So weird. I just saw Pontypool on my on demand service.
Fun film. Very supenseful. Very well composed.

You can see that Noah doesn't really watch Joe since he said he thinks Joe plays more MMOs, and in one of the few Angry Joe videos I watched Joe said Star Trek Online was his first.

I don't even have to care about what you're talking about to enjoy having you on as I draw. Seriously, I got a really good page of doodles done, and it's owed to how intelligent you gab about things I never even intend to follow up on. But yes, I was curious about how the Star Trek MMO was panning out.

Same here. I do some writing and effects work while listen to the Spoony Radio Hour. Only guy I've found on the web who can hold my attention with protracted rants.

Luckily Under a Killing Moon and Pandora Directive both support multiple cd-drives, so the DosBox emulation loads all the discs, no swapping here folks!

Your most thought provoking and well spoken vlogs to date Spoony! Thanks for the great insight. Its awesome to see you at to your intellectual best.

Wonderful to hear you give perspective on your process. Have you thought about speeding up all the transitions benny hill style for a short fun journey through the world of Ripper.

They need to incorporate politics or its not Star Trek.

As an avid Eve Online player, I have to say I’m pretty skeptical of STO, and your comments don’t do much to dissuade that.

A friend of mine got me into the STO beta and probably spent more time in the character creator than anything (which is quite good, by the way. It's not Champions Online, but it's up there). Once I got into the game, it was a sort of nice trip down nostalgia lane to the days of the long, since defunct “Earth & Beyond,” which STO certainly borrows a fair bit from.

Once that went away though, the experience was rather lukewarm. Especially the starship combat, especially stood out to me as lacking as the ship was about as maneuverable as a lame cow and was just lacking any real impact. It's the digital equivalent of blowing a stream of bubbles in a still room and watching them gradually collide into each other and pop.

I can see the potential within the game, but whether it reaches it is another story. After the second or third day, I actually forgot that I even had it until a friend asked me about it.

a fun fact for you Spoony: The woman who voices Flemeth in Dragon Age is Janeway from Star Trek: Voyager :B

Dragon Age was a big disappointment.

Plotwise a copy of LotR, filled with generic fantasy cliches.
The biggest part, nearly 90% of the game is combat.
Repetitive, unoriginal and dragging combat.
Even most of the companions are not very interesting.

I stopped playing after 40hours, after realising there is nothing interesting at the end. Just more boring combat, with a lot of micromanagement.

If you are at all interested in a good story, a breathing world and interesting combat, avoid this game.
I'm sorry to say this, but i get the impression that only people who were unable to play Fallout, Planescape:Torment and the like OR are huge fans of LotR are able to see something in this game.

But really..there is nothing in there you haven't seen before if you haven't been living under a rock for the last 20 years.
If you saw/read/played ANY basic fantasy game, book or movie..you have seen everything you will see in Dragon Age.

Spoony, for the love of god, I've been sitting here for the past few days watching my roomy play that GOD AWEFUL game, the bugs you mentioned happen to him as well, it's very dry, and like I keep telling him “It's NOT TREK! It just has it's name!”, and the real shit kicker is his crazy ass is going to dump that $200 for the lifetime! I can't stop him, he's going nuts about it like it's fucking jesus and the second coming, when in reality it's horse shit. I pitty anyone that plays this game, it's going to be the same now as it is on launch day. Lots of disconnects(which WILL get worse), instances being full so you're unable to go with friends into them, broken names, broken this broken that like the teleporter bug. I want to rant so hard about this game because of how badly it blows and trust me I know a thing or two about games that blow, I play FFXI for gods sakes, but at least IT has PLOT and WAY less grindy, hell with the advent of astral flow parties(1-75 in a matter of a few days, it's really lulzy, and forget about grinding for merits anymore, just do AF burns). This is what happens when you let people that did CoH a super grindy kill kill kill feast game do Trek. I can't wait for Angry Joe to re-review this, I'm going to laugh, cause I remember back when first videos and everything were coming out on the nets and I found out that EVERYONE will be a captain and get their own ship this was just going to be korean gridan but in american form trying to hide behind the relatively good name star trek has for probably millions of people that follow it.

It is game from original DMC director Hideki Kamiya.

There are 2 things I love some Spoony and some Star Trek… I gotta say i agree with you on a lot of stuff you said there but for some reason i really have hope for this game. As you said its a beta and still you are in the right on everything you said because you know they can't fix it in what a month before it comes out? but looking down the road say a year or 2 (when the game should of been released anyway instead of rushing this shell of a game) i think they could make a lot of improvements to combat the way the questing system works all the stuff that is fixable it seems to me they just got the graphics looking sorta pretty and said “just get it out there the trekkies will buy it and we will go from there.” but I ran into the exact same bugs as you and also you were right about just sitting there and stopping moving all together and slightly turning to the right it really does work because ship combat is that simple/boring… but damn as a trek fan i have to say this is all we have right now and this is the only future star trek outlet we have with out going backwards (the new star trek movie time line) and that is the only thing this game has going for it.

Funny coincidence. Last weekend I went to the Blockbuster down the road which is closing down and selling off all their stock (oddly enough the first time I've ever step foot in there) and almost bought a copy of Pontypool. I even had it in hand (along with an old-ass copy of John Woo's The Killer) but opted to put it back and instead got a sweet Inglourious Basterds print for my wall (the one with Aldo Raine standing atop a pile of Nazi bodies). I'm probably gonna go back again this weekend and I hope it's still there as it's the only copy they had. And even then, there's still another wall print I wanted, which was a painting of the main characters in Fight Club.

Disqus works finaly :D

I got my beta key recently and I will try out this game. I have not that High expectations for it, but I am still very very exited as I am a Trekkie and we got a shitload of bad games, like every other movie/TV franchise. Like yourself I loved Judgement Rites and the 25th anniversary, you really had the feeling of doing something the Star Trek way. I also liked Birth of the Federation very much, which was hated by most people.

