PixlBit

This is looking fun JD, I bet you will be quite happy that you pre-ordered it. In the demo you played did you get the chance to get the gist of the type of pace they are going for? There's obviously melee and ranged combat akin to Left 4 Dead or Dead Island, but how do you think things like resources, speed, and difficulty are handled in this game compared to those games? I've been interested in this game because of the atmosphere and the way gameplay looks, but I'm hoping it has a slower pace, less ammo, and at least a little more emphasis on survival than on being a shooting gallery like Left 4 Dead. If this game is basically Nintendo's version of Left 4 Dead it'll still be decent, but I'm hoping it's different.

Nice to see John come by again and join the conversation, it was a lot of fun to listen to. I just can't believe that in all the talk of horrible gaming movies nobody ever brought up Alone in the Dark. I hate Christian Slater, I hate Tara Reid, they are awful actors and annoying human beings, and they both team up in that movie in lead roles to make one of the worst movies possible. The only awesome thing about the Alone in the Dark movie is the soundtrack because it has Nightwish, Cradle of Filth, Dimmy Borgir, Lacuna Coil and other great heavy music on it.

I like the Silent Hill movie a lot. Radha Mitchell is one of the women on my freebie 5 we did not too far back, I love her in that movie. I also really love the visuals and the music in the Silent Hill movie. The first Resident Evil movie was too tame for me. I like the more raw effects, gore, and grittiness in zombie movies like Dawn of the Dead and 28 Days Later. RE1 was just too sleek and clean for me, but that's how I think those movies all are. The RE movies are more flashy and sexy and the small bits of gore they show don't have the impact they should have. The gory scenes are more focused on choreography, 3-D, slow-mo, or flashy super human nonsense and less on the fact that you're killing something or surviving. You can show gore sparingly, but when you do show it you have to knock it out of the park, otherwise what's the point of a zombie movie? It's suppose to be morbid, make you contemplate survival and see cannibalism, death, murder, disease etc. If you're not making something raw and shocking that makes you wonder what you would do in the character's situation, a movie that makes you want to survive and makes you glad you're alive, you're not doing a good zombie movie.

I like the all the anime I've seen that's based on video games like Dead Space, Halo Legends, Resident Evil Dengeneration, and some others, but that's another topic.

That's what I was wondering. Randy Pitchford seems like a really nice guy, I like him and I'm biased so I don't want to imagine him as being too sexist, but I'm sure there might be some people in the company that have some deep-seated issues with women. They snatched up the Duke Nukem frachise after all. You could probably find that in many development studios though. A little bit of this, a little bit of that, you know.

You could find this for relatively cheap nowadays, so I guess the biggest thing the game would cost you is time. I think my first playthrough was about 60 hours so it can be a medium length RPG if you're a first time player and you're cautiously wandering around like I was. I did spend a bit of time farming for experience and killing monsters in areas so you could easily take 5 hours or more off of that time. If you do eventually play the game you should tell me how it goes!

I just recently finished Borderlands and would love to play Borderlands 2 because I like the gunplay and leveling in the design of these games. These games offer a pretty relaxed atmosphere and sprawling areas where I can focus on wandering around, shooting people in the face, and finding junk so that I can analyze the numbers associated with it. I got through Borderlands 1 purely on gameplay, the narrative was so bad I stopped paying attention. The first game had the dumbest and most uninspired ending you could pull out of a hat. When the game ended with you plugging bullets into a giant, secret vault dwelling, immobile alien vagina I actually asked myself, "What the fuck was this game supposed to be about again?". The way you interact with NPCs is as boring and archaic as you can design, but the solid gunplay, exploring, and upgrading make these games well worth my time. It's like playing RPGs back in the day but in the form of a modern FPS in the sense that I would sit down with an old dungeon crawler and the story and characters would be dumb as shit but I couldn't stop playing because I loved all the exploration, loot, and upgrading.

Maybe for me Borderlands games are like a guilty pleasure, just like playing mediocre dungeon crawlers are. These games are dumb as shit and have some bland old RPG tropes, but it's so much fun that I love it.

Lady and gentlemens, well done. I agree with what Patrick said near the end, it was refreshing to see how positive the focus was throughout. Patrick was also correct in his assessment that I would appreciate the great shoutout to Alyx Vance. Lisa was fantastic and it would be awesome to hear her on more topics and episodes in the future.

It was great hearing you guys answer my question on how sex is handled in Fable games. The way sex is handled in the games doesn't lend itself to an intimate and emotional experience but I still think it's fun to play with. After all they are "systems" programmed into the game and in the end it's all math. Even though it's not very emotional and it all comes down to math I still really love the systems in Fable and the romance systems are included. In fact if I could distill all my thoughts on why I love the Fable franchise so much it would probably come down to the systems. I love the ambitious personal, nutrition, social, economic, and psychological systems built into Fable games and my favorite thing to do in those games is to experiment with the systems to see what kind of experiences I can have with them. I like seeing how I can affect my character's skills, appearance, wealth, standing in society politically, people's opinions of me, and how the good/evil system interprets my interactions with the game world. Now onto female characters in game.

The female lead and support characters at the top of my lists are all safe answers that I'm sure you could all guess since you've heard me explain them before. The favorite lead being my female Commander Shepard in Mass Effect, and the favorite supporting being Alyx Vance in Half Life 2, especially HL2 Episode 1. But instead of just going with the safe answers I'll go into other lead and support characters that I've never talked about.

