom: So this is posted by Manashi, and this is apparently a feature, and this feature consists of him saying he asked his retailer source, which could well have simply been some guy that works at EB Games or GameStop, whatever it's called, in most of the world, and this guy said GTAwas being tested on the Wii U kits for some time, and that's what the story consists of.

Phil: So this guy goes into a GameStop and says, hey, what if you heard about Grand Theft Auto and the Wii U?

Phil: And the clerk says...

Tom: That he knows it's being tested on Wii U dev kits.

Phil: Then let's write up Astronian and that, goddammit, that's a retailer's source.

Tom: Yeah, exactly.

Tom: They didn't want to be named, so it's an unnamed source, so you don't need to say that it was just some random guy in a GameStop.

Phil: My serious question surrounding this is, and this is a serious question, I know this only comes up once every nine shows, but my serious question is, why isn't this game being released for the Wii U?

Tom: Yeah, I would say GTA China could well have simply scared them off from Nintendo completely.

Tom: That did not do well, did it?

Tom: Or am I misremembering?

Phil: No, you're right.

Phil: No, no, no, it flopped.

Phil: I mean, they made possibly the greatest non-RPG DS game ever, right?

Phil: They put real thought into how to use the stylus, the touch screen, the dual screens.

Phil: I mean, it was a perfect execution of a DS game.

Phil: Which just blows my mind, because you think about all the developers out there who are amazing, who don't release games for certain platforms, and you're like, guys, if you only did this, it's great for us, the people who buy the game.

Phil: It's just terrible for them commercially.

Phil: So you think Chinatown Wars basically...

Tom: Because I wouldn't...

Tom: I really don't see Rockstar in general as being shy about releasing their things on everything right.

Tom: They go for as much as they can.

Tom: And so to me, Chinatown, the only area where they were slightly skeptical was Nintendo.

Tom: And so Chinatown Wars seem to me a test.

Tom: So they're not going to go and make a full console, GTA for a Nintendo console or even port one over.

Tom: They're going to make a slightly more niche one in a market where they think maybe we can tap in a different market than we're currently serving, right?

Tom: And so they did this and it just didn't hit the mark for the market that they were going after whatsoever.

Phil: Yeah, and what supports your argument is that you know that ping pong game they made?

Phil: That was a natural to bring over to the Wii, and they never did.

Phil: They did?

Tom: Yeah, they did.

Tom: They brought that to Wii, don't you remember?

Phil: No, I don't.

Tom: Yeah, they did.

Phil: Sorry, listeners.

Phil: So yeah, okay, well, that was my question.

Phil: I just look at the Wii U, though, and I go, okay, it's got better tech than the current gen systems.

Phil: They have the money to develop it.

Phil: They have the time to develop it in terms of porting it over.

Phil: Why don't you do it?

Phil: Even if you don't use the game pad, which would have tremendous opportunities for them, I just don't understand it.

Phil: I mean, I really don't understand it.

Phil: I think this game should be coming out on the Wii U, and it wouldn't hurt them unless they think that the install base is so low or they think that Nintendo console owners are not in their demographic.

Tom: Well, that's the only plausible explanation that I can come up with with the DSbecause as I said, contrary to popular opinion around here, they did in fact port the ping pong game to the Wii, right?

Tom: They basically released their games on everything they possibly can.

Phil: Yeah, they do.

Phil: I mean, even iPhones.

Phil: I mean, even though they're terrible, terrible ports, so they obviously don't have any respect for their games.

Phil: Otherwise, they wouldn't be porting these over to iPads and iPhones and things like that, where the games just are broken, I mean, completely inoperable.

Phil: So, yeah, I mean, that's interesting.

Phil: Well, at this point, we do want to welcome everyone to episode of The Game Under Podcast.

Tom: Yep, that was our introduction.

Phil: I am Phil Fogg, noted producer of the Press Room Podcast at thevideopress.com, and also obviously, co-host of this award-winning gaming podcast.

Phil: And I'm joined weekly, well monthly actually, we do this podcast every month, but I'm joined monthly by Tom Towers.

Tom: See, people might think that we are currently releasing them every week, but what we actually do is every month we record about four podcasts at once, right?

Tom: And while we're talking about stuff that is, you might not think was released at the time of recording, we get the inside scoop on everything.

Tom: So we just have the whole things back because of embargo, but we do actually only record these monthly.

Phil: We do only record monthly.

Phil: Basically, we do a three-and-a-half-hour show which is our big show is what we call it, right, Tom?

Tom: Yeah.

Phil: The big show.

Phil: We do the big show and that's done monthly.

Phil: But then after we do the monthly show, basically this is just what we do for fun, quite frankly.

Phil: We sit around and we...

Tom: You live very, very lonely and pointless lives.

Tom: This is the pipeline of our life.

Phil: So after recording the three-and-a-half-hour big show, we sit around for four to five hours and record other shows that we distribute weekly.

Phil: And we basically predict the news.

Phil: I mean, like with this Grand Theft Auto trailer, we knew it was coming out.

Phil: This show was actually recorded on January th of

Phil: So it's all scheduled.

Phil: So but we do appreciate you listening to The Game Under Podcast.

Phil: We encourage you to go to our website, gameunder.net.

Phil: And let's continue on with the show now.

Phil: I think you've got something, this befuddles me.

Phil: Something about Odin's Fear, the vanilla-ware game for the PlayStation

Tom: And this is in fact related to GTA, and you did your very best to completely ruin my premise early on, by the way.

Tom: Now short discussion of Grand Theft Auto.

Tom: Now Odin's Fear is basically an extremely Japanese game in that it's based around an extremely simple system of gameplay.

Tom: You've basically got a single attack button, right?

Tom: There's literally one attack button and you have the guard with that and you can do a limited number of attacks up to four which will then form a combo, right?

Phil: Oh wait, before we go on, Odin's Fear, was it only released on the PlayStation ?

Tom: I think it actually was ported to PC or something.

Phil: This is what I'm mystified by, is how are you going to draw some sort of nexus between Odin's Fear and GTA, so continue.

Tom: So it's got this extremely simple gameplay system, but it is done to extreme polish and perfection, right?

Tom: So that while it is a simple thing, it is extremely tight and everything just feels absolutely as it should, right?

Tom: And so then everything around that is kind of irrelevant.

Tom: The main thing is to get a few simple mechanics done perfectly.

Tom: And that to me is the main philosophy behind a great deal of Japanese gaming design, right?

Phil: No, I can go along with that.

Phil: Trust me, if I have an objection, I will raise it.

Tom: Okay, so now the thing that has always confused me a little bit, grant us auto, is the extreme amount of press it gets.

Tom: Now, I know it is obviously a huge game.

Tom: It sells a huge amount, is critically lauded, so it's going to get a lot of press.

Tom: But compared to the games of similar size and equal positive reaction, it has always seemed to be a level beyond that, right?

Phil: Yeah, I would say so.

Phil: That's the common consensus.

Tom: Yeah, so my theory for this is that it is basically the ultimate in Western gaming design in that it doesn't focus on perfecting any of the individual mechanics, right?

Tom: So, yes, the driving model was good, but the driving model itself wasn't actually the focus of the driving.

Tom: The focus of the driving was you're put in this world and you're going around doing whatever you want.

Tom: So the focus is not on the mechanics that make up the game, but the game that these mechanics result in, which to me is the main focus in Western game design.

Tom: And you can see this illustrated very easily in shooters.

Tom: So you've got something like Vanquish or...