I think you got the correct things pointed out, although I still have High Hopes that a lot of things are going to be Fixed/added/changed before the release. I really hope they do not make the Same misstakes that happened with Warhammer online, which was in my oppinion also a very good MMO but it was thrown out to earlie and felt unfinished the whole 3 month I played it.

It is not like the first MMOs that came out, where people just were glad to put their nerdiness somewhere, now a lot of people have experience with those kind of games and are very selective and nit-picky. I would not mind if the game developers say “we need more time” Angry Joe said it in his Video, Trekkie fans are Patient fans. If the game needs more efford, then please put the efford in, the Fanbase is there and will be there.

I also enlarged my Game collection with the Steam holiday discount special (or what ever it was called) GTA IV for 7,50 €, I hope the game developers saw that a lot of people buyed it and are reconsidering their Pricing for the future.

Looking forward to see who the ripper is.

It seems you have been playing entirely different Star Trek Online that i have. So let me rip you a new arse, good sire.

First of all, you claim that every Lt. ship is the same, yes, basically their stats are the same, however, the player class, the equipment on the ship, and the bridge officers allow quite a bit of variety in this.
Then you went to claim that every Lt. Com. ship is the same… and i went “…what?” and had to watch the part again. What game were you even playing? Lt. Com is where the ships start to branch out to more specialized setups, and there are -MASSIVE- differences between ships and players. Ships can fill multipile roles, such as plain old tanking, supporting, or minefielding, and this is only the first Lt.Com cruiser class. You clearly don't have a tiniest clue of the game to begin with to claim this.

Then you went on to claim that bridge staff don't really contribute to anything, and you can “mix them up”… what? What the hell are you even on about? Did you even play this game, or is this just hearspeech?
Bridge staff is the single most important resource in the game to any captain. They contribute almost more than the captain him/herself to the ship's well being. Claiming that ''bridge staff don't matter'' is absolutely stupid in every way.
On that notion, i saw someone note the same thing in zonechat yesterday, and the chat was instantly filled with laughter and mockery, as per norm for internet people.

Then you claim that the missions aren't soloable somehow…. what? All missions are soloable, aside from fleet battles, and the missions automatically scale to become harder when there are multipile players taking them. Though then again, you claiming that ALL SHIPS ARE THE SAME and BRIDGE OFFICERS DON'T MATTER, probably leads to you not being able to play the game in any proper way. To put this bluntly, you absolutely suck at this game. :P In addition, the space battles are like star trek armada, only they're done much much better, and it's with an MMO component. Don't judge a game that you either have absolutely no experience in playing, or do not know how to even play in the first place.
In addition, it would be intriguing to know what class you played, i mean… you went in and got your ass kicked, i assume you went in first, and i assume you took tactical, so you did the worst possible mistake, in short. Though, in Lt. ships, even tactical is capable of ''tanking'', for lack of better wording, so long they know how to adjust their power levels and rotate their shields. This is very very basic knowledge from star trek armada.

Yes, the patrol missions are repetitive, everyone would agree to that, but there's dozens of other type of missions to do! You do not need to grind for experience, as you stated, and storyline missions aren't even in yet… so why are you speaking of them? Cryptic has publicly stated that Storyline missions will NOT be involved in beta. I personally have skipped well over 30 missions because i went far over their level by doing other missions, so there are alot to choose from, to be sure. NOBODY FORCES YOU TO DO THE PATROL MISSIONS, DO THE DAMN EXPLORATION MISSIONS INSTEAD. HELLOO? BETA ISN'T MENT TO SELL COPIES, BETA IS TO TEST BUGS!

While it IS somewhat mediocre game, it is fun, for at least for a good while. I've now reached 2 characters to the beta-limit, of 16, and i've yet to gone through all the missions to go up to the level, and i'm not yet bored of it :/

Baldur's Gate was pitched to Black Isle by Bioware as Battleground Infinity (thats why its the Infinity Engine). Black Isle/Interplay wanted to make it a showcase product for the company instead of simply publishing it – which is why those are the prominent names in the intro – bought the AD&D license and helped develop it. But in essence, Baldur's Gate is a Bioware Game.

Star Trek Armada was an RTS. I assume you're talking about Starfleet Command.

If you say 90% of the game is combat you either haven't played the game and just c/p some trolls rant from 4chan or you suck at basic math. If you say it's plotwise a copy of LotR I again have to suspect you either haven't played the game or avoided any contact with LotR.

Comparing fantasy with LotR is a fool's argument to begin with but where the hell are the similarities except for the presence of elves and dwarfs? It's not the most original fantasy story, granted, but this tired “It's all just ripped off from LotR brah!” tripe is not only tired but also far fetched in the case of Dragon Age.

Anything that's cross or close to EvE in any way can absolutely and immediately be ignored. EvE is based on milking you out of your money while you wait, the combat is dull and boring, as it is completely and utterly automated in every way. For the trading and whatnot, it's dull and pointless, you won't do anything that matters ever.

Which only brings up the question: Why wasn't it an exclusive? If such a shitty job was being done on other versions, why even bother releasing it? Did nobody really think about the consumers?

On STO yes the game is slow and feels very very dry for it type. For Dragon Age, Sponny try playing a warrior or a tank I started different characters to try differnt things and to mix it up. On Bayonette the music yeah it is so so.. but the 360 version does not have the load problem the frame rate is the same as the ps3 and many game mags say it is an issue.. the later attacks are freaky.

