THQ’s assets have been sold to rival companies after a 22 hour auction because of the bankruptcy.

In order for this auction to go ahead, THQ’s assets had to be sold for more than $60 Million, because investment firm Clearwater almost bought THQ, but a Judge ruled against it. The $60 million price-tag has been successfully met, however this now means that THQ is nothing more than a memory for many gamers and employees.

THQ CEO Brian Farrell wrote a letter to all THQ employees with what happened during the auction. Farrell states in the letter that separate asset bids would yield more money than just one buyer as a whole.

Sales have gone like this so far:

• Relic has been purchased by Sega
• Volition and Metro have been snapped up by Koch Media
• Crytek have bought Homefront
• Evolve was bought by Take 2 and
• Ubisoft overtook Montreal and South Park.

Some assets were not all sold during the auction, but that means those people are now out of jobs. Farrell said in his letter that he is confident that their talent alone will get them recognized and allow them to go and work for other companies.

For those who don’t know about some of these companies, here’s a bit of info:

• Volition are the creators of IP’s such as Saints Row and Red Faction.
• The Metro IP went with Volition to Koch Media, who’s video label is Deep Silver.
• Deep Silver publish games such as Dead Island and Catherine.

• Crytek, devs of Crysis, have now taken on Homefront. This just means Crytek will also publish as well as develop this game.

• Relic are responsible for the Warhammer and Company of Heroes game series’ and now Sega is to publish their games.

• Turtle Rock Studios have a projected named “Evolve” which has been purchased by Take 2 for publishing rights.

• Finally, THQ Montreal will now operate under Ubisoft, taking with it a new IP named “1666″.
• Ubisoft also now have the publishing rights to South Park: The Stick of Truth.

More and more rumours are continuing to surface from the industry, as a slight bit of interest from Platinum Games has been shown for the Darksiders Studio, and IGN has reported that Take 2, parent company of 2K, have acquired the licence for WWE Video Games. 2K have made some pretty good sports games in the past, but can they improve upon a brand that was suddenly going stale?

More updates will follow in the coming days and weeks, but for now, THQ’s main assets have been sold to other companies and the unfortunate state THQ found themselves in just makes the games industry as sadder place.

To people who lost their jobs, just apply to other studios and have your talent recognised there. Seriously, other companies are looking; Naughty Dog tweeted a job advert in the direction of THQ employees. And if you search #THQJobs on Twitter, it’s quite humbling; the amount of people trying to find them jobs just shows what a great community gaming has.

THQ; thank you for all the great games…

So I’ll start with visuals here, and honestly, it’s not much different from WWE ’12. The game still looks like the same game. It is nice to look at, but it’s just nothing new. May be since these are only for the PS3 and Xbox360 (and the bloody Wii?) they are getting their limit from the consoles? I  have a feeling that if they made this game for the PC, which wouldn’t be too hard since Xbox and PC are very similar to develop for, that the way the entire game looks would have no limit to how good the texture quality would look like. However, since this is 100% a console experience, we must be limited. Some games manage to make things look so lifelike, but this struggles and still looks slightly cartoonish… but if this is a sacrifice for smooth gameplay, fine by me.

Next, Story… moving on. There is no Story Mode this year. In previous year, Yukes gave us completely original stories in the older Seasons mode and  Road To WrestleMania Mode. I can remember the  stories they came up with were awesome, which incidentally piqued in my opinion in last years game as it had a flowing story between WWE stars Sheamus and Triple H, which led into the rise of a Created Superstar which took on the name of Jacob Cass. That was pretty good in my opinion. This year turns away from that and brings us Attitude Era Mode. WWE’s (well, WWF’s) greatest period of time was towards the end on the 1990′s. WWF was in a rating war with WCW. It start sparked a huge thing called the Monday Night War. With Monday Night Raw and WCW Monday Nitro. Rather than turn this into a review of the whole era, I’ll just say that this mode features arguably the greatest matches in WWF/WWE history! Such as the Stone Cold/McMahon feud, the Rise of D-Generation X, and the first ever match that I watched as when I was younger, Undertaker vs Mankind in Hell in a Cell (watch here and imagine what a 6 year old thought). Being able to relive the best matches ever was just amazing and really made me thoroughly enjoy it. I will give them this: giving you primary and secondary objectives to complete is great. In order to complete a match there are somethings you need to do (such as climb out of the cage in Vince vs Austin to trigger the infamous moment of Vince flipping Austin the fingers, forcing Austin back into the cage, only to have Paul Wight break through the ring), which are known as Historical bonuses, and somethings you don’t need to do (such as winning by either pinfall or submission). This is a good little feature as it tries to guide you in the right direction of how the match officially went in history.

