Episode 54 – Mighty Orbots (right click save target as)

We are back and this time we brought the sexiest robits available … No it isn’t a Japanese sex robot! It’s the twins Bo and Boo from the Mighty Orbots.  This week we review Season 1 Episode 1 – Magnetic Menace.  Join us as we once again save the world from this week’s most dangerous force, the leader of SHADOW, Umbra.  We’ll need all the help we can get because this time we do battle with a god damn planet and a couple of rock stars.

Episode 53 – Alvin and the Chipmunks (right click save target as)

New Year means a new episode!!! 53 in and we haven’t reviewed Alvin and the Chipmunks until NOW?!? We have dishonored our families. But here we are this week we gangbang Alvin, Simon, Theodore, Brittany, Jeanette, and Eleanor (damn right we are tired after that). We venture all the way back to 1983 and review Alvin and the Chipmunks: Season 1 Episode 1A and 1B. In the first episode we team up with THE MR. T and help the chipmunks beat some bully ass. After hanging with Mr. T there is only one thing left to do and that is go track down three mirror images to your crew, so that’s what we do.

Direct download: 052_-_Punky_Brewster.mp3

We are back and this week we go big and by big i mean Soleil Moon Frye (wink wink nudge nudge).  This week we review It’s Punky Brewster season 1, episode 3: Pretty Ugly / Glomer’s Story.  Join us this week as we finally out what’s at the end of a rainbow … if you guessed a leprechaun chipmunk then a PUNKY POWER to you!!!

Episode 51 – Heathcliff (right click save target as)

Wow it has taken us 51 episodes to get to Heathcliff, for shame! Well we finally got here this week we take our plane / boat Cadillac and head to the junkyard as we hang with Heathcliff and the Catillac Cats. This week we review Season 1 Episode 49: Boom Boom Pussini – Beach Blanket Mungo. Join us as we double dip and help train Heathcliff for hiss big pro wrasslin debut (you know Cody will WWF out!). After that we head to the beach to shred some gnar waves in the annual Beach-Blanket-Surf-Off-a-Thon (presented from Mountain Dew).

Episode 50 – Ewoks (right-click -> save target as)

Just when you thought nothing else could ruin your enjoyment of the Star Wars universe (yes that is a direct dig at the re-imagining of the holy trilolgy for the bluray releases) here we come and poke fun at those lovable little rock throwers the Ewoks.  This week we tear down those tree hugging hippys, should have been the Wookies, Wicket and his cute little friends as we review Ewoks Season 01 Episode 01: Cries of the  Trees.

Episode 49 – Teen Wolf (right-click -> save target as)

This week we dodge the green lightning storm of doom and head off to Wolverton (RIP Beacontown) to get our woof pack on with Scott, Stiles, and Boof.  This week we review Teen Wolf Episode 7: Wolf Pride.  What happens when a Steven Spielberg look-a-like rolls into Wolverton (shouldn’t this be the birth place of Logan and not Scott Howard? – I digress) and wants to film a evil werewolf movie, inhabited by friendly werewoofs? If you guessed they join the stunt crew and lay down the ol’ banana peel gag then you are correct!  Banana peel gags will always make the general public come to love a lycanthrope.

Episode 48 – Saturday Supercade (right-click -> save target as)

What happens when you combine Donkey Kong, Frogger, Donkey Kong jr., Q-bert, Pitfall!, and Space Ace with cheesy 80s cartoons? Cody blows his load and goes to heaven!  This week the crew pulls out their stacks of quarters and heads to the arcade to tame Saturday Supercade.  This week we review Donkey Kong Ep 19 – Hairy Parent and we double up on you because we also review Frogger Ep 12 – Here Today, Pawned Tomorrow.  Yes sirs we get down and geeky with the two greatest fads of the 80s cartoons and arcades!

Episode 45 – Pound Puppies (right-click -> save target as)

I’ll get this out of the way right now I liked this game a lot more than the rest of the Internet and my co-host Diana.  Reviews for Brink have been pretty harsh with Giant Bomb giving it 2 out of 5 and GameSpot 6.5 out of 10.  Every site makes very valid arguments, arguments I tend to agree with.  However I think Brink feels pretty fresh in a very stale genre.