I dunno, I really like that rendition of Fly Me to the Moon, then again it’s one of my favorite songs ever and I like remixes. I’m a woman and I don’t really find it misogynistic. Bayonetta’s sexuality is played for laughs alot, but the key thing here is even when she’s being sexy and posing its always in a situation where she is absolutely, completely, unarguably in control. I mean she could have been some moe animu waif but she’s actually an older-looking and not exactly rail skinny woman, and this is a game where the female characters are important, intelligent and completely badass. It’s basically the witches’ world. That’s the things about the controls though, you CAN’T button mash, if you can really learn the controls you could get through most fights without getting hit. Lol, I feel sorry you played the PS3 version, the 360 version totally doesn’t have any of those problems, seriously.

Man fuck Tom Bombadil! I’ve been watching alot of the commentary and behind the scenes stuff for the LOTR films lately (I actually went out and got Two Towers and Return of the King platinum special extended blah blah blah just to hear more commentary, I didn’t have RotK and I only had a regular extended Two Towers that I got for 5 bucks in a supermarket) it made me kind of want to give the books a second chance, as a kid I always liked The Hobbit more and thought LOTR was painfully boring (although I still loved Gandalf and Gollum and ended up really liking Treebeard and I’ve always liked paintings and artwork based on it) and have thought the movies were much much better, but maybe I’d appreciate it more now that I’m older.

PC is definitely the way to go with Dragon Age. I’ve played it on the 360 too and there’s just so many petty, niggling annoyances that are gone on the PC version. Inventory is definitely easier. I haven’t beaten it yet either, though. Maybe you should try a different class. I’m a elf rogue, as I usually do, and you really need your support team as that class. I meticulously arrange my mages’ skills so they can AI themselves fine and I’m constantly switching between characters. Though I kinda used the cheat console to hack healing spells into Morrigan early cause I wanted to keep her around to hit on with my male character, sorry Wynne!

I dunno, I really like that rendition of Fly Me to the Moon, then again it's one of my favorite songs ever and I like remixes. I'm a woman and I don't really find it misogynistic. Bayonetta's sexuality is played for laughs alot, but the key thing here is even when she's being sexy and posing its always in a situation where she is absolutely, completely, unarguably in control. I mean she could have been some moe animu waif but she's actually an older-looking and not exactly rail skinny woman, and this is a game where the female characters are important, intelligent and completely badass. It's basically the witches' world. That's the things about the controls though, you CAN'T button mash, if you can really learn the controls you could get through most fights without getting hit. Lol, I feel sorry you played the PS3 version, the 360 version totally doesn't have any of those problems, seriously.

Man fuck Tom Bombadil! I've been watching alot of the commentary and behind the scenes stuff for the LOTR films lately (I actually went out and got Two Towers and Return of the King platinum special extended blah blah blah just to hear more commentary, I didn't have RotK and I only had a regular extended Two Towers that I got for 5 bucks in a supermarket) it made me kind of want to give the books a second chance, as a kid I always liked The Hobbit more and thought LOTR was painfully boring (although I still loved Gandalf and Gollum and ended up really liking Treebeard and I've always liked paintings and artwork based on it) and have thought the movies were much much better, but maybe I'd appreciate it more now that I'm older.

PC is definitely the way to go with Dragon Age. I've played it on the 360 too and there's just so many petty, niggling annoyances that are gone on the PC version. Inventory is definitely easier. I haven't beaten it yet either, though. Maybe you should try a different class. I'm a elf rogue, as I usually do, and you really need your support team as that class. I meticulously arrange my mages' skills so they can AI themselves fine and I'm constantly switching between characters. Though I kinda used the cheat console to hack healing spells into Morrigan early cause I wanted to keep her around to hit on with my male character, sorry Wynne!

About Star-Trek: A lot of BETAs exist to test the games basic functions and over time apply more and more to see how well they work together. I've played numerous betas and all have the same pattern, going from basic gameplay to more and more advanced. Then finally when the beta reaches its peak it has almost all functions integrated into the game but with content excluded. Like in Star-Trek that some parts of space may be unaccessible or that the story makes no progression etc. I can understand that most people gets thrown off by betas but thats often because they forget why they're there. A TRIAL version is to hook you to the game, and a BETA is for the developers to gather data and test their game on unbiased gamers.

What I'm saying is, don't give up on it just yet. Wait a couple of months after the MAIN release and if it gets good reviews give it another go.

I like STO…
I play it since the closed beta. Well is in an mmo what do you expect? A complet new concept,?Do you think the reinventing the wheel? Sto 4TW!

I like STO…
I play it since the closed beta. Well is in an mmo what do you expect? A complet new concept,?Do you think the reinventing the wheel? Sto 4TW!

Pontypool is the name of a place near where I live in South Wales :P

also wiki says it was developed as a film and a radio series simultaneously, looks interetsing though, i love my radio plays

Hearing talks about space exploration games where you see new things and who arnt mainly about space combat, made me think of the classic PC/3DO space adventure game Star Control II. The interactions with aliens was great, and the exploration of the gigantic deep space world itself was actually kind of compelling, even though it was very abstracted and simplified. If you never tried that, you should check out the windows port, called “The ur-quan masters”. Id wager you played it before, but who knows! So many people never heard of that game! Though it has quite a cult following up to this day. I'm not sure how interesting a “lets play” of it would be, though. The second game is the best by far, the first being only about combat, and the third game being terrible and considered by fans of the second as “not existing”.

A game you should definitely check out if you like challenging and rewarding games is the PS3 exclusive Demon’s Souls. With a deep customization option for you character, epic boss fights and innovative multiplayer elements, Demon’s Souls is a very good game. You should definitely give it a try.

Wow… a game with worse load time than Sonic 2006.

I'm calling it right now though for the Ripper game. I bet the Ripper is the actual ripper, or rather, a holographic one made by the brother of the old guy that he made for his whatever they call it, holographic virtual reality door ways to the past.

The 'no death penalty' is part of the open beta and will not be part of the full game btw.

A lot of your complaints about STO are really about minor, fixable issues. Things like game balance, sound, and the like have changed dramatically from patch to patch and are just not dialed in yet.

