GWJ Conference Call Episode 99

Mercenaries 2, Smacking Around QT3, Left 4 Dead, Gears of War 2, Rock Band 2, Hothead Games, Dragon Age Construction, Sins of a Solar Expansions, PAX Coverage Galore, Your Emails and more!

This week Shawn, Elysium and Julian are left holding down the fort while Rob and Cory yuk it up at PAX! We have a ton of coverage from the show including interviews on Rock Band 2, Hothead Games, Sin of a Solar Empire and Luna's angelic singing voice. Make sure you read the show notes to see more pictures from PAX, including the GWJ Slap & Tickle!

To contact us, email [email protected]! Send us your thoughts on the show, pressing issues you want to talk about or whatever else is on your mind. You can even send a 30 second audio question or comment (MP3 format please) if you're so inclined.

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Show credits

Music credits: 

Intro/Outro Music - Ian Dorsch, Willowtree Audioworks

"PAX 2008 Omegathon Final" - 0:26:34
"PAX 2008 RockBand 2 Tourney" - 1:40:34

Comments

I sort of want to listen towards the end but I probably shouldn't. Love the pictures!

lunabean wrote:

I sort of want to listen towards the end but I probably shouldn't. Love the pictures! :D

Yes you do! You guys rocked!

I really want to thank Doogiemac, and his friend for helping me out with a place to sleep on Thursday, and Elliotx who offered up his spare bed in his room for the rest of the weekend. I couldn't have gone without their help with accommodations. I had a lot of fun at PAX this year even though it was crazy at times.

I would again like to thank everyone who showed up at the Slap and tickle. It was a great turn out. I wish I could have stayed longer and hung out with you folks more during the weekend.

I told Certis not to post that Rockband shot before I got a chance to fix those artifacts. Oh well. At least it looks good on the front page.

Sorry, I thought you were just some roadie they pulled off the street. You were clearly not rocking as hard as you could, I figured they were the headliners

Wait, so now Crouton and I are just Cory and Luna's "crew," huh? W. T. F.

...
Sadly, what you say is 100% true.

(They were playing on expert, by the way, whereas Cory's brother and I were only playing hard. I must say, though, that Luna didn't do her best -- she only scored 100%. Crouton, however, was the most awesome stage hand you will ever see.)

Um...where is the donation box? The podcast lies! Lies!

Just an interesting technical thing about the podcast. Songbird gives minor trouble due to the metadata in the song file so it needs a slight workaround to play.

I thought I'd give a heads up.

Too Human Too Furious!

The caption on the pic with Felicia Day is hilarious.

It reminded me of this blurb from the most recent Penny Arcade post:

I also saw Felicia Day at the show, who gave me a brush and told me to groom her. This is a thing that really happened, and it was bizarre, but not so bizarre that I wouldn't do it. It was like brushing a unicorn.

So... could we get a little 'who's who' on these photos?

I know someone took notes on who was sitting where at the S&T, so maybe someone will post up a pic on Flickr with everyone highlighted / tagged.

Thin_J wrote:

The caption on the pic with Felicia Day is hilarious.

It reminded me of this blurb from the most recent Penny Arcade post:

I also saw Felicia Day at the show, who gave me a brush and told me to groom her. This is a thing that really happened, and it was bizarre, but not so bizarre that I wouldn't do it. It was like brushing a unicorn.

In case people haven't seen it:
IMAGE(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3126/2815622913_52cdb9c8cd.jpg?v=0)

Their respective faces are hilarious.

By the by, here's a slightly better shot of the Fruit F*cker cosplayer that I managed to take:

IMAGE(http://www.eknoop.net/images/fruitflive.jpg)

Coolest thing about that costume, the windup key actually rotates on it's own.

No WAR impressions?

Gaald needs a new MMO to level a character to max faster than spit, leaving everyone in the dust.

Demiurge wrote:

If you are into videogames, this is where you need to be.

Absolutely - times five. Thanks to all of you who made it a more personal experience than at any previous year. Next year, we'll improve our method of contact during the chaos of the con.

By the way, one of the coolest things about the BYOC area is that it opens a few hours before the actual convention on Fridays. What this means is that you can play LAN-games while everyone else is standing in line and still be among the first people waiting for the Expo hall to open.

Rabbit is totally wrong about Castle Crashers. The art style is not a 'flash game' art style, it's a cartoonish, 2D style. But there are a lot of details and depth to the art if you look closely. Flash games can't use detailed art that looks good on an HD screen, just due to size and bandwidth limitations.

Final Countdown: Yeah, all podcasts should use that music.

Cory "Demiurge" Banks: Get over the fact that you have three names, man. Seriously, get over it.
Or else use my new name for you, CDB. But now I know you don't read comments I feel free to say anything I like about you in the comments. PS. Literary Gamer is hot.

