This week, the guys review the 2001 classic film Lara Croft Tomb Raider. Join them as they recount their revisiting of this childhood classic that is a big part of their pubescent/formative years. Join them for the laughs and the pain as they figure out a way to deal with a very rigged vote for a game based on another form of media. Enjoy!
This week, Kaleb and Joe finally get to review the 1999 classic Metal Gear Solid. Join them, and Craig who played along, as they discuss the various aspects of the game. Joe ends up going on an overlong discussion on The Wheel of Time, and Schweiss beats five games to Craig's zero this week to put him one away from the Craig. Enjoy the episode!
This week, Schweiss and Joe attempt to review Metal Gear Solid, but their plans are dashed when Joe fails to mentally overcome a migraine headache. The rest of the crew pivots to their goals and some bullshitting to fill the time. Next time, our gear will be Solid.
This week, Joe attempts to give away a mystery game to one of his fellow hosts. What's the catch, you say? A series of phrases and actions that we have to determine whether or not John Romero or John Carmack of ID software said/did, or both. Joe picks open a scab from last episode, and the crew talks goals. Enjoy the episode, and congrats to Hailblue for winning the drawing again.
This week, our esteemed King Hog joins Cameron for a review of Persona 5. This marks the first real JRPG of Cameron's life, so it's full of interesting perspectives on the genre as a whole. Schweiss and Craig are destined to play Burnout Revenge next, and Joe get's triggered by a recent twitter poll involving himself, and Schweiss. Enjoy!
This week, the Clan assembles to discuss their opinions on cross platform play between consoles. We talk about how we as consumers view the platform, and how we'd imagine the big companies view it as well. The Kaleb's nominate their next games, and we rant a bit about vaping and Costco. Enjoy!
This week, the Clan assembles to discuss the listener favorite Nier Automata. Join us as we go over the games story, gameplay, sound/music, design, and overall replayability. We also ended up giving away two games to some great friends of the show, Felicia Nomiko and Douglas Hopkins. Thanks for the support, and enjoy the episode!
This week, the guys assemble to answer a bunch of questions, and rant and rave about porn, Cosmopolitan, and a few games here and there. They discuss their annual goals, and dig into the secret to balancing all these shows, games, and family members. Enjoy!
This week, Craig and Joe finally review Alone in the Dark: A New Nightmare. Will Joe come to his senses regarding Tank Controls? Will Craig bring balance to the force? Stay tuned to find out!
This week, we discuss the recent game breaking glitches Joe encountered in Alone in the Dark: A New Nightmare. We discuss what should be done in light of this glitch, and move on to discuss the network as a whole. Make sure you get your hog points in for next week, and we'll also do another game drawing. Live always in the NUDE!
This week, the guys take a look at a recent survey related to whether or not certain types of video games make you dumb, while others increase brain matter. Enjoy the recent Kill Marry F*ck from Pixel, and all the laughs in between.
This week, the clan gathers to discuss the recent survey answers regarding the network. We go over each result, and discuss the legitimacy of a few shows we asked interest in. We also update our PHAT goals, and dive into what games we've been playing as of late. Enjoy the episode, and live always in the NUDE!
This week, the Clan reviews Wing Commander, the classic 1999 film starring Shaggy and Fred. Enjoy all the laughs, and congratulations to TrueHoax and Steven for your victories with the drawing/dvd giveaway. Make sure you reach out on Twitter, and live always in the NUDE!
This week, we discuss Craig's topic of E-Sports. Join us as we dive deep into our experience with the genre of entertainment in a rare attempt for the Craiggert to defend Schweiss. The Clan finally gets back to the PHAT segment, where they discuss their successes and failures of goals past. Enjoy!
This week, Cameron and Schweiss review the 2014 hit Shadow of Mordor. Join them as they recount the story, gameplay, soundtrack, and discuss the replayability value of the game. Nier Automata is the winner of the UBER game, so stay tuned for that. Live always in the NUDE!