The “death penalty” is a tricky issue. Right now, there's none at all, and obviously that's not right (and the devs know that has to change). The problem is that if you make the death penalty too high, then open teams won't work. (You won't be willing to team with someone you can't rely on.) And open teams fix the “2 hours LFG and still no team, so can't do quest” problem a lot of MMOs have.

That said, a lot of your complaints are entirely legitimate. The two biggest issues you nailed are: 1) Your ship just feels like a toon. You get no sense that it's a starship with hundreds of people on it. 2) Most of your missions involve an awful lot of killing, and that's just not Star Trek. Yeah, how else can you make an MMO, I get that. But you have to find a way to balance it, at least with options of how to solve problems inside a mission, and that's entirely absent.

Another problem you don't mention is that this game is heavily instanced. You're constantly moving from instance to instance, and there's no feel that you're in a world that's full of people.

I found the graphics to be well above average for an MMO. They have to target a wide range of systems, and that always holds things back just a bit.

That said, I find I enjoy playing, and I'm not sure why. You didn't mention their exploration system. At least you go to systems that are dynamically-created. But right now, it's still just the same few missions. Either you find 5 alien relics, or you kill 5 groups of enemies there, or you bring them 10 provisions, so after a while they do all feel the same. But adding new content is the easiest thing to do in an MMO, and right now the devs are putting out fires.

You nailed what the game is right now, I'll give you that. But I have a lot of hope for the future.

Noah, can't we get beyond the Thunderdome?

Honestly, this is a terrible review of the game. He's essentially stating that he doesn't enjoy MMO's. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a huge fan of grinding, but when I play an MMO, I expect grinding because that's what they're all about.

The thing I thought was hilarious was when he said “You could make that criticism of World of Warcraft that it's all about grinding.” Anyone who doesn't make that criticism hasn't played WoW. The game is entirely focused on grinding. You're either grinding mobs for fun, grinding mobs for quests, grinding instances for items, or pvp grinding to get items.

This just sounds like spoony hardly ever plays MMO's because if you review an MMO, you need to expect mass amounts of grinding in the game.

Honestly, this seems like a hasty judgment of an MMO and one that sounds like it comes from someone who already doesn't care for the MMO genre at all.

I was heading out the door when I made my last post but: Hey spoony, check out the latest patch to STO, it was a MASSIVE polish pass eliminating a vast majority of the existing bugs and adding a lot of TLC, as well as removing the level cap and opening up the rest of space..

As for exploration and seeing strange new worlds, there are promises of what the devs call the 'genesis system' which procedurally creates new planets that nobody has ever seen before, that you can then save the coordinates to and do missions at – also expect stranger alien species to show up more and more as the game progresses to release, as most of the ones currently in were placeholders. The customization options for character appearance are REALLY deep, especially if you are playing a custom race.

another thing they could have done in star trek online to improve the way you feel about your ship would be to allow the player to walk inside the ship and socialize with your crew (maybe even have them give you sidequests once the officials reached a certain level like the ship's doctor needs supplies found in a planet with said characteristics or supervise the redshirts combat training inside the holodeck), or even being able to upgrade the rooms of your ship like better infirmary that lead to less casualties in battle, better cafeterias to lead to an upgrade in the people's morale, a better holodeck leading to an upgrade to the men and women's morale and combat effeciency and so on…
these things would certainly make the ship seem more important to the player i think, what do you all think?

and as for types of other sidequests, they could have made diplomacy missions as well instead of fighting or even analysing the flora and fauna of planets with the tricorders to supply the federation with more of the planet's info.

A few notes on Pontypool.
This movie is based on a book by Tony Burgess. As a couple people have mentioned this movie was also made simultaniously as a radio show. In fact, it started as a radio show. Grege Sinclair approached the director, Bruce McDonald, and asked him if he wanted to make a radio drama. During that process they decided to also make it into a movie as an artistic expariment, believing that it was the things you don't see we fear the most. A point I believe the Spoony one might agree on. Not to give away too much, but even beyond that, it really takes the things that some would say make us human, and makes them the things that make us inhuman. If that makes any sence. Because of this it really becomes more on a phycological thriller than a zombie flick. In fact, even the director denies that it is a zombie film. He calles the “zombies” conversationalists instead.
It's really a good piece of evidence that special effects don't make a movie good. They may enhance a movie. I would even say some movies could not have been made advances in special effects. But they still are just the icing on a great cake. If the cake suckes, the icing can't save it.
It's also interesting to note that this is one of the few movies the have been shot in sequence. This was possible since the movie almost exclusively takes place in the radio studio and was an asset to the actors. Being able to shoot in sequence allowed the actors to easily get into every moment.
I'm just speculating, but the case may case may claim that the movie is Crownenburge-esk simply because David Crownenburge is Canadian and so is this movie. I have seen it billed as the best Canadian horror since “The Fly”.
Last note. There are apparently two sequile scripts already written.

What I do in DAO is 1. Cast rune of warding (Or whatever the repelling one is. I don't care, I quit playing). 2. Cast rune of paralysis on top of rune of warding, paralyzing the entire room. 3. Cast incinerate/blizzard/tempest. 4. Have my archer and warrior shoot arrows. 5. Watch my mabari scratch himself.

Spoony, you keep saying you like hard good games, PLAY DEMON'S SOULS! Someone else mentioned it here, but I'm amazed you haven' played it yet, It is right up you're alley, I highly recommend it. I know I'm not anyone, but still, play it.

spoony if you plan to play ninja gaiden 2. get sigma 2 on PS3 i played the 360 version and it's broken. basicly Tecmo put the beta on 360 and put the finished product on the PS3

Tekken 6 has some pretty goddamn awful load times too, I think these devs need some more practice on working with the PS3.

