By John Walker on February 9th, 2009 at 4:55 pm.
Yes, yes indeed, it’s back. The RPS Electronic Wireless Show returns after an embarrassing amount of time. Jim and John get together to discuss the most important gaming news of the week, such as the opening of Half-Life, snowmen, and why you should give your children the MMR vaccine. However, we also manage to squeeze in discussions about Men Of War, Burnout Paradise, and EA’s slippery release schedule.
In a new and exciting twist, we also take quite a lot of our lead from Twitter. This is something we plan to do in future, and hopefully using RPS’ Twitter account. (However, just for the moment neither of us knows the password for that one, so we used mine. We’re a slick machine!)
Get the mp3 directly from this word here. Get it from the hosty site here. And find it on iTunes, and bring us back into the charts where we belong, here.
It’s a pretty quiet one. Our lovely new mic seems determined to be insanely quiet, no matter how loud it’s told to be. If anyone knows how to fix this, let us know. For now, I’ve boosted the volume considerably, and it’s still pretty low. And listen out for the special guest appearance of my creaky chair.
Useful links:
Bad Science. And specifically the Barnett incident.
09/02/2009 at 17:04 sbs says:
Sweet podcast bro.
09/02/2009 at 17:12 Dude says:
If it’s a realtek device you might want to check this:
http://torley.com/how-to-boost-the-mic-volume-on-your-realtek-audio-codec
because their mic boost is really really really well hiden.
09/02/2009 at 17:15 ImperialCreed says:
Great to see it return guys. Downloading now.
09/02/2009 at 17:26 John Walker says:
Dude – sadly not. The in-built mic records at a sensible volume after fiddling with that before, but this is a USB mic that remains unaffected.
09/02/2009 at 17:31 The_B says:
What software are you using to record, out of interest?
09/02/2009 at 17:33 Pags says:
I was thinking the other day that there hasn’t been an RPS EWS for a while.
I’ll listen when I’m done rediscovering my utter undying love for Neutral Milk Hotel.
09/02/2009 at 17:39 Smurfy says:
Woo! I’m going to go upstairs and get my iPod just to put this on it.
Needs charging, too.
09/02/2009 at 17:41 ImperialCreed says:
Thanks for the mention in the ‘cast guys. I’m firing on some details of what I went through buying GTA IV.
09/02/2009 at 17:41 John Walker says:
Audacity.
09/02/2009 at 17:42 Mike says:
I shall listen on the train to London tomorrow – looking forward to it!
09/02/2009 at 17:51 Smurfy says:
I get so aroused when I listen to RPS EWS or PCG Podcast.
09/02/2009 at 17:58 Jim Rossignol says:
Um.
09/02/2009 at 18:06 The Poisoned Sponge says:
As far as I know, a hill covered in snow is automatically a mountain.
09/02/2009 at 18:11 Pags says:
Do we have pictures of John’s disgusting Calvin & Hobbes snowman homage?
09/02/2009 at 18:12 Hypocee says:
http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net ? Are you just not able to crank it up enough in Audacity…?
09/02/2009 at 18:13 John Walker says:
It’s here, Pags:
http://botherer.cream.org/?p=1028
But my blog’s a bit dodgy atm.
09/02/2009 at 18:14 Pags says:
It’s totally better than I expected it to be!
09/02/2009 at 18:25 The Poisoned Sponge says:
Just so you guys know (I’m not sure if they put it in the PC version, but I’m sure they did), Burnout Paradise does have a crash mode… you can trigger it anywhere and you just blow up as many cars as possible, much like in the other Burnout games.
09/02/2009 at 18:27 John Walker says:
No, sadly it’s not at all like in other Burnout games. It’s a laughably awful mode where you BOUNCE your car around the road, trying to hit passing vehicles, for as long as possible.
09/02/2009 at 18:30 The Poisoned Sponge says:
Bearing in mind I’ve only played Burnout Revenge previously, the crash mode I played on that had a lot of car bouncing after you landed the big jump. I guess you could set up a big jump in Paradise, but yeah, I know what you mean about it not being quite the same.