Tom: Well, not Vanquish, because I haven't played that yet.

Tom: Binary Domain, which is...

Phil: Wait, wait, wait, you haven't played Vanquish yet?

Tom: Not yet, not yet.

Tom: So you've got something like Binary Domain, okay?

Tom: And the entire gameplay focus on that is what it's like to use the cover.

Tom: So using the cover is very responsive, you stick to it perfectly, the enemies you're shooting is very obvious that you're shooting them in a game, right?

Tom: You've got to aim for certain parts of them, and it's basically a boss battle with each individual thing.

Tom: So it's a very obvious and oppressive, for want of a better term, system of mechanics, right?

Tom: So then you compare that to a third-person shooter made by American developers where the cover might be automatic.

Tom: So you're just going to randomly stick to it, there's no tangible thing sticking to it, it's just there, you stick to it, you just shoot the people wherever you want, maybe headshot is going to do more damage, but the main focus is that everything is exploding everywhere and people are dying everywhere, left, right and center, right?

Tom: So it's about the spectacle as opposed to the thing that composes the spectacle.

Phil: So it's more like the Japanese have like a tradesman-like work ethic to their game where they're going to make the mechanics like in Switch Kill, you know, for a very specific reason.

Phil: I mean, as opposed to just, you're absolutely right.

Phil: Whereas in Western Design, it's like, come up with a concept, now let's build a game around it.

Phil: Whereas in the Japanese kind of development, it's more, as you see, sorry to say to our listeners, as in Yakuza, where there are very specific gameplay formats, like we will have a brawler concept, and we are going to perfect that.

Phil: We're going to make the brawler concept to the level of the sole caliber, or the arcade type games, or the golf games, or whatever.

Phil: And that's where a Western developed game like Sleeping Dogs would perhaps be like, well, we can't have the lead character play a round of golf in the game.

Phil: That doesn't fit with the overall theme.

Phil: So I'm tracking you, right?

Tom: Correct.

Tom: So to me, GTA is basically the ultimate representation of that, right?

Tom: Basically, the whole concept is done, everything within the game, sorry, is all about the overall aesthetic and concept and theme within the game, right?

Tom: So when you're driving around, you're in this awesome setting, and the focus isn't on the driving mechanics.

Tom: The driving mechanics are good, I'm not saying they're bad, but the focus is the fact that you're driving around fucking LA, right?

Phil: Right, and also like when they do focus on a specific thing, like when you go to the clubs and they have the dancing minigame, it's not substantial.

Phil: I mean, it's more of a distraction, more of a like, see this, you don't have to buy that game, we've got it right here in our game, right?

Phil: But, you know, whenever I see that sort of stuff in a GTA game, like the side stuff, like the dancing parts and the game, the gambling parts, the blackjack and Red Dead Redemption, it's kind of like, oh, I mean, what are you guys doing here?

Phil: You know, I mean, sell this as DLC if you want, you know, sell it under minigame adventures, you know, and charge people $for it.

Phil: It doesn't really add, other than just, they're just, you know, waggling their dicks saying, oh, you want a rhythm game?

Phil: We can make a rhythm game.

Phil: You know, oh, you want a poker game?

Phil: We can make a poker game.

Tom: And it's the complete opposite in something like Yakuza, where you could, in fact, literally use the Shogi games and whatnot as a perfectly valid virtual representation of them, whereas if you want to do the things that they offer in GTA, you're much better off going out and buying a game that's specifically designed around that, right?

Phil: Absolutely, yeah.

Tom: But in your case, you can do these and literally just spend, you know, hours playing Shogi or something.

Phil: Yeah, I mean, in the Yakuza games, like if you're using the, you know, the little claw, the space claw that comes down and picks up the item in the arcade or playing golf, I mean, the reason I don't have a current generation golf game is because the golf game in Yakuza is entirely serviceable.

Phil: You know, in the baseball cage simulator, I mean, these are full games in and of themselves, whereas in the GTA world, they're kind of dumbed down versions.

Phil: You know, someone took Friday afternoon to say, oh, let's throw a rhythm game in there, okay, let's do that.

Tom: Yeah.

Phil: So, yeah, good point.

Tom: I think that's the perfect way to describe it.

Tom: You said basically the motivation is just to throw this in there to say that we've got it, right?

Tom: So the most concise way to put it would be that basically Western development is all about showmanship, right?

Tom: And Japanese development is all about craftsmanship.

Tom: And there is no game that is as much about showmanship as GTA.

Phil: Yeah, absolutely.

Phil: Yeah, you're absolutely right.

Phil: It's dick waggling.

Phil: I mean, that is what Rockstar is all about.

Phil: And that's when I said when you play in Gay Tony, some of the shooter levels where they're basically saying, look, if we wanted to, we could make a shooter better than Call of Duty.

Phil: If we wanted to, we could make a driving game better than Burnout.

Phil: It's entirely just one-upmanship, showmanship and all the rest of it.

Phil: Whereas if you look at a game like Yakuza, it's just quiet tradesmanship.

Phil: It's like, okay, well, if we expect our players to be entertained, maybe it would be nice to provide them at this point of the game to experience a game of Shogun.

Phil: And if we're going to include this, it has to be on the level of something that you pay $for on your iPhone.

Phil: So, yeah, that's an excellent point.

Phil: So does that close out your Odin Sphere GTA?

Tom: That brings us to the end of our GTA-related segment, I believe.

Phil: Yeah, congratulations, everyone.

Phil: I'm going to issue achievements at this point.

Phil: You have now achieved the gameunder.net GTA Podcast achievement, and this is worth points.

Tom: And the little description is that you made it through the introduction of the show.

Phil: Made it through introduction.

Phil: Now, moving on to bonus news.

Tom: Yes, the first thing up for our section of bonus news is the spiritual successor to Eternal Darkness, Shadow of the Eternals, has been released, has a teaser trailer released for it.

Tom: And we're not going to do a like commentary from it, but personally, maybe this was simply because it was following on from the absolutely terrible Viva within teaser trailer.

Tom: I thought it was a very, very, very effective trailer.

Tom: It evoked a lot of what was good about the original Eternal Darkness, and I know you're not a fan, but as a fan, the great thing about it was all the settings, right?

Tom: And so this basically had a bunch of people from different time periods in history and showed them off looking at the book and being chased by demons in grandiose settings and what not, right?

Tom: So I thought that was a very, very exciting trailer for a fan of Eternal Darkness.

Phil: Well, I'd agree with you even as someone who didn't enjoy the initial Eternal Darkness, which was the popular survival horror game released for the Gamecube, released by the controversial developer Dennis Dyack.

Phil: There are two things I want to clarify here.

Phil: Number one is I think the concept of Eternal Darkness is awesome.

Phil: Basically, you've got a Sarah Michelle Geller lookalike.

Phil: You know, her relative has died and she's going through his mansion and she's discovering things about his Indiana Jones-like life.

Tom: Yep.

Phil: And then going into some sort of basically flashbacks, right?

Tom: Yep.

Phil: Throughout time.

Tom: Flashbacks.

Phil: Yeah, so there's like a, you know, some sort of Iraqi or Persian level.

Phil: An Egyptian level.

Phil: And on and on and on.

Phil: Romans, yep.

Phil: Yeah, this game is almost too complex for its own good.

Phil: The only real problem I have with it, and I thought it was just a great concept for a game.

Tom: Yep.

Phil: But I personally hate backtracking.