Paul Wight broke through the ring!

Other modes include the Creation mode, which allows you to yet again create everything from the previous game. However this year, there is an incredibly bad Championship creator. I can remember on SmackDown vs Raw 1 on PS2 that the Championship was great. Loads you could add and make them look really cool. This year, you can take a pre-made existing or defunct title from WWE and edit the colour of the face plate and the leather belt. That’s it. The finisher creator is still pretty innovative but yet again, it’s too limited. I had in my mind what I want to do as a finishing move, yet in this game I have to settle for something that looks similar but just looks off every time I use it. Superstar/Diva creation is the same again as always. Creation modes do not offer anything special this year. No massive improvement. Well, the arena creation has a little bit more freedom, but that’s it.

The controls are the same as last year which is a massive plus. In previous versions, in order to initiate a grapple move, you had to hold R1 and flick the right analogue stick in one direction and then another to start the move. Now you simply press X and with the left analogue. It’s a lot less cluttered and a great thing they have done. In this years game, they’ve added a new “OMG!” feature. If you have a finisher stored and you prop your opponent against the announce table and start the “OMG!” move, you’ll perform your finisher instead of a generic DDT and put them through it. Opponent in the corner of the barricade? Spear them through the thing! Playing with 2 Super heavyweights? Store 3 finishers, whip them into the corner of the ring, do a superplex and destroy the ring! Not using a Super heavyweight? Do the same again and simply super-duper-plex from the top rope to the floor below the ring. Incredibly satisfying when you pull them off. Yuke’s have done an amazing job in adding to what was already a full game. The best OMG move I’ve seen so far is this one below!

Oh... My... God!!!!

Online. Oh boy, where do I start. Well, unlike every other WWE game, this version has online trophies. Nothing too specific, you just have to level up your rank, upload, download and review Community Creations. Fine. No problem… oh, right until the servers reset your damn stats! I got up to level 5, which took a while, and now I’ve had to claw my way back up to level 3. The online isn’t hard, it’s just the lag. So much lag! If you can actually learn how much lag there is and know exactly how early you need to hit the reversal button, you could be in control of the entire match and win. However, most of the level points I have gained were all when everyone in the match disconnected during Elimination Chamber Tag matches and I beat all three opponents via submission. However, looking passed this, THQ and Yuke’s were quite ambitious  this year. Every match type is available online, the ranking system is cool and winning against real life opponents is really sweet. But sometimes the lag is too bad to even play and the stat resetting is a big set back.

"Good God Almighty, Mankind is broken in half!

The audio. Well, in the menu’s we have the standard entrance music of various wrestlers playing in the background. In game, we have the awkward recorded lines from Michael Cole and Jerry Lawler. Some of them don’t make sense and it’s a little distracting. They did try updating some lines which was a welcome change, but shameless plugs for the WWE magazine and WWE.com sound out of place while I’m Chokeslamming Vince McMahon through a table that is on fire! Where this shines though, is in the Attitude Era mode. Wow. I didn’t realise at first, but the dev’s ripped the audio from footage of the actual Attitude Era, cleaned it up as best they could to make it high quality and had completely real lines from Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler… along with the filler during the matches that sometimes (and it is rare) Lawler will say something authentic, to which Ross then says something about the current match with never happened. It’s tries to stay generic but sometimes fails.

To summarise, this game is just WWE ’12 with a new game mode. It’s not exactly a massive improvement, however I could say this one was great to relive those matches from the 90′s. WWE ’12 still holds my favorite moment from any WWE game in the past, when Sheamus wins every title in the WWE, and out of no-where Triple H destroys him. I never saw that coming, however in WWE ’13 I already knew the outcome of the matches. It was a good game, however once the platinum trophy has been achieved (or you’ve finished Attitude Era and max-rank online), I think it’s safe to trade this in. Little replayablitly here unfortunately. In my opinion, this game is a 7.5/10. Definitely not my game of the year, but I’m still really glad I played it.

The gameplay is a bit of a mess. At first I looked at it and as I was following the tutorial I thought I could get the hang of this pretty quickly, but then I kept following, and kept following until I was bombarded with so much combat information that I simply forgot somethings. That’s not the say the combat and gameplay cannot be fun though. I mean seeing your character do what is essentially is an ultimate move was pretty satisfying. Also swiftly switching out which characters in your battle formation are attacking an enemy at any one time is quite a fun little feature. That’s all there really is for gameplay. You get to run around a map which had me think of Final Fantasy 7, but there isn’t much gameplay. What little gameplay there is however, is alright.

