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This episode of Destructoid is brought to you by Host Gator. Coming up on Destructoid,
the Playstation Vita finally has a US release date, Harrison Ford plays Uncharted 3, and
Saints Row the Third is somehow more ridiculous than what we thought. All that and much more
heading your way on Destructoid.
Hey there, welcome to Destructoid, I'm Tara Long
And I'm Max Skogel
Happy Wednesday, Max.
Happy Wednesday, everybody- it's Wednesday again.
Yeah!
Happens every week, but we're still excited about it.
I'm always happy, every day of the- ok, let's talk news.
Ok. We've actually got a really good show today. We've got a big new Saints Row preview,
another preschool Kinect game from double-fine that adults will want for themselves; but
the big news right now is a western launch date for Sony's Playstation Vita. The United
States, Canada, Latin America, and Europe will all have access to the Vita on February
22, 2012; that includes the Wi-Fi only model for $250 and the 3G version for $300. Still
no word on the launch titles but we do have a date now, so that's cool. In other ‘Expensive
Sony Products I Wish I Had More Money For' news, they also announced a release date for
that 3D gaming TV that got thrown back at E3.
I remember that.
Yeah; fancy, fancy machine. It'll be available November 13th for $500, and that gets you
the TV, a pair of 3D glasses, an HDMI cable and a copy of Motorstorm Apocalypse, which
actually does look pretty cool in 3D. Its- you know, that's cool, it's a TV, whatever,
no big deal- it has the glasses that you can wear and your friend can wear a pair too and
you can play two player and it literally splits the screen so that both people are saying
different screens-
You're looking at the same screen, and seeing two completely different things.
It's like having TVs inside your eyes. It's really cool.
Yeah.
So that's a neat thing. That's kind of its really cool selling point. Also, you can put
it on your desk in your dorm room- if you have$500. Anyway, that's November 13th for
the TV and February 22nd for the Vita. So stop not paying for stuff that isn't those
things.
You know, Matt, February 22nd is only 4 days before my birthday-
But I already got you that Texas-shaped waffle iron!
Really?
No, I'm kidding.
Oh- well I'd rather have that than a Vita anyway, so please get me that. Also, stash
away a few pennies for Uncharted 3, which is still on track for its November 1st release
date- we kind of seem to be at the point in the game cycle now where Sony is literally
just throwing piles of money at people to speak on behalf of the game, and the latest
celebrity to lend their name for a commercial is Harrison Ford, the original adventureman,
and my personal pick for Hollywood's silver fox- although creepily he looks a lot like
my dad. Anyways, the commercial basically just shows him sitting on a couch, playing
Uncharted 3 for like 6 minutes, and he's kind of reacting to it- but the important thing
to note is he's enjoying himself, you guys. You know, because of all the money he got
paid to sit in front of a camera and play video games for 10 minutes. I guess it's not
all that different than what we do. Or maybe I'm just bitter because I don't have my own
Japanese commercial-
Soon. Sooner or later.
It's the hallmark of success. Japanese television aside, though, Sony did release the official
launch trailer for Uncharted 3 on their YouTube channel a couple days ago- and it looks a
lot like a movie trailer, even down to the cheeky one liners and comic relief. It's an
Uncharted game, though, so, you know, you expect to chase a lot of cars, and punch a
few guys, and look really handsome while you're doing it, not unlike Harrison Ford. Sony's
also announced that there is a season pass plan for the game called The Fortune-Hunters
Club, which for $25 gets you access to the first four of seven planned multiplayer map
packs that they have planned for DLC, as well as three skin packs. Naughty Dog has already
said that they are not planning on creating any single-player DLC for the game, but the
first multiplayer DLC could be available as soon as mid November, so-
Hey, Tara-
Yeah?
If Drake came up to you and tried to kiss you, would you kiss Drake?
Totally, I'd make out with him- I'd put my tongue in his mouth.
Oh, awful, you're dreadful-
Yeah, I know that's gross, I know it's gross, I know.
Yeah, he is a heartthrob though. Anyway, last Friday I got to pay a visit to Doublefine
studios, the guys behind games like Brutal Legend, Stacking, and whatever it was they
changed the name of Trenched to. Most recently their Sesame Street Kinect game, Once Upon
a Monster, convinced me that do want a Kinect, and now they're unveiling another Kinect game
that's actually really fun- it's called Happy Action Theatre and it's a game without rules.
