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This show also known as: Despair is a Powerful Ally.
Bioshock Infinite? Not unless it’s WITHIN 21 FEET.
Music Selection: Nah.
This show is about:
“Just Hangin’ Out”
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This show also known as: YOU CAN’T FIRE ME I QUIT.
Urban Square is JUST SO CLOSE to being the ultimate Fast Karate show.
Music Selection: It was actually the 121 FOOT rule. Sorry.
This show is about:
GIVE ME YOUR SECRET CHICKEN
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This show also known as: This Doesn’t Look Suspicious At All
Turns out Nier is pretty cool, but also pretty bad. It’s a really weird game. I wish more of the story existed outside of some weird Japanese art book I found translated on Google docs.
Music Selection: Nier is the best game for songs that sound awesome but are so short that they quickly morph into driving you insane since Persona 3.
This show is about:
Scandalous? Or just the average Tuesday night?
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This show also known as: No, It’s Fine, I Brought My Own Bread.
Golgo 13 is an huge dick. But not for the reasons you might expect!
Music Selection: BAGOOOOOOOOOOOSH.
This show is about:
Edible
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This show also known as: You Know What Bruce, I Don’t Think That’s A Good Idea.
If this show is about anything, it’s about Welcome To The Space Show, but if it’s ACTUALLY about anything, it’s about Grape Nuts.
Music Selection: BAGOOOOOOOOOOOSH.
This show is about:
FLAVORFUL.
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This show also known as: Like Baron Harkonnen?
Music Selection: BAGOOOOOOOOOOOSH.
This show is about:
You suck.
]]>
Then he is pulled back. Forced to try again. And again. And again. He will not stop. He can’t stop, just as I can’t stop, just as I never stopped clicking the ‘next picture’ link in all those pictures of Pripyat. Ruined swimming pools, trees reclaiming the tops of buildings, rusted ferris wheels. I convince myself that somewhere there is a ‘why,’ just as, somewhere, those pictures also have a ‘why.’ The boy, he thrusts his fate upon me, and when he falls onto the spikes he thinks, maybe, “this time, it’s over.” It is never over. There is always somewhere else, some lonely place where men once lived. He climbs that tattered ladder, swings on that rotten rope.
Even in its cruelty, Limbo is kind. Its solutions always on the tip of my tongue. Moments of ‘what do you want me to do?’ are rare, and the frequent instances of failure are mitigated by generous checkpoints. They have to be. I push forward not because of pop-up messages, but because of a need to know, uninterrupted by narration, or unlockable weapons, or achievement points. As I walk, as he dies, I realize our need is not specific. If I could just know one thing, any thing, it might make it easier. I find a hotel. Its neon sign sparks a violent warning. Where did everyone go? Why?
Limbo is a triumph. It’s what I want from Live Arcade. It’s what I want from video games. Against all odds it wedged itself into Xbox Live amidst all the poker games and 1990s-era First Person Shooters. It’s scary and sad where most videogames make you feel strong and brave. I keep pushing forward, even as I’m hoping it’ll stop. Silent Hill 2 was the last time that happened. Instead of twenty minutes, I ran that silent path for four hours. It’s nearly ten years since Silent Hill 2. I imagine it’ll be a just as long before it happens again.
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This show also known as: The Daryl Surat Greater Internet Theorum of Japanese People Being Crazy Because They Can’t Look At Vaginas.
Producing Mad Bull should be classified as a hate crime. Also Desktop Dungeons is amazing.
Music Selection: NOW HE GOTTA KEEP ON ROCKIN’. JUST CAN’T STOP.
This show is about:
The picture down here is just going to be a packed snack cake from now on.
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This show also known as: Fuck you, [I have] Pikachu!
Nier might be awesome. We don’t know, we haven’t played it. It MAY have a super-hot tranny.
Music Selection: Let’s enjoy the silence, together.
This show is about:
The Massive.
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This show also known as: AMIIIIIIIIIIIINGOOOOOOOOOOOO.
I’ll give you one guess what Street Fighter Alpha is about. Here’s a hint: it’s not cotton candy.
Music Selection: BURNT PIZZA? PIZZA GUT?
This show is about:
WHAT HAVE YOU DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONE.