Kryvix, Trumpicus, Pencicuis, and Obsidianbah set out once again in search of Thaddy Brunswick. Join us for the laughs, the misses, and all the nymph's you can get your hands on. Also, we put up nominations for the UBER game on the site, so get on and vote! Oh, and Live Always in the NUDE!
This week, the Clan reviews the fabled Fable 2! And when I say the Clan, I mean the entire clan. Join us for the official review ala Cameron and Joe, with a hefty second opinions section with the two Kalebs. We end up doing two giveaways, while also discussing what should be done in regards to the UBER game and remasters. Enjoy the episode, and live always in the NUDE.
This week, the clan displays their SNES prowess, or lack thereof, as we review the life, legacy, and history of the Super Nintendo. Enjoy!
The SNES is a 16 bit home video game console developed by Nintendo. It was released in Japan on November 21, 1990, and came to the states on August 23, 1991. The console is known as The Super Famicom in Japan, and the Super Cowboy in South Korea. In North Korea, it is simply known as “No”. The console was a global success, despite it being late to the party. It ended up selling around 49.10 million units worldwide. The NES came with a $200 pricetag, which is around $412 today. Nintendo’s initial shipment of 300,000 units sold out within hours of launch, and the social disturbance its launch created, caused the Japanese government to request that consoles be released on weekends. Apparently, the Yakuza also became aware of the console, which resulted in Nintendo shipping the console overnight to avoid robberies.
Much of this new consoles success can be attributed to the retention of third party developers: Capcom, Konami, Tecmo, Square, Koei, and Enix. The console featured few games upon release; In Japan, only two games were available in the beginning: Super Mario World and F-Zero. North America saw a Super Mario World bundle with the console, and F-zero, Pilotwings, SimCity, and Gradius III. Another reason for the Super Nintendo’s success was the early port of the classic Capcom Arcade game Street Fighter II.
Nintendo has a history of control, and family friendly practices. Each third party developer was initially only allowed to release up to five games a year, some would get around this by setting up other brands, and those five games couldn’t be released on another console within a two year period. Nintendo was also the exclusive manufacturer and supplier of NES cartridges. Competition from Sega brought this practice to an end, and in 1991 the studio Acclaim began releasing things on both platforms. The most notable holdouts were Capcom and Square. Nintendo would also meticulously review submitted titles, giving them a score out of 40. Each region did separate evaluations, and Nintendo North America decided to limit the violence in games on its systems. The game Mortal Kombat would challenge the policy. The Genesis version of the game retained the gore, and ultimately outsold the SNES version by either 3 or 4 to one. Liberal Scum, and godfathers of the ESRB and ESA, Herb Kohl and Joe Lieberman convened a Congressional hearing on December 9, 1993 to investigate the marketing of violent video games to children. The creation of the ESRB satisfied nintendo, and they decided that their censorship policies were no longer needed.
Like I said before, the SNES was a little behind the game. While other companies were moving on to 32-bit systems, Rare and Nintendo proved that the SNES was still king. In November 1994, Rare released Donkey Kong Country, a platformer featuring 3D models and textures pre-rendered on SGI workstations. This game rivaled the aesthetic quality of the games being released on the 32-bit CD consoles. In the last 45 days of 1994, Donkey Kong Country sold 6.1 million units, making it the fastest selling videogame in history to that date. The current record holder is the famous Grand Theft Auto V, which sold 12 million units in the first day of release.
Nintendo loves their regional lockout, and took it to the next level by employing physical and hardware incompatibilities. For starters, the cartridges are shaped differently for different regions. NA cartridges are rectaangular on the bottom with inset grooves matching protruding tabs in the console, while other regions are narrower, with a smooth curve on the front and no grooves. This can, of course be modified. They also placed a lockout chip within the console aand in each cartridge. The PAL versions of a game can’t be played on a NA or Japanese console and vice versa. NA and Japan do have the same chip. There have been ways to get around it, one of them being the disconnection of one particular pin of the console’s lockout chip can prevent it. The casing for the console is slightly different in each region, and the yellowing of the console was due to the ABS plastic used for the casing. Apparently, the discoloration was due to an exposure to air, likely due to an incorrect mixture of the stabilizing, or flame retarding additives. So that’s why everyone’s SNES looks yellow.