Spoony, if you want a online space mmorpg with the consequences you should try EVE online. When your ship in that game is destroyed it is gone permanently, and is a major blow to any pilot. So foolishly rushing into a situation usually results in your ship becoming a twisted pile of metal floating in space. The game is very harsh and unforgiving to new players but rewarding if you put some effort into the game.

If you guys enjoy radio dramas, check out the “Tales From the Afternow” audio series by a guy named Sean Kennedy. The best way to summarize the show is “post-apocalyptic ghost stories broadcast from the future”. It’s almost required that you listen to the show in the dark with lit candles for maximum effect… or driving down an unlit road at two in the morning.

Here’s the link guys. Enjoy.

http://rantmedia.ca/afternow/episodes.php

Cant wait for Ripper.
Have you played Demons Souls on PS3? You mentioned how you liked the fact Bayonetta was hard but only if you didn't know what you were doing. Thats Demons souls. Once you get over the learning curve its an amazing experience.

Oh wow what a treat to get three nice sized vlogs at once!! I've only watched the first so far–yeah, that's about what I expected for STO–and will get to the others very shortly. Looking forward to it!

Heh, I grew up with the Lord of the Rings radio drama, and there were many road trips spent listening to those cassettes. As for old games, I actually grabbed the original Dark Forces during that end of the year sale feeding frenzy, and it felt a little weird to play that again. One I'd love to see them re-release like that is the old TIE Fighter game… I've still got the disc and all, but I can't find a joystick that works for it ( even the old one that I've still got sitting around ).

Comment on the game: I don't play Dragon Age, but my beau does- and your complaint about doing the same thing with each mob is exactly why he didn't play as a mage. You might want to try anda different character class to raise the difficulty- there's more enjoyability in that.

Sorry, Spoony, but you can't play on easy mode and then give a fair assessment of the game play.

Star Trek Online I really had no hopes for, ever since I saw that it was being created by Cryptic Studios, whose MMO's have been terrible to date. City of Heroes, City of Villains, Champions Online – they all suffer from what Spoony has stated STO has problems with, that the whole thing feels empty. They try to hide the tedium of repetitive quests behind masses of quest text, but you don't even need to read that text because it's inevitably just another kill / travel quest anyway. I've had the problem with all the Cryptic games, after the first few hours I find I'm just repeating the same thing over and over.

Note that I play MMOs and I love them, I've been playing MMO's back when EverQuest was first released and they hadn't even thought of an expansion yet. But theres something about Cryptic games that lack something, they never have the 'personality' that other games do, if that makes sense.

Pontypool, I live not far from there actually. It's a place in South Wales. I have no idea what relevance that has to the movie, but I thought I'd mention it. Look it up on Google Maps. I've never seen Pontypool (the movie, that is), but it sounds a lot like a movie I saw not too long ago called 'Dead Air', which was surprisingly good. Again it's about a few people in a radio station listening to calls coming in about a zombie attack, this time caused by some sort of terrorist viral bomb, though in this one they step outside the station now and then as they try to escape, attempt to rescue loved ones, etc. Good movie, I recommend a viewing.

Lastly, Dragon Age Origins. I seriously couldn't get much past a few hours of that game. The furthest I got was the city with the poisoned King / Prince / Whatever. The combat was so bad and the character interactions so long, that I felt I was playing an interactive movie, with the interactive parts being FMV in style. Point, click, point, click. Sometimes I got to press a few other buttons to do special moves, but at the end of the day it was point, click. And this is from an MMO player who points and clicks an awful lot. The whole thing in DA:O just felt poorly executed and badly designed.

Dude, Bayonetta’s not that bad on the PS3. Maybe your PS is broken or something cause mine takes 30 seconds maximum on the load-times. It sure sucks ass to have the pause screen load 6 seconds, but nowhere near as atrocious as you make it sound… Just bare with it and you’ll have a great game.

Oh and BTW, you want good and hard RPG. Try “Demon’s Souls.” if you make it past the 1st level (the beat it or hate it part) you’ll find a gem. It won lots of Best RPG of 2009 and even a Game of the Year somewhere. Try it. But you have to be a bit masochistic. But I reckon you are.

Oh god yes, a Let's Play of Under A Killing Moon would be fantastic. It's so hokey, yet so amazingly fun.

A quick note on the relentless disc swapping of Under A Killing Moon: Well, we know the game didn't come on 7 CD's, and I know Spoony does, too. It came on four. Actually, if you read the manual, you'll see that they were trying to fit the game on 3 CD's, but it went just SLIGHTLY over that. So instead of trimming the game down, they decided to go with 4 CD's, and — this is almost a verbatum quote from the manual — COPY MORE REDUNDANT FILES ONTO THE CD'S TO REDUCE THE NEED TO SWAP DISCS. Yes! Imagine if they'd gone the other way and kept it on 3 CD's. What a nightmare that would've been.

Also, not only is the chronology of the discs all screwed up as opposed to games like Ripper, I get the feeling that some of the disc swapping was done INTENTIONALLY to fuck with your head. Just at the very start of the game: You pop in CD 1, boot up the game watch the introduction, and are then asked to insert CD 2. And you go, “Holy cow, did the introduction take up a whole disc?” And you go through the game, swapping back and forth between CDs 2, 3 and 4, but you never go back to CD 1 — until the very, very end of the game! I can see the logistics of that thinking from an engineering standpoint, but it just confused the hell out of me when I was a kid.

Conversely, a Let's Play of The Pandora Directive would not be nearly as good an idea, simply because there's too damn much of it. The game branches out so many times into so many different storylines, depending on how you interact with the characters, that simply doing a Let's Play wouldn't do the game justice. It's just one of those games you have to play and replay and replay again before you see all of it – and even then, there are two levels of difficulty, so once you've beaten the game on the Easy play mode, seeing all the seven endings and the vastly differing storylines leading up to those endings, you still haven't seen the extra conversations and the (single) extra room that's on the Hard play mode.

