What size is the human eyeball? Why aren’t scientific measurements listed in American so we can understand them? What animal should always wear goggles? These questions, along with everything you wanted to know about PAX can be answered in the next 76 minutes of your life if you listen to this podcast. Don’t tell me that you’re not curious why a man was giving out diamonds to playtesters; what we thought of the great Houdini of PC gaming (Duke Nukem Forever), Red Orchestra: Heroes of Stalingrad and Torchlight 2 after playing them on the floor; what the most popular game was; and everything else that we saw, experienced, and even hope to forget about this year’s fanfest in Seattle. You want to know; we want to tell you. So stop reading this and crank up the podcast.
Still bummed out that you weren’t able to make it up to PAX this year to participate in the PC Gamer panel? Be bummed out no longer, faithful readers! We’ve uploaded the audio of the entire shindig onto our website for all to enjoy.* In the panel, titled “The Five Wonders of PC Gaming”, we talk about everything that makes gaming on the PC a uniquely awesome experience, including the recent indie blowup Minecraft, StarCraft II, the classic Chex Quest, and flight sim enthusiasts.
PAX is just around the corner and most of the PC Gamer crew is mid-flight to the convention center. There they’ll be meeting readers, hosting a panel on PC gaming, and of course playing the best games and reporting on the latest news in the industry. Our ground team, Andy Bauman and Josh Augustine, talk about what they expect to see at PAX, the latest news–including Elemental’s review and ATI disappearing off the face of the earth forever–and answer some reader questions. Enjoy and be sure to tune in for PAX coverage over the weekend!
At PC Gamer, we hate redundancy. We hate redundancy so much that we won’t even tell you how much we hate redundancy. But we hate it. That’s why during this weeks podcast, we decree that the two Dakotas shall be consolidated into one. And in between our political proclamations, we discuss all manner of PC gaming news, including:
Epic-length two-hour podcast! Evan, Logan, Josh, Dan, Andy and newcomer Chris Comiskey relay a flood of news coming out of Germany’s Gamescom. Relic’s Dawn of War II expands while Dawn of War III peeks over the horizon, Torchlight 2’s co-op trailer triggers a Pavlovian drool response, Jagged Alliance goes online, and Microsoft brings back Age of Empires and Flight Simulator – sort of. Then we play World of Warcraft: Cataclysm’s Collector’s Edition: buy or no buy, answer listener questions and interview the CEO of hardcore strategy publisher Paradox Interactive.
This episode’s busting its seams with people eager to talk about all the latest video game news (and a few things that aren’t video game-related at all). The author of LOVE, Eskil Steenberg joins us this week to offer developer insight on the news and explain why he’s still using a decade-old mouse. Logan tells us all about his trip to the Bioshock Infinite announcement in New York, including why his skepticism turned to optimism with a single video of gameplay. The whole gang, including guests Andy Salisbury from the official World of Warcraft magazine and ex-PCG EIC Gary Whitta, tackle RUSE’s lack of DRM, League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth latest additions, Fallout New Vegas’ star-studded voice casting list, and our big scoop on the next big TF2 update.
Fresh off his guest-writing stint at Penny Arcade, Hollywood scribe Gary Whitta joins Dan, Josh, Erik and Andy to talk about what brought him back to PC gaming after a real-life rage quit and his plans for building a new PC. Then we cover announcements ranging from Battlefield to Batman to Worms, speculate on what Irrational is up to, and discuss the best way to entice gamers back to an older game – and that’s before we even get to answering listener questions and what we’re playing.
On today’s podcast, Evan, Josh, Dan, and Erik recap the results of yesterday’s office StarCraft 2 tournament and offer their first thoughts on the launch of the game, the campaign (spoiler-free, of course), and Blizzard’s mostly issue-less worldwide launch of one of the biggest multiplayer games of all time. Yesterday’s SC2 tourney champ, Tyler Nagata, senior editor at GamesRadar, also joins us.
At the end of today’s episode we interview “HDStarcraft,” one of the prominent StarCraft 2 professional match broadcasters in the SC2 community. If we can encourage you to subscribe to one YouTube channel (after ours), let it be HD’s elegant, entertaining StarCraft commentary.
StarCraft 2’s new trailer: analyzed. Valve’s surprise free game, Alien Swarm: talked. ArmA 2: Operation Arrowhead’s incoming British DLC…sconed. Erik “Level 80″ Belsaas, Andy “Cat Murderer” Bauman and Evan “Caramel Nougat” Lahti talk about all this, plus our insight on the often unnecessarily-long lead times gaming publishers make between the announcement and release of a game.
Intern Robert rallies the PC Gamer crew to chat about the Mass Effect-izing of Dragon Age 2, why League of Legends has our attention, our hopes for the next Batman: Arkham Asylum and the brand new talent trees of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. Podcast producer Andy Bauman shares a rare gripe with Monkey Island 2, too.
Quote of the week, courtesy of Evan: “One time, I was The Hamburglar for Halloween.”
