PixlBit

Statham Sightings lol? It's pretty funny. I liked Crank and Transporter, I have nothing against the Statham.

You have way too many games to play Julian lol, it's a good problem to have, but it's a very daunting problem to have. I would prioritize this one and move it up on a list of ones you have to get through. Push Amalur down and put Dark Souls in its place. When people talk about this game they always talk about the difficulty, and they never give it the credit it deserves as a complete package. The difficulty is perfect, it's fair, the programming is good, the visuals are gorgeous, sound design is incredible, and most of all the combat is a ton of fun.

People don't give Dark Souls enough credit for how fun it is, it's a fricken blast once you start developing the right timing and use your shield, sword, arrows, spells, and items well. Death itself is like a system built into the game. You will die a lot but it always gives you a chance to learn something and do something different next time. Plus, since dying only makes you loose souls, if you are low on souls there's literally nothing to loose. You can die over and over, learn more and more, and it won't make you feel cheated. The risk and reward is great and the game makes me feel like a badass more than I ever have in another RPG. There's something so fresh about playing this.

There's undead, dragons, swords, sorcery, it will be easy to get a grasp of the universe. But the actual execution and design of it is so solid it makes it feel like nothing else out there. Games just don't feel like this anymore. Not sure how to explain it. As an aspiring designer I should be able to break it down more for you and explain why, but at the moment I'm just immersed in it greatly, it makes sense, it's fun, it's so balanced and polished, and it feels fresh.

Excellent job guys lol. It might have gone off the rails but I was thoroughly entertained and I'm not just patronizing you. You covered a lot of ground and by the end I couldn't remember everything I wanted to comment on, but I was entertained all the way through without a doubt. Classic episode, great topic, lots of laughs, lots of hey-ohh's tossed around, and I'm glad to spend the hours listening.

It's bittersweet seeing the Tri-Force title absolved, but I like Nerd Without Pants as well and I'll be here for the new shows. I still remember those first shows when Jules showed up on the Hellblock Heroes crew to ease into the podcasts before he was given the helm of his own crew. There's a lot of reasons why I love this gaming nook, and lots of reasons why I nestle in here proudly, listen to your podcasts, and interact, but at the end of the day the reasons always have to be distilled back to the three of you. You're great. You have been since the first episode, you were this week, and will be as NWP. Before the sap gets too squishy, just know that you're doing a good job, the work is appreciated, and take your pants off.

Excellent episode Jason, nice to see PB&Jason oiled up and back on the war path. I liked the shout out to Power Rangers, I use to watch the Mighty Morphin series everyday when I came home from school as a kid. If anybody wants to whip out a token and morph into a triceratops, I will look forward to it. I'll keep my eyes open for the podcasts changes you were talking about.

I've never had a DS or 3DS and I've been hesitant to save up and invest in them because I wouldn't know what to pick honestly. The DSi is cool, but if I was looking at those I'd get a DSi XL because I like the bigger screen. I have 20/20 vision so I don't need the big screen because of any vision issues, I would just like to play on bigger screens. One of the reasons I think that is because I use to play with my friend's PSP back in the day and it was uncomfortable seeing all that detail on a small screen. My eyes were stressed a little and it didn't feel natural.

So with all that in mind, when the 3DS came out it didn't interest me because it was expensive, the screen was smaller, and there wasn't a second joystick. So I expected that eventually they would redesign the 3DS and I was hoping they would add the second stick, and make an "XL" version just like they did for the DSi line before it. Now that we see the 3DS XL, it has the bigger screen but I don't know why it's still missing the second stick. They designed that stupid second stick add-on for the 3DS (clearly they were interested in giving players and developers a second stick to work with), why wouldn't they just cut out the add-on, streamline the design, and build the second stick into the new 3DS XL?

In some ways the 3DS XL seems like a bigger version of the same old design that people complained about in the first place. Why not improve it more?

(UPDATE) It took me a second but I think I understand why they didn't design the second stick into the 3DS XL. The original doesn't have a second stick, and if the XL came out with one, they wouldn't really be compatible with eachother. Designers would have two different platforms and it might render the original 3DS obselete even though many people own one. I understand why they might not want to redesign it TOO much, but I'm still hoping for a second stick. Do you think one day they'll give this whole 3DS thing a do-over and make versions with two sticks to replace these ones lol? Wishful thinking.

Nice to see you up on the soapbox again J-Bone, this is an excellent installment to the series. Excellent F-bombs too, they were not in short supply lol.

I was disappointed to see the multiplayer gameplay demo for DS3. When I saw it play out at E3 I thought to myself that the multiplayer portion I was seeing was just a wannabe Gears of War with the dialogue from Bulletstorm. Nothing kills tension and erases horror like a couple of enraged bros back to back yelling out, "Fuck! Goddammit! Shit! Die!" while they plug human enemies in the chest with projectile weapons. That multiplayer demo wasn't Dead Space. It was some frankenstein heralded down by an exec who thought it was necessary to change the formula. Just because it looks like Dead Space, has the character models, the color schemes, etc, doesn't mean it's Dead Space. They don't get it. They're not playing to the series' strengths with this multiplayer. Instead of playing to it's strengths, they're assuming those very strengths aren't good enough to sell, so they cast them aside and go back to the drawing board.