So basically, to do a Let's Play of The Pandora Directive that did the game any kind of justice, you would have to pull up the “That's what COULD have happened…but how about this?” screen an UNGODLY amount of times. Just the first couple of acts, man. Do you apologize to Chelsea, or do you stuff it up and go raging alcoholic on her? Do you let Emily live, or let her get killed by the Black Arrow Killer? Do you let Regan get the better of you, or do you stay loyal to Fitzpatrick? In my life, I've never seen a game with such an intricate branching storyline, and a Let's Play would just be all-as-hell confusing unless you specifically stuck to ONE path/ending.

Anyway. Lot of rambling there. I would sorely welcome an Let's Play Under a Killing Moon. It's a classic, but like all old classics, nostalgia-tinted memories still need a good MST3K-kicking every once in a while. Hell, “This Island Earth” was considered a classic back in the day.

Oh, PS: you should get The Void/Tension off Steam.

It's like 15 dollars.

Imagine Okami but a first person game that combines extreme difficulty and incredible atmosphere. For some reason, I think you might enjoy it.

Bayonetta IS better on the 360… Luckily for me I did the smart thing and actually read up on the differences between the two. Had I known you got the PS3 version I would have warned you to avoid that… yeah, it's THAT bad. Whoever made the port for the PS3 version failed, horribly. Sorry if that ruined your experience for you…

I dont own a 360 so I was forced to play it on PS3 and while the loading time is BAD (couldnt belive the pause needed to load either^^) it seems like it is even worse for you (I am in PAL region) I could skip the logo things in the start and my loading times while they were WAY to long dont seams to be as bad as you make it (I might have more patients^^) the thing I noticed the most is how horrendus the camera angle could get and I find it really hard to dodge when I use Lock On

Oh my, you've not played any Heroes of Might & Magic games after 2? You really should look for Heroes of Might & Magic 3, it's by far the pinnacle of the series, and one of the best turn based strategy games I've ever played, and definitively up there in the top twenty of games with the best replay value.

There's a reason the PS3 version scored lower in Famitsu and EDGE.

Best thing about Pontypool: it’s Canadian. I actually wrote an essay on it for my English class last semester, I completely fell in love with it, so it’s nice to see you Americans getting it down there. You should check out the novel too, though it has nothing to do with the radio show. Apparently the sequel will follow the novel a bit more, so I’ve heard.

Om case your wondering, Pontypool is a real town northeast of Toronto. The author drove through there once and when he read the sign he saw the word ‘typo’ in ‘Pontypool’ and that sparked the whole idea about playing around with language. That’s always why in the movie the word ‘typo’ comes up first.

Okay, now I’m rambled too much… Love your reviews, I’m always happy when you post more.

Anybody who is into these space MMO's should check out Infinity, it is the most ambitious game I've ever seen.

http://www.infinity-universe.com/

Gonna have to add another recommendation for Demon's Souls. Brutal game, but fun as heck.

Seeing LPs of them sounds really great. I also bought those games and recommended them to Spoony (perhaps he read my post?). But I really have a big problem with Under a killing moon (I did not try the others, as I would prefer to play the series in the correct order): I use a Razer Lachesis mouse and the thing seems too fricking fast for the game! I really have big trouble moving around in the 3D environment and sometimes even get nauseous. Does anyone know a work around for this?

Going to have to respectfully disagree with you on Dragon Age there, spoony. I've been watching your videos for a while under the radar and only recently registered on the forums, and as you can see this is my first comment. But don't worry, you won't be getting any heat from me, just some counters to what you've said.

First, I'm glad you like the characters and dialog. I think that's the strongest point in a lot of bioware games. What you said about the skills is true, and I really don't have a counter to kiting other than “don't do it.”

However, playing a mage is widely accepted (because of skills like walking bomb, and the absurd specialization “arcane warrior” that lets mages wear armor and use swords) as playing the game on “easy mode.” If you want a challenge, a sword and shield warrior is the way to go. Or sword and board as I call it. You don't do as much damage as a two hander or attack as quickly as a rogue, and you have to split your skills between Strength, Constitution, and the occasional Dexterity instead of just magic and willpower. And if you want a Templar, then you have to add willpower points as well or else your best ability will do, as you put it, “exactly dick.”

where do cows go for vacations? moo york

That's funny I installed Bayonetta on my 360 an loading was no issue at all. I hated that game for entirely different reasons. The story was so stupid an worse the combat was no fun. They simplified it down to just dodging at the right time so it paused everything an let you get free hits in. For that alone I don't think its fair to say its a difficult game. I was kicking its ass without too much trouble on Normal. Granted I am veteran of Ninja Gaiden which didn't have the easy game breaking time freeze mechanic. And yes Ninja Gaiden 2 boss's are cheap as hell so it ends up not being as good as the first.

Oh fuck yeah Snow Crash. Love that book.
Definitely going to give Pontypool a look though, it sounds awesome.

I registered just to post this:

This guy is probably the dumbest reviewer I've ever seen. I stopped watching it at about 5 minutes because he was complaining that there was a lack of depth to the game. He claimed he felt so underwhelmed by the lack of content, and flow of the game. Yet at the same time he thinks that having multiple character builds (Your captain, your ship, and your bridge officers, all leveled independently, and equipped likewise) was pointless, and didn't do anything. AS a matter of fact, to point out he knows nothing, he claimed the bridge officers were merely aesthetic, and lacked customization. As a matter of fact you can customize names and you may also recruit any of the available star trek species for your bridge officers.

Skill points are all given independently to each of these officers, and you are given different and useful abilities for each of them that quickly become integral (See High Yield Torpedoes!) to your gameplay as you progress more and more. I found it tiresome that he said the game was boring, and it just seemed to me as if he was merely a lazy gamer and not wanting to actually spend the time to understand the game mechanics and how to play. He wanted the classic, “OMG, IMMA FIRIN MAH PHASERS!” type starship and go off and fight 30 Borg cubes. Sorry, the game you want is called Bridge Commander.