Visuals. Wow. Contrast much? As you progress you find that the “cutscenes” are a background and a maximum of two drawn anime characters with dialog at the bottom of the screen. Japanese voicing is on at all times. Credit is due. The drawn characters are quite nice to look at. But then during game play, we get 2D character sprites on a 3D plain. The 3D plain does not look to render very well and seems to chug along a bit. Standing still it looks nice, but when that camera moves it’s like running a PC game on Max-settings with a really bad Laptop! But I think it’s an even split here. One good thing, one (not bad thing, just) not so good thing.

The audio in this game is pretty cool. Japanese voice acting is a big plus. I’d hate to listen to a crummy English translation that says one thing but the subtitles say another. +1 there. Then there’s the combat sound. Another good move. With the combat being kind of turn-based, the sound effects of each weapon and each character sound pretty cool. Now for the good bit… soundtrack. It’s just awesome. Japanese rock with a female singer. So stereotypically Japanese but it’s really cool to listen to sometimes. I actually put the controller down at one point and just started listening to some of the tracks. I found them to be very enjoyable, fit well into the game and sort of motivated me to play the game a bit more than normal.

Look at the anime!

Story is this game. Playing it for any other reason may be a strange decision. It’s really long, but it’s interesting. Your “main” character is a boy/man named Weiss (which is odd, a German surname for Japanese kids first name). You lose your memory after killing a God, which isn’t a spoiler, that’s the damn tutorial stage… the first one anyway. Weiss then loses his memory after killing this God and seeks to get his memory back while also not getting into any more trouble with the remaining Gods. With your team, you battle through the map getting from point to point and triggering more dialog. The dialog and the soundtrack, two best points about this game. Weiss needs to complete this quest as he is the “vessel” of the deceased God. One of Weiss’ party will become a “Maiden of the Pillar”… I’m still not entirely sure what that means. Should Weiss fail this quest, his sin of killing a God wil be “punished” (I guess) upon his child.
There is so much stuff to do in this game. However it isn’t in the exciting way that Skyrim manages, but in an overwhelming way! So many things to buy, so many things to learn, and so much grinding… FORCED grinding too, just makes the game grow a little stale. It’s not that there’s a lot of stuff to do in the game, it’s just that there is so much that you are forced into doing (like missions from the hunters guild).

Japan is very forward, huh?

Did you know this game also has PlayStation Move features too? Oh yes, plugging in your PSEye and picking up your Move controller allows you, not to play the main game, but to… wait for it… massage or bathe the female characters from the game! You read that correctly! Completing said “mini-games” can even bring the girls to, as Jeremy Clarkson says, have a crisis. It’s just sexual content for the male gaming world that, well, nope, can’t actually find a reason why it’s in there! …Japan, eh?

All in all, this game is well made. It’s huge and easy a 40+ hour grind-fest. Story and music is great. Visuals are okay. Combat is playable. But the length of the damn thing and sheer amount of stuff you’re expected to remember is ridiculous. I give this game a 5.5/10. It’s just above an average game in my mind. Maybe not being a big JRPG fan is a factor here. So all I can say is, if you are a fan, give this a chance. If not, (at the time of writing) Arkham City is free on PlayStation Plus.

Spec Ops: The Line is actually part of a series of games that were on the PC, Dreamcast and PSone, but this one is a completely original story and sets itself apart from those games. You take on the role of Captain Martin Walker, known simply as Walker during the story, and you lead a team of two other men, named Lugo and Adams, on a rescue mission. You set out to look for a man that Walker knows from his past in the Army named John Konrad. The Story starts out sounding like it’s going to me a typical Call of Duty-style bad guy wants to start something, you have to stop it. Boy is that wrong! Straight away in the second chapter you realise that everything is strange, and it’s just going to get stranger and stranger. The story is slightly decision based, but they only affect you immediately and they are scarce. It’s not like a decision is going to affect the end game sequence, however there is more than one ending.

Personally, I thought the story was incredibly bold. Usually in the video game industry, if your game has an 18-rating and it doesn’t have the words “Call of Duty” or “Halo” written all over it, it’s as good as doomed. I fear this game fell under everyone’s radar because of this. The story does keep you hooked! You play through the game thinking that you are going to get to the end and be all, “Dude! Bro! America! Fuck yeah!” NOPE! Things take a sudden freaky psychological turn and the game all of a sudden has a whole new meaning and that has made the game fantastic to me. The writers also did something that very few games can make me do… it made me feel. I felt the pain of the main character, the anger of is companions, and the confusion of everybody. There is one scene (you’ll know it when you come to it… it involves the white phosphorus for reference), where you can see the pain etched onto Walker’s face and the way the creators have set the whole event up just make you feel something for the characters.