Phil: And I hated going back through those levels time and time and time again.

Phil: As you do with each different generation.

Phil: And at a certain point, I was like, enough.

Phil: The second thing I'd say is, I think Dennis Dyack, even though I hated Too Human...

Tom: Yep.

Phil: Well, I didn't hate Too Human.

Phil: I actually really enjoyed Too Human, but it had a...

Tom: What do you do to games if you hate them?

Tom: You run over ones you don't hate with the tractor, or shoot them.

Tom: What do you do to the ones you hate?

Phil: Well, I infamously did run over Too Human after I beat it with a slasher.

Phil: Connected to a tractor.

Phil: And then I believe I shot it with a shotgun.

Phil: And then I burnt the remains using a diesel-fueled fire and posted this on YouTube.

Tom: This is basically what we were describing in the upcoming horror podcast.

Phil: Well, yeah.

Phil: The thing is about Too Human and Dennis Dyack is I think that if I were to make video games, I would be Dennis Dyack.

Phil: I think I would, as I do in this podcast, drive it home just a little too much.

Phil: It's like, OK, you had a good idea.

Phil: Now shut the fuck up.

Phil: OK, move on to the next point.

Tom: What I'm saying is if anyone wants to complain about the length, you're entirely to blame.

Phil: I am.

Phil: I am Babylon.

Phil: So what he's proposing here, right?

Phil: First of all, I saw the trailer, and I came into this as a hater.

Phil: Damn impressive.

Tom: Absolutely.

Phil: I was impressed.

Tom: And we should note, this is going to be available for PC and Nintendo Wii U, and it does look extremely good graphically.

Phil: It does...

Phil: I wouldn't say extremely good.

Tom: Maybe not extremely good.

Phil: It looks current-gen.

Tom: I would say high-end current-gen, though.

Phil: Well, that's because what you're seeing is CGI.

Phil: I mean, it's CGI on the same level, perhaps a little bit lower than The Witcher

Phil: But who knows what the gameplay is actually going to look like.

Tom: Well, I would be surprised if the PC version easily looks like that.

Phil: Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised either.

Phil: I mean, basically, doing graphics like that these days is like falling off the onion truck.

Phil: I mean, you know, anyone can do it.

Phil: It's out there.

Phil: The tools are out there.

Phil: The thing that worries me the most about this is, obviously, Dennis Dyke's company was driven bankrupt through a frivolous lawsuit that he claimed against Epic Games.

Phil: Right?

Phil: I mean, this is a guy who is just stabbing himself, shooting himself in the foot, left, right and center.

Phil: He's obviously desperate for money.

Phil: At least, I mean, you'd have to be after what the judge awarded Epic for filing this frivolous lawsuit.

Phil: And then, as a result of that, this game is going to be released through episodes.

Phil: Each episode is going to be about two to four hours of gameplay funded through Kickstarter.

Phil: I mean, this sounds like nothing.

Phil: This sounds like less than tipping your toes in the border of public acceptance.

Phil: Basically, you're asking people for money for the first two-hour game.

Tom: Yeah, and then relying on it to do well, to do the rest.

Phil: And he's looking for $million for the first episode, which seems like a lot to me.

Phil: But then again, I guess, you know, this is including all of the setup costs and everything else.

Phil: He's got to get the...

Phil: I'm assuming he's got the engine license paid for already.

Phil: Yeah, I don't know.

Tom: For four hours of games, I would say, for four hours of a game that is not, say, some random point-and-click adventure game that you see popping up on Kickstarter constantly, $million doesn't seem too extravagant.

Phil: I don't know, man.

Phil: I just think of the things I could do with $million, which is, you know, in respect to this Dennis Dyke guy, he gets a bad rep because of what he said on NeoGAF.

Phil: But here's, in his defense, he is actually going, he waded into the community and threw himself out there, right?

Phil: And very few developers do that.

Phil: And second of all, this is a guy who could probably get a very, very good job just going to work for EA or Activision, you know.

Phil: He may not get a game director position or something that suits his ego or pretension, but he could get a very good six-figure job working for a traditional game company.

Phil: And he's sticking his neck out online to go back to intellectual property that several gamers, I mean, you know, hundreds of thousands of gamers hold very dear.

Phil: So he's putting himself out in the line again, and I have to respect that.

Phil: I mean, this guy has balls.

Phil: At the very least, he has character.

Tom: The other thing I find interesting about this is I've always basically wondered, and the answer is obvious, though, but why you don't see more sort of niche horror games in the same way that you see niche adventure games, right?

Tom: So to me, this is interesting to see if it is actually feasibly possible to release a survival horror game or series of shorter survival horror games in this manner, as many adventure games and other niche games are released, which you don't really see with proper survival horror games.

Tom: You're going to see horror adventure games released this way.

Tom: So I'm interested to see how it's going to do as a genuine survival horror game.

Phil: Yeah, at least not in this generation.

Phil: I mean, in the last generation, you had games like Cold Fear and Fear Effect.

Tom: Yeah, I mean this gen, definitely.

Phil: Yeah, but this gen, we're basically talking about, well, there are not any middle tier games, unless you want to count Condemned from Sega, which is amazing.

Phil: So all right, well, enough about Dennis Dyack.

Phil: You've got other news here.

Phil: I just read about this D Mario, a new Super Mario Galaxy is guaranteed to come out by October.

Tom: Yep, and...

Phil: So within five months, there will be a Super Mario Galaxy

Phil: This is absolutely confirmed, right?

Tom: Well, maybe not.

Tom: See, this article by CVG basically says there's going to be a D Mario by October, right?

Tom: That's the title of the article.

Tom: That's what they say.

Phil: Amazing.

Tom: Yep, this is based on comments they've got from Shelly Pierce, who is the PR Director at Nintendo UK.

Tom: Now, the only thing they've actually quoted is this.

Tom: From July onwards, we will launch a succession of Wii U titles and we will promote these extensively until the end of the year.

Tom: Margining activity will include TV, print online and PR, as well as comprehensive, experiential and social media campaigns.

Tom: She added, We have a strong line-up planned for Wii U in the second half of including the likes of Pikmin Wonderful those just out of the Wind Waker HD Wii U.

Tom: We are looking forward to launching these in the UK and for the opportunity to showcase the full potential of the Wii U.

Phil: Okay, I didn't hear anything in there about Mario D.

Tom: Nor did I.

Tom: Nor did I.

Phil: So, okay, the headline was what now?

Tom: The headline was, Nintendo plots Wii U resurgence with D Mario by October.

Phil: See, now, when I saw this story at the VG Press, I didn't click on it because I saw the word plots, right?

Tom: Yeah.

Phil: Like, you know, Iwata is glowering in his cave somehow and they're going, okay, this is how we're going to bring about the resurgence of the Wii U.

Phil: Okay, now, Iwata is French in my mind.

Phil: And what we will do first is, from July onwards, we will launch a succession of Wii U Tet hours.

Phil: But in October, this will reach a Crescendo, leading to, perhaps, now he's turned Spanish somehow.

Tom: Well, he's a European Renaissance man, so...

Phil: Super Mario Galaxy

Phil: Or

Phil: Ah, yeah,

Tom: and then

Phil: and then before October.

Phil: This is fucking nuts.

Phil: This is why no one should read CVG.

Phil: Goddamn.

Phil: This is a non-story.

Phil: It doesn't say anything about anything.

Tom: I just don't comprehend how they came up with this title.

Tom: Where did they get that from the comments?

Phil: I don't know.