Brink is a game that had tremendous potential but came to the party with a handful of issues.  This class based first person shooter comes to a party dominated by the likes of Halo and Call of Duty and seems like the ugly girl in the corner.  But I found the more I played it the more I liked it, kind of like all those 80s movies where the nerd girl lets down her hair and takes off the glasses to reveal a hotter girl than the cheerleader.

Don’t get me wrong there is plenty wrong with Brink namely the online lag.  Your mileage may very but getting hooked up to the wrong host will make Brink damn near unplayable, luckily that isn’t every game that this happens.  When you get a good host there is no lag to be had, which makes me think this could be an easy patch fix.  If you don’t want to deal with occasional games being unplayable due to the lag then there is always the option to play the “single” player experience, which is basically the exact same as the multi player offering just with AI controlled bots.  This is where another problem reveals itself … horrible AI.

The AI is so random, sometimes I marvelled in how smart and how they were a vital part of my team helping complete an objective.  Then other times I was yelling at the screen while I was the only one guarding a node, while all the other members of my team were off running around seeing what the rest of the level looked like.  This was very frustrating as we had to defend said node for 10 minutes and this happened with 1:30 left, because of them we lost.  After we lost we had our post match huddle, turns out they were hungry and went for a bite to eat … fucking AI.  Again this doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does it really ruins the game, maybe this is how they inflate the difficulty of the game.

Brink takes a page from Mirror’s Edge play list and tries to seamlessly merge a your typical first person shooter with free running parkour.  Like the rest of Brink this is hit and miss.  When it works it works amazingly, you are able to quickly zip from point A to B without thought of what stands in your way.  Your character will slide, jump, sprint, and traverse terrain, but when something gets in your way that you can’t quite jump over your swift flowing movement comes to an abrupt halt.  I noticed this to happen on just about every corner of a handrail.  If you aim for the stairs you’ll run up the stairs, if you aim for the middle of the rail you’ll jump over the rail … the corner is another story.  Hitting the corner and the games doesn’t know what to do with you, instead of bouncing off and continue running on a slightly altered path you just dead stop.  Forcing you to backup or turn around and readjust your path, then continue forward.  In a first person shooter where the line is “move more than you shoot” this will kill you numerous times.

For all the innovations Brink brings to the table you’d think it would at least look like it was made this year, if you do then you’d be wrong, because this is where the ugly girl comes back to the party.  Brink’s during play graphic assets look like they were created for a 360 launch title.  A first person shooter in 2011 has to compete with the likes of Crysis, Halo, CoD MW and Brink clearly has been left behind.  The weird thing is that the art style is amazing.  I spent 30 minutes going through every customizable object on your character just to bask in the awe of how awesome your character can look.  Once in game all of that goes away and every character just looks kind of like what you picked out.  For me this is the biggest let down of the game.  The world of Brink seems like it has a very interesting story and during the few cut scenes looks like an amazing place to discover … its too bad you don’t get to every see it outside of those cut scenes.

What Brink does get right is the class based objectives.  Without a death match every class is absolutely required to work as a unit or they will fail.  From a soldier being required to blow up a bridge so the mechanic can continue powering a mobile generator in an escort type mission, to the spy placing a firewall on a computer so the opposing team has to hack at it longer to complete their objective, Brink is all about teamwork. Every class feels like they have a role to play.  This is what kept me coming back.

To me the core of the game works, it just has some problems that can be addressed in a patch.  So bottom line is it worth 60 bucks?  If you are looking for a single player experience then this game is NOT for you. If you are sick of the other 800 first person shooters that have came out since last year and are looking for the next thing to play then this won’t let you down. However if you are willing to let this one simmer and get a couple of patches to address some issues and maybe some more DLC maps your patience will be rewarded.  Because despite it’s few flaws there is a core game that is a lot of fun, especially if you have a handful of friends to play with.