Joystiq Podcast 118 - Big Country edition

Jesus christ, Justin, I think I almost died I laughed so much at that


Put a warning before posting something so funny.

Ludwig doesn't do it for ya? Weirdo.

This is why I love Joystiq. Come for the steaming hot scoops of news, stay for the steaming hot piles of comments.

If you want to hear 50 cent in MW2 he does one of the operatives voices in the "Terminal" Spec Ops mode. Load it up and just shot your partner, reload, etc and you'll hear the 50 cent goodness.

Only Ludwig ever says "What a twist!"

Is it a Robot Chicken reference or does the joke go much deeper?

BRUSH WITH FAMEEEEEE

I don't really understand the complaints on L4D2 in this podcast. I mean, I wasn't great at L4D1 or anything, always played it on advanced, never bothered with expert. And going into L4D2 on normal, it was pretty easy. Me and my friends blew through the campaigns, like dark carnival, in about an hour each, which is about the same as L4D1. I don't understand how you guys can find it hard, or even to the point where you drop it down to easy just to win. That seems pretty ridiculous.

Chris, MW2 is actually 59.99$ here in Canada, at least in Quebec.

Justin is surprised how toned Chris is and Ludwig is giving us the People's Eyebrow

So they are referring to... when a plot jumps the shark, so to speak?

concerning Left 4 Dead 2........

It's weird, me and a friend both find that L4D2 is much easier on Advanced than Normal. Not sure why. (other than friendly fire)


L4D2 plays a little differently than L4D. It's a little more frantic and you have to be more mobile.

Wow, this is the first time I've drastically disagreed with you guys. Your commentary on L4D2 was so over-the-top negative and hyperbolic. I can understand if you didn't like it, the you didn't like it, but damn... You are hugely mischaracterizing fans of the game as being primarily hardcore. I've never enjoyed playing L4D on expert (or usually even advanced), nor do I consider myself particularly good at FPS games, but it's *really* not that hard. To call it an "absolute failure" is ridiculous.

Good times playing with you guys. =3

omg ludwig, I used to think your taste in video games was questionable (farcry 2 is bad and fallout 3 is awesome) but you have redeemed yourself, sir. DAO and AC2 are my GOTYs for sure - it is very close so I can't choose.

Chris asked for stories about finding people on facebook connect. I have yet to find a single person through the feature, I've got like 200 facebook friends, some of whom I know have 360's, but not a single person showed up on the facebook connect feature.

I was thinking one or two people would set it up first day from my list but as of now, still nobody I know has set it up other than my self and 4 people who were already in my xbox friends list before the patch.

Maybe Microsoft should advertise the feature in the main menus...

This podcast would have been perfect without the excessive complaining about Left 4 Dead 2, even though I personally don't enjoy those games, it was just too much.
Also CheapyD sounds like Vin Diesel or something, it kind of bothered me.
More Dragon Age:Origins talk is welcome though, Chris you must play it!

ok, so i just scanned the entire comment thread looking for ALL the people that hate left 4 dead 2 and I can't find them. can't really find them on google either. WTF are you talking about chris? and what's with the extreme whine session? i haven't played the game, so I can't speak for myself. i loved the first one.

i generally trust joystiq to give me a good idea about a game, but the guys just don't seem to be on the same page as anyone else on the 'net... what gives? fellow commenters? is it as bad as chris's ultra-rant makes it sound?

I'm just blown away that these guys had such a hard time with L4D2 on normal. Honestly, I would absolutely LOVE to see these guys play. They're doing something wrong. That's the only conclusion I can come to. Are they not playing well enough as a team? Are they moving too slow through the levels? Are they trying to kill every single zombie in an area before moving on? There's got to be something. I'm sorry, but this game really isn't that hard, even if you've never played it before. They talk about how perfect the AI director was in the first one. Aside from the dynamic paths and whether affects, the AI director seems virtually identical to me. The keep mentioning how hard the final level is. The final level on dark carnival has almost the EXACT same structure as every final level of the original left 4 dead. Zombies-tank-zombies-tank-rescue. They also keep mentioning how many people agree with them on twitter or whatever. I honestly haven't ran across that at all. Go to Google and type in "Left 4 Dead 2 too hard". Nothing comes up. No ones really talking about that. As they've admitted, they're the only reviewers to even mention it in their review. Now I admit, I'm not one to judge an entire site based on one review (after all, I hated Metal Gear Solid), but it blows my mind to think that so many people on Joystiq he played with had such a difficult time with this game. Please play it one more time Joystiq and post a video of it. I gotta see what's going on.

Your comments about Left 4 Dead 2 are absolutely unfathomable to me, and do a grave disservice to a game that improves on the original in almost every respect.

I own the game on both Xbox 360 and PC, as I did the original, and the differences between them in terms of how they play (leaving aside how they look) are negligible. I can only assume you are doing something horribly wrong, or that you have a different version of the game to everyone else. The games play and feel perfectly comparable. The console controls are the same as they were in the original game, which you claim to have been able to play with no great difficulty.

[One note in this regard: neither L4D uses "autoaim" on the console to steer or sticky your reticle the way the other big titles (notably Halo and CoD) do, albeit in usually imperceptible ways. However, the 360 version of both Left 4 Dead games uses considerably looser hit detection to compensate for the use of a controller (i.e. if you aim "close enough" to the head, it counts it as a headshot). I have played both versions of the game extensively over the past week, and they play and feel near identical, apart from the obvious adjustment in control scheme. If anything, the 360 version feels slightly easier to me because of the hit detection (although it becomes harder in Realism, where landing precise headshots becomes more important).]

Certainly the game on the whole has become more difficult (largely due to the introduction of melee fatigue and the various new specials to Campaign, which force players to adapt to new tactics that don't involve sitting in a corner spamming the melee button), but this is mainly at the upper end (Advanced Realism, Expert, Expert Realism). The game on Easy is still a cakewalk. I got the achievement for carrying a gnome through Dark Carnival in Normal singleplayer (i.e. with three bots), bunnyhopping all the way, while taking a phone call. And I am by no means a hardcore player.

Every one I have spoken to is frankly baffled by your review, and by your remarks. Without wanting to sound patronizing, you must have failed in some fundamental regard to understand the game and its mechanics.

wheres this weeks episode?

how dare you not release this free product regularly, I demand retribution

(Secret) Oil Tanker attacked by pirates?
Ludwig mauled by Lions in the back yard?
Justin lost in 16th century Italy?
Chris Grant locked in high-level important executive meetings?

Where's my damn Podcast?

2/3 of the podcast is American, which means they were probably celebrating Thanksgiving. Ludwig, though...he should do a one-man podcast. Although who will set him up for puns?

I just love 𝓿𝓲𝓭𝓮𝓸 𝓰𝓪𝓶𝓮𝓼