Phil: I don't know.

Phil: But, I mean, equally spurious.

Phil: I saw a story at Katakli this week that respawned, which is the Infinity Ward dude since the other dude bailed.

Tom: That dude broke life anymore.

Phil: No.

Phil: They basically said that respawn's new game is going to be a Durango exclusive, right?

Phil: And you have a quote about this, I think.

Tom: Well, I think the most fascinating thing was one of their sources, one of Katakli's sources, apparently told them that respawn's futuristic shooter will be designed for multiplayer.

Tom: In fact, they say the game is always online.

Tom: Now, there's two points here, okay?

Tom: We could take the first sentence here as some sort of terrible, terrible preamble into the second sentence, and that, oh, wow, their source is telling them that it's going to be always online, right?

Tom: But there were rumors of this ages ago.

Tom: Basically, as soon as the Adam Orff crap had broken, Microsoft or presumably someone at Microsoft basically leaked the rumor that, wait a minute, the always online is going to be up to publishers, and, for example, Call of Duty, it's a new game, the Call of Duty developers, or rather former Call of Duty developers, new game is probably going to be always online.

Tom: So even as a really terrible preamble, the thing it's moving into was already known.

Tom: So this is just completely redundant on every damn level.

Phil: The thing I love about this is one of our sources tells us that Respawn's futuristic shooter will be designed for multiplayer.

Phil: Well, what are your other sources telling you?

Phil: They're all telling us it's going to be single player only.

Phil: Yeah, that's absolutely fucking right.

Phil: The guys that developed Call of Duty for activism are bringing out a shooter, but guess what?

Phil: It has no multiplayer mode.

Phil: Yeah, that's right, we're showing the man, right?

Tom: Chameleon says, maybe, maybe, the reason they see one of our sources is that just to cover up in case it turns out that it's not always online, because that is still technically a rumor.

Tom: So they're just going to say, well, one of our sources was full of shit.

Phil: Well, I don't know that you know, but I recently have joined the Twitter community at Game Under Phil.

Phil: People can follow me over there, and I engage with the industry types as Twitter avails.

Phil: And I do have my...

Tom: That's a sort of cutting commentary on the industry to the podcast where they're not going to hear it.

Phil: Exactly.

Phil: I mean, people feel that they can confide in me.

Phil: So I do have my own anonymous source.

Phil: So do you have any questions for my anonymous source?

Phil: Because I can just get on...

Tom: Well, I think the most interesting thing would be to...

Tom: Because clearly these two articles, they are, to put it lightly, full of shit.

Tom: So even with the things that are rumours, let's find out.

Tom: No, I can do this.

Phil: I can go on Twitter and I can ask my anonymous source.

Tom: If what these people are saying might too.

Tom: So my first question is, will there be a sequel to Super Mario Galaxy on the way you buy October?

Phil: Okay, I can check that.

Phil: I'm asking my anonymous source now.

Phil: And my reply is no.

Tom: Oh, that's not good, is it?

Phil: Well, I mean, this anonymous source is pretty well connected to me.

Tom: I find that far more convincing than that article.

Phil: So will there be a sequel to Super Mario Galaxy by October?

Phil: Again, I'm sorry to have to report to everyone.

Phil: My reply is no.

Tom: Yeah, that's a bit disappointing.

Phil: You probably don't have anything else to ask this anonymous source, but I have it on Twitter.

Tom: I've got three questions.

Tom: My next one is, I've got a couple written down.

Tom: I'm going to ask a different one.

Tom: Is the new Respawn futuristic shooter going to be designed for multiplayer?

Phil: Okay, well, the new Respawn should be designed for multiplayer.

Phil: My anonymous source says, all signs point to yes.

Tom: So Kotaku might be on to something there.

Phil: I think they are.

Tom: My next question is, is it going to be always online?

Phil: The answer to that is, reply hazy, try again.

Tom: Yeah, well, I think that's just indicative of the fact that that's still very much in the rumored sort of territory.

Phil: Well, I'm going to ask him again.

Phil: Because this guy can be kind of elusive.

Phil: He says, don't count on it.

Tom: So Kotaku's one of their sources is possibly wrong.

Phil: I think so.

Tom: I hope all the other sources are correct, though, for their sake.

Tom: Now, my next question is, will the Durango launch in early November in time for Black Friday this year?

Phil: All signs point to yes.

Tom: Oh, that's a pretty big scoop.

Phil: I'm going to hit Twitter right after this podcast.

Phil: This anonymous source, I mean, he should just shut up right now.

Phil: I mean, he's going to lose his job at this point.

Tom: Now, my next question is, will Reggie Phil's aim still beat Nintendo in ?

Phil: Outlook good.

Phil: Which is shocking.

Phil: I have to call into question our anonymous source at this point.

Tom: Yeah, that's kind of destroyed his credibility.

Phil: Yeah, I don't think Reggie's going to be at Nintendo in

Tom: You know why he's not going to be there is because there won't be a Super Mario Galaxy by October.

Tom: So someone's got to be the foreguy for that.

Phil: Bad call.

Phil: So it's time now for our Yakuza kills one minute, or Killzone minute, for those of you who are a bit slow.

Phil: I've got some interesting Yakuza news, but why don't you hit us up with what is the latest on Killzone?

Phil: There was some huge news about Killzone this week.

Tom: Yeah, well, the interesting thing about Killzone is, well, apart from the fact that they have been helping Sony with the PSas has been previously discussed, they're also going to be using the light bar on the controller in interesting ways.

Phil: That's the triangular shaped light that's on the front of the controller that we all thought was going to be some sort of move thing that apparently isn't.

Tom: So what they said was, like when players are losing HP, the color could change from green to red.

Tom: Like in the Killzone demo, if you were watching Stephen playing, that game had that function already.

Tom: People were watching the main screen, but Stephen was facing the audience, showing how the light bar color changes as he was hit by the enemy.

Tom: As he lost HP, the color was changing from green to red, and when he used the health replenishment, it went back to green.

Phil: Gimmick.

Tom: Yeah.

Phil: Yeah, this just doesn't add.

Tom: Yeah, that's...

Tom: I mean, you've got to be glancing down at it.

Phil: Well, you'd probably see, like, peripherally in your peripheral vision.

Tom: Yeah, but it's still distracting.

Tom: I mean, if you're in a shooter, you'll often very much focus on the very center of the screen, right?

Tom: That's why lots of modern shooters, instead of pulling your focus to the health bar, they have the screen go red and out of focus, right?

Tom: So that even if you're staring at the very center of the screen, you're still always aware of what your health is.

Tom: So if you take it a step further than that to what's on the controller, seems pretty pointless to me.

Tom: And on top of that, they're not going to just do that.

Tom: It's going to be that as well as the normal on-screen prompt.

Phil: I would bloody well hope so.

Phil: I mean, that just seems pointless.

Phil: In Yakuza news, well, there's no news about the game Yakuza unfortunately, this week from Sega, but I do have real Yakuza news, and that was that two prisoners were hanged in Tokyo on Friday.

Phil: That's right.

Phil: Real people lost their lives with a noose around their neck that not even America does anymore.

Tom: Well, I think you'll find America's main form of execution isn't exactly much better.

Phil: Well, it's like lethal injection, actually.

Tom: No, but you need to look into how the lethal injection works.

Tom: It's not as if they're giving them a dose of nemutol.

Phil: Oh, you think they're poisoning hot dogs and then making them eat like hot dogs?

Tom: Exactly.