The SNES released a slew of peripheraals throughout its lifetime. The light gun that was released for the SNES is known as the Super Scope, and the Super Advantage is the name of an arcade style joystick that was released with turbo settings. They released the SNES Mouse in conjunction to the game Mario Paint, and of course the mutitap simply known as the SuperMultitap was released with the popular Bomberman games. The most impressive release was the one that allowed the SNES to play GameBoy Games. This device was known as The Super Game Boy. The SNES would also create the first online console gaming network with the XBAND in the US. This feature allowed players to compete with each other across the country, but was shut down a mere two or three years after its inception.
During the lifespan of the SNES, Nintendo contracted with Sony and Philips to create a CD-Rom based console to compete with Sega’s Sega CD. Ultimately these deals fell through, and Sony went on to create the legendary PlayStation.
The SNES was given the ability to interface special coprocessor chips into the console itself, thus making its CPU not obsolete a few years after release. The Super FX was designed to perform functions that the main CPU couldn’t do. It helped create 3D game worlds with polygons, texture mapping, and light source shading. It could also be used to enhance the consoles 2D library. They later released the SA-1 chip that clocked in at a whopping 10MHz. Japan also had little Nintendo Power Kiosks that could be used to Download games at a lower price onto special cartridges using flash memory.
The SNES didn’t repeat the success of the NES, it was still the best selling console of its era. In 2007, GameTrailers named the SNES the second greatest console of all time due to graphics, sound, and the high quality library of games. It was also listed as Nintendos best console by GameTrailers in 2015.
Top Ten Selling SNES Games
This week, the clan finally gets to their review of Horizon Zero Dawn. Enjoy!
Horizon Zero Dawn is an action role-playing game developed by Guerrilla Games, and published by Sony. You may remember Guerrilla from their work with the Killzone series. The game was released on February 28th, 2017 and has become the best selling original IP on the PS4 console, selling 3.4 million copies as of June of this year. Development for the game began in 2011, and the director has been cited as stating it was the “most risky of the proposed projects”. The game won Best Original Game at the Game Critics award in both 2015 and 2016.
Story:
The game is set approximately a thousand years in the future. Mankind has been reduced to primitive tribes as a result of an unknown calamity. The technology spread across the land is reffered to as belonging to “The Old Ones” Large robots known as machines now dominate the planet. They, for the most part, peacefuly coexist with humans. However, a recent phenomenon knond as the “Derangement” has cuased them to become more agressive towards the humans, and larger, more deadly machines have now begun to appear. The three main tribes in the world are The Nora, the Carja, and the Oseram. Nora re nodic people who worship “All Mother”, the carja live in the desert and worship the sun, and the Oseram are tinkerers who brew beer and do a lot of metalworking.
Aloy was cast out as a young child, due to her being born from a machine. She obtains a Focus that gives her special abilities, including the ability to interact with machines. Aloy, once she comes of age, enters a competition called the Proving to become a Nora Brave, and no longer be outcasted. She wins the competition, but is soon attacked by cultists. Aloy survives, and learns that the cultists had control of corrupted machines. We learn, through an old man named Olin, that the tribe who attacked us are the Eclipse. They worship a demon known as Hades, who allows them to corrupt machines.
