49 - Hairy Delicious Moose Bacon

This week Jay and Wally attempt to trap and contain the incite of Elaine Stryker, the master of podcasting and the master of making uncomfortable jokes about male genitalia. After their initial attempt at casting pods with Elaine fails harder than an Alien tie in video game, the duo finally get their wish and release a barrage of swears and hilarity that could make Hellboy blush! Which is hard to do since he is already red, if you're into having people explain jokes to you.

Is Man of Steel good? Should you be boycotting PAX? Does this font size make me look fat? Most of these questions and more will be answered on this week's Broke Nerdcast!

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But Does It Play Games?

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Broke Nerdcast Episode 6: The Walking Dad!

Father's Day is upon us and we celebrate the only way we know how: by trying to keep our loved ones safe from the zombie apocalypse!  Join Jason and Wally as they review YOUR zombie plans and determine which ones could keep you alive as well as which ones could make you an appetizer. Also enjoy the latest nerdy news as our heroes discuss E3, the new comic book movies in development, the winner of the first ever giveaway, and a whole lot more.

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This show is rated PG-13

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E3 Special Report: Nintendo- Now You're Playing With POWER!

Anyone who is around my age can remember a time that when you were playing video games, no matter what you owned, you were “playing Nintendo” in much the same way you Xerox a copy and drink a Coke.  Those days are behind us, but this era dropped a small amount of the fanboy seed for Nintendo in you. 

Quite literally, without Nintendo, there is a really good chance that video games wouldn’t be the powerhouse industry that it now is.  This is especially ironic in that Nintendo could also be equated as a company who would innovate, but refuse to change with today’s gaming trends. 

Between the company releasing the Wii with outdated specs, deciding not to add HD capability to the machine, and using the much maligned “Friend Code” process, it is interesting to see what the big “N” is doing to keep in step with it’s much more powerful competitors.

Watching the live tweets of the Nintendo conference is not the same as actually being there, I’m sure and I am in the poor position of having not even seen Nintendo’s new console in action, but I’m going to attempt to anyways.

Continuing my trend of not really “getting” what makes other gamers excited, I sat through the game announcements of new “Zelda” games and whatnot and was completely bored, especially since most of these announcements were for 3DS games and I couldn’t be less excited about that thing.  I played one for a total of five minutes and my head hurt, but I can say that my head problems weren’t as bad as they were when the Virtual Boy attempted the same many years ago.

Then Nintendo showed their new console…or more accurately, the controller for the new console, and they called it “Wii U”.

Pronounced just like it looks (as if it was a European police siren), the new Wii U controller is the size of a small E-reader and has face buttons, shoulder buttons, motion tracking, and a 6 inch touch screen in the center.  Quite honestly, I can’t see myself playing games with this thing, but to be fair, I said the same thing when I saw the original Wii controls. 

A few tech demos were showed and the single most impressive thing I heard of was a golf game where you place the controller on the ground and you swing at a ball on the screen and it flies on-screen down the fairway.

You can also have the game stream to the controller if someone wants to commandeer your TV, but only for a few feet as it requires the console to power the game.

I am rather skeptical about this whole thing.  They say that the console is a modern machine with graphical capabilities comparable to the other current-gen consoles and will output 1080p; however, many of the visuals shown during the conference were on those other consoles and not native to the Wii U.  Like I said earlier, the controller looks unwieldy.  I recall people throwing their Wii remotes when it first came out and I can only imagine the potential damage this thing could be capable of.  The controller also looks as if it could cost around $100.  If my guess is right, then how on earth could I hope to play multiplayer?

Nintendo; however, is showing initiative and had the most interesting showing of E3 in my opinion.  Nintendo frequently takes chances and when they pay off, it does in droves.  I can’t wait to see what they have in mind for this thing and the kind of experiences we’re in for.

E3 Special Report: Sony, Livin' La Vita Loca

To be fair, I have to give a little bit of full disclosure with this one.  I do not own, nor have I ever had a lengthy play session with the PlayStation 3.  

There are a few reasons for this, but the most prominent is that I am, in fact, a broke nerd.  I can really only afford to buy games for and accessorize one console at a time and this time around it is the Xbox.

So with this said, I felt that the Sony conference was pretty forgettable, but only because I pretty much don’t care about the PS3 and the games associated with it.

That statement is going to get me a lot of flack with the gaming community, but I need to explain it further.

During the announcements, Sony started announcing big exclusive after big exclusive that everyone was hyped for in the crowd.  Me?  I’ve never really played the games that these sequels were for.  

As an old school Sony fan, I was pleased to hear some of the more classic titles getting new installments, like Twisted Metal, but I was lost on some of the newer ones.

Sony’s biggest two announcements were a 24’ starter 3DTV that I didn’t get a price for that is PlayStation branded.  This seems a little odd as I don’t think I’d want to experience 3D on a smaller screen.  Sony understood that the reason why 3D isn’t so widely accepted at home yet is due to the expense, but what they aren’t counting on is that I don’t want a crappy experience either.  I’m not saying that 3D on a smaller screen can’t work, anyone with a 3DS would argue that fact, but I’m just saying that if I decide that I was going to be jumping into the 3D TV bandwagon, I would do it full-hog.  

