Pointless Side Cast, Episode 4: The Loganing

It's time for the fourth episode of Pointless Side Cast! For the first time, this episode gathers all five members of Robot Geek's old Some Assembly Required podcast, with Logan Krauss joining John Markley, Jade Kimmel, Nick Nguyen, and Corey Atwood to talk about the highlights and lowlights of E3 2013 amd other topics from the world of video games. Join the gang for important subjects like:

The future of robe technology!

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain!

Logan joining the conversation via a laptop made in the late 1870s!

Shin Megami Tensei IV!

Crushing despair!

Saint's Row 4!

Appalling Kinect-enabled laziness!

Corey trying to talk Nick into eating candle wax!

Struggling in vain to figure out what the hell the deal with Quantum Break is!

Infamous: Second Son!

Tactical horse espionage!

Titanfall!

Nick accidentally gluing his hands to his own face live on the air!

Mirror's Edge 2!

Stonerville, Pennsylvania!

Dead Rising 3!

Captain Kirk's bloodthirsty misogyny!

Halo!

Me singing part of "I Will Wait for You" badly enough to induce the sudden apoptosis of your entire auditory cortex!

Emilio Estevez!

And much, much more.

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Pointless Side Cast Episode 3: Nick's Revenge

The third episode of Pointless Side Cast is here! John Markley, Corey Atwood, and Jade Kimmel are joined by another of their old Robot Geek compatriots, Nick Nguyen, for over an hour of edifying discussion on such subjects as:

The Xbox One reveal!

Marvel Heroes!

Corey's epic battle with his audio input settings!

Call of Duty: Ghost!

Nick's mastery of international finance!

Noncanonical F.E.A.R. expansion packs!

Bruce Dickinson!

The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap!

The waking nightmare that is the PlayStation Network!

Dead Island: Riptide!

Sony's wanton abuse of the word "beta!"

Misogyny of the 23rd century!

Demon Souls!

Corey enters puberty at last!

League of Legends!

Sinister biometric mind-reading!

And much more!

Download it here.

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Because it's been too long since Hitler appeared in a 3DS game: New Releases for the Week of June 9th, 2013

The Last of Us

(PlayStation 3) Third -person action game, set in a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by a plague that turns people into- as is now apparently required by law for games released in the United States- zombies, or some close analogue of them.  The zombies don't really seem to be center stage this time, though, with human antagonists figuring quite prominently

It's from Uncharted developers Naughty Dog, and a lot of the gameplay I've seen- with its combination of cover-based shooting and melee fighting- actually seems reminiscent of that franchise, except that now it's starring the Dead to Rights: Retribution version of Jack Slate in his later years, Sully is a teenage girl, and the plot and characterization don't politely pretend not to notice that the gameplay involves killing large numbers of human beings at ranges short enough to see the terror in their eyes as they die. It looks interesting.

Bugs vs. Tanks! 

(Nintendo 3DS eShop) In the tradition of Plants vs. Zombies, Marvel vs. Capcom, and Konami's critically panned 2011 God of War-inspired beat'em up Roe Vs. Wade, the endless procession of X vs. Y games continues with it's most cruelly unfair match-up yet, Bugs vs. Tanks. The game is most noteworthy for involving Keiji Inafune, who was the character designer and artist for the original Mega Man- the classic character as he appeared in the games, not the obscene, tortured mockery of the human form from the American box art- and one of the driving forces behind the Mega Man series, as well as the producer of the Dead Rising series and some of the Onimusha games.

The story involves a group of World War II-era German panzers that have been shrunk down to a tiny fraction of their normal size , which does even the odds somewhat. How or why this has happened is unclear, though I respect any game that goes with a premise that seems to have been devised by someone who played Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 and said, "This alternate history Second World War just isn't silly enough."

Pointless Side Cast: Episode 2

At long last, it's time for the second thrilling episode of Pointless Side Cast! This is our special PAX East show, which was a reasonably timely subject at the time we recorded it, with our own Cory Atwood giving fellow hosts John Markley and Jade Kimmel his first-hand account of the event.

Get it right here:

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But that's not all. In addition to PAX East, this episode features:

Constant technical problems!