It's like somewhere between a virtual toy and an interactive visualization- very psychedelic-
for instance, it covers your living room floor with molten lava, or, you know, makes you
underwater so you can catch fish- but basically it's a weird- it's just playing with the Kinect.
It's some weird stuff you can do. Tim Schafer was there to talk about how even when video
games are really simplified, like in Sesame Street, they can still be frustrating for
little kids to figure out, so they wanted to make a thing that's, you know, sort of
open ended and fun to play with, which is pretty cool. He also pointed out that it could
be fun for a dorm room full of college kids under the influence of- things- I got a chance
to play a bit of the Happy Action Theatre with our good pal Anthony Carbone, it was
really neat- we kicked a bunch of balloons and I got really sweaty ‘cause we're in
a room, and then I went in the other room and ate corndogs and drank the beer. So thank
you Tim Schafer, you just gave me one more reason that I want a Kinect: so that I can
stomp around my tiny apartment and knock things over and *** off all my neighbors, so-
It actually sounds, and looks kind of Japanese, also; ‘Happy Action Theatre'
A little bit, yeah. I could see that, maybe. It's pretty fun though- I think it's gonna
be something to keep an eye on.
Definitely. So, we usually make it a point not to cover sports games on these shows,
because our producer really likes them and we also- you know, we just like to make him
mad. But, when I saw my Twitter blog this morning after the news broke that EA is remaking
NFL Blitz, I thought that we should probably at least mention it, so here goes. EA confirmed
today that they've been busy developing an HD remake of the popular Midway title NFL
Blitz, set to release on XPLA and PSN in January 2012, for $15. The game will feature the same
set of crazy non-regulation rules as previous games in the series, but with a few modern
updates. For example, you will be able to play 1 on 1 or 2vs 2 if you want now, both
locally or online, and they've added a couple new modes, including a single-player one called
Blitz Gauntlet where you go up against NFL teams with exclusive fantasy character bosses,
which sounds so lame- EGM has the full exclusive on the game, and I have a friendly tip for
you EGM: use a light when you shoot video next time, K? Also, the new Blitz looks like
*** *** according to Zach Meitner, our producer; he says it's not nearly as crazy
as the old game, so-
Well, it's a new modern era.
As long as you can light a guy on fire and punch him in the nuts, I'm a-ok with that.
Speaking of crazy, crazy things- we'll be back in a second to talk about Saints Row
the Third- but first, let's have a word from our sponsors.
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Well, here we are again. As you guys probably know, my two most anticipated games of the
year are Skyrim and Saints Row the Third, and last episode I summarized my 2600 word
Skyrim preview, which you should go read- and then afterwards, a few people ask me why,
or when I was going to be talking about Saints Row the Third-
It's been like 4 days!
Yeah, that's crazy- well, unfortunately the last big Saints Row preview event happened-
like, until they release it- and that was the day after I played Skyrim and it was down
in LA and I didn't get to go- apparently I didn't really miss much, though. I mean, they
were only- they only had pole dancers and, you know, free Saints Flow energy drinks,
and t-shirts that said I Heart Rimjobs, and then Lindsay Lohan showed up and all the gossip
sites talked about her yellow teeth and her possibly bloodstained hands, supporting my
theory that she is in fact an incubus, and I'd also like to point out that she got her
probation revoked this morning and is going back to jail most likely- I feel like THQ's
PR department might have pulled some strings to make it extra exciting.
You didn't really miss much from the sound of it.