I got up to that point and realized, this guy never got past level 11, and never got past the point where the game actually starts to really get interesting and unlocks new ships, gear and abilities all around. In short, the guy is an idiot. I wouldn't waste your time watching this trash.

EDIT: Man, the more I watch of this video, the more revealing this guy gets. He claims he is surprised and disappointed that it's All combat. Hello? Anyone actually read the story?! There's a war on!

I am going to give some points to humanity on this one and say you're a troll. I have trouble believing a person such as yourself actually exists.

Oh, and that one person who liked the comment was me; I meant to hit reply.

I have to agree with you on Dragon Age, and I've beaten it twice (and it is definitely a game that makes you want to beat it again after the first time, trust me). The game's main flaw is the combat, but too that there's…really not that connection to your allies that there is in Baldur's Gate II or whatnot. Too often you end up having to swap people around that will get a massive bug up their butt if you choose an answer they don't like…and it's not always clear what that is. So you end up sideboarding allies a lot, and too often realizing you don't have that same attachment to them like you did Minsc and whatnot.

And yeah, combat is far worse as a warrior: you get a few options to play with, but too often you really want more to do in combat. The abilities more often than not don't make up for this, and leave you feeling shorthanded as a result. With that said it does give a few option on how to play a character, and Reaver is nice for it's highest ability (more damage to you = more damage from you). Maybe the expansion will give more options.

Ultimately it's not a bad game really…it's just not up to par with Bioware's other stuff. I could go into more detail, but on the offhand chance you read all this…well, you've got enough to read.

About Bayonetta:

I did some research before buying it and was well aware that the PS3 PORT (yes, port), was inferior to the 360 release. I read that it was made for the 360, but Sega wanted to port it to the PS3, in which they did, but they did a pretty bad job with frame rate consistency and loading (the game has no HDD installation feature).

I do have to say however, that both you and a good amount of people really exaggerate with how bad it is, then again, that's part of your charm as a reviewer/critic, you blow things out of proportion. Anyway, it could definitely be better and should have been better with the PS3's technology, but what's done is done. I'm biased towards Xbox and refuse to get a 360, but I'm happy enough that what was once intended to be a 360 exclusive actually made its way to the PS3, even if it's inferior. The frame rate has not affected my gameplay whatsoever, and I can deal with the loading times which are in no way as long as you and others make them out to be. They're lengthy, but tolerable enough to play such a fantastic game. With some of the games that you've played and reviewed that must have required immense patience, I'm surprised that the loading times in Bayonetta pissed you off that badly.

As for the music, were you aware that you can play the game with a custom soundtrack from music on your console (maybe even hooking up an external HDD with mp3's)? Try that if you can't stand the games music (I love the game's soundtrack, personally).

Like others have said, indulge in the 360 version if you really want to try the game without any gripes.

Ok now I played the Beta and I have to say, I am rather disappointed. Spoony says it, its just fighting, fighting, fighting, beam down to planet to do some more fighting, click something important to the mission, fighting some more on the ground, beam up and fight a final wave/whatever. It is soooo boring. I can see why people like this, the ship battles are really cool. The ground battles are lacking. I can not point my finger on it but something is missing when fighting on the ground.

According to my friends I am the trekkie that has a problem with this Fighting². For me it just does not feel like I am in a Star Trek universe. I never considered myself as a hardcore trekkie, but when it comes down to it, I am a trekkie nerd. So I find it really amazing when you fight 2-3 waves of enemies, with a group of 4 small cruisers.

For Example yesterday I had a group with 3 other players, we had the mission to hold a system of klingon attacks, there were 3 waves. 1st wave were 4-5 Bird of Preys, which is beatable, I think. Next wave had 3 K't'inga and some Bird of Preys now at that point I would say 4 Small Cruisers are fucked, even if the 4 ships could fight off this wave they would at least be beaten and a lot of the crew would be lost. However there was still a 3rd wave and there were 2 Negh'Var-class battlecruisers and several other ships. Now here comes the Trekkie: How is it possible for 4 small Cruisers to beat 2 Negh'Var Battlecruisers, which may not be the most powerful ships in the universe, but they are by FAR better than 4 Small Cruisers, and if they are not and the Federation Ships have that kind of a punch, why is this god damn war a problem? Just send 3 Sorveign Class ships to Qo'noS and destroy all Shipyards while drinking earl gray and watching the newest edition of Sing along with the Proton. This is so much bothering me that it ruins the game, I can not see past that.

BTW: This makes the Klingons a complete punch of pussies and if later crews of the empire are getting better I really wonder, why the Klingons throw their unexperienced crews deep into Federation space just to get obliterated by unexperienced federation crews in their Small Cruisers of god. I know it is a warriors race, but WTF.

Also there is no excuse not to have other missions than “go there, blast this” (I know there are some missions, but they just felt like Thrown in, the battle missions are much more detailed). For Example, you could get a mission to go to a Planet where an diplomatic incident happend. Now you find out that a Federation Member is going to be arrested, for whatever reason. But he claims to be innocent, so you have to investigate. After you have enough clues (or you think you have engough clues) you can go to the Authorities and proof that he really is innocent. And tada get XP, stuff and shit.

Oh and while I am on it. It is really strange that you are allowed to modify your ship. I assume that every ship differs from other ships, as the engineering teams works differently and the Warp Drive are calibrated for their needs. But that you can drop the Phaser Banks and install Disrupter Cannons is really really really … really strange. I guess this is to appeal the loot whores but what do I know.

I guess for people who are not into trek or people that are into trek but only like the “pew pew pew” episodes can enjoy this game, for me it is just boring and not trek.