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This show also known as: Tell Me Where You’re Going With This, Mystery Man.
Let’s talk about Law and Order: SVU! WHY? Because we’re Fast Karate for the FUCKING GENTLEMAN and we don’t answer to nobody. Which I guess is actually true, because this podcast has no sponsors, and will never provide even a subsistence living. It has its perks, though, like the ability to speculate about bacon flavored potato chips.
Music Selection:
This show is about:
WHO ARE YOU STRANGE CREATURE.
]]>
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This show also known as:
Plastic Little is just another one of those stupid, garbage shows. It’s got nothin’ on pie, that’s for sure.
Music Selection: WAIT THIS ISN’T WHO LET THE DOGS OUT.
This show is about:
…delicious?
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This show also known as: Energetic woman but whose mind feel the dark-side. She wanna kill ninn ’cause he said “Wow, pretty ass!” In fact, she got tired.
So many things to talk about. Peanut butter forests. Thai food. Lying Middle Eastern restaurants who don’t want to deliver to you. Lost Planet 2. Insect Vampire Drug Addicts. But most importantly, I want you all to buy Mamotte Knight. I did, however, neglect to mention how RACIST one of the chapters in Lost Planet 2 is. And it’s like: why?
Music Selection:
This show is about:
The charming artist.
]]>
This fuckin’ asshole bug monster has been harassing you since you started this chapter and now it’s time to take your revenge. Your group of pirates has stolen and lost (due to bug monster interference) a train, made a stop off in a bandit village to steal another train, and is now in the process of hijacking yet a third train. Why? Because, I don’t know, it passed by you on the tracks and it had a huge gun on it and that’s the kind of giant train gun that a train thief waits his whole life to steal. In essence, this train gun is the train thief equivalent of the Maltese Falcon. The Maltese Falcon didn’t shoot bullets as big as a grown man, but the metaphor is otherwise apt. So you grappling hook your way onto this third train and just as it looks like you’ve secured your rightful place as new owner of the coveted train gun, the worm from Tremors that wrecked your first train pops out of the sand and decides it’s got nothing better to do than wreck this train too. But now you have a GIANT TRAIN GUN. Suddenly, the tables have turned! You are ready to kick some ass! …then the cutscene ends and you’re staring at a diagram for the first time in the entire game. Slowly the realization dawns on you: uh, guys… does anyone know how to fire a train gun?
The train gun is a puzzle, and your AI Teammates aren’t exactly a fantastic sounding board for ideas. “Okay guys: how do we fire this thing? N-no answers? Anybody? Well, I see you’re picking up giant bullets and putting them in the giant bullet chamber. So that’s a start. And now… you’re getting more bullets. Well it looks like if I jam this button it extinguishes fires. Oh, well, you’re not listening. H-hey guys, I think there’s probably something more to this than just picking up the bullets.” The basic operation of the train gun is such: someone has to stick a bullet into the breach, someone energizes the bullet to make it stronger, then someone has to rotate the gun to get it into position, then someone has to hop into the cockpit and fire the charged shell at the giant bug monster. Meanwhile, the bug-worm-thing is attacking you, ramming you, shooting spores at you, trying to swallow you. If it moves to eat you, you’d better be ready to shoot it in the mouth before it does. Someone has to repair your train when it gets damaged, and it’s certainly helpful if one of your team mans an anti-aircraft gun and shoots down the little flying bugs the big guy is spewing out. With only two of us playing we felt constantly overwhelmed. We would barely have time to load the bullets before someone had to go below decks and repair the train. We never even saw the helicopter on the back of the train! Even if we did know about it, there’s no way we would’ve found time to fly it. We barely managed to keep ourselves alive at points! I can see a solo player going insane on this level. With two people it was tense enough to be scary, but never so frustrating that it stopped being fun. By yourself? That could be an issue. The AI is programmed to load bullets, yes, but they can’t figure out how to repair the train, man a turret, or even super-charge loaded shells. Watching the lumbering computer characters stare around like useless dopes must be as frustrating as watching a team of bots kill each other endlessly and without strategy in an FPS. Lost Planet 2 by yourself is playing a solo game of Capture the Flag. Yes, there are computer characters on the map. You may jump into the back of the jeep, feeling like you pulled off one of the most exciting flag grabs in recorded history, but victory is a little shallow when the opponents weren’t paying attention to you, and your team mates are content with banging the jeep into the wall over and over again instead of driving you back to base.