So that was all last week, and today Honza put up his full preview of Saints Row the
Third on Destructoid.com- I think he got 6 hours with it- he was let loose on the game
starting from character creation. Now, if you've played any of the Saints Row games,
you just stop paying attention to what I'm saying. Look at her- look at her go. You know
how extensive the character creation is. You can do pretty much whatever you want with
your character's body, and they pushed that further now, apparently. Honza considered
modeling his character after a reviews editor Jim Sterling, but instead fell to his baser
instincts and made a naked Asian chick with big ***-
Oh- that's a good look for him-
See, you can adjust your character's breast or *** size with a sex appeal slider, and
as you can see some of those characters had the sex appeal turned all the way up. So,
after that Honza started the game at his first mission and he got to play through the ill-fated
bank robbery and then the daring sky-diving escape from the syndicate's plane- you can
find both playthroughs of these online. Once on the ground, though, in the new city of
Stillport, Honza's character went to the gun store, bought some guns, and then went to
rob a weapons depot where they got the new Reaper drone, which is a remote-controlled
missile launching baby helicopter, apparently, which is really cool. I use it during my demo,
it's actually really fun- now, back to the character customization, keep in mind it shows
up in like every aspect of the game, this is true with the second one too- but you make
a character, you're like “Oh that's cool!” and then you get to a cut scene and that character
does stuff that you're not controlling, which is a little bit unsettling. So during the
cut scenes, all the characters in the game were taking orders from Honza's naked Asian
trick who happened to be wearing a gigantic Professor Genki foam Japanese cat head- on
top of that, you can change your character's voice, and there are now seven voices to pick
from, one of which is the zombie voice which apparently just makes your person grumble
incoherently, and other characters in the game will react to this. For instance, they'll
talk down to you if you're just “Rworwaorwwaooarwaooo” and they're like “OK, yeah, sure, all right.”
You can also customize the vehicles, like this ridiculous street sweeper of death, which
I want to play with so much. Yeah- you can make a killing machine- that's a rocket powered
street sweeper of death. That's pretty cool. So this is all footage that Volition sent
over to us of all the crazy gameplay footage, so let's- we're gonna take a look at that
for a little bit.
Yeah, let's do it. I actually haven't seen a lot of this yet.
This is actually so offensive.
I think I need to put a big thong on my character, when I make her.
Yeah- I was like, “I'm gonna make it look like me,” but look at- it's so offensive,
and ***, and- look at that ***-
Really admire those jiggle physics, also-
Seriously! I didn't know they were working on that, I thought it was just the Soulcalibur
team who does the jiggle physics that much.
I really feel they put a lot more effort into the physics of genitalia in this game-
I hear that they actually tone it down compared to the early build I saw, apparently- hey-
Naked skydiver!
Naked skydiver.
That's gotta be cold.
Yeah. That's- whoa-
Do not want to do that.
Yeah, so, Saints Row the Third- oh god I want this game- one thing that Honza pointed out
in his preview which you should go read on our website, is there's a radio station that's
all Adult Swim stuff, so it's like Deathklok and Tim and Eric songs and weird *** like
that- which is pretty neat. Here's the trailblazing activity that's a holdover from the second
Saints Row, where you just drive an ATV on fire through stuff, and this looks like most
of the press events we go to.
I think I have that shirt.
Yeah! I'm a Games Journalist!
The worrisome part is they had to get people to actually make those movements.
I'm just mad they didn't ask me to help out. I would be happy to let them mo-cap me staring
at the stripper.
*** the air, yeah?
Yeah, I don't know-
I'm sure you'd be good at it.
It's going to be a dirty game. I want it.
So, Saints Row the Third. There you have it. Before you go, as you may have already seen
on our Twitter feed, we now have an Android app. There's been Destructoid apps before,
but this one is just exclusively for the show- you can watch any episode you want on the
go whether you're on a phone or a tablet- pretty soon you'll be able to actually watch
our lives shows on there which is really cool. So, big shout out and thank you to Evan at
Revision 3 who built the app for us with his bare hands- good job putting it on the Android
market because it's totally free.
Yeah, check that out. That's kind of rad, that sort of legitimizes us one step further.
Also, a quick programming note. We'll be back on Friday at 3:30 PM Pacific Time for another
live show, but it's going to be a little bit different this week. I actually won't be here
because I'll be attending Blizcon and fighting the crowds of sweaty nerds, but you will be
here with Anthony Carbone doing God knows what-
We're going to be doing some things. You never know what- some fun things, probably. We're
going to probably be talking about news a little bit, but we're also going to be playing
a game. It's going to be sort of like- you know, Don't Tell Mom the Babysitters Dead,
but with us-
Do you know what game you're playing yet?
Let's leave it a secret- it'll be entertaining to watch, put it that way.
Ok, so watch that on Friday, and as for Blizcon, expect to see our coverage popping up over
the weekend on this YouTube channel. I've got some hands-on time and an interview scheduled
for Diablo 3 so far, so if you want me to talk about something specific or you have
something that you want me to ask in an interview, head over to our Facebook page at Facebook.com/DTOIDSHOW
and leave your suggestions there and I will read them tonight before bed.
Excellent.
Excellent- alright, Destructoid is go.
That's our show for the night. See you guys.