First thing’s first, thanks to Jonathan’s new schedule, episodes will now be dropping on Fridays.  Now, on with the show!

Business this week: In theory, Sam will be moonlighting on another podcast, I Thought They Smelled Bad On The Outside.  That’s assuming, of course, that Scott doesn’t hear how Sam butchered his podcast’s name first and subsequently bans him from the show.

In games this week, Jonathan finished up his time in Skyrim and immediately began playing a game that feels an awful lot like Skyrim.  Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, though, has a much greater focus on gameplay and character progression than Skyrim, though, so the similarities only serve to highlight each games’ distinct qualities.

Alex doesn’t have much by way of games to talk about this week, but he has been reading a book that kind of has to do with games.  Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline, is about a the death of a billionaire, the contest to win all his money, and the video game full of the greatest hits from the 80′s that the billionaire built.  At least, that’s how Alex describes it.

Sam, meanwhile, continues to get his dance on in Dance Central 2, and is also still fully immersed in the world of Skyrim.  He’s gotten in some time lately on Space Marine, as well, and has been taking advantage of a service that probably only barely qualifies as a video game, GamesByEmail.com.  If you’d like to play copyright sterilized versions of some of Avalon Hill’s great strategy board games, just shoot us an email or hit us up on Twitter, and we’ll be happy to set something up.

We have two topics this week.  The first is inspired by Double Fine’s massive success with Kickstarter.  Is this the herald of a new age of video game development, or rare confluence of cult status fame and Internet savvy fans?

Our other topic revolves around a rumor about the 720, the NeXtBox, or whatever Microsoft ends up calling it.  Among wild tech speculation, the rumor also claims that the machine will include “some sort of anti-used game system.”  We have no idea what that means, but we sound off on what we’ll find acceptable or not, and also whether this is where the industry was destined to end up anyway.

Finally, we’ve got a bit of a twist on one of our games: Reverse Casting Call.  Instead of casting the movie of a game, we cast game characters in the roles of an awesome movie.  Sam and Alex cast the roles of Sarah Conner, Kyle Reese, and the Terminator from Terminator, and Jonathan gets some sweet revenge.

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Due to scheduling conflicts, the boys have only had a couple of days since Episode 102 was recorded, so game talk is light this week.  That’s okay, though, because we’re bringing back the headlines!

What little gaming did we do?  Alex tried to force himself through the Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood finally, and fails to make it past Hitman: Blood Money‘s tutorial.  Jonathan picked up and started playing Space Marine, and found that the atmosphere is fantastic, but the difficult spikes are irritating.  Sam, meanwhile, busts out a Skyrim dragon story, and talks up ODST with Brad and William Pall.

In the headlines this week, we’ve got protests, lawsuits, delays, leaks, and hacks.

• ESA Drops Support for PIPA, SOPA
• EA Invokes First Amendment Protection for Video Games in Trademark Dispute with Helicopter Maker
• XCOM FPA Pushed to 2013, Firaxis Strategy Reboot Still Set for 2012
• Max Payne 3 Pushed Back to May
• Windows Live Login Suggested as Xbox Live Security Flaw
• BioShock Infinite 1999 Mode for System Shock Fans
• Resident Evil 6 Logo, Release Date Leaked

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We break into triple digits this week with a fairly laid back show.

Jonathan talks about how comparing the 2011 version of Mortal Kombat with the 1993 version of Super Street Fighter II Turbo illustrates how modern fighting games have completely left him behind.  He’s also been disappointed in the changes made to Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, and Red Faction: Armageddon proves to be just another bug shooter.

Sam’s gone old school with Grand Theft Auto 4, which has helped improve his opinion of Red Dead Redemption and L.A. Noire.

Alex, meantime, received EDF, Dead Rising 2, and Bastion for Christmas, though he hasn’t played any of them because he’s been playing with his new toys, an iPod Touch and a Kindle Fire.  He’s also broken out some Space Marine Capture the Flag, but finds himself just wanted to go back to Exterminatus.  Finally, he and Jonathan have both been playing an Xbox Indie Game called Lexiv, which is an interesting mix of Scrabble, SimCity, and tower defense.  It sounds weird, but it works great.

In our topic this week, we still aren’t ready to discuss the games that were in the year that was, but we do decide to talk about the prevailing themes of the year.  Jonathan’s already been discussing his belief that the year is full of Almost Perfects.  Sam focuses on setting aside his expectations.  And Alex decides that 2011 was the year Day-1 DLC and Multiplayer Codes became a permanent part of the industry.

Finally, Jonathan’s in charge of this round of Name That Game!, and he’s got a 100-themed round prepped for the others.

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First: Sorry this episode is late.  Sam’s week got insane, and then my week got insane too, then Alex got sick.

Second: Sorry for the state of this episode.  Thanks to all the insanity and sickness, there’s no way we can get an edited episode out this week.  If it’s really bad, we’ll see about editing it when things calm down.

In the actual episode, we get Luke on to talk about the games we’re not playing.  If you love Gears 3, League of Legends, or Rocksmith, this is the episode for you.  We also spend WAY too much time talking about the GTA trailer, Human Revolution, and the new Space Marine multiplayer mode Exterminatus.

Next week, we should be back to our usual level of mediocrity.  Thanks for tolerating our issues this week.

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To start this episode, The Pimp of the Internet gives us a bit of feedback on episode 87, where we debated the merits of reviewing in a vacuum.

We were going to continue our Seven Sins series this week, but then we realized that we’d played a ton of games over the week that deserved to be talked about, so we skipped the topic and just covered the games.

Before getting into the games, though, Jonathan announces some good news in the form of his grand victory in the Spooky Outhouse Frozen Synapse Tournament.  He took down long-time listener, Smerbev, in an epic series of games to take the title.

