The Way of the Game is returning to our once-and-future mission of serving you well-rounded awesomeness.  If you prefer your chocolate and peanut butter separate, we’ve set up new feeds for you.

• The first feed is just podcast episodes; movies and games.
• The second is all our video game content; posts and podcasts alike.
• The third gives you We Just Watched a Movie on its own.

The home page will always aggregate all our content, but the we’ve broken it all up into categories (and seasons for WotG) for your browsing pleasure.  That should make it easy to get just the content you want, when you want it.  Enjoy!

The Holmberg forgot he has a wedding he’ll be out of town for tomorrow, so these notes will be short.

Thanks for playing bingo, Gaerma, Rokwynd, and WilliamPall!  We’ll be contacting you all with some gifts soon.

We then talk about E3 a lot, even though we’re all tired of talking about E3.

Current-gen consoles received pledges of support, but not a lot of air time.

The PC was strangely absent from the E3 news.

The portable scene is tempting, but it’s hard to overcome the piles of dust sitting on the hosts’ current portables.

Microsoft’s XBone offerings are intriguing, but not anywhere near intriguing enough to make any of the hosts look past the consoles other issues or $500 price tag.

Nintendo showed off a lot of games that will no doubt be a lot of fun, but are any of them enough to make a Wii U purchase worthwhile?

Sony slapped Microsoft around, and won gamer minds and hearts by maintaining the status quo.

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Pinocchio this week.  Hable Con Ella (Talk to Her) next week.  As always, follow along on our iCheckMovies list, and be sure to let us know how you’d rank the movies in the comments below.

Pinocchio – February 7, 1940

Director: Ben Sharpsteen, Hamilton Luske, Norman Ferguson, T. Hee, Wilfred Jackson, Jack Kinney, Bill Roberts
Producer: Walt Disney
Writer: Ted Sears, Otto Englander, Webb Smith, William Cottrell, Joseph Sabo, Erdman Penner, Aurelius Battaglia
Voice Actors: Cliff Edwards, Dickie Jones, Christian Rub, Mel Blanc, Walter Catlett, Charles Judels, Evelyn Venable, Frankie Darro
Distributor: RKO Radio Pictures

The course of the conversation:

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Despite Alex’s attempts, we avoid talking about Metal Gear V until we get through an entirely new section on the show.

You Might Wanna Know: (Stuff we just found out about, and maybe you want to know about too.)

• How Long to Beat: For those who need to know how much entertainment their dollar buys.
• Rain: Have we talked about Rain?  Because games like this are why I’ll likely end up with a PS4.
• Spy Party: The paid beta has finally launched.
• State of Decay: Open-world zombie game with trust mechanics and permanent character death.
• Select Your Hero: Art!

Short News:

• Konami’s Pre-E3 Not-Really-A-Press-Conference Online Streaming Event
  • Kiefer Sutherland will be the voice of Snake in MGSV.
  • Dracula is the main character of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2.
  • Pro Evolution Soccer 2014 gets a new engine.
  • And that’s it.  Maybe there’ll be more at the Big 3′s conferences?
• Microsoft lays out all the information about how the XBone will work:
  • You can lend your games to a friend.  Once.
  • You can give your games away.  Once.
  • You can only sell your games to approved retailers.
  • Publishers get to make the decision if you even get to sell your game.
  • The XBone has to validate your games daily if you’re at home.
  • The XBone will validate your games hourly if you’re elsewhere.

Games:

• Read more »

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Mouchette this week.  Pinocchio next week.  As always, follow along on our iCheckMovies list, and be sure to let us know how you’d rank the movies in the comments below.

Mouchette – October 26, 1967

Director: Robert Bresson
Producer: Anatole Dauman
Writer: Robert Bresson
Actors: Nadine Nortier, Jean-Claude Guilbert, Maria Cardinal, Paul Hebert
Distributor: UGC / CFDC

The course of the conversation:

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Compared to last year’s E3, 2013 should be a real barn burner for news.  We’re getting the game part of Microsoft’s new living room device.  Sony’s planning to bring the noise and remind everyone about the PS4.  Nintendo’s backed out of the usual E3 game, but they’ve still got plenty of E3-week content to share with the world.  And the rest of the gaming industry has girded its loins for the second-biggest event in the year (sorry E3, but I think the title goes to PAX).

Here at The Way of the Game, we usually host a show where we talk about our predictions for E3, but we’ve decided to do something a little bit different this year.  With everything that’s happening, we’ve got a big list o’ predictions, from the already-confirmed to the pie-in-the-sky.  It’s too much, in fact, to do any sort of justice in an hour-long podcast.  Instead, we’re going to post the list here, and then we’re going to invite you to play E3 Bingo with us.  Sure, other sites do this, but who says we can’t get in on the fun?

Even better, what we’ll do is send you a randomized bingo card that you can play along on.  We’ve got more predictions than fit on a card, so everybody should get a unique card they can play along on.  Let us know that you want to play in the comments, on Twitter, via email, whatever, and we’ll set you up.

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Sam’s back from moving!  But he won’t be joining Jonathan at Gen Con this year.  Sad face.