Competitive First Person Shooters of a certain era could run simulated matches with AI stand-ins instead of other players. No reasonable person would’ve mistaken Unreal Tournament with bots for Unreal Tournament against real people. The functionality exists, but it’s a shadow of the actual game. Same too with Left 4 Dead. There is a ‘single-player’, where the game is unchanged, but all your friends are replaced with computer controlled characters who do stupid things like heal you when you’re only down to 40% health, or ignore you when you’re getting smoked, or run off a balcony trying to save your life. Reasonable people don’t expect magic from these stand-alone modes, but these same people rate Lost Planet 2 by a different standard. Why? Because if it a game has cutscenes — my word if the game has a STORY — then it MUST be a single-player game, and that necessitates the ability to play by yourself! There exists AI Teammates in Lost Planet 2 for the same reason there exists AI Teammates in Left 4 Dead: because crazy people are going to complain if they can’t play the game by themselves. The game designers would almost certainly prefer that you didn’t. They cannot make an AI Teammate act like an actual human being. And since they can’t, then everyone’s gonna freak out about how garbage the AI is. But they keep putting garbage AI in games, so I guess people would freak out more about not having it than they’d freak out about having it, but it being terrible.
Anyone playing the train mission by itself would complain about its difficulty, its complexity, the stupidity of your AI helpers, maybe rightfully so. It was a mad house. The train gun can be turned relatively quickly by levers outside of the cockpit, but once you’re in the gunner’s seat you’re subject to its ponderous movement speed. That means if your partner is occupied, you might not be able to turn fast enough to get the perfect shot. There were plenty of times where I fired off a half-aimed bullet to stun the worm and prevent an attack. But did I hit the weak spot and stop him, or is he going to come barreling through the gun smoke and kill us? In that split second, blinded by the smoke, and maybe an attack’s coming or maybe it isn’t, I would cringe and hold my breath. And not in the stupid writing-about-it-hyperbole way. I actually felt these things. The smoke clears, the attack doesn’t come. You rejoice when see the crater you bored into the worm’s hide, you holler and scream “Fuck you!” and you barely have time to savor your victory because you’re already barking at each other to get moving on the next salvo. Yeah, I could see how that could be too many things to do for one person. Nobody to help rotate the gun, nobody to keep the train repaired. But for two? This level is one of the best levels in videogames.
Is it fair to penalize a co-op game for its lackluster single-player experience? If its stated intent is for you to get three other people together and kill a giant salamander (FROM THE INSIDE OUT) then it’s hardly the game’s fault if you decide to go it alone, much like it’s not Left 4 Dead or Unreal Tournament’s fault if you decide to play the game with bots. So I sit here, and think about it. I think about nearly getting shaken off the train, begging Graz to wait before she loaded a bullet because I needed time to charge it, but we CAN’T wait because every second we do he’s gonna ram us again, and then we are going to die. The second it’s charged I am screaming at her to fire. We are out of bullets, the worm is out of life, and he’s coming up from behind to swallow us whole. The AI has been negligent in their duties, or maybe they’re already dead. I don’t know, I don’t have time to look. I jump over the railing to the bottom level, pray that I land on solid ground, and grab the first shell I can find. I don’t know if I’m going to make it in time. We are freaking out. Okay it’s in! I loaded it! FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE.
A week later I still go “Wow, that was amazing.” When we rode a giant dinosaur-thing at the end of Gears of War 2 it barely felt like we were in the same room together, and we forgot about it as soon as the credits rolled. Gears of War had a train mission too, didn’t it? It’s hard to remember. I certainly didn’t fire a giant gun during it. Things like giant guns and salamander monsters make it easy to forgive all the stupid things Lost Planet 2 does. I can deal with freezing in place when I switch weapons, or the too-long knockdown animations, or the cumbersome controls, or the generic mission objectives. I piloted a robot that turned into a submarine. Graziella sliced through an entire robot armada with a laser sword while I supported her in a helicopter. We stormed a beachhead like D-Day and on the other side was a mechanized bug monster with laser turrets. And we fired that train gun. And none of it was scripted, at least not in the way we mean when we use that nasty, awful word. There was no ‘helicopter mission.’ There was a helicopter IN the mission. Maybe you wanted to fly that shit, maybe you didn’t feel like it. And maybe it that all would’ve sucked doing it by ourselves, but that’s not Lost Planet 2. Lost Planet 2 is a co-op game. So is it fair to judge a co-op game by its single player? If you’re playing it by yourself, you’re not playing the game they made.