This also provides a good point to mention the attempts made to start a Way of the Game tournament.  Calvin the Canadian has graciously offered up a 1600 point Xbox Live card to the winner of the first tournament, but we need to figure out if there’s interest in such a tournament, and we could also use some input on how to run the tournament.  Hit up the forums or leave a comment if you have any thoughts on either subject.

Jonathan:

• Batman: Arkham City (finished)
• Bit.Trip Complete
• Child of Eden
• Driver San Francisco
• Saints Row 2 (finished)

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The Producer & The Tlustos review…

Platform: Xbox 360, PS3, PC

Developer: Relic Entertainment

Publisher: THQ

Genre: 3rd Person Shooter

Rating:

• The Producer: Classic
• The Tlustos: Buy It

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We take a break from our Seven Sins of Gaming series this week to discuss whether reviewers should compare games to one another or not.

Jonathan (as usual) has been swamped with school.  He’s still playing Dead Island, though going solo is ridiculously depressing.  He’s got a bunch of games waiting for midterms to finish, including the ICO/Shadow of the Colossus HD remix, Knight’s Contract, and Another World HD.  In lieu of games to talk about, Jonathan instead talks about what happened at Archon before Archon happened.

Alex and Sam then pull out a massive amount of wankery about Space Marine and Gears of War 3.  Gears is growing on Alex, but has only succeeded in making Sam appreciate Space Marine more.  Jonathan, as usual, has nothing to contribute to the wankery.

It does lead into our topic, though, which revolves around a reviewer’s personal experience, and whether or not they should be comparing a game to others (such as Space Marine vs. Gears) or if a game should be reviewed in a vacuum.  This is wankery Jonathan can contribute to.

Finally, Sam breaks out the final round of Name That Game!, and one of the hosts does really well.

Next week, a Space Marine review!

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The boys couldn’t get their schedules to synch up this week, but rather than inflict more Catherine talk on you (yet, anyway), we decided to experiment with asynchronous podcasting.

Sam’s finished Space Marine and put more time into Dead Island.

Jonathan surprises Sam with his opinion on El Shaddai, and has also been putting time into Dead Island.

Alex succumbs to peer pressure and picks up Gears of War 3 and lets a copy of Culdcept slip through his fingers.

In our Seven Sins series, focusing on Pride, we take aim at Sony, Peter Molyneux, and achievement whores.

Finally, we even attempt an asynchronous Name That Game!  You’ll have to let us know how it works.

Next week, we take a break from the Sins Series to talk about the ethics of game reviews.

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We’ve got a special guest with a special project this week.  Tony Mast, of Back Seat Producers fame (and he of the old-school Top Ten), joins us to talk about Sausage Fest.  The Holmberg went to Sausage Fest last year, and it was a blast, plus it raised a nice chunk of change for the breast cancer fight.  There’s actual planning and intention going into this year’s Fest, so an event that couldn’t be more awesome will be more awesome.  The IndieGoGo campaign is still going for a few days more, and even though the campaign is technically funded, any money over what’s needed to run the event seeds the final donation we send to that breast cancer campaign we can’t name without specific permission, so we encourage you to donate if you can.

Tony sticks around for the rest of the episode, and drops some knowledge about Populous and Greedy Spiders.  Jonathan’s been re-exploring Saint’s Row 2, has been confused by No More Heroes: Heroes’ Paradise, and has whacked some zombies in the face in Dead Island.  Sam has finished Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and has been enjoying Space Marine and Dead Island.  Due to the short time between recordings, Alex hasn’t played anything new.

In our topic, we continue our Seven Deadly Sins Series with Gluttony.  Jonathan targets Google, Alex throws stones at EA, Sam points fingers at the Madden series, and Tony brings an RTS twist to the topic.

Finally, we have a three-way Name That Game!  Tony makes a valiant effort to dethrone the hosts, and succeeds with one of them.

Finally, we ask Tony to pick our next sin.  Pride goeth before a fall, and cometh in next week’s episode.

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We start an experiment this week: a series of shows based on the seven deadly sins.

But first, Jonathan bobbles a contest giveaway, and Sam doesn’t bother to try to make it sound good.

For the games this week, Jonathan has given up on Eternal Sonata.  Perhaps it was a bad idea to claim he’d play whatever game the audience chose “to completion” but he thinks he’s got some good excuses for why he should be allowed to call the game “done.”  He inflicts a small flash game, Hero’s Adventure, on the crew, argues with Sam about Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet, and discusses the D Trilogy: Deus Ex (the original), Dungeon Keeper 2, and Dungeon Siege 3.

Alex leveraged his connections to get a hold of Space Marine and Dead Island early.  He loves both for very different reasons.  Space Marine is everything he wants in visceral, for-the-emperor style, brutal destruction.  Dead Island takes its marks from Left 4 Dead, and expands it in a way that nudges all of his pleasure centers.

Meanwhile, Sam has spent an ungodly amount of time playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution, considering the game practically just released.  He’s got some complaints, but it mostly scratches the right itches.  He’s also still playing Eternal Sonata, though he wishes he wasn’t any longer.

In our topic, we start out the list of deadly sins with the one that most obviously relates to the video game industry: greed.  What games, companies, and events typify gaming greed for the crew?  What do you think of when you think of games and greed?  Some choices might surprise you.  Others will be pretty damn obvious.

Finally, we fumble through the introduction of a new game: Casting Call.  Since we haven’t yet let our obsession go, Jonathan and Alex cast the big three parts from Catherine: Vincent, Katherine, and Catherine.  Sam then decides on the final cast.  Hop over to the forums or drop a note in the comments letting us know who you’d cast in the roles.

Next week: Sausage, Gluttony, and a Special Guest.

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