PixlBit

Stage Select:

Beating enough kids at Tekken 3 in an arcade by mashing buttons with Yoshimitsu that one of them actually got mad I was beating everyone by mashing buttons with Yoshimitsu. "Game of skill" my ass.

FINALLY getting Platinum in Arkham Knight after months of only missing the Brutality 101 trophy. 

Having a more and more zen-like reaction to frustrating or difficult video games. 

Intro: 

The reason we all hate our own voice is cause there's more bass in what we hear as sound comes out of our mouths than what other people hear: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130913-why-we-hate-hearing-our-own-voice

The reason I hate hearing myself is because of my lisp. And also a general hatred of the way I talk. Especially the stuttering, which I cut out as much as I can.

I don't remember any noticeable stuttering the two times I was on. I don't think you do that as much as you think or at least I don't notice it as much as you. 

I hate my voice cause I think like I sound like a little kid, but, like you, I've edited myself enough times it doesn't bother me as much. 

I just want to be clear...  Transmetropolitan is my favorite series....  hence my name.  
I do feel shame though because I haven't finished all of it, but it's fantastic.

...I don't know how I didn't put that together. Sometimes me no think so well.

Stage select:

1. Beating the original Legend of Zelda before my friends did.

2. My first ever playthrough of Final Fantasy VI, I was fighting Atma Weapon (last boss of the World of Balance), he wiped out all of my party members except Mog, who was stuck in Dance mode where you can't control him. I went off and made a sandwich figuring I was screwed and not happy about it because it took so long to get there. I get back after eating my sandwich and Mog is doing a victory dance. I'd won the battle.

3. Beating Dragon Quest VIII with my wife, who I'd just married at the time. We played together along with my stepdaughter.

Hey, 'sup? I listen to the show.  I guess if you don't listen to the whole thing, this comment will be "really in the bushes" obscure. Also, Skyblazer looked awesome when I saw it on Game Grumps. I really want to play it. 

I meant some of my comments about Chasing Amy and Citizen Kane somewhat tongue-in-cheek, so I read them back to myself that way, but I'm glad they read the way they did and resulted in an incredulous exclamation of "JESUS" from Patrick. This is why I edited "Game of skill, my ass" into my comment about Tekken 3 above. 

Whoever is saying country is the most repetitive genre has not listened to near as much punk rock as I have. You listen to all of Bad Religion's discography and start noticing the riffs being repeated throughout not only that band, not only that genre, but being carried over into metal/hard rock you listen to and you learn not to judge other people's music tastes as "repetitive" or "sounding the same." 

I like Tyrone Swift as a guest. Double the Julian's opinion, double the fun. I do sincerely think he jives with y'all pretty well. Consumption Junction comment to come. Thanks for indulging me ALL of my questions. I really thought the Facebook one would be too late. 

Thank you for powering through! It took me until late Sunday to finish the show since I was off for 4.5 days. I know it was a super long show, but if it makes you feel better, it was 4 hours and 15 minutes before I started editing.

Thankfully, most of our listeners seem to like our long shows. I definitely like long podcasts, and can't wait for the Giant Bombcast GOTY Deliberations in December, which usually gives me about 20 hours of podcasty goodness at the end of the year.

I'm just overwhelmed with all the shit that's out there and the fact I'll never be able to get to it all makes me a little ... anxious isn't the right word, but the Paradox of Choice definitely gets to me. I like knowing I'll be able to finish something and focusing on that one thing, and that tends to mean I seek out media that's more condensed. 

For context, I listen to podcasts when I'm scrolling social media feeds, so I might feel differently if I was actually doing something like commuting or running. I listen in chunks partly cause I just can't sit that long. 

Hearing Tyrone describe The Quiet Man makes me want to do a let's play of that game ... but I'll probably just do something with a game I already own or want instead. 

I'm glad to hear Bohemian Rhapsody was good and do want to see it eventually. The complaint I kept hearing from YouTube movie reviewers (Double Toasted, The Cinema Snob, probably another) was Rami Malek's (sp?) prosthetic teeth being super distracting. I think if I know that going in, it may not distract me as much. Or it'll distract me more, but I'm looking forward to finding out. 

I ... do not like the original Halloween II or III. I haven't seen the Rob Zombie version recently enough to have an opinion, nor have I seen the recent reboot. I think the original John Carpenter Halloween is ... decent. Having said that, I do like the anthology horror idea if it's somewhat campy, like Goosebump's or Tales From the Crypt. I think it works better for TV than movies. Has anyone seen the Batman anime anthology from around the mid-2000s? 

Gonna be honest: I kinda want ALL podcasts to be within 2.5 hours. I just listened to the equivalent of an extended Lord of the Rings edition, and despite listening in chunks, I am exhausted. Truly, this is my greatest podcast achievement. 

For the love of god man, don't risk your sanity by playing The Quiet Man. It's just not worth the risk. And you're not wrong about punk rock. I will fully agree with you on that. But really all artist's songs in any genre sound the same, (Cough AC/DC) it's just whether you prefer that sound or not. Punk rock is fairly repetitive though, but I would say the key difference would be whomever is on vocals usually has their own style. (Mind you not all of them) Country has a very similar vocal style which makes it somewhat hard to distinguish artists from each other, but that could just be because I don't listen to enough of it. Congratulations on making it through that episode, sorry I am long winded at times, but hey, we had fun!

Oh! And I knew there was science behind the voice thing! I just only remember half of the facts a lot of times.

I know people have heard the science behind it, I just posted that link as a reminder/conversation piece. 

Stage Select: I admit to not being much of an achievement hunter when it comes to games, but I do have some things that come to mind here...