09/02/2009 at 18:30 Kynes says:
RSS?
09/02/2009 at 18:33 John Walker says:
http://rps.libsyn.com/rss
09/02/2009 at 18:36 Pags says:
Burnout 3 Crash mode was by far the best Crash mode in Burnout. Were it not for the fact that you were hurling several tonnes of metal into a crowd of other, fast-moving pieces of metal, you could even say it was tactical.
09/02/2009 at 18:45 skizelo says:
Is there a more beautiful sound than a hushed “can we say that out loud?” from a journalist? I guess you could, which spoils it a bit.
09/02/2009 at 19:32 James G says:
Excellent as usual, and I thought the volume was fine, the sound quality was certainly better than previous RPS electronic wireless shows. Nice shout out to Goldacre by the way.
09/02/2009 at 19:34 Hypocee says:
Sorry, but absolutely not. It was a shit puzzle game completely ruined by the addition of Win Medallions floating along the one and only path that could and would give you gold, if and only if you hit the 4x. Having not played Paradise yet, 3 is my overall favourite in the series but its Crash mode is a crime against the name. You appear to mean 2‘s Crash mode, which could have stood on its own as a complete videogame.
09/02/2009 at 20:00 ...hmm... says:
awesome thanks guys, i even put a glowing review up on itunes in order to further your goal of taking over the internets… oh wait you have achieved that, gz.
09/02/2009 at 20:12 Dinger says:
On the joypad issue: I’ve got nothing against using joypads/xbox controllers/whatever on the PC — quite the contrary, PC gaming is all about using a plurality of devices.
On the other hand, I find extremely irritating the idiocy of companies that release PC games (usually ports) that require a controller. If you release a racing game, it should work with a steering wheel and pedals, not just an Xbox360 controller. Joysticks, and not just xbox controllers, need to be supported for games where they make sense. And there’s no excuse for not having proper keyboard support.
Let’s put it this way: if anybody looked at Evochron (and all its predecessors) for a second, they’d find that Starwraith gets far more sales from TrackIR support than the time it took to put that in, and only the tiniest percentage of the market has that thing. Yet there are companies that refuse to work on a decent mouse-and-keyboard implementation, even though A) it is quite feasible, and B) the overwhelming majority of PC owners don’t have controllers.
I’m not saying keyboard-and-mouse is always better than controllers, or that having a controller won’t be more rewarding, but if you say that last year’s Tomb Raider is unplayable without a 360 controller, don’t go wondering why PC sales stank. Most sane people agree Audiosurf is better with a controller, but it features both mouse and keyboard implementations that are quite respectable.
09/02/2009 at 20:12 SuperNashwan says:
Brilliant as per usual. I love these podcasts, couldn’t ask for more than both funny and insightful, really.
09/02/2009 at 20:23 EyeMessiah says:
The sound quality is terrible.
09/02/2009 at 20:38 Gap Gen says:
Is there an MMO vaccine yet?
09/02/2009 at 21:01 Pags says:
Ah, it would appear I do. This isn’t the first time that sort of thing has happened to me though, I regularly get confused between various iterations of games. But yes, you’re right, I do mean 2 as 3 essentially just showed you the optimum path for destruction which kind of negates the point I was trying to make about Crash mode being a puzzle game.
09/02/2009 at 21:04 The Sombrero Kid says:
the stuff about far cry 2 is the warren spector harvey smith interview of ‘as most gamers what they want they’ll say totally open’ and they’ll be wrong thing
09/02/2009 at 21:20 Homunculus says:
I, too, got the hankering last week to fashion a Calvin and Hobbes snow-murderer tribute.
09/02/2009 at 21:22 Heliocentric says:
Some gamers want totally open some of the time.
And some of the time they are right.[\non-commital]
09/02/2009 at 21:26 Pags says:
@Homunculus: Did you make a sad face with a zucchini?!
