We’re never doing that again at the following link.

Before you listen to this episode let me first apologize. Sometimes things will play out in our head better than they actually do when we implement those ideas. The song choices for this episode is the VERY best example I can give of such a situation. Never again. I swear it.

Gaming is about to get busy. This past week alone saw the release of at least THREE games I know of that had substantial interests. Sniper Elite 4 – which we discuss on the show, Halo Wars 2, and For Honor. This current week is sort of a…buffer. A time to make use of and get in all we can of whatever we wanted to play. Next week is Horizon Zero Dawn. The reviews and general conversation seems to put this one in a good light. One not to miss kind of a thing. Then the week after is the Switch release which means Zelda. That early March release should give you plenty of time before Mass Effect at the end of the month.

And that’s only the big hitters and even then I feel like I’m leaving stuff out. In between there’s PC releases of all kinds and probably some lesser known things that could come in under the radar and surprise us all.

To the publishers – I know we used to beg you to step out from the Fall/Holiday release schedule and you did that. Keep that going, but now back it off the early year release as well. Summer is still a massive drought of nothing new worth playing. Fill that in from time to time and you’ll see that releasing a good game in ANY month of the year will still get you the returns you want. We’ll buy it. We totally will. But throwing them in the crowded early and late months of the year doesn’t do you any favors.

We’re statistically speaking at the following link.

Sometimes we think we know our audience. Mainly because most of you show up in the chat room during the live shows (if you listen to this outside of the live broadcasts we’d love to hear from you and know you’re out there). But then we have calls like we did during this episode. A much older gamer calling us about Doom posed the question to us about the demographic of gamers these days and one of our listeners in the chat room provided us a lot of information on that very subject. It was necessarily eye opening to any of us – the statistics anyway. The phone call, however, was a different story. There is no defining age of a gamer, I mean, statistically yes there is, but we all know you can be as young or old and still enjoy gaming. There’s videos all over the internet that exemplifies this and proves the point. But…it’s honestly different when you actually have a conversation with someone who exemplifies this.

I’ve seen my interests in things come and go as I’ve grown older. Food that I didn’t like as a kid don’t seem so bad now. Or television shows I enjoyed as a kid seem to be difficult to understand why as I’ve gotten older. Gaming has been one of these things that I’ve wondered and often been afraid about – will I grow out of this? Is this a phase that’ll eventually pass? I don’t ponder too long on the questions cause we really can’t predict these things, but hearing from these callers make me a little more comfortable in the fact that it isn’t likely my love of gaming will pass on or phase out.

We’re pretty sure size matters at the following link.

I’m back from PAX South and being under the weather and everyone else is back from their convention locally as well. I love going to the different PAX’s that I am able to attend, but this one afforded me something no other PAX has been able to do up until now – hands on time with a not-yet released console. And you can take that term literal. Hands on this console in particular was something that had been bugging me since the main reveal last month. Everything about it looked small, and while that’s usually in Nintendo’s favor, something about this seemed to be on the extreme side of the size. Yes, it’s small. Very small. Too small. And, oddly enough, they’ve got it backwards when used as a handheld – it’s too big. When you’ve got a 3DS and you need to focus on something else at a moment’s notice you just close it up and move on. You can’t do that with the Switch. There’s no folding. Maybe there’s a bag you shove it into, but there is no quick sleep. This thing has problems up and down and that’s outside the already limited launch library that we’ve discussed before.

We’re all going out of town next week at the following link.

To start with, we’re running a replay next week. I’m going out to San Antonio for PAX South with the other two are headed to a comic convention. The dates kind of worked out pretty well in that regard. Anyway…on with the show.

We’re still looking at Nintendo and trying to figure out where the value is – for us. We can possibly see it for some if the games are there but they aren’t really providing them. Not now anyway. They might be there by the time the system drops about fifty bucks and becomes a $250 console (or less), but with all costs involved you’re looking at a $350 – $380 dollar system. At the low end, it’s $50 less than a PS4 Pro and $50 to $100 more than an Xbox One S or PS4…Non-pro or whatever. And most of those systems come with packed in games at the moment. I don’t think Nintendo has failed. They just aren’t in a position right now to get my money. A lower price would help, sure, but more games are needed for me to buy into this thing and we likely won’t see anything like that until E3 – and even then those will likely be released for next year. It’s very much a wait and see sort of thing, at least for me.

What isn’t wait and see right now is VR – Matt is currently getting his first experience with PSVR and so far it seems to be blowing his mind. We’ll get more out of him when we return on February 4th.

We’re really thrown off by fighting game soundtracks at the following link.

Like Nintendo’s previous console releases there’s any number of puns I could make here involving the name of their latest – but none of us on the show are fathers so we’ll leave the dad jokes to the experts.