As a lead female character in a narrative, I really love and became attached to the female Spartan-II that I created for the Halo Reach campaign. At the beginning of the game you can create your own Spartan, male or female, and customize their appearance. The female Noble 6 that I created became the canon character for me and I can't imagine any other character being in her shoes. She's like my own personalized Commander Shepard in the Halo universe. *Reach spoiler* At the very end of the game all of your fellow Noble Team Spartans became dead or missing while defending the planet and when the Pillar of Autumn departs desperately for orbit with Cortana and 117 on-board, Noble 6 (your character) remains behind on Reach to go down-with-the-ship and fight the overwhelming Covenant ground forces to the death. The very final moments of Reach occur in an unexpected mission after the end of the game. In the final mission the lone Noble 6 is surrounded by Covenant on the destroyed surface of Reach and you are free to fight as long as possible, but eventually you loose your helmet, you have to fight hand-to-hand with Elites, and watch your Spartan die alone, but with honor. That was one of the most heartbreaking things I've felt in an FPS campaign. You can criticize the narratives and coherency in the previous games all you want and I will agree with you, but Bungie really made a tragic and beautiful story with Reach and the female Spartan I created was at the heart of it. *end spoiler*

As a supporting character I don't want to cheat and give two but these guys are basically a 2-for-1 package. I love Anna Grimsdotter/Colonel Lambert in the Splinter Cell franchise. During every mission Grim and Lambert are the ones you hear in your ear the whole time and Same Fisher couldn't do his job without those two. Together they all get the job done with respect to the military hierarchy, but they are incredibly informal, they take jabs and liberties, and they basically all know each other on a very intimate level (Sam's daughter Sarah is discussed often) since they are all in the intelligence and reconnaissance business. Over the course of the games I became so comfortable with each character's presence that I have the various actor's voices imprinted on my brain after so many years of listening to them. Anna and Sam have a unique relationship because she is much younger than him and they joke about it all the time, but there is no submission from either character. Niether one is afraid of the other. They are both brilliant, each is the best at what they do (like Cortana and 117 in Halo), they're both strong, dangerous, and they can't do the job if one of them is missing from the equation.

Amen to that.

The lamp should look pretty cool, if it's actually what I think it is. Plasma lamps look pretty neat in general, they have a ton of them at this Spencers store here in town. If the "exclusive high-frequency katana blade lamp" is just simply a plasma lamp in the shape of a katana blade and it has blue coloration with other violet hues in there to give it the magic-infused look, it will be neat. Not any better than the other plasma lamps you could get for a dime a dozen at Spencers, but it will still be very neat. As I said, plasma lamps are pretty cool in general. It's an interesting thing to bundle in with a collector's edition of a game. I wonder how many of the plasma lamps will break in transit through the mail?

This is a really great lineup. This launch day lineup covers so many bases. You have several casual games for the kids and parents, you have music and dance games for those fans, you have a fitness game, a few sports games, a fighting game, you have Warriors Orochi for that Warrior's niche, and then you have several core mature games and AAA blockbusters. It covers a lot of bases and it's probably the best launch lineup I can remember.

I won't be buying the system though (I'm going to have $100 going to Halo 4 collector edition already this holiday season). Hypothetically if I were to get the system day one I'd buy Mario Brothers, ZombiU, AC3, Call of Duty, Batman, Darksiders, Nintendoland, and Ninja Gaiden.

This may not be a media giant, but all of the staff out there making this site what it is really do a lot of work. There's so much content being created here between previews, reviews, news, podcasts, editorials, videos, etc, and at the end of the day all that content comes out the end of the cannon in a professional, creative, and entertaining fashion. Well done, everybody. My thanks go to the staff who not only make this a great enthusiast site, but a great community that I enjoy being a part of. The cake isn't a lie here at Pixlbit.

Congratulations on 3 years, that's a spicy meatball!

@Angelo Mmm, wall of text. The Lordvessel is satiated sir Angelo, and all of Lordran thanks you. On a serious note, I can understand your wife's experience and opinion, as well as yours. You two seem to have great senses of humor and it's so cool that you can enjoy so many of the same things and same jokes. If this game isn't a good fit for your household I think that your decision not to play it is a very reasonable one.

Mmm, binary symmetry, nom nom nom. Your writings are always a pleasure to read Travis. Calling your older co-workers cretaceous lol, and my favorite of all, "If you're a murderer, please don't participate in Play Video Games in Public Day." You'll always get a two thumbs up from me.

I'm with you on Game in Public Day. I've never been to Japan but I've read in articles from gamers that being a gamer in Japan is really looked down upon strongly when you become an adult. People scoff at you if you get caught gaming on your bus ride to work or stuff like that. Some politicians over there and to some extent the non-gaming population seem to really rail on otaku in general, including the gamers. Some even go as far as to be anti-gaming, and they think it's ruining their country. That's silly.

I see people like that in America too, some who even go as far as to be anti-gaming. Do you ever listen to astrophysicist Dr. Neil Tyson's podcast Star Talk Radio? It's a mix of science, comedy, and pop culture podcast. I'm a huge fan of it, and not too long ago he had a gaming series where he talked a lot to Will Wright about game design and how games are percieved in America. He made some excellent points about how different the experience of gaming is between people who are actually playing, and the ones who are observing. People who are just watching a game will often only see action, violence, and explosions. Meanwhile the player who is interacting with the game is naturally using the scientific method to figure out how a game works, what the rules are, solve puzzles, survive situations, and play a game without really realzing they are using the scientific method and engaging is very complex problem solving. He also goes on to talk about Spore, Sims, Sim City, and lots of other awesome stuff.

You can find the first entry of that 2-part series here:

Advancing to the Next Level: The Science of Video Games - Part 1