The Rumble Pack

Rumor has it that if you listen to our spooktacular Halloween episode the ghost of Ooey Booey will kill you with bad special effects. Muah ha ha haaaa!

 Justin, Tom, Nick and Kaz meet in the digital world to bring you their thoughts on video games this week. Nick and Tom talk about the fun they’ve had with Zack and Wiki. Kaz talks about why everyone was right about Lair. While Justin gives his opinion on more handheld titles and some “interesting” arcade games. In the second segment Nick, Tom and Kaz go to town on Guitar Hero III, which leads, inexorably, to a Rock Band versus Guitar Hero discussion. Then the gang contemplates Nintendo’s Wii getting marketplace penetration in China (marketing speak guaranteed to get you an M rating, Wii? Penetration?). Then the news rundown rounds out a spooky episode. Boo! Headshot!

 

 Episode 18: Redemption [90:49m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

“Hello.”

“How are you?”

“I’m fine, thank you, and you?”

As an English teacher at the Hutchin English School, I hear this exchange roughly 100 times a day, maybe more. It really doesn’t get much more difficult than that. I just wish I had this knowledge a few months ago. Before making the trek across the globe, my biggest concern was the teaching. As a total introvert (borderline hermit), I’ve always had a difficult time speaking in front of large groups, and although I knew I would be dealing with little kids, I still had reservations. When my students’ parents are paying considerable sums for my expertise, I don’t want to disappoint. Luckily, the curriculum has turned out to be much more structured than I had been led to believe, and the awkwardness of standing in front of a pack of noisy, nose-picking children has subsided.

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The full cast makes a triumphant, somewhat distorted, return! Tom, Nick, Justin and Kaz belt out what they have had stuck in their trays this week. Including but not limited to: Warhawk, more Resistance, Final Fantasy Tactics, Breath of Fire II (for the last time?), Brain Age 2, Guitar Hero III Demo and Looney Tunes: Duck Amok. Justin and Nick ponder the fate of Street Fighter IV and its implications while Kaz and Tom fret for the latest guitar offering. Septembers rip roaring NPDs make an appearance and no one can explain the Wii’s sales. The shows ends with a rundown of all the obscure game news we could find and a tired crew. Round 1, FIGHT!

 

 Episode 17: Guitar Zero III? [90:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Shijiazhuang might not have much to offer tourists, but it does have a handful of mountains, including Baoduzhai. This apparently translates into “Baby Made of Corn” or something to that effect, though I don’t see the resemblance. It’s quite a hike (4,000 steps), but once you get up to the top, several temples and Buddhist statues await. Below are some of the sights along the way (The two ladies in some of the photos are my teaching assistants, Ashley and Sophia).

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All four casters unite again for a brief period of time. The opening segment finds Nick, Tom and Kaz discussing more “Breath of Fire II moments in translation brilliance”. Once that’s over with they discuss Nick’s purchase of a PS3, and all the demos that they could get their hands on. Kaz finds Metroid Prime 3 not to his liking and Tom got tricked into playing the Conan demo on the PS3. Justin phones in from China for a relatively distorted conversation, he weighs in on the WiiWare and some of the Smash updates. The news finds Nick having and nerdgasm over the confirmed inclusion of his favorite character in his favorite game, and the discussion of the shocking Bioware and Pandemic sellout. Showing the huge difference in third party mentality in the US versus Japan. Order up a Donkey Burger for this one!

 

 Episode 16: Super Sonic Brawl! [68:05m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

After a month of trying to teach second graders the difference between “put away your book” and “take out your book” (we’re not quite there yet), I was certainly ready for a few days off. Unfortunately, when the Chinese National Holiday kicked off last week, I had a little paperwork to take fill out. Due to the huge backup of U.S. passport applications, I wasn’t able to get the necessary worker visa required for a year-long stay here. Ordinarily, it just takes a routine trip to the Shijiazhuang police station to straighten things out, but for whatever reason, my case was “special” and warranted a trip to Hong Kong. Though I wasn’t pleased about having a trip forced upon me so soon (we won’t receive our first paycheck until this upcoming Monday, so my budget was pretty meager), I decided to make the most of an initially unwanted opportunity.

Luckily, the actual business part of the trip was stress-free. Despite the long journey and expenses, I was able to complete all of my forms and drop off my passport within an hour. This left plenty of time on that first day to walk around the city. Compared to Shijiazhuang, Hong Kong is a sprawling metropolis, with tons of tourist hot spots and exciting night clubs (that I naturally ignored). It’s much like the difference between Cleveland and New York in that while both are technically cities, only one of them “never sleeps.” And in both comparisons, I’d take the quieter, less hectic cities over their hustle-and-bustle competition, at least for long durations of time.

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At first I thought the title of the game was a utilitarian way of describing the game as a rudimentary dual stick shooter that was made for the working man.

After playing it, however, the title appears to be creator Jonathan Mak’s way of telling everyone he does drugs every damn day.

He describes this “game” as an album of games that examines “the expressive power of abstract shooters.” Which isn’t helping his case; were you to play his game and have him standing behind you as you groove to the abstract guitar noises and tell you about the expressive powers the game had…you would most certainly know he was on heroin. Read more

This week features the whole cast for the first time in a while, well, for the first 15 minutes at least. Justin phones in from China to relay how he’s been faring in gaming and otherwise. After that Nick, Tom and Kaz go on to discuss all the gaming they have been doing, including Nick’s personal struggle with torturous old school RPGs and the like, Tom’s portable fun times and Kaz’s foray into actually using a Wii. All that and we discuss Halo 3 as a group now that we’ve finally played some local matches. After the break: we go in depth on what G4 TV really seems like to us, what they do right and what they do wrong (mostly wrong). After that rant we dive straight into the news at break neck speed, it’s a race to the finish this week!

 

 Episode 15: Halo + Beers = Good [78:26m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Note: I experienced all Half Life 2 and Orange Box titles via a gaming PC and Steam. Opinions may vary based on the quality of the version being played.

The first reason that I would list for wanting to purchase The Orange Box is the last component I ended up playing. I went after Portal almost immediately, in spite of the game being an afterthought in the package. Then I transitioned to Team Fortress 2 having played a lot of the beta on my steam preorder. Finally I got around to cracking into Episode 2.

As a testament to its fantastic quality I beat the game in two sittings. For my own record I refer to these parts by two different names: Part 1, “The really good part” and Part 2, “The effing mind-blowing portion”. No amount of telling myself to stand up and walk away from the monitor could tear me away. Especially once I had gotten into the really effing mind-blowing portions. Read more

Warning: Some people may consider seeing screens of a puzzle game spoilers, I do not think this simple puzzle ruins anything, but if you are spoiler sensitive then you might want to play Portal before you read this review.

How do you get that box onto the switch in the center of the room? With Portals of course! Read more