But, like any parent, we’re (somewhat) responsible adults who look at spending three hundred dollars and try to see what value we have in it. So far, based on the launch library, we’re finding none. Look, I don’t care if the console came with all the launch titles and still cost three hundred bucks, if they aren’t games I want to play, then I’m not interested. And outside of Zelda, at the moment, there’s nothing else. And even with that I can play it on a WiiU, seemingly without any loss of visual quality or anything else for that matter outside of portability. And if everything we know were to hold true for the rest of the year, I’m still at a loss on spending three hundred dollars to play Zelda AND Mario come the fall. I’m sure other titles we’ll be announced and shown off, but the WiiU never became an interest until just this past year with a great library of games to pick from and now you can toss Zelda into that which knocks the Switch down to ONE game I’d be interested in.

I admit the allure is there. For me, anyway. It’s something new in the world of gadgets and games and that’s always a siren song for me, but Nintendo has shown me THREE times now that this isn’t a console I’ll play at launch and we’ll need to wait for the library to hopefully grow with some worthwhile exclusive titles. I say all of this knowing full well if they threw in something with Metroid I’d be in on day one more than likely.

We’re 49 episodes away from our 500th at the following link.

Speaking of large numbers – I recently maxed out one of my characters in Destiny to the highest you can go, which is 400. Destiny has been around for 3 years and in all my attempts (and I did make them), I’d never gotten any of them to the level cap at the time. I’ve always been just short of that random drop that would push me over the edge. Well, that finally changed this weekend and now the bug of Destiny addiction has bitten once more.

I mentioned doing the hard mode version of their latest raid on Friday night. I did it again on Saturday and again on Sunday. Something that was once out of my reach has now started to become second nature in learning the mechanics of the process. It’s gotten me addicted again and given me more to look forward to beyond the once-a-month Iron Banner session.

But I wonder, how long will that last? As mentioned before I went 3 years chasing down that white whale, and now I’m easily within reach. What’ll happen when I finally reach the end of my race? I’m pretty curious about that, honestly. We’ll probably know by the time we settle into the studio again for our next episode.

We’re not really sure what year it is at the following link.

You’d think with a week away we’d have come up with something better for our year end show. By that I mean, we’d know what our highs and lows were of the year 2016 – at least in gaming.

Not. One. Bit. In fact, some of the games we throw out there aren’t even from 2016. And what does get mentioned is from the past few months save all but DOOM.

What we are aware of, however, is that this is episode 450 and the last of 2016. And we couldn’t have reached this point and that many shows without your support. From all of us at In-Game Chat, we want to thank you for that and hope nothing but the best for you and for gaming in the new year. Thanks again, and enjoy the show!

We’re settling down for a short winter’s nap at the following link.

The show so nice we’re playing it twice. Consider this our Christmas episode. Which is easy to do considering the audio we used. So yeah, this show will also be our show for next week. We’re off to do the Christmas thing so we won’t have a new show for you next week but we will return on New Year’s Eve for our year end wrap up and what we have to look forward to in 2017. Speaking of, we’d like to hear from you on your highs and lows of gaming for 2016 and what you’re most looking forward to in 2017. Call in for that episode or email us your lists to be read on the air!

As for this episode, we stick our toe in the waters of the PC vs Console debate with Carson who calls in. If you’re expecting a straight winner here – there isn’t one. Not from us anyway. We easily concede to the PC’s power, its numerous strengths and very little weaknesses, but we also don’t limit ourselves to being trapped in a corner. Arkham Knight taught us better than that. Pricing on newer games and the community to find them playing also points us in different directions. The thing is, we have our reasons for where we all game and it almost always comes down to convenience over anything else on offer. If it puts us in front of our PC or in our beds with our consoles, then so be it.

We’re keeping things still in the box at the following link.

I’m a sucker for a lot of things. Gaming trinkets are one of those things. Well, some people consider them trinkets, they’re collectibles to me. You give me a nice statue or some physical object of the like and I’m in. Steel books will also work in that regard as well. Then there’s the autographed stuff and while eBay may give me an idea of a price, these are things I have no intention of selling. A few of them I brought in with me on this episode. RJ also brought in a few of his collectibles and we’re joined in the second hour with listener Chris who brought by a small sample of his EXTENSIVE collection of consoles and games. As much as I love the trinkets, Chris’ collection actually contains games. Just…the games themselves were a sight to see and collectibles in and of themselves.

There’s a line in Fight Club about the things you own ending up owning you. And I only really think that’s true if you allow those things to own you. Talking with Chris and RJ this weekend only showed me that these things we own are the things we love and represent what we love doing. It isn’t ownership so much as it’s pride for what we have and the love of what we do that those things represent.

We’re complaining about awards at the following link.

“Often in video games we get to choose how we’re seen. Our avatars and our tweets and the work that we do are all meant to portray the story that we want to tell the world about why our lives matter. But sometimes the story is written on to us. Where it’s told because of us or in spite of us. And it reveals our weaknesses, our failures, our hopes, and our fears. You let us tell the story of my son, Joel. And, in the end, it was not the story that we wanted to tell. But you chose to love us through our grief by being willing to stop and to listen and to not turn away. To let my son..Joel’s life change you because you chose to see him and to experience how we loved him.

And I have hope that when we are all willing to see each other, not for just who we want to be but who we are and who we’re meant to be. This act of love and this act of grace can change the world.”

-Ryan Green, Creator, “That Dragon, Cancer”