Phil: Yeah, I think I read an Atlantic article about that.

Phil: But these two inmates were members of a Yakuza syndicate.

Phil: The pair were convicted of conspiring with an accomplice to gun down two rival gangsters at a family restaurant in the Chiba Prefecture in

Phil: At a morning news conference after the executions, Justice Minister Sadokaze Tanigaki described Miyagi and Hamasaki's crimes as nefarious and cruel, especially given that they fired eight shots in a place crowded with innocent bystanders.

Phil: Tanigaki also said the pair unleashed their hail of gunfire to, quote, save the face of their organization, a motivation he described as typical of the Yakuza.

Phil: Now, you haven't played Yakuza yet, right?

Tom: Not yet.

Tom: So this is life imitating art, is it?

Phil: This was in Yakuza so you've got that to look forward to.

Tom: I think we can safely say this was because of Yakuza then.

Phil: No, I don't think so.

Phil: I think real life influences Yakuza far more than Yakuza influences real life.

Tom: I don't think so when it comes to games and violence, let's be honest here.

Phil: Well, I think if Yakuza was to influence society more, it would be great because then we'd have orphanages all over Okinawa.

Phil: Now, you're going to be playing Yakuza fairly soon, right?

Tom: I believe so.

Phil: Your PSis getting fixed or you're buying a new one?

Tom: I think, well, actually I posted a Kickstarter for people to get me a PSand they've come through.

Phil: Because they should.

Tom: Yeah, exactly.

Tom: I mean, it's not to saw me, it's for the listeners.

Phil: Oh yeah, it's not for you.

Tom: No, I don't even like the PS

Tom: Basically, an act of self-sacrifice.

Phil: It's the same thing with me and the transvestite prostitutes Kickstarter I have.

Phil: It's not for me.

Phil: I mean, this is something that's going to inform my commentary moving forward.

Phil: Unless I have these kinds of experiences, I mean, who's going to listen to what I have to say about video games?

Tom: I mean, how could you be considered an authentic commentator on Grand Theft Auto if you have not had sex with transvestite prostitutes and murdered them?

Phil: That's exactly my point.

Phil: So we'll move on to game impressions now.

Phil: We've played a couple of games this week, right?

Tom: Yeah, well, I played one.

Tom: And I also played one interview, but we're not going to go into that because we already sort of did earlier on.

Tom: So I'm going to talk about Diad, which if you go to the website, you can find a link to my review of it.

Phil: Oh, this is Dennis Diad's game, right?

Tom: No, this is Sean McGrath's game, but that was a nice pun.

Phil: Okay, so everyone head over right now before you listen to any more of this podcast and go over to gameunder.net, and then I guess click on Written Word and then Reviews, and you'll see Tom's review of Diad.

Phil: This is a tube shooter that was a PSexclusive until like last week, right?

Tom: Yep, that is correct, and it was released on PC.

Tom: And You've Got a Lonesome Weight was released.

Tom: The Sean McGrath posted some extremely low-fi, just him talking to a webcam, right, in the early morning, covered in mucus from sleeping with a very disheveled beard.

Tom: And he's just like, OK, I'm going to release Diad on PC.

Tom: And a couple of weeks later, we had Diad on PC.

Tom: That's how you should do PR.

Tom: That's awesome.

Phil: I remember that, actually.

Tom: So that was awesome.

Tom: Now, you've read the review, right?

Phil: Oh, yeah.

Phil: It's a great review.

Tom: Now, you also discussed the game with me, correct?

Phil: Yep.

Tom: Now, I believe you'll remember me saying that basically the aesthetics in the gameplay are completely unlit, right?

Phil: Yeah, which I thought was kind of odd.

Phil: I mean, just the aesthetics of this tube shooter, just to describe to our listeners, it looks like a music visualizer, right?

Phil: I mean, lots of synesthesia, you know, going around and...

Phil: I mean, it's just basically like a res for this generation, right?

Tom: But, first of all, before we move on to this, what a fugitive point is, okay, so now in the review, though, you would have noted that I said in fact that there is a perfect symmetry.

Tom: This is not how it was described in the review because there is a perfect symmetry between the aesthetics and the gameplay, right?

Tom: Yep.

Tom: So, bear in mind that the review is basically full of stuff that is not true.

Tom: So this is going to be the opposite of that and is going to focus on not including any bullshit.

Tom: And I don't even need to justify why I included this sort of bullshit in the review because the keen reader would understand why, right?

Tom: So this is just going to be what the game is without any sort of bullshit.

Phil: So this is Diad the review uncut.

Tom: That's right.

Phil: Director's Edition XXX version, bitches.

Tom: What this actually is is Diad Remix Mode because in Diad, before we get to what Diad is, we're going to mention Remix Mode.

Tom: Now in Remix Mode, what you can do is you can alter the settings of the game.

Tom: So you can turn off the music, you can alter the music from being following the tempo of the gameplay, you can alter how the visuals behave, and you can alter elements of the gameplay, right?

Tom: So you're basically literally remixing the game on a very high level, right?

Phil: Can you use your own soundtrack?

Tom: No.

Phil: Is this the game that had the Beck song?

Tom: No, I don't think so.

Phil: Alright, sorry everyone, different game.

Tom: I don't know that, but anyway.

Tom: What this effectively does though, is it reveals all the tricks that Diet is using, all aesthetic tricks and all its gameplay tricks.

Tom: So for example, when you're playing, it might feel at first that the soundtrack is perfectly following what you're doing, right?

Tom: Now if you go around and mess around with the settings, you can very easily discover exactly what triggers the certain sounds.

Tom: And when you do this, you immediately realize that it is not at all dynamic.

Tom: It doesn't even come close to making it appear that it's dynamic.

Tom: Yet it creates this feeling that it is dynamic as you're playing it.

Tom: And it does this very simply and very, very brutally.

Tom: And it does it through complete and utter sensory overload.

Tom: So it throws at you so much noise, so many sound effects, so much music, so much visual stimulation that you're basically put into a state of confusion where you have no fucking idea what's going on, right?

Phil: Oh, well, I mean, like with the original REZ, in Japan it came with the vibrator controller.

Phil: It would be hard to outdo that level of sensory overload, I feel.

Tom: Yeah, well, I'm not sure about that.

Tom: Because REZ, the visuals don't seem that extreme level of sensory overload.

Phil: No, but with REZ, I mean, they did have that evolutionary, you know, you start out with basically line drawings and then it evolves up through polygons and it gets too close to a level, but nowhere near the level that can be provided through dyad in terms of visual overload.

Phil: But it's the same kind of concept, right?

Phil: I mean, selling a game with a vibrator is pretty much sending a message that we want to take over your body, right?

Tom: And now here's the thing, okay, this is all done, and I had to actually do research on this review because if you remember, I reviewed a game known as Prune a long time ago, right?

Phil: Yeah, oh, proun, C-R-O-U-N, right?

Tom: Yeah, but I think it's pronounced prune.

Tom: This was the first professional in inverted commas review I did.

Tom: So after doing this, I went along and read random other people's reviews of it, and the vast majority of them were just complete another bullshit, and the main problem was it's an extremely hard game, right?

Tom: And you have to become dedicated to it to really appreciate it.

Tom: It's like Demon's Souls.

Phil: Wait, this game or Prune?

Tom: Prune.

Phil: Prune.

Tom: And so these reviews, all their criticisms basically boiled down to them being shit at the game and not bothering and putting in the effort, right?