Left4Dead release date:

wikipedia wrote:

The expected release date for Left 4 Dead is November 18, 2008 in the U.S. and November 21, 2008 in Europe to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the release of Half-Life.

ps. Why does PAX have a rule against cheating? Can anyone answer this question for me? Isn't cheating really part of gaming for all of us? Is this really just a rule against wallhacks, aimbots, and other FPS things or what? Philosophically I'm against this rule.

pps. No thank YOU docbadwrench. Seriously, if I come next year I'm going BYOC with my crummy laptop, just so I have an excuse to hang with the awesome GWJ BYOC'ers.

KingMob wrote:

Cory "Demiurge" Banks: Get over the fact that you have three names, man. Seriously, get over it.

Dude. Seriously.

KingMob wrote:

Rabbit is totally wrong about Castle Crashers. The art style is not a 'flash game' art style, it's a cartoonish, 2D style. But there are a lot of details and depth to the art if you look closely. Flash games can't use detailed art that looks good on an HD screen, just due to size and bandwidth limitations.

Hey, I like the game, I just don't think the art design is all that and a bag of chips. As for resolution - dude you playing any of the games we post on mondays? Some of those have some insane art design going on, with pretty advanced stuff under the hood.

You're right though, that I could have gotten much more specific about the style - my point wasn't to dis the game anyway, it was to make the comparison between the cartoonish style of Grimm (bad) which requires DX9 for some reason, and the cartoonish style of CC (good) which, I'll bet you nearly anything, could easily be pushed to a very low end PC, likely through flash.

KingMob wrote:

Cory "Demiurge" Banks: Get over the fact that you have three names, man. Seriously, get over it.
Or else use my new name for you, CDB. But now I know you don't read comments I feel free to say anything I like about you in the comments.

Boy, you picked a bad day to test the waters, Hellgate-Fan.

wordsmythe wrote:

Dude. Seriously. :)

Quiet, you!

And while I'm here, I want to thank everyone we met up with this weekend, too. PAX is a lot more fun when you've got homies with you, and GWJ homies are the best.

KingMob wrote:

ps. Why does PAX have a rule against cheating? Can anyone answer this question for me? Isn't cheating really part of gaming for all of us? Is this really just a rule against wallhacks, aimbots, and other FPS things or what? Philosophically I'm against this rule.

I don't think this is meant to include spoilers or cheat codes that you use when you're playing alone. Rather, this is mostly about cheating while playing with other people, because it's unsportsmanlike and disrespectful. The broader implication is that you shouldn't take unfair advantage of people in any context. That is, games should be about having fun, not about winning.

- Alan

Glad to see the M's properly represented in pic 5.

So... what's planned for the 100th episode? And how else can I get a rise out of Cory Demiurge Muthatruckin Banks?

Awesome pictures, guys. I totally regret not making the meet n' greet.

Man, this podcast has made me want to go to Pax desperately.

MrDeVil909 wrote:

Man, this podcast has made me want to go to Pax desperately. :(

Doooo iiit. PAX 2009. Join us! It's only a continent or two away!

bnpederson wrote:
MrDeVil909 wrote:

Man, this podcast has made me want to go to Pax desperately. :(

Doooo iiit. PAX 2009. Join us! It's only a continent or two away!

I'll start swimming, are there sharks in the Atlantic?

I have to agree with Rabbit about Grimm. For some reason I've been playing every episode as it comes out and I keep looking for the game there but I haven't found it yet.

The entire game is how he described it. You run around and, as you do, you make the world dirty. As you make more of the world dirty your "filth meter" (or whatever they call it) goes up and you can turn larger things dirty. (I find the gameplay oddly reminicent of Katamani Damacy actually, except that you are making things dirty instead of picking them up.) Once your meter gets high enough you "butt stomp" (their term) the goal for the level and advance to the next.

That's it. That's the entire gameplay. Yeah, there are a few places where you have to do a jump, there are "cleaners" that will run around trying to clean things you have made dirty (until you get your filth meter high enough to turn them dirty themselves), there are some hidden "secret" tokens (that really don't do anything) and the occasional "powerup" that does nothing but let you run faster. If you've played any one episode you've essentially seen everything.

And for all of that the game seems to have ridiculously high system requirements. I have a 2.4Ghz Quad-Core CPU, 3Gb of memory and a 1 Gb nVidia 8600 video card, but the game warns me every time I play that I don't meet the recommended specifications. I don't know why; I've seen papercraft figures with more polygons than the characters in this game. There is a very thin line between "stylized" and "bad" and this game is on the wrong side of it.

On other topics, it looks and sounds like all of you had fun at PAX. PAX is one of those things I'd like to go to, but given that I'm probably at least twice the age of most people there I'm not sure how well I would fit in. Still looks like fun though.

I'm sort of glad Rob wasn't in the games you can play right now section this time, it saved us from more whining about Metal Gear Solid 4.

But great coverage of PAX from Rob and Cory. I could definitely hear some Strong Bad language from Rob, using the phrase 'crazy go nuts' multiple times. Good work guys.