Glad to hear that you arent in pain and that your foot is doing good. You are still the man Spoony. Still giving us awesome entertainment after surgery. I shall pledge my undying devotion to ya LOL! Keep up the good work.

Thank you for the birthday present. :)

I borrowed Pontypool (DVD) and the Fellowship Audio CDs at the library with your suggestions. They were both great, but I only listened to some of the Fellowship. I really like the acting in that, and the credits guy said it has Bill Nye. Which is awesome.

I'd love to see a Let's Play of a Tex Murphy game, or even all of them. Sanitarium could get a good Let's Play too.

On the subject of game download services, have you ever tried GameTap? It's a great dea, with over 1000 games, and they have some you can't get anywhere else except something like eBay (The Last Express for example).

Dude you need to play the Tex Murphy games… Yes the CD Swapping is a thing of the Past… And trust me the games are longer than 15 minutes… lol

Also, have a little bit of Patience when playing Adventure games, they aren't meant to be over and done with in a matter of minutes… You just come off as someone with little to no patience when playing adventure games…

If you need help with any of the Tex games come over to http://www.unofficialtexmurphy.com or go to http://home.wideopenwest.com/~hbech/… Either site has tons of info for you… The first site is a Message Board…

About Dragon Age: Origins- Playing as a mage is what will kill your experience. Becoming a tank badass mofo is the most possible under mage. Let me put it to you this way, it is frequently common and very possible to completely beat the game on nightmare mode as a mage. Play as a Rogue, or a warrior. But I say Rogue because as a Rogue I usually get the best experience, I have a useful MC who can attack as well as disable traps and open chests, gaining experience for my party members fairly easily. At the same time, I don't deal that much damage and strategy is key for defeating anything in this game. No battle goes the same for me, nothing ever ends the way.

Also, 53 hours? Everyone says it takes them this long but I've never been dealt the same hand of cards. My longest playthrough was my level 20 Rogue and it took me about 43 hours to completely beat the game, epilogue and all. My second longest was my level 16 and it took me all of 38 hours to get to the final boss, and this one is looking to be shorter. I am having no issue AND I love this game, I'm completely enthralled, and I am always in fear I'll die and I'm always forced to use strategy to defeat every enemy. My friend who's playing a warrior is experiencing the same. Mages are broken dude. Really, really broken. I'm just a fangirl on this end, man.

Thanks for the warning on Bayonetta!

Yo, Spoony, i don't want to be a troll or anything but what about reducing the number of Vlogs and make more reviews on games or movies? I don't want to be a jerk, in fact i'm a big fan of yours and i hope your website just get better and better. But these logs just don't have much fun in them, and certainly is quite a challenge to endure 40 minutes of simple rants and comments on various assets. So, what do you think?

For Dragon Age: What difficulty are you playing? You seem to be doing a lot of AoEs throughout the game. If you go higher than Normal, the gameplay changes and you stop AoEs whenever they're remotely close to your guys (specially the corpse explosion spells since they're uncontrolled walking AoEs).

Suggestion: Beat Mass Effect 1, really get into the story you built through your choices and import your game in Mass Effect 2. I know, everybody says it “Your choices matter blablabla” But seriously… this is the only instance where it actually works beautifully. I gotta tell you, I saw videos before the game was released and I was disappointed that that specific character became “this”… but then in MY game this character is COMPLETELY different (we're talking about Shadow Broker agent to diplomat) So your choices really… REALLY change the sequel's story.

LOL “I killed so many people before breakfast”
“I fought a lot of kilgons and those kilgons are pussies”

Heh, nice 40k reference there. I see what you did there.

Hah, I just watched Pontypool. Damn, I'd even listen to the guy who plays Grant Mazzy recite Vogon poetry.

[yay, doubleposting]

i like his shirt :D

For those of you who agree with Spoony about Star Trek Online, let me direct you to a third-party replacement that almost sounds like it might be better than the real thing. Has anyone ever heard of Sins of a Solar Empire? There is a mod for the Entrenchment Expansion Pack that can be found here: http://www.moddb.com/mods/star-trek-sacrifice-of-angels-2/downloads/sacrifice-of-angels-2-for-original-sins called Star Trek: Sacrifice of Angels 2. Sounds like its own game, right? It is. You can play as Dominion (With Cardassian and Breen allies), Klingon, Federation, Romulan, and my all-time favorite, The BORG! It’s true this mod for that game doesn’t focus so much on story line, but it sure as hell makes use of galaxy management and warfare in a way that this sad game doesn’t. And no, it isn’t MMORPG. It’s an RTS Strategy game. But trust me, it’s worth it.

“Stop, Disc-time!”

And how dare you say the truth about Dragon Age! Well, I really enjoyed it and are in the middle of my third playthrough, but I agree that it can be excruciatingly boring to some extend. The Deep Roads or the part in the Fade are the best examples for it. “Uh…another group of darkspawn? Leliana, scattershot. Shale, Taunt. Wayne, buffs. Leandra (me), Whirlwind.”

Your right Spoony, Pontypool is really good but kinda hard to talk about with making it seem boring or not as good as it is

wow  I somehow missed this vlog :S

Pontypool I found really interesting because it is set in a town in Ontario Canada, which is where I am from. Pontypool actually exists, but during the course of the movie it mentions the neighboring town, which happens to be a Ghost town in Canadian lore, and was said to have been abandoned a long time ago. 

I like that canada is getting more attention from people making movies, like filming Silent Hill outside of Toronto for example. A friend of mine actually just finished filming on a small budget in ottawa for a contest being held in the next few weeks. They were able to close down a highway, get footage inside an abandoned Hospital and much more  with consent from the city  free of charge.  Anyways,  cool to hear you talk about this one :D 

Just saw Pontypool; it’s a throwback to ye olde radio programs like Orson Welle’s live broadcast of “War of the Worlds.”