We had some audio issues this week, delaying the show, but they’ve been worked out because we’re here for you, dear listener.  Enjoy.

News!

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We start this episode with a special guest, who almost immediately wanders off to take a nap.

In our short news segment, we can thank Kickstarter for allowing the opportunity for Shadowrun to come back as a top-down, turn-based, 2D CRPG!  Alex is very excited.  Not so excited is Sam for the extended cut of Mass Effect 3′s ending coming this summer.  Finally, none of the hosts are excited for the possibility of a law requiring a warning label be affixed to every video game ever made.

The hosts have also been playing games this week!  Well, two of the hosts have.  Sam’s just been playing solitaire on his phone, which doesn’t really count.

Alex has gone old-school and picked up Final Fantasy X-2.  Not XIII-2.  X-2.  Yup, he’s playing Final Fantasy Dress-Up, and liking it.

Jonathan has spent some time this week with the new FIFA Street.  The trick controls and various modes are pretty awesome and deep, but figuring out how to play the basics of the game have got him a bit stumped.  Also this week, The Tribe has dropped as a new team for Hero Academy, and Jonathan continues to be impressed by the depth and variety each team brings to the game.

In our topic this week, it’s been reported that Obsidian missed out on a bonus for Fallout New Vegas because the game was one point short of an 85 on Metacritic.  Alex thinks this is a terrible way to hand out bonuses for a game because of the high degree of subjectivity involved in reviewing a game.  Jonathan and Sam think any metric for determining bonuses is going to extremely arbitrary, and Metacritic is as valid a method as any other.

Finally, we have another round of Star Wars Reverse Casting Call.  For this round, Alex has chosen Lando, Ben Kenobi, and Darth Maul as the characters to be cast.  He’s also chosen “fighting game characters” as his restriction.  It gets ugly, folks.

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We’ve mentioned The Way of the Game’s official Twitter feed before, but where before it’s just been a conduit for announcing that a new episode has been posted, we’re going to be trying to post to it more often.  Stuff that doesn’t fit in as discussion for the podcast will find a voice on the feed.  Check it out.

Sam’s broken record continues.  Moving and Skyrim.  Moving and Skyrim.  Moving and Skyrim.  With any luck, the launch of Mass Effect 3 will break him out of his rut, but probably not until episode 110.

Alex has been playing Syndicate.  In 4-player co-op, he’s continuing to enjoy himself, but console freezes and predictable enemy routines are a bit of a drag.  He’s also taken a shot at the new SSX.  As a huge fan of the earlier entries in the series, the new one leaves him entirely ambivalent.  Alex has also picked up Quarrel for iOS and XBL, and enjoys everything except the part where it told him “GRAPES” isn’t a word.

Jonathan continues to get 2011 games from GameFly, though none have yet made him reconsider any of his picks from episode 104.  Alice: Madness Returns proves to be fairly competent, if a bit overwrought.  Two Worlds 2, meanwhile, starts off terribly, a fact everyone seems to agree on, and the the few people who claim it gets better only serve to show that Jonathan won’t have the patience to wait.  Meanwhile, the dwarves have arrived at Hero Academy, and they’re play-style is entirely different from either the humans or dark elves, and that’s a good thing.

In our topic this week, the guys decide to go out on a limb and preemptively pick their 2012 Game of the Year.  With nothing to go on but gut instinct and marketing hype, each host stakes a claim in a wildly different game.  We can pretty much guarantee that there will be crow to be eaten in January.

Next week, Reverse Casting Call returns, and the guys talk about… something.  See you then!

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Scheduling conflicts this week means there’s been a lot of time since we recorded 101, and very little time until we record 103.  As such, we’ve got a lot of games to talk about this episode, and we’ll have a lot of headlines to cover next episode.

Before we get into that, though, we have a correction to make.  Jonathan’s not sure how he messed this up, but Ryven Cydrelle didn’t win our contest last week.  Moreover, he didn’t even enter it.  Rather, a listener named Joe was the proper entrant and winner in the contest, and all has been corrected.  Thanks to Ryven for noticing the error and to Joe for being a good sport!

In the show proper, Alex explains why The History Channel: Great Battles – Medieval isn’t a particularly good game, a fact which should surprise no one.  He also makes a case for why Asura’s Wrath needs a change of venue to the Kinect, no matter how foolish it might make you look or sound.  Then his mic goes wonky, and he kind of talks about Hero Academy (which he’s been playing with Jonathan, Luke, and others).

Jonathan’s got a big list, explaining why he shipped Battlefield 3, unplayed, back to GameFly, and only gave Record of Agarest War Zero a quick pass.  He’s also picked up Space Marine, and didn’t much care for the new NFL Blitz, or the older Madden Arcade.

Sam has been moving and has had Internet issues, so his list consists of his primary addiction of late, EDF, and the game everybody on the show has played this week (and which we end the show talking about), Skyrim.

Sam gets a bit of a rage-on about Skyrim’s AI system.  His Lydia apparently has a fondness for geology, and flinging herself headlong into hopeless battles.  Overall, though, Skyrim seems to have overcome his major gripes about Morrowind and Oblivion.  Meanwhile, Alex barely got through the tutorial mission and turned the game off.  He claims Everquest flashbacks, and no one really wants to see him relapse.  Jonathan has spent a preposterous amount of time playing Skyrim, but he’s not really all that far into the story.  Somehow it works, though.  None of the hosts think it deserves all the hype it’s getting, but at least two hosts are enjoying it quite a lot.

Next week, fewer games, and more game-related headlines!

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