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This show also known as: Nobody gets more ass than a stolen submarine captain.
With our 401st show we enter a new era of Fast Karate, and what better to herald our maintaining the status quo than a little film I like to call Silent Service?
Music Selection:
This show is about:
Keep buying shirts! Need many more pre-orders.
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This show also known as: THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE.
Our 400th (399th) show heralds the end of 24. Goodbye 24, you ended pretty much how we all expected: shittily. Also BUY A SHIRT.
Music Selection: GATHERING OF ANGELS. ‘PPEARED ABOVE MY HEAD. I was singing this song the whole Lost finale then they made some dumb-ass ‘alternate endings’ and this appeared and now I don’t know what to think. I know one thing I DO think which is that this would be the soundtrack to Jack Bauer’s death scene.
This show is about:
THE Arsenal
No wait, THIS is the Arsenal
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This show also known as: This Biojetpack Sucks!
Splinter Cell Co-Op, Halo Reach Beta, Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey, BTO BABY.
Music Selection: POOPY DIAPER.
This show is about:
The Arsenal
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This show also known as: You Got Me This Time Bauer, I’m Goin’ Back In.
Hey Russian President: FUCK YOU. Also, Starcraft.
Music Selection: CAN YOU SEE IT MAN.
This show is about:
BUST SOME CAPS??
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This show also known as: Despair is a Powerful Ally.
Bioshock Infinite? Not unless it’s WITHIN 21 FEET.
Music Selection: Nah.
This show is about:
“Just Hangin’ Out”
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This show also known as: YOU CAN’T FIRE ME I QUIT.
Urban Square is JUST SO CLOSE to being the ultimate Fast Karate show.
Music Selection: It was actually the 121 FOOT rule. Sorry.
This show is about:
GIVE ME YOUR SECRET CHICKEN
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This show also known as: This Doesn’t Look Suspicious At All
Turns out Nier is pretty cool, but also pretty bad. It’s a really weird game. I wish more of the story existed outside of some weird Japanese art book I found translated on Google docs.
Music Selection: Nier is the best game for songs that sound awesome but are so short that they quickly morph into driving you insane since Persona 3.
This show is about:
Scandalous? Or just the average Tuesday night?
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This show also known as: No, It’s Fine, I Brought My Own Bread.
Golgo 13 is an huge dick. But not for the reasons you might expect!
Music Selection: BAGOOOOOOOOOOOSH.
This show is about:
Edible
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This show also known as: You Know What Bruce, I Don’t Think That’s A Good Idea.
If this show is about anything, it’s about Welcome To The Space Show, but if it’s ACTUALLY about anything, it’s about Grape Nuts.
Music Selection: BAGOOOOOOOOOOOSH.
This show is about:
FLAVORFUL.
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This show also known as: Like Baron Harkonnen?
Music Selection: BAGOOOOOOOOOOOSH.
This show is about:
You suck.
Then he is pulled back. Forced to try again. And again. And again. He will not stop. He can’t stop, just as I can’t stop, just as I never stopped clicking the ‘next picture’ link in all those pictures of Pripyat. Ruined swimming pools, trees reclaiming the tops of buildings, rusted ferris wheels. I convince myself that somewhere there is a ‘why,’ just as, somewhere, those pictures also have a ‘why.’ The boy, he thrusts his fate upon me, and when he falls onto the spikes he thinks, maybe, “this time, it’s over.” It is never over. There is always somewhere else, some lonely place where men once lived. He climbs that tattered ladder, swings on that rotten rope.