Aloy enters the Faro headquarters and discovers that the calamity mentioned before was due to Faro losing control of the peacekeeper robots. However, the world was saved due to an emergency project known as “Zero Dawn” which was created by Dr. Sobeck. Sylens contacts Aloy and lets Aloy know the location of an AI base. We journey to that factory, and learn that Zero Dawn was a vast underground system of databases, factories, and cloning facilities run by and AI known as Gaia. Once life had been extinguished, Gaia developed a countermeasure to deactivate all the Faro robots, and then build it’s own to recreate Earth’s biosphere. Once the planet was once again habitable, Gaia reseeded life on earth based on stored DNA, and taught the first human clones not to fuck up again. We also find out about Hades, who was created to enact controlled extinction if Zero Dawn was not worthwhile. Aloy is able to reach Dr. Sobecks office due to her being a clone of her. She also enters the door to “All Mother” and finds a recording that a signal activated Hades, who took over Gaia’s functions. As a last resord, Gaia self destructed to stop Hades. Aloy was created as a contingency plan with Sobecks DNA in the hope that she would find Gaia’s message, destroy Hades, and restore Gaia. Aloy learns taht Sobeck sacrificed herslef to ensure that the Faro swarm didn’t find Gaia. Aloy overridesd the system, and destroys Hades. We then find out that Sylens was the original founder of the Eclipse and was tempted by knowledge. Aloy finds out that Hades is trying to send a signal to release the Faro robots to end life on Earth again, and Aloy overrides and destroys Hades with Sylen’s lance, ending the great war. We venture to Sobecks home, find her corpse, and Aloy gets all emotional over her “mother”. Post credits shows us a scene where Hades is still alive, but trapped by Sylens. He wants to interrogate Hades to find out who sent the signal that reactivated him in the first place.
It's that time of year again. E3 has come and gone, and the Clan is here to shed some light on their favorite games. The guys come up with their favorite gilfs, and then Schweiss goes off the chain about some neighborhood garbage. Enjoy the NUDE!
This week, the clan invites special guest Larsen on as our very first Dungeon Master. Join heroes Obsidianbah, Nooborious Trumpus, Michaelangelus Pencicuis, and Kryvix as they combine forces for a simple caravan mission. Will things go awry? Will Pencicuis fall asleep on watch duty? Find out! Oh, and we also did a few E3 predictions for good measure. Live always in the [NUDE]!
This week, we go over the history of the Xbox 360. Join us for all the laughs, the sales, and the history behind things. We also round out the month's HOG updates: Congrats to Jake for NUDE Hog, and Ryan for Super Hog. Also, special shoutout to Truehoax for winning the drawing. Make sure to vote on the Forced Entry title!
The History of the Xbox 360
Kaleb Schweiss
The Xbox360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. It competed with the Playstation 3 and the Wii during the seventh generation of video game consoles. It was officially announced on MTV on May 12, 2005. The console was released on November 22, 2005, and has sold 84 million units as of June 9, 2014. The console didn’t win the great war of the 7th, but it is praised via TechRadar to be the most influential through it’s emphasis on digital media distribution and mutliplayer gaming on Xbox live. But of course, the thing I feel like they did the most right is the achievements. The console is the highest selling console originating from America, the greatest country ever, and is the sixth highest selling console of all time, behind The Playstation 2, Nintendo DS, Game Boy/Game Boy Color, Playstation, and Wii. The initial release was plagued by a high failure rate, otherwise known as The Red Ring of Death. The console initially had a 54.2 percent failure rate according to a Game Informer survey of 5,000 readers. This is more than five times the failure rate of the PS3. The console began production a mere 69 days before launch, and Microsoft was unable to supply enough consoles to most regions, selling out everywhere but Japan. The original Xbox didn’t sell very well in Japan, 2 million units, but the 360 would sell even less at 1.5 million from 2005-2011.
The 360’s advantage over the Playstation 3 was great. The pricepoint was two hundred dollars less, and they had plenty of third party support behind them. The console also featured much better cross-platform capabilities. Five years into it’s lifespan, the Xbox 360 got the Kinect, which became the fastest selling consumer electronic device in history, and effectively extended the console’s lifespan. In April of 2016, Microsoft annouced the end of production for the system, but they will still support it.
-Talk about Xbox live
-Talk about UI
-Exclusives
This week, the Clan dives Jango deep into some Bounty Hunter. The guys discuss the shooting, bounties, and tons of platforming the game has to offer. There's also a new poll up for Schweiss' and Cameron's next game, and don't forget to send in your HOG!
This week, the guys discuss their week in gaming, and then dive straight into an epic Q&A episode. We got to as many of you guys' questions as possible, and will clean the rest up next week. Schweiss loses his shit over his recent run-ins with his HOA. Enjoy the NUDE!