Gaerma is the grand winner (and only entrant) of the Don’t Starve giveaway.

Sam gives us his take on the XBone, and it’s not terribly positive, although Alex has some new feelings about it.

Molyneux’s “social experiment,” Curiosity, has finished, there’s a winner, and the winner will be a god (for a while).

Sam may still be unpacking, but he’s got 5 of his 6 consoles unpacked and set up.

Alex makes inconsiderate comparisons when talking about Knytt Underground.

Jonathan makes similar, but more appropriate, comparisons for Stealth Bastard Deluxe.

Next week we’ll stop revisiting topics that one or another host missed out on!

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Star Wars this week.  Mouchette next week.  As always, follow along on our iCheckMovies list, and be sure to let us know how you’d rank the movies in the comments below.

Star Wars – May 25, 1977

Director: George Lucas
Producer: Gary Kurtz
Writer: George Lucas
Actors: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Peter Cushing, Alec Guinness
Distributor: 20th Century Fox

The course of the conversation:

May the Fourth and Revenge of the Sixth.  Ouch.

Star Wars.  Not A New Hope.  Not Episode 4.

We’re going to limit our discussion to just this movie.  (No, we’re not.)

Three geeks like Star Wars.  Stop the presses!

Perhaps immaturity accounts for thinking A New Hope was a slow movie.

Darths & Droids: Where Jonathan read about the alternate take on Han’s Kessel run.

As geeks, do we do Star Wars a disservice by trying to make everything in the movie perfect?

The rest of the trilogy makes it easy to forget where Han Solo starts as a character.

Mark Hamill was the actor Luke Skywalker needed.

Leia is the strongest character, and Carrie Fisher plays it very well.

Vader’s the bad guy you remember.  Tarquin is the real villain of the film.

Despite saying that, the guys spend ten minutes talking about Vader.

Vader is the active use of the Force.

So much of the universe is implied in this first film, and it’s fascinating.  Later films get more explicit with the universe, and some of the wonder is lost.

One of the potential troubles with the Special Edition additions is that it loses the build up of suspense and context that make the later reveals so interesting.

Nathaniel disses George Lucas.

Did George Lucas become a slave of his own success?

Han Solo is the prime creator of satisfying character tension in the story.

Thank you, Ralph McQuarrie.

And credit to Lucas for letting Ralph McQuarrie do what he do.

An X-Wing would probably be pointless in space, but it looks perfect.

What’s your favorite Star Wars ship?

We apologize to Trekkers on behalf of Nathaniel.

Podcast compensation is discussed.

The Rule of Cool turned to 11.

It doesn’t make sense, but you don’t really care, do you?

Did Star Wars unite geek culture?  Or did it unite us all?

“I like Star War better!”  Dammit!

The hosts all try to convince themselves that they didn’t just fanboy out on this movie.

The hosts diverge into talking about Lord of the Rings out of order.

There’s after-credits bonus content if you want to hear Nathaniel agonize over his placement.

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We basically skip the usual format this week to talk about the reveal of the Xbox One.

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Eador: Masters of the Broken World will keep you busy for a very long time. That’s not to say the gameplay is bogged down by clumsy GUI problems or that it proceeds at a snail’s pace. Rather, it gives you a series of randomly generated miniature fantasy worlds to conquer, and the worlds are rich with challenge and opportunity.
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Some Like It Hot this week.  Star Wars(!) next week.  As always, follow along on our iCheckMovies list, and be sure to let us know how you’d rank the movies in the comments below.

Some Like It Hot – March 29, 1959

Director: Billy Wilder
Producer: Billy Wilder
Writers: Billy Wilder, I. A. L. Diamond
Actors: Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, George Raft, Joe E. Brown, Pat O’Brien
Distributor: United Artists

The course of the conversation:

We continue to be unable to stick to the movies we announce.

The puppy test is in full effect.

Jack Lemmon.  Respect.

Jonathan finally gets a clear idea of what the word “grounded” means.

Bert may be wacky, but you laugh at Ernie.

Tony Curtis seems to be either overshadowed or carrying the entire scene.

Some of the slower bits, while necessary, may keep this from being a regular viewer.

Marilyn Monroe is exactly what the movie needed, and not just in the film itself.

We diverge into talking about actors and actresses who only have looks to sustain them.

Jonathan tells a story about angering his mother.

Chris Farley and Marilyn Monroe are compared.

Here’s why the movie was filmed in black and white.

Kansas couldn’t handle it.

Jonathan apologizes to Kansas on behalf of Colorado.

Nathaniel apologizes to Kansas on behalf of Kansas.

Lots of symbolism in bed-wear.

But wait, there’s more!

Is this a screwball comedy?  Do we yet know what a screwball comedy is?

Nathaniel makes a sure and “simple” decision.

Jonathan risks the wrath of Brando and De Niro to gain the favor of Stanwyck and Lemmon.

Michael shuffles his list like a deck of cards and gives more credit to John Wayne.

Jonathan flip flops on his vote for Michael’s movie, bumping Twelve Angry Men in favor of Blazing Saddles.

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