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The Comic Conspiracy — Episode 80 (2012-10-22)
We continue our coverage of news from NYCC 2012, including Superman vs New 52 Superman, Snyder’s Man of Steel, costume changes, Joe Mad back on Battle Chasers, Guardians of the Galaxy vs the Green Lantern Corps, David Goyer’s DC event comic, Bendis/McNiven’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Team 7, Alternative Press Expo 2012, Walking Dead and Arrow numbers, and some Random Picks of the Week! Starring Ryan Higgins, Bryce Larsen, Brock Sager, Toby Sidler, and Charlie West.
Running Time: 1h 09m 36s
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POP QUIZ, HOTSHOTTTTTS.
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Good Job, Brain! #34: ALL QUIZ BONANZA! #7 (2012-10-22)
Get out your sandpaper, because this one’s for the quiz buffs! So many individual quiz segments. Karen rounds up her favorite film scores for a special music quiz, Chris grills us on burgers, Colin’s got travel on the mind, and Dana describes dancing diddies. ALSO: the best punctuation mark, license plates, and brain anagram puzzles. Starring Karen Chu, Colin Felton, Dana Nelson, and Chris Kohler.
Running Time: 39m 18s
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I missed this week’s show, but stay tuned for next week’s Lost Boys commentary. Go pick up your DVD or Blu-ray copy if you haven’t done so already!
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The Comedy Button — Episode 51 (2012-10-19)
Max shares a whole book of raccoon facts, while Anthony and Brian talk about the joys of moving furniture. Brian also met Anthony’s father (and his car full of weapons), we talk about how retarded Star Wars is, and bemoan our lack of cool Lego toys. Also: We don’t know what car engines do, but we ran across a crackhead a capella group and a few homeless people on the local awful commuter train. And, your mail is still terrible. Starring Scott Bromley, Brian Altano, Anthony Gallegos, and Max Scoville.
Running Time: 59m 39s
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Our three-man nerdcast sounds off on the Doctor Who mid-season finale, and talks about big dumb video game sporting events. Enjoy, and don’t forget to vote for us in the 2012 Stitcher Awards!
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The Geekbox — Episode 190 (2012-10-16)
Wherein we discuss rap battles, Doctor Who’s mid-season finale, the future of Agent Coulson, Argo, James Bond, the Star Trek holodeck, eSports, the League of Legends Season 2 world championships, Carnage Heart EXA, Harvest Moon in World of Warcraft, Friday the 13th for the NES, and The Unfinished Swan. Starring Ryan Scott, Adam Fitch, and Ryan Higgins.
Running Time: 1h 1m 27s
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This week, the Good Job, Brain! cast settles in for some real-life Office Space.
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Good Job, Brain! — Episode 33: Have You Seen My Stapler? (2012-10-15)
Let’s spend a day at the office! We find out how the modern office cubicle came into being, the shockingly old history behind the vending machine, office movie trivia, coffee breaks, and the not-so-nice origin of Scotch tape. ALSO: secrets to identifying major African nations, science quiz, the world’s fastest clown, and a very special listener challenge! Starring Karen Chu, Colin Felton, Dana Nelson, and Chris Kohler.
Running Time: 46m 14s
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The Comic Conspiracy — Episode 79 (2012-10-15)
More news this week than we can fit into one episode, so we put it in two! This week, we discuss Uncanny Avengers #1, Batman #13, Ant-Man gets a release date, Coulson lives!, new DC cancellations, DC’s new space books, Cartoon Network being the worst TV station on Earth, Superior Spider-Man, and the Walking Dead Season 3 premiere. Starring Ryan Higgins, Omar Brodrick, Brock Sager, Toby Sidler, and Charlie West.
Running Time: 1h 11m 36s
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Dishonored
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Developer: Arkane Studios
Platforms: PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 (October 9, 2012)
Genre: Stealth action
Official Website: Dishonored.com
Reviewed By: Eric Neigher and David Wolinsky
Eric Neigher, Savage Gypsy Lover: Despite my strong connection to Klingon value systems, I still spent some time playing Dishonored this weekend. One thing I liked about it is that the title really describes what the core of the plot is about. One thing I didn’t like about it was that the plot is pretty dumb, otherwise. What pros and/or cons jumped out to you right away, David?