 Oh… My… God!

The controls of the game seem to be standard shooter controls. They take everything from the simplicity of an FPS and mix in the gameplay of a 3rd person game and mash it together in a nice way. In classic style, the shoulder buttons operate the aiming, firing, grenade throwing, and squad commands. The face buttons allow you to sprint, vault over obstacles, reload and switch weapons. Nothing too extravagant there. The controls really don’t add anything special apart from the fact that it makes the game have a very small learning curve. It’s what the buttons do situationally that make this game great. Like vaulting over an obstacle will drop kick an enemy and throwing a grenade in the sand will blind people that it doesn’t kill. A lot of situational stuff helps this game along. Some enemies are incredible pains, however. Unless you have a few grenades, a heavy machine gun and/or a shotgun, killing a heavy is going to be a task-and-a-half! I think they made them unnecessarily strong. I don’t think anyone in reality would be able to with-stand two sticky grenades to the crotch!

Hey look… SAND!

A huge point is that this game looks just absolutely beautiful… in most places. The landscapes and locations you go into and threw are absolutely gorgeous! I got the same feeling as Uncharted 3. The desert is bright, but this game manages to convey the darkness of the whole thing really well with shadows, blackness from burning everything and the sheer grittiness of every situations. Sometimes there would be a few texture errors. The face of Walker was just one block of colour with eyes for a few seconds and sometimes the guns don’t have any definition… just a big black L-shape. But this is only a minor thing and doesn’t happen often.

The writing and all of the dialogue is very military, with a little bit of light heartedness thrown in here and there. In the bad situations, all of the characters react appropriately and in the sections where you can breath easy, there are some little quips that make the characters seem a lot more human. For instance, Lugo, one of your team-mates, says something and Walker replies, “Do you ever hear the shit that comes out of your mouth?” and Lugo just replies, “Not at all sir, it’s messes with my flow!” That little interaction just showed me that they really did try to make the writing of this game a treat to listen to. When not in combat situations, a lot of it was nice, but it still wasn’t anything like Uncharted or Shadows of the Damned.

Honestly, this game was a real treat to play and deeply regret not playing it on release day. 2K did an excellent job in putting Yager behind this game. They really knew what they were doing to I get the feeling they enjoyed doing it. It definitely shows, and my level of enjoyment was just so high I wish there was more I could play… oh wait, there is. There are a few DLC missions I can play and also go through again on Fubar Difficulty… I could use an even bigger challenge. I give this game… a 9! Yes a 9 out of 10, 4.5/5, 90%, 90/100, which ever you prefer. I think this game could actually be my game of the year… I truly believe that, and I want to thank the developers for creating such a great game.

Another milestone hit with episode 60. For reasons explained on the podcast, this is our last episode; we hope you’ve had fun listening to us over the year, and please stick around for other content on the site!

Given our unreliability with editing and release schedules these days, we don’t cover any news. Nor can we be bothered listening to any Rolling Stone Top 500, so this episode is basically just a one hour what we’ve been doing.

What we do talk about though, is all over the place. Greg and Craig listened to Muse’s new “The 2nd Law” album, and the new Adele “Skyfall” James Bond song, Mark and Nigel went to see Steel Panther and Bill Bailey, we share Train Simulator videos, we all argue about Dredd and The Hobbit (again), and all get emotional.

Thanks for listening

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Check out our awesome music, Anguish by Shide

Enjoy

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Email: podcast@oppsides.com
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Times:
Intro 0.00.00
WWBD – 0.02.05
News- 0.31.30
Break – 0.44.00
Rolling Stone Top 500 – 0.44.30
Q4 Look Forward – 1.07.50
Outro – 1.46.30

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Check out our awesome music, Anguish by Shide

Back to the old school thrash metal now, and we have the ‘third up’ on the Big 4; Megadeth. Formed by guitarist Dave Mustaine upon leaving Metallica, they have worked long and hard to attain their own unique distinctive sound.

Their fourth album, ‘Rust In Peace’ contains several very conceptual songs. The opener in particular, Holy Wars… The Punishment Due kicks off in true thrash style with riffs and a pounding rhythm straight off the bat. Lyrically, despite the obvious references to the Crusades of the Middle ages, the song refers to the Northern Ireland Troubles. The song is split into several segments, each with its own riff, culminating not in a confused puzzle, but a logical song with a slower segment in the middle complete with solos and verses building up to a solo. Mustaine’s unmistakable vocals fit in nicely; his voice doesn’t seem to fit any recognised vocal style, yet the music he has written in Megadeth works really well with it. You wouldn’t expect to see Mustaine performing a ballad on Broadway with that voice.

