
When Todd asked me to edit this week’s podcast on account of him being in Sweden, I told him I was going to ditch the usual music and replace it with one of the many excellent songs that makes up Pearl Jam’s fantastic catalog. He was, in a word, uncomfortable with this. I’m not sure if he thought that Eddie would sue us or if Jeff Ament would kick down his door and punch his kids in the face, but whatever the case, I didn’t want to push it. Instead I went with the usual music rather than bring the show in on the heels of a truly spectacular Mike McCready guitar solo. I mean, I personally can’t think of a better way to end the show than with Yellow Ledbetter, but it’s best not make one’s producer uncomfortable.
I can, however, post whatever the heck I want for this podcast post, hence the above video. Backspacer is filled with a number of touching songs and Just Breathe is one of them. I was going to go with The Fixer because it’s an absolutely awesome song, but I’m feeling mellow today, hence this one.
Oh right, the podcast…
Tom Chick joined us this week to talk about his decision to review games solely for Quarter to Three. That kind of naturally led us into a discusson on the various changes recently taking place within games journalism, which I was concerned would be a little too inside baseball-y but I think we managed to handle it well enough. From there we were kind of all over the place, touching on the Amalur demo, the shitty Saints Row: The Third DLC, Scary Girl, Darkness 2, Mage Knight and probably other things that I can’t remember right now. I, personally, am still struggling with trying to keep the bouncing between topics sounding natural and I know I’m not doing as well as I could be, but it’s still fairly new for all of us. As with most things, I blame Todd. At any rate, here’s the show:
I can’t get the embedded feed to work on account of me being a moron, so instead, here’s a totally badass version of Yellow Ledbetter.

I tried to like it but good Lord that is a hideously ugly game. Just could not get past the WoW art.
OTOH, I love the art. Personally I hate games that sacrifice style for realism. I don’t play WOW, so I don’t make that connection. I thought of it as a more stylised version of the Torchlight art style. To each their own as they say.
I liked it too. Yeah, it’s definitely Blizzard influenced, but the game has a very rich, lush look to it that isn’t common these days. It’s bright, vibrant, and alive. It’s not a bunch of blown up buildings and wreckage scattered everywhere. I like the colorfulness and the slightly cartoonish characters give it a nice warmth. It’s not all surly and dark to appeal to 15 year olds that think they’re depressed, and I appreciate that.
There is a way to do this style without looking dated and cheap. Fable, Torchlight (I don’t think this is anything like Torchlight, personally) even Space Marine and Darksiders do a great job of using a more vibrant pallette without looking like a WoW clone.
On the subject of Pearl Jam, I always loved everything they did, up to and including Riot Act. Since then i’ve just not been able to get into either of their new albums.
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