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Thanks for the support and we’ll see you next week!

William Milby and Brittney Brombacher.

You'll get it.

Since we had technology troubles on 23.5, we got together again to do episode 24 proper justice. On this episode, we cut out the news and extras and get right into an hour of round table. This week, we’re talking:

• Negativity in MMOs,
• Used game sales, who’s to blame?
• Half-MMOs

The show came out great and is wonderfully tangential. We use our topics as a launching point and expand, but, hey, we bring it back around, I think.

Oh, and links. Got to have links:

• Hunter’s Insight – Read it!
• Upshift Strike Racer – Play it!
• MMOV Podcast – Hear it!

We’re trying a new topic format, so let us know what you think! Also, big kudos to Ferrel for editing. It’s a bigger job than you’d think and he’s doing great with it.

Long time no see! I know, it’s been too long, but we’re back.  This episode actually demonstrates some of the technological issues we’ve been running into trying out new recorders. Unfortunately, Ferrel echoes throughout; however, the content itself was too good not to share — hence, 23.5 and not 24.

We talk about lots of stuff on this episode: the Neverwinter MMO, the LotRO cash shop, EQ Next, raiding, and more. Enjoy!

Centurion Quintus Dias (Michael Fassbender) survives a brutal attack by the Picts and makes his way to the legendary Ninth Legion, who then set out to eradicate the Picts once and for all. Unfortunately the Picts ambush the Ninth and decimate them, capturing their leader General Titus Virilus (Dominic West) and leaving a small band of legionnaires including Dias to escape back to Roman fortifications. Dias and his small band play a cat and mouse game with the pursuing Pict battalion led by Etain (Olga Kurylenko).

Marshall’s films all have one thing in common, that being he knows how to make realistic looking action scenes. Centurion is no different, featuring some excellent and explicitly gory action sequences depicted on film. Unfortunately Centurion doesn’t have much else going for it.

The acting is serviceable, although nothing to write home about. The action scenes despite having excellent craft behind them are devoid of any tension. In fact the whole film is devoid of any tension. The ending is really never in doubt aside and aside from one small side step over the last third of the film it stays on script for the typical chase film it is. Some of this would actually be passable if the film as a whole wasn’t mind numbingly boring. It is rare that a movie of this type had me completely disengaged but Centurion managed to actually make my eyelids heavy.

When Centurion is combined with Marshall’s last film, Doomsday, it indicates something of a downward slope for a director I once thought had immense upside. He still has the skills needed to create excellent films but he needs find his writing touch again and get back to the basics of telling a good solid tale with strong tense moments.

2 out of 5.

Halo clip mentioned in show is available here.

Music in this episode:
Strike of the Devil’s Axes OC ReMix by CarboHydroM & LuIzA
The Forerunner Mix (Gamma) by Nick Singer
Samus’s Lonesome Waltz by blackguitar

E-mail comments (or questions) to pefectlysane@vagary.tv or follow us on Twitter and send them there.

Tony Odett – iamnapoleon1066
Jeff Derrickson – JustSomeDude899
Cyrus Fayazi – FozzyTehGamer
Chris Scott – kariyanine

Would you like to have a new segment called Fozzy Goes to Time Out?

Anyway, back to the podcast, we are cram packed full of two weeks worth of news from Gamescom and of course reader mail and the like. plus a big fifteen minutes section on Red Dead Redemption at the beginning of the podcast, so beware of massive *****SPOILERS*****, I repeat, *****MASSIVE SPOILERS*****. This is also the very first episode with only two people on the cast. Just good ole’ Britt and myself Beez. Make sure to send us plenty of readermail for the next episode, we could really use it. Not to mention some positive reviews on iTunes. And yes, I realize I accidentally say episode 31…

Thanks for listening and bon appetit!

William Milby and Brittney Brombacher

You'll get it in a bit…

Call of Duty, for example, is annually criticized for being “too short”, and while some might argue that Soap & Co.´s war-adventure is lacking in length, I respectfully disagree.

Take Borat, which in my eyes is a work of pure genius, both in terms of comedy and social commentary. Borat, as good as it might be, lasts only about one hour and twenty minutes, yet in that time, the film has said everything it needs to say perfectly well.

To name a video game example, the recent Alan Wake took me about eight hours to complete. Those eight hours had consisted predominantly of running through the woods while aiming my flashlight.

And I found Alan Wake to be an amazing game, as running through said woods with said flashlight was an experience I´ll look back on with fondness.

I never felt the game was repetitive. But had the game lasted twenty hours, that might not have been the case.

I´m not saying all good games need not be longer than a demo, what I´m saying is that the elements of a game should fit the length. Alan Wake´s gameplay lacks the depth to support a 70-hour game, just as the story lacks the complexity to support something that long. Mass Effect 2, on the other hand, has story and gameplay perfectly fitting it´s 35-hour length.

That does not necessarily mean Mass Effect 2 is “better” because it can support a longer game, it just means it´s different in style.

For example, I found GTA IV to be a little too long. The game was brilliant, sure, but I must say I felt Rockstar´s supposed “masterpiece” dragged in places. The story was engaging, but did not have enough to say to warrant the 30-or-so hours of game time, and the same “enter room-shoot everyone” combat started to lose it´s edge towards the game´s end. The length of GTA IV, was out of balance with the experience of GTA IV.

So when you feel the credits screen in CoD: Black Ops makes it´s appearance too quickly, ask yourself:

Would this game really be enjoyable for another five hours?

If there was one option I would have pleaded with Bioware to include in The Old Republic, it would have been space flight. Luckily, a couple of weeks ago now, they obliged. Fanboys and girls “Squee’d” loudly. For me, it was hopes beyond my wildest dreams that we would be seeing fighting similar to that of “X-Wing vs. Tie Figher,” or even Star Wars Galaxies: Jump to Light Speed expansion. I even have my joystick ready to go. Speculation from all of the blog sites was about the same as what I was thinking. The game that was shaping up to be Epic in its own right, was now even more grand. That was until a few days later.

News started trickling out of the blog-o-sphere about a translation that was done on an upcoming PC gaming article about the space flight in TOR. With this news came a bit of sour news: TOR’s space fighting would be a rail shooter similar to the game Star Fox. This was not what most of us wanted to hear. I know that I did not want space to be this way. Space and space battles are such a huge part of Star Wars that it almost seems like a stab in the back to include it as a mini-game. Then, though, Bioware had to throw in a curveball. They released a video depicting what the space combat would look like:

And of course, they had to make it epic! While I, and many others, are still very upset about the lack of open-ended space battles and exploration, this video puts the news into a whole new light. It may not be Star Wars: Battlefront or any of the earlier mentioned titles, but it’s a start. With a space system in game from the start, there is also hope for it being expanded upon in the future. I truly hope that this is the case. I would love to be able to hook up my joystick again and get into PvP dogfights with other players. I’m not a PvP fan by any stretch normally, but the fact that I could be doing it in space gets me just a little giddy. Yes, I said giddy.

Right now, there isn’t a whole lot of other information about the space flight in the game other than what we’ve already read and seen, but Bioware is giving us little snippets to keep interest up. This comes in the form of announcing the first two ships, of six, that we will encounter in this space battles. So, I leave you this week with a picture of the Republic Defender, which as it sounds, is a Republic defense cruiser, and also the Fury, which appears to be a spiritual predecessor to the Tie Interceptor or Tie Fighter. Drool away!