Tom: Now, this has always annoyed me.

Tom: Now, the whole time that I...

Tom: When I finished Dyad, I was like, okay, this was incredibly easy, but I didn't always get the highest score available on the level, right?

Tom: And I just could not bring myself to do it because there's no motivation to play through the levels and do better, because once you've done it, if you do it again, because it's basically just doing the same thing again, because there's no personality to most of the levels, right?

Tom: So I just couldn't bring myself to do that.

Tom: So I went along and had to actually do research on the game, looking up interviews and all that sort of thing.

Tom: Now, a fascinating thing on Joystick I found, and Joystick are all over this game.

Tom: They love it, and they've got so much press about it.

Tom: In a preview, one of the guys went and played Diane in some seedy hotel room with Sean McGrath, and who knows what else went on at this meeting.

Tom: Now...

Phil: Well, Sean McGrath, was he a reviewer?

Phil: That name sounds familiar to me.

Tom: I'm not sure.

Tom: I didn't do that much research.

Tom: So basically, after playing the demo, Sean McGrath asked him, now, didn't the sound go along really well with the gameplay?

Tom: Did you notice that?

Tom: To which the re-reply, it did.

Tom: And Sean McGrath said, well, I think you probably experienced synesthesia because it didn't, which is a true statement.

Tom: And here I think it boils down to where a lot of confusion about what synesthesia is comes from, and that is the description and etymology of synesthesia.

Tom: So synesthesia basically means a confusion of the senses, right?

Phil: Right, you're overwhelming the senses.

Tom: But the thing is, no, but it's not confusion in the sense of being overwhelmed.

Tom: It's confusion of the sense of things being mixed together, right?

Tom: Or you might say one thing confused for another, but it's on a more basic intuitive immediate level.

Tom: So it's not like you're confused into experience in something, right?

Tom: But people take this meaning of the word, completely misinterpret it, and somehow think that if you shout at someone incessantly, you kick them in the balls, you spit on them, you vomit on them, and while this is happening, they might think that this vomit has splashed on their dick because you're kicking them in their dick and they're so overwhelmed by the whole experience.

Tom: But in reality, the vomit was only ever on your face, right?

Tom: That's not synesthesia.

Tom: Synesthesia is very simply how someone experiences the world, as anyone would with their senses.

Tom: But the difference being, if someone hears something, for most people that is going to be an entirely auditory experience, right?

Tom: But to someone with synesthesia, this sound might also have a smell or have a shape, this sort of thing.

Tom: It's not in any way a confusion as it is experienced by the person involved.

Tom: It only sounds confusing to people without synesthesia, right?

Tom: Yeah, so attempting to have the player of your game in question experience synesthesia for you confusing them is approaching it from a completely backwards angle.

Phil: Well, I mean, from an artistic perspective, though, I mean, it's entirely acceptable.

Phil: I think it's something that Andy Warhol would have embraced.

Phil: I mean, if you've got a shortcut to confusing the viewer, I mean, that's basically pop art, right?

Phil: You're basically saying, here's something that you see every day, bam.

Tom: Yeah, but there's nothing.

Tom: But what I'm saying is, I'm not saying it's not a valid aesthetic to use.

Tom: I'm saying it just does not achieve in any way what the people that use it are attempting to do.

Phil: And yet you gave this game like a out of

Tom: Yes, I did indeed.

Tom: And well, that's because the sensory overload is actually an incredible experience.

Tom: The best part of the game is the final level.

Tom: And the final level is the ultimate symbol of everything that is good and bad about the game, right?

Tom: So the final level is you're basically going along.

Tom: It starts off in a normal race, and you just think it's a normal race.

Tom: So you're going along hooking together pairs of hooks and trying to go as fast as possible.

Tom: Then this normal track starts to disintegrate and disappear and just become this completely abstract thing, right?

Tom: The thing that it's closest to is, you know, the evolution scene in A Space Odyssey.

Tom: Are you familiar with that?

Phil: Well, keep talking.

Phil: I've watched the movie and I loved it, so...

Tom: Okay, well, the ..

Phil: It's like a long time ago.

Tom: Yeah, Space Odyssey evolution scene is, the guy is basically strapped into his seat, akin to a clockwork orange.

Phil: Well, I was actually about to ask you, actually, curiously enough, if you were to take a game and compare it to clockwork orange, can you come up with something on the top of your head?

Tom: No, I can't.

Phil: No.

Phil: Just for our listeners, and then we'll move on, I'd say The Warriors.

Phil: So, keep going.

Tom: So, it becomes this completely abstract thing where you basically, you still have a sense that you're going forwards, but there's no track, and it ends up disintegrating into just completely, basically, psychedelic patterns and the like, which slightly move if you do stuff on the controller.

Phil: Can you fail at the last level, or is it one of those kinds of things?

Tom: You cannot fail at it, but the...

Tom: No, but, here's the thing that I think goes beyond most games that are like this.

Tom: The reason I really enjoyed it and found it a fascinating experience is, while you cannot fail at it, you cannot actually complete the level without actually interacting with it.

Tom: So if you leave the controller untouched at the beginning of the level, for an infinite amount of time, you're gonna go through an endless loop of the first normal-looking racing visuals, right?

Phil: What I find fascinating about this is that you actually tried it.

Phil: You're like, oh, I can't fail?

Phil: Fine, put the controller down.

Tom: Yeah, well, that's the thing.

Tom: See, I mean, as I said, I actually had to do research this because I could have written a review.

Tom: And basically, my first reaction to this after considering was correct, but I didn't want to go down the prune route of writing a review where clearly I just didn't bother putting the effort.

Tom: I wanted to confirm that my ideas were correct, right?

Tom: So I went the extra length of testing this out.

Tom: And so this basically, even when you're not doing anything, that is to me a funny trick.

Tom: It's basically saying completely fucking with you, right?

Tom: It's saying, well, you don't actually have to do anything skill-wise to complete the level.

Tom: You're also not allowed to not do anything.

Tom: So it's still forcing you to do something.

Tom: It's the game completely in control, right?

Phil: Well, this kind of goes back to our prior conversation about QTEs and bosses as being a compromise between developers and players, right?

Phil: Where the developer is saying, okay, you don't want to actually play my game, but god damn it, I'm not going to turn this into a movie.

Phil: You have to do something to get through this.

Phil: It basically exactly maps back to what we were saying in the last podcast.

Tom: Exactly.

Tom: And the last thing I'm going to say is basically the major problem with the game play is the aesthetics simply do not work as a fast moving racing game because of the extreme sensory overload.

Tom: So when you're moving really quickly, if they were to make it that it required really precise movements, it would be impossible to play because you simply would not be able to tell where the fuck anything was.

Tom: So this means that the level of skill required to move very quickly through the levels is very low.

Tom: So to work out a good line through a track, and to do this, what you've got to do is it basically boils down to linking together two nodes of the same color, which then is going to give you a speed boost or create a speed boost that you've got to move forward through.

Tom: And there's other things.

Tom: There's enemies where you've got to shoot and then avoid their counterattack and then move through the pathway they created.

Tom: Because of the extreme sensory overload, this is all really, really easy to do.

Tom: And they've designed the line through the levels.

Tom: So it's not like in a racing game where in Gran Turismo or Prune, you've got to spend a lot of time not just learning the physics and everything, but learning the track.

Tom: You've got to work out the best line.

Tom: And it might take you times to master a track, right?

Phil: I've always referred to Gran Turismo as a car PG.

