Gameover: The Dog Ate My Podcast Edition

By Paul Munn | September 24, 2007

I was feeling good going into the recording of our ninth podcast on Saturday night. I’d finished off Resistance earlier in the week and started seeing some of the new weapons they give you on a second play through. I’d played some PC titles I’d been meaning to try like Space Rangers 2 and the free option for the Puzzle Pirates MMO. I’d even discovered a complete gem of a game on the PS2 called Rogue Trooper, which I can happily say is also available on the Xbox and is Xbox 360 compatible and should be played by anyone who likes 3rd person shooters.

Stephen and Joe also had good gaming weeks to talk about. Stephen jumped into Resident Evil 4 for the Wii, was feeling the heat up against Metroid Prime 3’s bosses and was happy to report he had found a copy of Metal Slug Anthology on the cheap. Joe was running and gunning his way through Stranglehold on the PC, playing the Tabula Rasa beta, and had some commentary for us about what Star Wars Galaxies looks like these days.

We recorded the podcast after about 15 minutes of joking around and inadvertently creating a couple of outtake candidates. After we all signed off I opened the recording up in my favorite sound editor to do what I usually do, edit it, add in the music, and generally make us seem presentable. Just a few minutes into the recording I noticed something was wrong.

We record the podcast in a single file from the voice chat software we use and it turns out that there’s a bug that can cause the voice streams to record out of sync. I heard myself answering questions that were being asked by Joe or Stephen a few seconds into my answer. There’s no way to salvage it, I’m afraid, so the best I can do is say sorry, but the dog ate my podcast for this week.

What else did we cover? Here’s a rundown:

Multi-platform:
The Guitar Hero III Set List was leaked, then pulled.

Nintendo:
Ubisoft will be publishing No More Heroes, a new game from the makers of the very unusual game Killer 7.
Online play will be in Super Smash Brothers Brawl, but no voice support!
Neo Geo and Turbo Grafix Games are coming to the Wii Virtual Console. With only 512mb on the Wii, only a few of the bigger games will be able to be stored.
Zelda Phantom Hourglass schwag popping up all over: Gold box for AU, Wal-Mart skin and stylus, a Master Sword stylus.
And some video footage of a long-awaited DS title called ASH.

Microsoft:
Bioware to have male-female or female-female sexual encounter in Mass Effect, and how this is not unusual for Bioware games.
Our Halo 3 review will be up by the time you read this.
How Joe got hate mail from his friends list while playing Halo 3 to do his review.

Sony:
The November PSM gave Castlevania and Final Fantasy Tactics 9.5’s. Jeanne D’Arc already got a 9.x from them, and Syphon Filter Logan’s Shadow is coming in October. It’s a great fall lineup for the PSP. Stephen agrees, saying I must visit him after I buy Castlevania and forget to take my PSP home.
Home delayed to Spring. Paul maintains Sony is losing a marketing opportunity with this delay, but Joe raises a bigger question: who wants Home anyway? Sony has some ’splainin to do to demonstrate its value.

PC:
Shadowrun developer FASA is shut down. Joe enlightened us that the game was probably doomed to fail since they made it Vista-only on the PC and tied it to a Games for Windows Live initiative that hasn’t really even gotten off the ground yet. Paul thought it kind of harsh that they kill the studio over the one game even though the developers are now working elsewhere in Microsoft.
Crysis Demo delayed so it will show up about a week before the game ships.

And that’s about it.

What did you play this weekend?

Image credit: State of Delaware Division of Fish and Wildlife.