David Wolinsky, Putting The “Ass In” In “Assassin”: I like how your opening paragraph reads like a third grader wrote it, Eric. It’s a nice change of pace from your usual Dennis Miller-ish obscure references and Latin expressions. All teasing aside, I am largely underwhelmed. I get the sense that a ton of time went into the world and mythology, instead of making a great and polished game. It’s akin to fussing over the perfect font to use for your screenplay… and then slapping the whole story together during your flight into Hollywood to “make it.” Only here, the reverse is true.
No amount of narrative tap-dancing can hide the fact that this is another generic first-person shooter with so-called moral choices, the decision to play stealthily or violently, and blah blah blah. We’ve seen this before. This is Assassin’s Creed as an FPS, only without the Animus, without the parkour, and without the learning.
I wish Dishonored were more successful at the things it tried to do, and followed those sketched-out thoughts and turned them into complete sentences. The interesting stuff, to me, is how your choices affect the world in a slightly more sophisticated way than what we saw in games like Infamous: If you kill a lot of people here, it ripples out: The more you murder, the more the rats pile up, the more the plague spreads, and the less help you get from non-player characters and such. Or at least, I would imagine.
So where did you find Dishonored to be honorable in its execution?
Eric: Well, I agree on the retread part. Dishonored feels like a mishmash of other games reshuffled into something that Gamers-Will-Love (TM). I also really don’t care for the art — particularly the character models. They all have extremely elongated arms and fingers, and tiny lower bodies. If you want a game to convey a sense of gritty realism (as Dishonored clearly attempts to do), don’t give me characters that look like Gargamel had Gumby’s baby. Actually, is Gumby a guy or a girl?
Anyway, the mechanics are heavily reminiscent of the old Thief series. Those games, too, were first-person, took place in a similar sort of Steampunk-ish world, and gave players a variety of lethal and non-lethal paths to accomplish their goals. It also had a lot of back story — but unlike Dishonored, it didn’t go the clumsy Elder Scrolls route of just throwing in tons of text in the form of in-game books. Developers have no excuse for making us put up with boring blocks of text in a game: if they wanted to disclose lore, they should have done it through implication, dialogue, or at least voiceover narration of text. Hell, games like Dark Souls and Shadow of the Colossus hardly say anything to you at all, but convey a sense of storyline through little snippets of dialogue, graphical cues, and item descriptions. Dishonored just makes you read a lot.
OK, I know — I was supposed to talk about how the game is “honorable.” That would require a discussion of what it means to be honorable, which is a big deal and more than you or I or this little review can handle. I will say that I greatly appreciate Dishonorable’s many PC-friendly options. You can tweak the graphics for much more than mere brightness: field of view range, anti-aliasing, and even whether or not the rats should have shadows, are all highly customizable. You can easily remap the controls, and with a few tweaks to .ini files, you can delve even deeper. I appreciate developer Arkane Studios giving PC gamers more than a crappy barebones port, unlike many of its competitors.
David: Well, these guys aren’t the only ones guilty of making players read a ton — Bionic Commando’s reboot did this as well. And don’t even get me started on Reading for Dummies: The Game. Anyway. I basically embarked upon the path of being a murderer, because I misunderstood something in the tutorial and figured, hey, let’s just see where this goes. I usually opt to play the “good guy” in these games, but because I opted for the harder difficulty, it was tough going. You’re very vulnerable to damage, and although the enemies do the usual “Fisher, where are you? I just heard something over here. I bet it’s Fisher!” thing straight out of Splinter Cell, they have the uncanny ability to just zero in on you no matter where you are.
In all, I think Dishonored is just another game that tries way too many things and pulls in too many directions. A lot of games do this now, and it’s become something of a trend, but here’s what it all boils down to: Was it fun? Did the act of stalking on your prey feel exciting? I could take it or leave it on the whole. It’s somewhat interesting, but ultimately I’m nonplussed (and it plays just fine on the Xbox 360, thanks for asking).
Eric: Yeah, I’m playing on wussy normal difficulty, so I feel like a big man, but I agree — it’s really hard to avoid killing people (also, because I’m a murderous psychopath in real life). I wouldn’t say Dishonored isn’t fun; it has its moments, and the approach to wide-open puzzle solving in fixed areas is kinda like taking Portal to its umpteenth level of complexity, so that’s nice. But because the story fails to compel you, and because so many of the aspects feel so derivative, the game falls pretty flat, in my view. As you said, not bad… but I’m not going to sacrifice too much Borderlands 2 or XCOM: Enemy Unknown time to see how this one ends.
FINAL SCORE: 559 out of 860 disease-infested rats
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