This week, the clan dives into Parasite Eve II. Here's the writeup:
Parasite Eve 2 is an action role-playing survival game released for the PlayStation. The game was developed by Square Enix, and published in 1999 in Japan and the US, and in 2000 everywhere else. The game has sold just over a million copies as of February 2004, and was released on the PlayStation Network August 23, 2011. The music was composed by Naoshi Mizuta, and arranged by Hiroshi Nakajima. The soundtrack took a year and a half to compose, and Mizuta was given a lot of freedom.
Story:
This game opens up peaceful enough. We meet up with Aya Brea, og protagonist from the first game, who is now an FBI member working for an elite squad known as MIST (Mitochondrial Investigation and Suppression Team) Lol. She’s currently dispatched on a mission in LA, where there have been reports of NMC sightings (Neo Mitochondrial Creatures). We start this bad boy out investigating the Akropolis tower, which is now home to NMC’s, and a bunch of dead swat members. We eventually run into No. 9, who is some sort of humanoid Neo-mitochondrial creature. This beastman ends up destroying the tower, but not before Aya and her friend Rupert are rescued in a police helicopter. We then head to Dryfield, another location infested by freakish beasts, including a fucking Elder Camel that totally reminds me of the grand master from the Kill Bill series. We meet up with a survivor named Mr. Douglas, naturally, and his loyal beast Flint. Douglas is sort of our informer for the next little bit. We also rescue Kyle Madigan, a PI claiming to be on a similar mission. He tells tale of a “Shelter” nearby that may contain the answers we’re looking for. But not before we fight craiggers himself! Oh, and of course, we get a sweet shower scene.
Aya and Kyle set out to find the shelter through an abandoned mine. This is where the Elder Camel finally shows his face. After we defeat this epicly bearded beast, we find a secret entrance to The Shelter. Here we find out that the AANMC’s are a result of genetic engineering to create superior life forms. We also find that these beasts were created using her DNA. Oh, also the “Star Wars” esque waste beast battle… Jesus Christ the FUCKING CAMERA ANGLE!!!!!!asdfasdfasd
We then find the fourth area, called Neo-Ark. This area was created as sort of a Jurassic Park-esque showcase for the ANMC’s. We meet up with Kyle, and rescue a little girl that was controlling the NMC’s. This turns out to be Eve… How? I don’t fucking know. But we soon find out that Eve was created using her DNA, thus sort of making her Aya’s daughter. But I mean, that also means that we’ve spent this whole game killing all of her other children, so whatever. Fine. I’ll accept this shit. Aya is later attacked by a huge group of golum beasts, but is rescued by the US Marines. Ameeericaaaaaa!!!!!! We later get a couple gifts from Mr. Douglas, and track down Eve to a giant room containing a cocoon. They’re trying to stuff Eve into it, and Kyle turns on No. 9 and kills him. We then get a cutscene where Bill Clinton wipes Dryfield off the map, and displaces the fuck out of our party. And now we fight the vag n balls beast.
The last NMC in the game is pretty brutal, since he harnesses the power of the sun in his shaft. Once we successfully geld this motherfucker, we move to the final fight. Eve. Again. She transforms into a beast that sort of resembles the second to last form of Eve in the first game. Once we beat this super OP boss, we get a few cutscenes. The good, and canon, ending features Aya adopting Eve as her sister with help from Mist. We then see a cutscene where Pierce gives them two tickets to the American Natural History Museum in NY, where we run into Kyle Madigan again.
Gameplay:
This game plays like a standard survival horror game. Tank controls. Also, cuntish camera angles. There isn’t an active time bar that governs actions, and the battles take place in real time. They removed the stupid Range Dome feature that the first game came with, which gives users to engage from further away. All enemies are in plain view, unless they’re the BDSM ninjas, which allows the player to avoid fights when they want. We get a chance to customize our weapons similarly to the first game, but it’s fairly limited. Armor lets us add extra items slots, which dictate what items can be used during combat. We also have a few different elements to our PE abilities: fire, wind, water, and earth. The game features a NG+ that offers you bonus items; not that you’ll ever want to experience this fucker again.
Enjoy the NUDE!