This week, someone gives Jonathan some ice cream.

In the news, all we have to talk about is the success of the Ouya Kickstarter.

In games, Jonathan found Armored Core V to be utterly incomprehensible.  Alex has rekindled his love for Brutal Legend and watched a whole lot of people play fighting games at Evo.  Sam continues to play Kingdoms of Amalur and brings some thoughts about MMOs.

Also this week, we discuss Peter Molyneux’s claim that Curiosity’s prize will be “life-changingly important.”  Should this bother us as much as it does?  Does this have the power to finally kill Peter Molyneux’s credibility?  Does Molyneux even have any credibility with you anymore?

Finally, we wrap up with our first entry into the Way of the Game’s Ten Commandments of Gaming: Thou shalt finish a game before buying another.

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We’ve got a guest this week!  Joe, the Brother, joins us to talk about Mass Effect 3 and some other stuff.

Games this week:

Jonathan has played Street Fighter X Tekken, and has nothing to say about it.  He got some more comments about Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, and he’s spent a bit of time with Mario Party 9.  That’s right!  The Wii makes an appearance!

Alex does inappropriate things with his Kinect and Tiger Woods 13.  He’s also got much (more) love for Armored Core V’s multiplayer, and no love for the single-player.  And then he and Sam rip into Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City.

Other than RE:ORC, Sam has been playing more Binary Domain, though he’s not sure why.  Perhaps it’s the scintillating conversation.  He also talks Mass Effect 3, but mostly as a lead-in to Joe.

Joe’s finished ME3, and has plenty to say about it.  He’s got (non-spoilery) thoughts on the game play, the universe, and (of course) the ending.  Then we wrap up the discussion with speculation about the “clarifying” DLC Bioware has promised.

Since teasing future topics hasn’t worked too well lately, I’m not going to make any promises about next week’s show, other than that it will be here.

‘Til then, have a great week!

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Triple Ones! Oh yeah!

We enjoyed the quick-hit headlines bit we did last week, so we’re making it a regular feature.  This week, the uncomfortably expensive collector’s edition of Steel Battalion, and Free-to-Play makes its first appearance on a portable console.  Can home consoles be far behind?

Alex has gotten his grubby hands on Armored Core V early, and he’s in for the multiplayer but has reservations recommending it as a single-player experience.  Draw Something also invades the podcast via Alex, though OMGPOP hadn’t been bought by Zynga when this episode was recorded, if that’s of any importance to you.  Finally, Assassin’s Creed Recollection has sunk its hidden blades deep into Alex’s psyche, and it doesn’t look to let go anytime soon.

Sam’s been playing more Binary Domain and more Mass Effect 2.  Along those lines, he also inflicts upon us an audio-unboxing worse than any that has come before it.  And, assuming he can ever break himself free from Mass Effect 3, Shadows of the Damned and Kingdoms of Amalur may make a moose-like appearance in a future episode.

Jonathan only has one game this week, thatgamecompany’s Journey, but it’s a doozy of a game.  In fact, in just one short week alone with the game, Journey has set itself up as the expression of everything that video games are capable of as an artistic medium.  Yeah, it’s like that.

We close out the episode with a topic which we touched on briefly in Episode 109: Would gaming benefit by separating multiplayer and single-player into standalone products?  The hosts all have fairly different takes on what that would mean.

Next week: is Metacritic a valid method of handing out bonuses?

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