Second is the portable gaming system, the Vita.  With a touch screen, a touch pad, dual analog sticks, and a powerful gaming system inside.  

Now I’ve already was a huge fan of the PSP when it first came out and I took it everywhere.  I remember watching “Kill Bill” while waiting in line to see “Star Wars”, playing “Hot Shots Golf” on the way to Disney World, and hacking the firmware to do all the neat things that Sony didn’t want me to do.  Before the system could really take off, my brother broke it and as you know, I couldn’t afford to replace it.

With this in mind, I am quite excited about the Vita, silly name aside.  Of course I’ll never be able to afford it at $250 for the WiFi version and $299 for the 3G with AT&T service inside.

So how was the Sony Conference?

To me, it seemed a little safe and the innovations behind the Move controller do not seem as incredible as what is happening with Kinect right now, but overall, it was about games and Microsoft seems to have lost that fact.

Tomorrow, I will attempt to give my lengthy first impressions of Nintendo’s newest console: Wii U.

E3 Special Report: Strange Things Afoot On the 360

So the big three have fired their collective shots across each others bow in this year’s E3 and I’ve learned something very important about myself.  I must not be a gamer anymore.

Let me clarify:  I love playing video games, but I don’t seem to be nearly as excited and genuinely dislike some of the more beloved franchises on each of the consoles.

Yesterday morning, Microsoft held their pre-E3 shin dig and announced new User Interface changes for the 360 to make the experience more in line with what we all thought we were getting when Kinect came out and everything will be controlled with gestures and voice if we so please.  The highlight of this part of the conference was “Xbox Bing” that allows you to search the Xbox universe using only your voice.  For example, if I were to say, “Xbox Bing Sesame Street”, everything related to “Sesame Street” would appear for me to peruse.

Also announced was a new app for using YouTube.  This is a great new addition to the social networking apps already available and in fact might become my favorite social networking app yet if it wasn’t for the data caps that are poised to start making me change the way I consume media, but I’ll get into that in more detail at a later date. 

 I really wish that the other apps would be updated to allow us to be able to see Twitpics or follow links since I feel that they are useless without that functionality.

Also announced was live television streaming to the Xbox, which looks interesting.

Microsoft also announced a few diversionary apps that make use of the Kinect technology that were made available immediately.  I downloaded a couple of them and played around with “Kinect Me” and “Buddy Creator”.   

“Kinect Me” (or is it “Me Kinect”?) is an app that would create an avatar by scanning your face and body and creating an avatar with your face and clothes.  It takes pictures of your doppelganger to share.  It works fairly well and it allows you to get some achievements, but it has a few shortcomings.  First thing that’s apparent is that there is not a way to edit your body type and thus, I looked nothing like myself.  I am a pretty big guy and the Avatar was skinnier than anyone I know, but at least I know what I’d look like if I were to lose an amazing amount of weight and bone density.  The second issue is the fact that you really can’t do anything with this thing except share it on Kinectshare.com, so there really isn’t a point.

“Buddy Creator” is a pretty exciting app, but it’s not because of its content, but because of the possibilities opened with the technology.  What it does is scan the front and back of an object, in my case a few plush animals I borrowed from my daughter, and inserts the object in the game space.  You create a personality for the character and provide a voice and it takes you to a rather lame game where you follow on screen directions asking you to do simple gestures.  The issues with this app is that after doing the gesturing, there really doesn’t seem to be much else you can do with the character but watch it do the bizarre action animations based on the role the app gives it.  For example, I scanned an Elmo plush and the app assigned it to a “clown” personality and this apparently means that he will walk around and poop balloons and  confetti.  The on-stage demo of this app showed 1:1 body tracking and I never could find where I could do this or where I would be able to hear my voice over work be used and I was REALLY looking forward to hearing that.  If anyone knows if there is something I’m missing, then please tell me as I love this idea, but the execution seems slapped together.  It’s pretty awesome to be able to use your own things in the game space as it was shown in the early Kinect trailers.  An interesting side bar is that I tried to scan my daughter into the game, but she came out as a deformed monster baby with my arm jutting out of her armpit.  The results were so disturbing; especially with the “Ninja” character profile, I had to delete her entirely.

There was a huge Kinect push this year from Microsoft for all of the other games announced with some really intuitive control schemes being planned for core games, like head tracking in “Forza 4” that allows you to look into turns, audible calling in “Madden 12”, and weapons training in “Ghost Recon” that looked rather impressive.

Of course there was a focus on casual games and this is why I made my previous statement.  I am not looking forward to anything but the casual games like “Kinect Sports: Second Season”, “Dance Central 2”, “Disneyland” and the like.  I mean, sure, I want to play “Halo 4” and the update of the original “Combat Evolved”, but there wasn’t much excitement behind it.

This wraps up the Xbox conference, for me anyways, as I really have no opinion about all of the stuff I don’t think I’ll ever play.  I’ll try to get my thoughts on Sony’s Conference (the Vita), and Nintendo (Wii U) tomorrow, but until then…party on dudes.

P.S. Next year, hire less over the top actors M$.  They made the games look dumb.