I'm not saying Dead Space 3's multiplayer won't be a good action experience. It's a AAA game and AAA games by their nature are usually pretty polished and solid, so it might just be a good third person shooter experience, but it's not going to be a good Dead Space based on what I've seen.

I come from a similar angle as you, I don't have anything against online games, competition, or co-op. My favorite competitive game of all time is Team Fortress 2, my favorite co-op experiences of all time have happened in Halo 3 and Portal 2. The thing I don't like is that decision makers have tunnel vision and only see this one trend. Multiplayer is a good thing, some people do it really well, and it can be excellent if you design an experience around it. But, it's not the silver bullet, it's not the only thing gamers want. When you sit down to design a game, multiplayer shouldn't be a requirement, it should be an option. Just like when you design or remodel your kitchen, getting granite is just one of many options. Or when you sit down to write a book, your imagination is the limit, and writing a crime drama is one of many options, it's not a requirement. It's all up to you to make the game however you want, that's how it should be.

I wouldn't say that single player gameplay in AAA game design is dead, but it's been suffering for a while now. Decision makers only see the one trend (multiplayer), and that tunnel vision is what makes single player designs suffer.

Great review Esteban. Except, try and say "Turtles In Time Re-Shelled Review Rewind" 5 times fast. That's a tounge twister if I've ever seen one :)

I've never read manga or manwha but I'd like to read about it and hear people talk about it. I just started getting into watching anime last year and I've slowly been finding stuff I like and buying box sets of anime series one by one. My collection is very tiny so far but I really like anime a lot now that I've givin it a chance.

I got called out in this episode! And I finally heard about it all this time later, that's crazy. Well, I have finally found this podcast just by chance, I replied, and fufilled my call-out lol.

When it comes to where and when to buy a game, I'm not a fan of all the pre-order bonuses and carrots that try and get me to buy from a certain outlet at a certain time. Several years ago I didn't really mind, I just went along with it all, but around the time that Assassin's Creed 2 came out is when I started becoming opposed to it. When I was looking to preorder A2 Amazon had this deal where a preorder would get you an extra area of the game to explore and that rubbed me the wrong way. Do you remember that? At the time I was really tight on cash and didn't have enough to preorder it at that time, I ended up having to get A2 a few weeks after launch and I felt cheated that I didn't get to explore an entire area that was designed. I don't know if it was relevant to the story, if it had missions, if there was anything of substance there at all, but I thought it was lame that they would be willing to leverage level designs and areas in their pre-order carrot business.

That whole Assassin's Creed 2 pre-order thing and the extra content it contained might have amounted to nothing and had no impact on the game or people's experiences, but the concept of it it still rubbed me the wrong way and the damage has been done.

My favorite quote in this one - "If your enemies health bar isn't going down, then run."

That's what I did in Dark Souls a couple days ago. I came across the Black Knight in the Undead Burg just lolligagging around, and I had no idea what he was so I wanted to experiment and see how tough he was, and what kind of move set/animations he had. So I firebombed him, he got pissed, ran over to me, and killed me in two super fast strikes with his sword lol. Eventually after a few tries I killed him though! I ran to the top of the scaffolding that the firebombers were staked out on, and I waited up there. By luck, the Knight stayed below and I firebombed him till he died. I got a Titanite Chunk for it and celebrated. Never would have happened if I didn't take the risk.

The part where you said you have OCD and like to test boundaries isn't a bad thing. Games wouldn't get shipped without people like that. Games can't play and break themselves. Everybody from a temp tester to a lead designer should be playing a game everyday to test for breaks, document bugs, update bug lists, and find ways to make their game better. I like to take risks and push boundaries sometimes too, like I did with the Black Knight in the Undead Burg. In Halo Firefight I run out into chaos and get in fist fights with 4 Hunters, hop on tanks to plant grenades in them, dodge explosions, and get in a frenzy. Once I'm focused, relaxed, and in the zone, I'll start destroying entire waves of Covenant at a time. I'd never be able to do that without the "I might get lucky" syndrome. Sometimes, you actually MIGHT get lucky lol. If I just sat in the base and was scared to leave, they'd all come to me and flush me out of there and kill me.

I also love to jump around and do platforming in Halo to try and find boundaries to levels. In Halo's Forge World I actually design entire platforming levels that deviate from what you'd expect to see in Halo.

My point is, if you get the urge to poke a dragon far above your level, jump off a ledge just to see what happens, or you want to run around at night with your lantern and fight goblins in DD, go ahead and do it from time to time lol.

I don't have this game yet, but it's right around the top of my to-buy list, I'll be really excited to buy it eventually. I liked the demo for the most part, aside from the overwhelming NPC banter and constant UI notifications of each line of text. I heard from a friend that you can turn off the UI text that pops up when NPCs talk, can you actually do that? It would be a helpful way to clean up the screen. The combat and exploration are what really has me interested in the game. The character personalizer is the deepest I've ever seen in a game as well, and I love creating characters. I could spend an hour just making a character.

The three vocations are pretty straight forward and simple to understand it seems. I myself would have to pick between the fighter and strider. I really like being strong with melee, but have a decent (doesn't have to be as strong as my melee) ranged weapon to help me out. That's what I've been doing in Dark Souls with my character.

Since you picked the strider vocation, how do the aiming mechanics feel? How are you liking the ranged combat so far?