Phil: I mean, it is about learning your craft, and the tracks are really, I mean, the battles, right?

Tom: Exactly.

Tom: The tracks here are just meaningless.

Tom: They all feel the same, and you can improvise a line through it and easily two-star almost every level.

Tom: And the vast majority, you can easily three-star every level, just improvising a line through it with no problem.

Phil: See, that was the great thing about Gran Turismo, a wipeout where you had like a Laguna Seca type thing, like where there was a distinction between the tracks and you felt like you could master them.

Tom: Yeah, and once again, to go back to another interview, he said basically one of the main intentions was to strip back a racing game to the bare essentials by removing all the problems with friction and physics, right, so that...

Tom: Now, this works.

Tom: In a way, it can work.

Tom: Prune is basically a racing game with all the bells and whistles completely removed.

Tom: It's just you working out the line of the track.

Tom: And while there is friction at play, because if you're turning, you're then slowing down.

Tom: So you've got to work out the smoothest pathway through a track, right?

Tom: Here, it could have worked if the tracks were well designed, but they're not.

Tom: There's one other way that he tries to make things interesting, and he does succeed here.

Tom: And that is with the trophy levels, which basically take the myriad different gameplay styles that it throws at you in different concepts.

Tom: And it actually uses them to create something unique and an interesting effect.

Tom: Whereas in the normal levels, it takes all these different gameplay concepts to create these personalityless, generic tracks that all feel exactly the same, even if they've got slightly different gameplay mechanics going on.

Tom: So for example, you might have to shoot an enemy, avoid its blast, and then go through its line, right?

Tom: In the trophy levels, it takes this concept and makes it extreme enough where you're doing something unique and you've got to actually learn how to do it well.

Tom: And I think those work really well.

Tom: And if he had made the rest of the game like that, it would have been really excellent.

Tom: And not just an interesting experience due to the...

Tom: basically trolling the player -and the brilliant soundtrack and excellent visions, it would have been an excellent game as well if he had put that much effort into the main tracks.

Phil: So, I mean, does it compare favorably to Prune?

Tom: Not at all.

Phil: Yeah, I wouldn't think so either.

Tom: Prune to me is...

Tom: that stands tall with any racing game full stop.

Tom: That is, as far as mechanics go and track design, that is an absolute masterpiece.

Phil: Which is amazing considering that Juice Van Dungan, the developer of this game, prior to Blob, right?

Phil: Yeah.

Phil: And for Prune, again, if you want to check this game out, it's P-R-O-U-N.

Phil: It's available only on the PC.

Phil: Yeah, you can play for free.

Phil: And it's on the racing.

Phil: It's just a completely different experience than one that you're going to have anywhere else in terms of racing.

Phil: So I do wonder, I mean, is it just an accident of fate that Prune hasn't been released in the PlayStation ?

Phil: Because it seems at this point that the PlayStation seems to be the format for indie games, right?

Tom: Well, you have to remember when this was made because this was just basically made by Juice Van Dongen and he used some other people for the music, basically.

Tom: I would say it was on a much, much smaller scale than even Dyad.

Tom: I mean, Dyad, Sean McGrath got a grant to make it.

Tom: This Prune was made completely off Juice Van Dongen's own back, right?

Tom: It was his own backyard, basement project.

Tom: And the other thing complementing the matter is he works for Ronimo Games.

Tom: So I don't think they would have necessarily wanted to be diluting their marketplace, where they might have wanted to release a game on PSN.

Tom: And they did eventually in the form of Awesome Noughts with Prune.

Tom: And I think back then the level of entry was lower.

Tom: Now you can basically make an indie game.

Tom: It's enough of a mainstream thing where you're going to get coverage everywhere, right?

Tom: Prune was just the very beginning where larger websites are going to consider reviewing something on the level of Prune.

Tom: And the only reason that got any press coverage at any large outlets was simply because it was so excellent and such an amazing concept, right?

Phil: Yeah, well, we even GameSpot didn't even bother to review it.

Phil: I mean, it has a Metacritic of

Tom: And the other thing is I think if it was released on PSN, it may not have actually been reviewed because I can imagine a lot of those...

Phil: Trust me, IGN would have reviewed it.

Tom: Yeah, well, IGN maybe.

Tom: But a lot of the coverage it got at medium level sites, I can imagine that a lot of those people reviewing it would have been people that were following this previously and may not have been interested in wasting their PR resources on looking into it or putting money into it themselves.

Tom: Because it was released for free, that lowered the level of entry even for a lot of reviewers, I would say.

Phil: Which basically makes Juice Van Dungren like the best man on the planet, right?

Tom: Yeah.

Phil: Here's a guy who's working for Ronimo, releasing Awesome Nights, and on his own free time, hey, let me just produce this amazing racing game on the level of burnout for free, and go from there.

Phil: We do have, we should say, and we'll turn live before the show, an interview with Juice Van Dungren that you conducted.

Phil: So, I mean, I'll have to tweet him as well and let him know about it.

Phil: I mean, this guy obviously loves games as much as anyone.

Phil: I mean, come on, that's fucking admirable.

Phil: If you haven't played Prune yet, P-R-O-U-N, find a way to play it because here's a guy that's basically doing this for free.

Phil: Check it out.

Tom: Exactly.

Tom: And I'm just going to end, Dyad, on a different note.

Tom: And it's a question for you, okay?

Tom: So, you're saying that perhaps attending to illicit synesthesia through sensory overload is a valid tactic.

Tom: Now, when you're watching Fox News and Bill O'Reilly is shouting at you, are you experiencing synesthesia?

Phil: No.

Tom: Yep.

Tom: And therefore, this is not a valid way to attempt to get people to experience synesthesia full stop.

Tom: Just because Bill O'Reilly, the background of his set isn't purple with a lava lamp.

Tom: Even if it was purple with a lava lamp, that's not going to make it any more synesthetic.

Phil: It's going to take a lot more than that.

Phil: So I'm going to go on to impressions of the game I've been playing this week, which is Resistance

Phil: Holy shit!

Phil: I did not expect this game to be this good.

Phil: This is an incredible, incredible arcade shooter.

Phil: So as a reference point, GoldenEyeSingularity, Half-Life Homefront, all of those games that let you carry more than two weapons.

Phil: I want to say it's an arcade shooter, but I don't even know what that means anymore.

Phil: It's not like in racing you have arcade racing and simulation racing.

Phil: So you have Burnout vs.

Phil: Grand Trees.

Tom: I think we can go back to one of our rating systems, and you can be a Call of Duty first-person shooter or a non-Call of Duty first-person shooter.

Phil: This is a non-Call of Duty first-person shooter.

Tom: So there you have it.

Phil: Which means obviously this is a franchise set to failure.

Phil: Amazing game.

Phil: I mean, really great game.

Phil: It does have the Half-Life animatronic NPCs that want to tell you a story and things like that, as with Bioshock Infinite apparently.

Phil: The worst thing about this game is it has the absolute most detrimental color palette I've ever seen.

Phil: And this was true of Resistance Ball of Man, the first game on the PlayStation

Phil: It just has this smog-colored sepia haze to it.

Phil: Which is entirely unnecessary.

Phil: It's set in or which was an era of aqua and peach and things like that.

Phil: But the game is just completely brown.

Phil: And I know a lot of people complain about that in these big selling games, but this game is the brownest game since Quake.

Tom: Does it fit the setting?

Phil: No, not at all.

Phil: That's the thing.

Phil: I mean, they could have done an Area where this is set in...