3. That time I beat Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game when I was like... five years old. Yea sure, maybe I went to a theatre during their grand opening and they were giving out free arcade games to people, and sure maybe I was the weakest link among all the teenage kids who I was teaming up with at the time, but damn it I beat that game and nobody else I knew had. I remember going to friends houses and describing the end levels to them when we would die on the third stage. Did that make me an asshole? Possibly. But I thought I was pretty cool.

2. I caught all 151 of the original Pokemon before it was a cool thing to do. I got Pokemon Blue and Red, a link cable and a brand new Gameboy Color for my birthday one year, and proceeded to play both games until I had caught them all. This was a little before Pokemon really blew up in the states, which basically made me a video game hipster at the time. And yes I realize I said 151 pokemon, I eventually convinced somebody to buy me a Gameshark so that I could have Mew as well. After that, I hung up my Pokemon hat for good, because it got too cool. And as the video game hipster that I was, I was not about that life anymore.

1. So I talked a bit on the show about how I think the new WWE games are bad, and they are, but I'm part of the problem and I still buy them every year. Mainly because I love the Create a Character stuff on those games. Years ago I started uploading some of the things I had put together out of boredom and people randomly downloaded some of them. I even started to develope kind of a cult fanbase for some of my stuff. Turns out I'm really good at making female wrestlers... Crazy right? I mean who'd have thunk a guy who idolizes Chun Li could understand some of the finer points of women's wrestling fashion? Last year I had over 25,000 people download one of my creations and that was pretty wild. There's a Youtube video of a Youtube man asking his audience who my made up wrestler is because he's never heard of them on the indy scene. So if anyone asks, Roxanne Rolston definitely came to your town and put on a great match okay?

Episode Comment: I enjoyed listening to this back a whole lot. Hope other people dig it as well. Hope to do it again!... Sorry I don't have more than that as I was there. Also I'm glad I was on the episode with the Queen music... Because Queen is good.

I have no issues with the Witcher 3.  I genuinely want to play it, and my desire for it to be a desert island game is genuine.  It bothers me that I have yet to be consumed by The Witcher 3, especially with my love of The Witcher 2.  My issue was only ever with the reduction of Bloodborne...  which I am glad to see that Patrick is able to see the brilliance of the game again.  To be clear, no issue with Patrick changing his pick for 2015.

STAGE SELECT - 
I am not sure if this is what you are looking for.  
I am going to have to pull out the cartridge and see if I can see what my record was.  I played F-Zero X's DEATH RACE mode endlessly.  I got my record down to a point that I had no idea how else to shave off time.  I was quite proud of it.
I also spent quite some time trying to shave my time in Metroid Fusion down to under 75 minutes.  I got close, but had issues shaving off the last 90 seconds.

Patrick's been on this whole kick about Bloodborne having this fantastic narrative and characters that he never knew because it's not very clear in the game, and how that is a better way of storytelling. But I can't get behind that notion. If the sum of your story is hundreds of people creating conspiracy theories that may or may not be correct, then in my eyes you failed at expressing your story. I'd rather have a fleshed out world and characters like in Horizon and The Witcher that also reward you for delving deep on your own than a game of vagaries that leave you with little notion of what you saw.

Some of Bloodborne's story is that way...  which is why people are going nuts about some of the items in Deracine.
The story about Gascgione's family is a little more explicit than some of the deeper lore of Bloodborne...  assuming you realize you can talk to the doors with lanterns.

Overall, I like to think I prefer gameplay over story.  I can appreciate a good story in games, but I won't necessarily want to see a story through if the gameplay is not fun.  I can't think of an example at the moment though,

Very fun episode of NWP. Cant wait for the AMA to return. TyroneSwift was a great addition. I couldn't wait for him to dive into The Quiet Man. I watched the whole Giantbomb playthrough and damn was that rough. The only way its playable is if you get a group to play it for the laughs. I couldn't imagine this game solo. I think I'd take the cash if I had to play Quiet Man on the toilet though... 

I was personally ecstatic for the Giant Nerd Cast. I'll always welcome 4 hours of my favorite podcasts. Also cant wait for GOTY Deliberations. I feel much more invested this time since I started actually watching their series and know them much better. 

Stage Select: Top 3 Gaming Achievements

3. Beating The Souls Series Shieldless: I'm no pro but the fact that I was able to beat the souls series without a shield is one thing I'm proud of. It really helped me actually get good at this game because it forced me to learn how to anticipate attacks and roll. I also didnt rely on parrying at all which is another reason why I'm so proud of this. 

2. Getting the Untouchable Medal in Halo 3: Halo was one series I was great at. It was something I feel like I could have played professionally if I was the type to play 1 game for years.

My favorite moment is also bittersweet. I was jumping back into it after weeks of not playing. I hit a Lone Wolves ranked match (which is everyone for themselves) and completely dominated. I was 5 kills away from winning the match/getting the medal when someone quit and the game had to find a new host. The game continued but it stopped registering my streak. I got the last 5 kills and went 25-0 but didnt get the satisfying announcer to say, "Untouchable." Despite that I knew what I had accomplished and felt invincible.

1. Beating The Witness: The Witness isn't the hardest game I've ever played but it's definitely the most satisfying I've ever completed. Many have compared it to learning a new language and that isn't far off. Taking pen, paper, graph paper, tetris shaped cutouts, pictures, and combining them to solve puzzles was unlike anything I've ever played. I would take puzzles to work and try to solve them for when I'd play next. I'd look around the real world and see puzzles that needed to be solved (The Witness Effect?). I was actually a bit sad to have finished The Witness because I knew I'd never have that experience again. This game isn't for everyone but for those it is for, you will have an unforgettable experience unlike any other in gaming.