Saint's Row 4!

Saved by the Bell!

The horrors of substance abuse!

Ninja Gaiden!

The wit and wisdom of Cersei Lannister!

DuckTales!

Jade's thrilling day job!

Highly questionable sound quality that stands as a grim testament to the dangers of careless audio normalization!

Corey's constant, not-at-all-gratuitous references to BLASTMAGAZINE.COM!

Aliens: Colonial Marines!

VH1!

The dark necromantic powers of the Xbox!

Tomb Raider!

John singing excerpts from "Holding Out for a Hero" with such conviction you'd swear Bonnie Tyler herself had joined us!

And so much more.

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Tomb Raider: A thorough review by someone who has not actually played it

Tomb Raider was the first game I’ve ever attended a midnight release for, accompanying a friend who was buying the game. It was a disappointingly sedate affair. No one trampled by angry mobs in a mad rush to the counter, no one arriving after they’d sold out and angrily telling the clerks that their refusal to magically conjure more copies of the game into existence has ruined Christmas, no burly die-hard fanboys cosplaying in tiny Lara Croft shorts, no GameStop employees using their hypnotic mind control powers to force people to trade in used games against their will.

(I have it on good authority that the latter does, in fact, happen on a regular basis. Otherwise I’d have to entertain the possibility that the comments section at Kotaku contains a significant number of reactionary hysterics who can’t grasp the idea of people whose preferred trade-offs between money, convenience, and time actually differ from theirs, and that couldn’t be. Perish the thought.)

I’ve not played the game, but I have been present for a playthrough of most of it where I prevented several player deaths with my Molotov cocktail-spotting skills, so I think I can speak with some authority on it. Some thoughts:

He learned almost too late that man is a feeling creature...

I liked the more humanized version of Lara Croft. She gets knocked around a lot and actually seems to feel it, she gets scared of things, she looks filthy for much of the game, she gets physically sick the first time she kills a man, and her chest size in combination with her extreme agility doesn’t require me to assume that she’s a cyborg whose original spinal column has been replaced with carbon nanotubes and titanium to preserve my suspension of disbelief. She has a more interesting personality than the original Lara Croft, though that’s admittedly not the highest of bars; the GameStop bag we carried the game out with and the bottle of Pepsi I drank later that night have won similar accolades.

Oh, the pain, William! The pain!

Croft soaks up a truly impressive amount of abuse in this game. She’s perpetually falling or being thrown off of high places, whacking into and/or being whacked by objects at high speeds, or sliding down near-vertical inclines at velocities that would probably leave a mere mortal needing months of intense physical therapy before they were able to sit in a normal chair again.

And I say this as someone whose standards for what constitutes an “impressive” amount of damage to inflict on a main character is pretty high. I spent quite a bit of time playing Spec Ops: The Line not long ago, a game where protagonist Martin Walker takes several very nasty spills involving damaged skyscrapers and a crashing helicopter and suffers burns that have him looking like an alternate-universe version of Two Face who joined the Army instead of going to law school by the final stages of the game, and I was still struck by how the game puts its heroine through the ringer. On the other hand, Lara Croft never had to walk down a barren desert version of the Sorrow’s river of the dead from Metal Gear Solid 3 (so really not at all like the Sorrow’s river, now that I think about it) while being berated by the Eye of Sauron.

There are some moments where it started to seem a little silly, particularly the part early on where one of her punishingly rapid descents is followed by her stepping into a freaking bear trap. At that point I half-expected anvils to start falling on her head. For the most part, though, it does a nice job of conveying how hellishly arduous the main character’s journey is.

Somebody get this man his own prequel series

Conrad Roth, the captain of the ship Lara Croft and company were on, is a badass and all-round awesome character. He’d be a shoe-in to be my favorite older mentor figure in a third-person action game about an adventurer killing lots of people in gunfights during archaeological investigations, if my heart didn’t already belong to Sully from Uncharted.

I can knock a hundred dollars off that Trucoat!