The next track, Hanger 18, hops on the conspiracy theory wagon with Area 51-style references. Musically though, riff after riff makes the song amazingly fun to listen to. The solo in this track is perhaps comparable to modern-day Dream Theater – diddly diddly solos over a heavy beat, interrupted occasionally with a whole-band riff. It sounds like it would again be difficult to listen to, but altogether it makes the song a little easier to listen to – instead of 3 minutes of solid guitar solo, there’s an opportunity to bang one’s head to the beat. Superb.

The third track returns to a more generic thrash metal formula; Take No Prisoners starts with a lengthy instrumental , the riff of which forms the basis for the song. Verging on tuneful shouting, the vocals overlap with the show-offy guitar playing, which again creates a pounding bassline with a harder guitar tone. This, however, turns the song into a air-guitaring track, which would no doubt incite moshpits at live gigs. The lyrics “do not ask what you can do for your country, ask what your country can do for you” incites a little unintentional tongue in cheek humour, especially when you look at Mustaine’s modern day outspoken political beliefs.

Later on in the album we come to possibly the most underrated ‘Rust In Peace’ song, Tornado Of Souls. A classic track by all definitions, it’s one of the easy to listen to tracks on the album. The opening complicated riff – played fast, as is typical of Megadeth – inspires air-guitaring and head-banging; leading into the chorus, again highlighting Mustaine’s distinctive forced vocals. A typical Megadeth technically complex riff structure, which feels very clean and polished in comparison to their peers speed-at-all-costs playing technique. The usual tricky solo makes the song complete. Excellent.

The climax of the album is the equally awesome Rust In Peace… Polaris, continuing the trend of ellipses everywhere. Beginning with a (fast, of course) drum fill, with the other instruments kicking in shortly after, this track is obviously going to be a good one. The pace changes into the chorus riff, again anthemic with a heavy beat. The song is characterised by several tempo changes, yet it all flows together well. A great climax to the album.

While not the most respected of Thrash albums, Megadeth put the dog to bed with Rust In Peace. Great start to finish, the mood of the album doesn’t diminish, and the songs stay fan favourites to this day; to the extent the band performed the album in full at their live shows to mark its 20th anniversary.

Every song feels ‘right’ on record, and its easy to imagine how well they relate to a live performance.

Hey guys! Sorry this one is a little late, editing skills are a bit rusty and Audacity doesn’t like a full hard drive! But anyway…
This week, Mark is out, so we four-man this one! Nigel has been checking out someone’s hot wife in Resident Evil: Retribution, Jake sucks at Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Craig has been perving on Lara Croft in the HD Collection, and Greg gets all hot in the pants about F1 2012′s new engine noises! All of this, news, and more, on Episode 58 of OppSides!

Enjoy!

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Email: podcast@oppsides.com
 Tweet us @OppSidesCast
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And subscribe to our sub-Reddit /r/OppSidesCast

Times:
Intro 0.00.00
WWBD – 0.01.00
News- 0.40.00
break – 1.00.12
Rolling Stone Top 500 – 1.00.33
Outro – 1.28.10
Outtakes – 1.30.05

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Check out our awesome music, Anguish by Shide

Tracks used this week:
Jackson Browne – Redneck Friend (Album: For Everyman)
Big Star – Kizza Me (Album: Third/Sister Lovers)
The Police – Synchronicity II / Mother (Album: Synchronicity)
Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto – The Girl From Ipanema (Album: Getz/Gilberto)
MC5 – Back in the USA (Album: Back in the USA)
Steve Miller Band – Fly Like An Edge / Dance, Dance, Dance (Album: Fly Like An Eagle)
War – The Cisco Kid (Album: The World Is A Ghetto)
Cheap Trick – I Want You To Want Me (Album: In Color)
Devo – I Can’t Get No (Satisfaction) (Album: Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo)
Suicide – Johnny (Album: Suicide)

All tracks should be available from your favourite digital music retailer!

We last saw Queen on this feature back in 1975 with their best album, Night At The Opera. Despite releasing some of their most commercially successful and universally anthemic songs between ’75 and ’89, nothing quite lived up to the sheer style and musical talent of the earlier albums. Making a good stand for it though, is one of their final albums, The Miracle.

By ’89, the band had accepted and played on their image as the biggest band in the world. Coming four years after their world-famous Live Aid performance, but only two years before the tragic passing of Freddie Mercury, The Miracle shows the band at an interesting time. Most of the songs are classic hard rock, driven by Mercury’s powerful vocals and May’s sweeping and distinctive guitar sound, but lightly reflects the time period too, with the phrasing, instruments and themes.