Even in its cruelty, Limbo is kind. Its solutions always on the tip of my tongue. Moments of ‘what do you want me to do?’ are rare, and the frequent instances of failure are mitigated by generous checkpoints. They have to be. I push forward not because of pop-up messages, but because of a need to know, uninterrupted by narration, or unlockable weapons, or achievement points. As I walk, as he dies, I realize our need is not specific. If I could just know one thing, any thing, it might make it easier. I find a hotel. Its neon sign sparks a violent warning. Where did everyone go? Why?
Limbo is a triumph. It’s what I want from Live Arcade. It’s what I want from video games. Against all odds it wedged itself into Xbox Live amidst all the poker games and 1990s-era First Person Shooters. It’s scary and sad where most videogames make you feel strong and brave. I keep pushing forward, even as I’m hoping it’ll stop. Silent Hill 2 was the last time that happened. Instead of twenty minutes, I ran that silent path for four hours. It’s nearly ten years since Silent Hill 2. I imagine it’ll be a just as long before it happens again.
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This show also known as: The Daryl Surat Greater Internet Theorum of Japanese People Being Crazy Because They Can’t Look At Vaginas.
Producing Mad Bull should be classified as a hate crime. Also Desktop Dungeons is amazing.
Music Selection: NOW HE GOTTA KEEP ON ROCKIN’. JUST CAN’T STOP.
This show is about:
The picture down here is just going to be a packed snack cake from now on.
This is a test. Also, if you can’t get to the forums, whose new address is http://www.daveandjoel.com/forum, you may need to refresh your browser/delete cookies.
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This show also known as: Fuck you, [I have] Pikachu!
Nier might be awesome. We don’t know, we haven’t played it. It MAY have a super-hot tranny.
Music Selection: Let’s enjoy the silence, together.
This show is about:
The Massive.
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This show also known as: AMIIIIIIIIIIIINGOOOOOOOOOOOO.
I’ll give you one guess what Street Fighter Alpha is about. Here’s a hint: it’s not cotton candy.
Music Selection: BURNT PIZZA? PIZZA GUT?
This show is about:
WHAT HAVE YOU DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONE.
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This show also known as: Tell Me Where You’re Going With This, Mystery Man.
Let’s talk about Law and Order: SVU! WHY? Because we’re Fast Karate for the FUCKING GENTLEMAN and we don’t answer to nobody. Which I guess is actually true, because this podcast has no sponsors, and will never provide even a subsistence living. It has its perks, though, like the ability to speculate about bacon flavored potato chips.
Music Selection:
This show is about:
WHO ARE YOU STRANGE CREATURE.
Putting together an article about Deus Ex. Why don’t you all buy it on Steam for $2.50 today and we can have a big old discussion about it. Be forewarned: skipping the opening cutscene, in the style of Dark City, is maybe advisable. Unless you’re like me and forget everything you watch four seconds afterwards anyway.
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This show also known as:
Plastic Little is just another one of those stupid, garbage shows. It’s got nothin’ on pie, that’s for sure.
Music Selection: WAIT THIS ISN’T WHO LET THE DOGS OUT.
This show is about:
…delicious?
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This show also known as: Energetic woman but whose mind feel the dark-side. She wanna kill ninn ’cause he said “Wow, pretty ass!” In fact, she got tired.
So many things to talk about. Peanut butter forests. Thai food. Lying Middle Eastern restaurants who don’t want to deliver to you. Lost Planet 2. Insect Vampire Drug Addicts. But most importantly, I want you all to buy Mamotte Knight. I did, however, neglect to mention how RACIST one of the chapters in Lost Planet 2 is. And it’s like: why?
Music Selection:
This show is about:
The charming artist.
(Spoilers: in this game you shoot very large guns at very large bugs)
This fuckin’ asshole bug monster has been harassing you since you started this chapter and now it’s time to take your revenge. Your group of pirates has stolen and lost (due to bug monster interference) a train, made a stop off in a bandit village to steal another train, and is now in the process of hijacking yet a third train. Why? Because, I don’t know, it passed by you on the tracks and it had a huge gun on it and that’s the kind of giant train gun that a train thief waits his whole life to steal. In essence, this train gun is the train thief equivalent of the Maltese Falcon. The Maltese Falcon didn’t shoot bullets as big as a grown man, but the metaphor is otherwise apt. So you grappling hook your way onto this third train and just as it looks like you’ve secured your rightful place as new owner of the coveted train gun, the worm from Tremors that wrecked your first train pops out of the sand and decides it’s got nothing better to do than wreck this train too. But now you have a GIANT TRAIN GUN. Suddenly, the tables have turned! You are ready to kick some ass! …then the cutscene ends and you’re staring at a diagram for the first time in the entire game. Slowly the realization dawns on you: uh, guys… does anyone know how to fire a train gun?