Phil: or a home front, where this is set in the United States of America, suburban settings, et cetera, et cetera.

Phil: It's just depressing to have to play this game.

Phil: But everything other than that is wonderful.

Phil: It's got great customization.

Tom: Depressing because the color is bad or because the color tone is depressing.

Phil: The color tone is depressing.

Tom: So you don't think perhaps that was deliberate and might fit the narrative?

Phil: Okay, fine, great.

Phil: That's great for an artistic statement, but not for a commercial one.

Tom: Well, that's what I'm asking.

Tom: Is the color palette bad or are you complaining about because you think it is a bad color palette or because you think it is commercially unviable?

Phil: I don't want to play the game because of its color palette.

Phil: Even though every other aspect of this game is incredibly amazing.

Tom: Okay, so you think it doesn't fit with the rest of the game then?

Phil: Absolutely not.

Phil: I mean, it does a disservice to the rest of the game.

Phil: I mean, it has amazing customization where you can, you know, change the speed of the camera to your liking.

Phil: So the default camera is kind of too floaty where it's going to cause nausea.

Phil: You can slow it all the way down.

Phil: It has a great story.

Phil: I mean, and a great setting, s America.

Phil: But it's just a depressing game to want to play.

Phil: And it's kind of kept me from playing it because it's like, okay, well, here we go.

Phil: Just because of the color tone set to it.

Phil: It is a little easy, which is something I seem to be saying lately, which might be a message that I need to play on hard rather than normal.

Tom: I think you're just bitter about my comments on Spec Ops.

Phil: It has short chapters.

Phil: It has fluctuating AI.

Phil: I mean, the AI can go from being amazing to walking up to a guy who doesn't see you and shooting him in the back of the head and he doesn't turn around until he's, you know, completely dead.

Tom: Is this part of a stealth sort of system or just out of stupidity?

Phil: What do you mean?

Tom: Like, is there some stealth aspect to the game where they want you to be able to sync up on people behind?

Phil: There is no stealth in this game whatsoever.

Phil: Yeah, what happens is basically like, what I try to do is I'm really good at gaming levels, so I can go into a level and outsmart the level designer and get into places I'm not supposed to be in.

Phil: And so the AI hasn't, quote, woken up yet.

Phil: So if you can get into levels where you're not supposed to be, you can just basically shoot these guys in the head and they don't move, right?

Phil: And AI is really hard, obviously.

Phil: I mean, it must be.

Phil: I mean, because AI is so bad.

Phil: Yeah, because it is so terrible.

Phil: So I'm assuming it's hard.

Phil: Maybe it's the easiest thing in the world.

Phil: Maybe only fuckwits are put in charge of AI.

Phil: But it is such a tough thing, because the AI can be % perfect, but then you find the flaw and then you're like...

Phil: Yeah, then you're like, oh, yeah, shit in this game.

Phil: Because I walked up to this guy and shot him in the head and he didn't do anything.

Phil: Which happens time and time again in Resistance for the PlayStation

Phil: So it's a great game, though.

Phil: It's one of those games where they keep unlocking the weapons.

Phil: And some of them obviously develop ratchet and clank, and they keep unlocking better and better weapons.

Phil: And you have access to all of them.

Phil: It's not like the simulation first-person shooters where you only have access to two weapons.

Phil: You can switch and change between any one of them at any time.

Phil: Graphically, it looks brilliant.

Phil: Unfortunately, it slavishly follows the Half-Life model, which is where, you know, I really can't put it better than that.

Phil: Everyone must know what that means.

Tom: The Half-Life model in what sense?

Tom: The graphics?

Phil: Well, yeah, yeah, the graphics and when you get to a cutscene, the people talk and you can walk away from them.

Tom: Okay, so in the presentation, yep, yep.

Phil: Yeah, in the presentation.

Phil: But, I mean, if you can pick this game up for, you know, bucks, I'd definitely go for it.

Tom: Have you ventured online, may I ask?

Tom: I assume you haven't.

Tom: No.

Tom: Okay, because I was wondering if people were playing that, because I've been watching a fair bit of online multiplayer videos, and it looked like it actually had quite an interesting online multiplayer mode as well, due to the large amount of bullets that people could take before dying and the heaviness of the weapons, and the interesting movement speeds.

Tom: It looked like it had a pretty unique multiplayer mode.

Phil: Well, depending on the weapons you use, I mean, some of these weapons are like one-shot kills, and others are basically sponge-type weapons.

Phil: So it really does depend on the weapon that you use.

Phil: But I think that you would really enjoy this game.

Phil: I think that any gamer would really enjoy this game.

Phil: And it's unfortunate that it was a PlayStation exclusive, because it really deserved a larger audience.

Tom: Have you played the previous two Resistances?

Phil: I played the first one, because it was the only game that you could play on the PlayStation for about months.

Phil: There was really no other games.

Phil: And I had the same approach to that.

Phil: That first game mirrored closely the first Uncharted in terms of its plot and pacing.

Phil: This one is also kind of weird, because it closely mimics Infamous

Phil: In Infamous there's this conceit that you are...

Phil: that there is this horrible thing that's coming from New York, and you're in New Orleans.

Phil: And in this game, it constantly is...

Phil: And in that game, it's like, you are miles from New York, you know?

Phil: And in this game, they do the exact same thing.

Phil: It's like, you know, you are now miles from New York, which is where you're heading towards, right?

Tom: So it's a road trip game as much as a first person shooter.

Phil: Yeah, it's bizarre.

Phil: It's absolutely bizarre.

Phil: So with that, I mean, I have no more impressions, so I think that's about all the Game Under podcasts we have left.

Phil: Please follow me on Twitter.

Phil: You can follow me at Game Under Phil.

Phil: We do solicit questions from our audience before each show, and you can also stream or download this show from gameunder.net.

Phil: We do encourage you to subscribe via RSS or iTunes, but you can also subscribe via Stitcher Radio, and you can do all that from our site at gameunder.net.

Phil: That's probably the easiest way to find us because if you go to those independent sources, you are not going to find us very easily.

Phil: So please go over to gameunder.net.

Tom: And it also gives us imaginary money from our imaginary advertisers as well.

Phil: Yes, and I use that imaginary money on imaginary transvestite prostitutes, which is surprisingly effective actually.

Phil: This week we put up reviews of Torn Curtain, which is actually a film, some sort of non-interactive video game.

Tom: Yeah, I think they're a pretty new concept.

Phil: Yeah, you can read our reviews over at gameunder.net.

Phil: So with that, I am Phil Fogg.

Tom: And I am Tom Towers, and I'm just going to end on a special note.

Tom: We actually got our first comment on the website, which was from some guy.

Tom: Now, can you perhaps decipher his name?

Tom: It appears to be Hebrew or something like that.

Tom: I believe you're fluent in Hebrew.

Phil: I am.

Phil: His name is Ilohim Salchali.

Tom: Yeah, well, he said, correction, Mr.

Tom: Towers, Jack Lantz, not Tim Robbins, Cheerio.

Tom: So thanks for that comment.

Tom: I would just like to point out that it looks like Tim Robbins.

Tom: That's why I called him Tim Robbins.

Tom: And that's it.

Tom: There was never, never any, any implication that it was actually Tim Robbins.

Tom: You just need to read it between the lines a little sometimes.

Tom: That is all.

Phil: Thank you everyone.

Phil: You've listened to Game Under Podcast at gameunder.net.

Phil: Have a great day.