On the other end of the spectrum, the only thing saving Dr. Whitman from being far and away the most repellant character in the game is the fact that the competition includes a small army of murderous cultists. And unlike the latter, he doesn’t have the excuse of being driven insane by years trapped on an isolated island with nothing but other people who’ve also been driven insane by years trapped on an isolated island for a company. He’s whiny. He’s untrustworthy. He’s both cowardly and stupid, never a good combination. He’s smug and dismissive towards others when he thinks he can get get away with it, unctuous and servile when he doesn’t. The man practically leaves an oil slick in the air when he walks. The fact that he sort of looks like William H. Macy’s character in Fargo with a mustache doesn’t help.

Stormguard don’t surf

You eventually gain access not only to regular burning arrows, but to napalm arrows. This pleases me. It has the dual virtues of being both absurdly over-the-top and oddly realistic, since making homemade napalm isn’t terribly hard.

(Link is for educational purposes only. By clicking it, you agree to indemnify Pointless Side Quest against any damages that occur if you roast yourself alive and then come back as some sort of vengeful fiery ghost.)

Pointless Side Cast: Episode 1

As you may already know if you've been reading this site for a while, there was once, in the mists of prehistory, a British-based videogame website called Robot Geek. In addition to being a writer there, I was part of their occasional podcast, Some Assembly Required. Robot Geek is no more, but I missed the old gang there. And so, I've been working  on bringing that podcast back in some form.

At last, I'm very pleased to announce the first-ever episode of Pointless Side Cast, featuring John Markley, Corey Atwood, and Jade Kimmel.

Now, I should warn you that the sound is not exactly professional quality. And that we'd all been out of the saddle for a while and take some time to start firing on all cylinders again. And that it was recorded a few weeks ago- Superbowl Sunday, in fact- and wasn't exactly on the bleeding edge of the news even then. And that Corey has an utterly filthy mouth. And that some of us were drinking throughout the show. And that the subject of the conversation sometimes wanders a bit. And that I have a weird, annoying voice that sounds sort of like somebody punched the G-Man from Half-Life in the mouth and started giving him amphetamines and barbiturates simultaneously.

Aside from that, though, it's a good show. You can download it here, as well as subscribe to the feed, or scroll to the bottom to play it without soiling your hard drive.

Download this episode (right click and save)

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You can also check out our (very rudimentary as of right now) page at Podbean.

So join us, if you like the sort of writing I do here at Pointless Side Quest and/or listening to three people in various stages of sobriety discussing such topics as:

Exciting new games of 2013!

Crysis 3's multiplayer beta, and how much I suck at it!

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky turning in his grave! (Special thanks to Musopen)

SimCity's new DRM!

The musical stylings of Master Chief!

Devil May Cry and Max Payne 3 fashion Dos and Dont's!

XCOM: Enemy Unknown!

Dolph Lundgren!

The cruel dramatic irony of Corey telling us about how much he's looking forward to the release of Aliens: Colonial Marines!

Chrissy from Growing Pains!

Watchdogs!

Decades of X-Men continuity fully explained in 15 seconds!

Tomb Raider!

Super Bowl XLVII!

Atlelier Ayesha: The Alchemist of Dusk!

The episode of Star Trek that revolved around how horny Spock was!

Shin Megami Tensei, cruelly taunting me once again!

Our impending deaths at the hands of NFL assassins!

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance!

Novel uses for your bathroom!

The Walking Dead, DayZ, and some of the ~400 new zombie-themed games coming out this year!

Star Wars 1313!

Yours truly laboring under the misapprehension that the Superbowl occurs under the auspices of something called "Major League Football!"

And much, much more.

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In the year 20XX...

Hey, everybody, and welcome to another year of Pointless Side Quest!

2012 was a bit of a slow year at the blog- in large part because my grandfather and both of my cats died, so if you have ever so much as contemplated being annoyed by the slow pace of new content here you are officially a horrible, horrible person- but I have higher hopes for 2013.

I'm also inaugurating a brand-new regular feature on Pointless Side Quest that, at the risk of seeming hyperbolic, will be a greater and more important development in the history of video games than Pac-Man, the joystick, Shigeru Miyamoto, ROM cartridges, ENIAC, and the nucleosynthesis of the first silicon atoms in the cores of dying primordial stars, combined. It's not far away, so don't miss it.