09/02/2009 at 21:30 The Sombrero Kid says:
@Heliocentric
i was being vague and reallying it badly cause i’m still listening to the podcast dl and watch the video for the real point i think he said usually.
09/02/2009 at 21:39 Heliocentric says:
Oh, ignore me. I was just being a tit.
09/02/2009 at 22:44 Dolphan says:
The Atari loading bee! God, that takes me back. We found our ST in a cupboard a few years ago, covered in soot and totally non-functional. It was a sad day.
09/02/2009 at 23:12 mrrobsa says:
@Homunculus:
I’m sorry to say at first glance I thought it was snowman sex.
http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~gutrot/Snow%20Murderer.JPG
10/02/2009 at 00:22 El Stevo says:
Not as artistic as John’s, but mine’s bigger.
10/02/2009 at 00:40 EyeMessiah says:
I dunkenly dropped my cheese on toast on the kitchen floor before listening to this. But I blew on it afterward. Is that OK??
10/02/2009 at 00:57 EyeMessiah says:
Very enjoyable! Re. loudness. If you have run a compressor\auto-normaliser over it after recording you have got the attack\release settings wrong because I can hear it fading in and out. I’d suggest much, much faster a&r. It doesn’t sound like you are anywhere near clipping so don’t fear.
10/02/2009 at 05:36 Trip SkyWay says:
Funny stuff, looking forward to the next one.
10/02/2009 at 08:28 Radiant says:
That was a great podcast.
10/02/2009 at 08:29 Radiant says:
Also that snowman was[?] incredible.
10/02/2009 at 13:07 Muzman says:
I’m immune to MMOs already, so anyone concerned about exposure can come and rub up against me. If that’s a bit much I’m sure I’ve got some pus lying around somewhere that folks can variolate themselves with.
10/02/2009 at 13:27 nabeel says:
I totally roll everywhere, given the choice.
10/02/2009 at 13:34 JohnArr says:
It’s an impossible task! Good people can’t play the darkside path; I had high hopes for ‘Lord D’Eath’, he would carve a bloody swath through the galaxy! After the first sob story he had given away all his credits and sworn to be a better person.
10/02/2009 at 13:53 Nilocy says:
Hmm, when you said there was no crash mode in Burnout Paradise, there acctually is on the 360 version… I don’t understand why they’d take it out, What you had to do was start of a street and press the two bumber buttons then it activated the crash mode, and you just went and destroyed cars on the streets.
10/02/2009 at 14:26 Markoff Chaney says:
Great podcast from the half of you! =D Thank You!
10/02/2009 at 16:01 Schmung says:
Nilocy : ’tis not a proper crash mode. The one in previous Burnouts that everyone is lamenting the absence of is the awesome subgame that was hybrid of puzzle game and carnage where you had to launch yourself at a junction and cause as much damage as it possible.
Also, lovely podcast gents.
10/02/2009 at 19:19 Hypocee says:
I finally actually listened to this today. When you guys cavalierly dismissed Microsoft Studios’ contributions to software a little red mist came down. Maybe you never played Crimson Skies or Starlancer interrobang. There were a couple of years in there where MS was satellite-developing or publishing some of the best stuff in the industry.
But it was fun anyway.
10/02/2009 at 23:44 Nilocy says:
Schmung: Yeah, i know, but it was still alot like the old crash game types from Burnout 3 and 2. Its not the same, but then again, you don’t make any progress rehashing the same stuff over and over.
11/02/2009 at 04:10 Hypocee says:
If the old stuff is good and the new stuff is crap, mathematically you do.
13/02/2009 at 01:23 pkt-zer0 says:
On Steam region pricing differences: you actually can check what the games go for in other regions, just add the two-letter country code as the value of the ‘cc’ variable to the URL. For instance, Mass Effect in Norway, US, and the UK.
Prices don’t seem to have been altered, a couple new arrivals are almost properly priced, British prices are still calculated with 0% or even -15% VAT, which is also weird.