Double opener Party and Khashoggi’s Ship are standard rock tracks, with catchy riffs and a foot-tapping rhythm. With the title track, The Miracle, the band created a sort of pseudo-political anthem, dreaming that “if every child on every street, had clothes to wear and food to eat, that’s a miracle,” to strange effect. The catchy song of course features several guitar solos, and a little of Queen’s signature backing vocals. For the last minute, the slower, synth-orchestral sound climaxes, and bursts into a hard rock guitar solo which seems a little misplaced, before horribly-yet-cleanly changing tempo mid-phrase into the chorus to bring it out. A strange track.

Speaking of hard rocks, the next track, I Want It All, is literally that. Distorted guitar chords starts it, followed by a blistering little solo from May set this song up well. Mercury’s vocals adopt a slightly gruff tone here to add to the effect of the song, as do the overdubbed vocals on the chorus. Definitely one of the heavier songs on the album; particularly when it dives head first into a still legendary ‘facemelting’ guitar solo. Seeing a trend here? One of Queen’s under-appreciated songs when compared to We Will Rock You, We Are The Champions  and Don’t Stop Me Now.

One of my personal favourite tracks follows this; The Invisible Man. Fully embracing the popularities of the day, this song features a very heavily prominent bassline, digital-sounding drums, heavily emphasized synths and autotuned(?) vocals for effect. It’s almost a mockery of the 1980s synth-rock genre, but it’s such  great track it can’t be taken to be anything less than awesome. The accompanying music video references The Invisible Man as a video game, and so features Brian May’s guitar shooting lasers and Freddie Mercury teleporting around the set. A little silly yes, but fun as hell to watch. And the song itself is so well written. Brilliant.

The rest of the album begins to tail off a bit, but they are still great tracks. Breakthru is another cheesy 80s rampage through fretless basses and digital drums, but it’s a great track nonetheless. Scandal carries another socio-political, with a rather awesomely eerie sounding musical track, and Rain Must Fall seems completely unlike the 1970s Queen we all know you might suspect elsewise if it weren’t for Mercury’s vocals.

Listening through to this album has reminded me how great it is. True, the songs aren’t anthems like We Will Rock You; they aren’t iconic head-bangers like Bohemian Rhapsody and they aren’t arena-sized hand-clappers like Radio Gaga. Instead we see a band evolving from that writing some more contemporary, but still fantastic songs.

But with hindsight, it’s hard to look past the thinly veiled references to Mercury’s illness.

16th September 2012!

I have no realised that doing a weekly posting on my back log is very dumb! I don’t even get round to playing my back log every week so I’m just going to number them from now on, with the date in the post!

Okay so here I am again, playing Psychonauts and not getting far again! I now realise that every time I play this game I earn a new merit badge and then save and quit the game. So if I actually play this game more than once every fortnight then I should be done within the next to postings here. Today I managed to get my Levitation badge. Now I need to go back to Sasha Nein’s lab and complete the task of getting Dogen’s brain back from a weird and evil dentist! …Yeah, did I mention that this game is insanely weird!?

Again, I’m going to TRY and keep this weekly, but since I’ve failed at that twice, I’m just going to post these as numbers.

There have been 3 changed to my back log since my last post, and that is that Hitman 1, 2 and Blood Money have all been added to my Steam Library after that we’re on sale at some point this past week.

Maybe next week I’ll have started another game? Doubtful, I know, but I’ll start trying to aim high on this one!

Thanks again,

Jake!

Greetings folks,

sorry this is a little delayed this week; I’ve been pretty damn busy getting ready for Uni, so editing time has been reduced. But without further ado, here is episode 57!

This week we cover a lot of stuff. In ‘What We’ve Been Doing’, we go in depth about modern comedy, Guild Wars 2, Dredd 3D and Zen Pinball; afterwards we hit up some news, inluding Ubisoft being good guys, crazy Japanese people buying Vitas, some MASSIVE new televisions, and EA’s attitude towards post-sale care.

After the break, Mark steps out to do some moving stuff, while the rest of us cover albums 460-451 of the Rolling Stone Stop 500 albums.

With that, episode 57 in the bag! Ever onwards and upwards! Thanks for listening.

Please feel free to email us anything (spam and chain mail included) at

Email: podcast@oppsides.com

 Tweet us @OppSidesCast

 Like us on Facebook

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And subscribe to our sub-Reddit /r/OppSidesCast

Times:

0.00.24 -Intro

0.01.02 – What We’ve Been Doing

0.25.32 – News

0.59.30 – Break

1.00.30 – 500 Greatest Albums 460-451

1.29.47 – Outro

1.32.40 – Out-takes

 Download Here!