The train gun is a puzzle, and your AI Teammates aren’t exactly a fantastic sounding board for ideas. “Okay guys: how do we fire this thing? N-no answers? Anybody? Well, I see you’re picking up giant bullets and putting them in the giant bullet chamber. So that’s a start. And now… you’re getting more bullets. Well it looks like if I jam this button it extinguishes fires. Oh, well, you’re not listening. H-hey guys, I think there’s probably something more to this than just picking up the bullets.” The basic operation of the train gun is such: someone has to stick a bullet into the breach, someone energizes the bullet to make it stronger, then someone has to rotate the gun to get it into position, then someone has to hop into the cockpit and fire the charged shell at the giant bug monster. Meanwhile, the bug-worm-thing is attacking you, ramming you, shooting spores at you, trying to swallow you. If it moves to eat you, you’d better be ready to shoot it in the mouth before it does. Someone has to repair your train when it gets damaged, and it’s certainly helpful if one of your team mans an anti-aircraft gun and shoots down the little flying bugs the big guy is spewing out. With only two of us playing we felt constantly overwhelmed. We would barely have time to load the bullets before someone had to go below decks and repair the train. We never even saw the helicopter on the back of the train! Even if we did know about it, there’s no way we would’ve found time to fly it. We barely managed to keep ourselves alive at points! I can see a solo player going insane on this level. With two people it was tense enough to be scary, but never so frustrating that it stopped being fun. By yourself? That could be an issue. The AI is programmed to load bullets, yes, but they can’t figure out how to repair the train, man a turret, or even super-charge loaded shells. Watching the lumbering computer characters stare around like useless dopes must be as frustrating as watching a team of bots kill each other endlessly and without strategy in an FPS. Lost Planet 2 by yourself is playing a solo game of Capture the Flag. Yes, there are computer characters on the map. You may jump into the back of the jeep, feeling like you pulled off one of the most exciting flag grabs in recorded history, but victory is a little shallow when the opponents weren’t paying attention to you, and your team mates are content with banging the jeep into the wall over and over again instead of driving you back to base.
Competitive First Person Shooters of a certain era could run simulated matches with AI stand-ins instead of other players. No reasonable person would’ve mistaken Unreal Tournament with bots for Unreal Tournament against real people. The functionality exists, but it’s a shadow of the actual game. Same too with Left 4 Dead. There is a ‘single-player’, where the game is unchanged, but all your friends are replaced with computer controlled characters who do stupid things like heal you when you’re only down to 40% health, or ignore you when you’re getting smoked, or run off a balcony trying to save your life. Reasonable people don’t expect magic from these stand-alone modes, but these same people rate Lost Planet 2 by a different standard. Why? Because if it a game has cutscenes — my word if the game has a STORY — then it MUST be a single-player game, and that necessitates the ability to play by yourself! There exists AI Teammates in Lost Planet 2 for the same reason there exists AI Teammates in Left 4 Dead: because crazy people are going to complain if they can’t play the game by themselves. The game designers would almost certainly prefer that you didn’t. They cannot make an AI Teammate act like an actual human being. And since they can’t, then everyone’s gonna freak out about how garbage the AI is. But they keep putting garbage AI in games, so I guess people would freak out more about not having it than they’d freak out about having it, but it being terrible.