Check out our awesome music, Anguish by Shide

Music featured this week:

Hole – Plump (from ‘Live Through This’)

The Drifters – Saturday Night At The Movies (from ‘Golden Hits’)

Elton John – Ballad of a Well-Known Gun (from ‘Tumbleweed Connection’)

My Morning Jacket – Wordless Chorus (from ‘Z’)

Marvin Gaye – I Met A Little Girl (from ‘Here, My Dear’)

Los Lobos – Don’t Worry Baby (from ‘How Will The Wolf Survive?’)

Alice Cooper – I’m Eighteen (from Love It To Death’)

EPMD – I’m Housin’ (from Strictly Business’)

John Prine – Illegal Smile (from ‘John Prine’

Amy Winehouse – You Know I’m No Good (from ‘Back To Black’)

All music should be available from your favourite online retailer, no copyright infringement intended.

This movie opens on small talk. Small talk these days always makes people laugh. To my amazement, this movie was actually funny! Yes, the action was the big part, but the characters had enough personality to joke with each other. Immediately at the beginning, action hits us full-belt. The Sweeney (which is what the department of the police force is known as), foils plans early on just to show how good and unorthodox they are… In the sense that “armed” police doesn’t necessarily mean guns!

"Your knicked!" "Hahaha!"

Ray Winstone plays a great part. The leader of the Sweeney. He has the respect of all of his colleges and gives it back. He plays his typical hard case role and simply shines throughout the entirety of the film. Ben Drew, at first seems a little laboured. You are thinking is he a bad actor or playing the part correctly. We find this to be the latter as the story goes on and we find out more on Carter. All of the supporting roles are done well. They are all given their fair share of screen time perform well with it… even when smoking, which every character does in this movie.

The movie plays out in a quite old-fashioned sense, where we find out what the team is like and then get into the meat of the story. This time however, their or so many twists and turns that you are left with a masterpiece of a jigsaw puzzle by the end. All of the pieces fall together really well. So the main meat of the movie, starts when the team receives an alert of an armed robbery at a little independent jewellers. When someone in the store ends up dead, Regan & Carter take what they think is a random murder into an even deeper mystery that leaves Regan reeling because of an old adversary. The story seems dry and little at first, but it just explodes into a great one that only these actors could have portrayed. No fake accents here, all Londoners speaking their lines as if from the heart.

The technical elements in this film are great. From fixed cameras in small monologues, to massive “shakey-cam” in the high-adrenaline portions, the camera work was done excellently. The way they piece some scenes together leaves you puzzled and then immediately thrown back into action! The movie has is all, and the camera catch every detail in one of the best ways I’ve seen on film in a long time.

Caught in the cross-fire

Personally, I think this film is outstanding. This is my sleeper hit of the year. I rank this higher than Prometheus and the Avengers, with it ranking on-par with the level of enjoyment and amazement I got from Dark Knight Rises… yes, I am saying that The Sweeney is as good as DKR! If I was to give this a rating out of ten, I’d go with a 8.5/10! This is not the perfect film, as some of the stuff seems to come out of nowhere and a few things are unexplained, but the film is just so good I don’t care! If there is only one film you go to see this month, make sure it’s the Sweeney! Disappointment is the last thing you will be feeling towards this movie.

In the words of Monty Python, “and now for something completely different”. On the opposite end of the 1980s, completely contrasting hair metal and thrash, is Leonard Cohen. The Canadian singer/songwriter had already made quite a name for himself by 1988 with hits such as Hallelujah and Suzanne, but often underappreciated is the iconically ’80s ’I'm Your Man’.

Within three seconds of the opening slap-bass and keyboard on the first track First We Take Manhattan, you can tell that this is a large departure from Cohen’s earlier acoustic guitar driven work. In fact , the whole album barely features any guitar; the keyboards are the driving instrument musically. Then Cohen’s signature vocals kick in. The man seems unable to vocally produce any sound high enough to be heard by anything less than a submarine, never mind for human listening. Yet he writes his songs around the voice, to great effect. This particular track Manhattan, is very very keyboard heavy and also features Cohen’s often used female backing vocals. It also showcases his poetic nature, with subtle yet tuneful references to various aspects of pop culture. The song is used (along with Hallelujah) in the film Watchmen to epitomize the 1980s.

If I haven’t already expressed, this album features many aspects of the distinctive 1980s sound, almost to a cliche. Yet Cohen ensures the music remains deadly serious. Ain’t No Cure For Love opens with a short saxophone solo before the main beat of the song kicks in. Cohen utilizes his voice cleverly in this track; he sings (to the extent he can be musical with his deep voice) the chorus, yet speaks the story of the verses as if he were narrating a play. Superbly done.