Anyone playing the train mission by itself would complain about its difficulty, its complexity, the stupidity of your AI helpers, maybe rightfully so. It was a mad house. The train gun can be turned relatively quickly by levers outside of the cockpit, but once you’re in the gunner’s seat you’re subject to its ponderous movement speed. That means if your partner is occupied, you might not be able to turn fast enough to get the perfect shot. There were plenty of times where I fired off a half-aimed bullet to stun the worm and prevent an attack. But did I hit the weak spot and stop him, or is he going to come barreling through the gun smoke and kill us? In that split second, blinded by the smoke, and maybe an attack’s coming or maybe it isn’t, I would cringe and hold my breath. And not in the stupid writing-about-it-hyperbole way. I actually felt these things. The smoke clears, the attack doesn’t come. You rejoice when see the crater you bored into the worm’s hide, you holler and scream “Fuck you!” and you barely have time to savor your victory because you’re already barking at each other to get moving on the next salvo. Yeah, I could see how that could be too many things to do for one person. Nobody to help rotate the gun, nobody to keep the train repaired. But for two? This level is one of the best levels in videogames.
Is it fair to penalize a co-op game for its lackluster single-player experience? If its stated intent is for you to get three other people together and kill a giant salamander (FROM THE INSIDE OUT) then it’s hardly the game’s fault if you decide to go it alone, much like it’s not Left 4 Dead or Unreal Tournament’s fault if you decide to play the game with bots. So I sit here, and think about it. I think about nearly getting shaken off the train, begging Graz to wait before she loaded a bullet because I needed time to charge it, but we CAN’T wait because every second we do he’s gonna ram us again, and then we are going to die. The second it’s charged I am screaming at her to fire. We are out of bullets, the worm is out of life, and he’s coming up from behind to swallow us whole. The AI has been negligent in their duties, or maybe they’re already dead. I don’t know, I don’t have time to look. I jump over the railing to the bottom level, pray that I land on solid ground, and grab the first shell I can find. I don’t know if I’m going to make it in time. We are freaking out. Okay it’s in! I loaded it! FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE.
A week later I still go “Wow, that was amazing.” When we rode a giant dinosaur-thing at the end of Gears of War 2 it barely felt like we were in the same room together, and we forgot about it as soon as the credits rolled. Gears of War had a train mission too, didn’t it? It’s hard to remember. I certainly didn’t fire a giant gun during it. Things like giant guns and salamander monsters make it easy to forgive all the stupid things Lost Planet 2 does. I can deal with freezing in place when I switch weapons, or the too-long knockdown animations, or the cumbersome controls, or the generic mission objectives. I piloted a robot that turned into a submarine. Graziella sliced through an entire robot armada with a laser sword while I supported her in a helicopter. We stormed a beachhead like D-Day and on the other side was a mechanized bug monster with laser turrets. And we fired that train gun. And none of it was scripted, at least not in the way we mean when we use that nasty, awful word. There was no ‘helicopter mission.’ There was a helicopter IN the mission. Maybe you wanted to fly that shit, maybe you didn’t feel like it. And maybe it that all would’ve sucked doing it by ourselves, but that’s not Lost Planet 2. Lost Planet 2 is a co-op game. So is it fair to judge a co-op game by its single player? If you’re playing it by yourself, you’re not playing the game they made.
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This show also known as: Nobody gets more ass than a stolen submarine captain.
With our 401st show we enter a new era of Fast Karate, and what better to herald our maintaining the status quo than a little film I like to call Silent Service?
Music Selection:
This show is about:
Keep buying shirts! Need many more pre-orders.
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This show also known as: THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE.
Our 400th (399th) show heralds the end of 24. Goodbye 24, you ended pretty much how we all expected: shittily. Also BUY A SHIRT.
Music Selection: GATHERING OF ANGELS. ‘PPEARED ABOVE MY HEAD. I was singing this song the whole Lost finale then they made some dumb-ass ‘alternate endings’ and this appeared and now I don’t know what to think. I know one thing I DO think which is that this would be the soundtrack to Jack Bauer’s death scene.
This show is about:
THE Arsenal
No wait, THIS is the Arsenal
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This show also known as: This Biojetpack Sucks!
Splinter Cell Co-Op, Halo Reach Beta, Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey, BTO BABY.
Music Selection: POOPY DIAPER.
This show is about:
The Arsenal
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This show also known as: You Got Me This Time Bauer, I’m Goin’ Back In.
Hey Russian President: FUCK YOU. Also, Starcraft.
Music Selection: CAN YOU SEE IT MAN.
This show is about:
BUST SOME CAPS??