The album itself is fairly short, consisting of only eight tracks. Yet each one is meticulously written to ensure they are perfect; there are no filler tracks at all on this album, and every Leonard fan will know all them. Everybody Knows with its ambiguous social commentary of cocaine and poverty; Take This Waltz which is of course, a waltz, with its laid-back nature and more classical oriented music structure gives a nice break from the synthpop feel of the rest of the album, building up in structure to include piano accompaniments, more signature female backing vocals and obligattos; both are great tracks which may be lost among the greater tracks on the album.

Back to the electric drums and fretless slap bass with Jazz Police finds Cohen almost whispering through another slight social commentary. The ragtime honky-tonk solo in the middle adds to the general atmosphere of the song, again, to great effect.

Rounding off the album is the great Tower of Song, with its clever metaphorical title. A very laid back song, it again features Cohen tunefully talking through the verses, humorously talking about how “I was born with the gift of a golden voice”. Another social/political commentary here about poverty and the like is hidden within his poetry, giving the song another dimension. The “doo dum dum” backing vocals give the song a slightly good-natured feel to it, but Cohen’s vocals keep the feel serious and sensible. In saying that, of course it’s good to listen to; the musical track is fairly minimalist – a simple bassline, orchestral chords, and the occasional piano (or even banjo??) melody compliment the groundshakingly deep vocals.

Admittedly, I’m not accustomed to reviewing non-rock/metal albums, so I hope I’ve been able to do justice to this great album I grew up with. The songs are well written, and the length of the album means it’s a joy to listen through, without becoming boring or strainful.

Even if you do need a subwoofer to listen to it.

Another week means another show! Greg steps out to not be a lazy unemployed bum; meanwhile we’re still finding our feet with the Rolling Stone Top 500 Album feature, so that’s the main focus of this week. We’ve managed to cut it down though so it should be better listening!

Before that though, we cover what we’ve been doing – including some Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Civilization 5, The Wedding Video and more Batman – then we head on to cover what little news there was this week – including Final Fantasy, OnLive and Skyrim.

Join us next week when we should finally have a full cast again!

Please feel free to email us anything (spam and chain mail included) at

Email: podcast@oppsides.com

 Tweet us @OppSidesCast

 Like us on Facebook

 Circle us on Google+

And subscribe to our sub-Reddit /r/OppSidesCast

Times:

0.00.21 -Intro

0.01.37 – What We’ve Been Doing

0.17.23 – News

0.32.38 – Break

0.33.47 – 500 Greatest Albums 470-461

0.54.24 – Outro

0.57.22 – Out-takes

 Download Here!

Check out our awesome music, Anguish by Shide

Tracks sampled this week:

LL Cool J – Dead Yvette (from ‘Radio’)

The Fugees – No Woman, No Cry (from ‘The Score’)

The Paul Buttersfield Blues Band – Blues With A Feeling (from ‘The Paul Buttersfield Blues Band’)

Bruce Springsteen – Tunnel Of Love (from ‘Tunnel of Love’)

Coldplay – The Scientist (from ‘Rush of Blood To The Head’)

The Magnetic Fields – A Chicken With It’s head Cut Off (from ’69 Love Songs’)

Def Leppard – Rocket (from ‘Hysteria’)

Echo And The Bunnymen – With A Hip (from ‘Heaven Up There’)

R.E.M. – It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (from ‘Document’)

Public Image Ltd – Albatross (from ‘Metal Box’)

All tracks should be available from your favourite online retailer.

<editor’s note: I’m trying out a new mixer, so my audio sounds a bit funny this week, which accounts for the sparkling noise throughout. I’m still working on it, thanks for sticking with us!>

Half way through the 50 Years now, and we come to a genuine musical classic. An album which transcends the ages, and appeals to all. Guns N’ Roses’ debut ‘Appetite For Destruction’ contains songs which are universally recognised and adored by even those not from the rock world; SEVERAL songs – an achievement not replicated by many albums of the 1980s!

GnR are hailed by many as the ‘last great rock ‘n’ roll band’, and in a way they are. No-one since has made such an impact on the music industry in quite as much style or longevity. Borrowing elements from the 1980s glam metal scene in which they grew up in (reflected in their visual style), punk (their attitude) and 1970s hard rock such as Aerosmith (their musical sound); Guns N’ Roses burst onto the scene with this absolutely brilliant album, and created quite an impression.

The album kicks off with the classic Welcome To The Jungle; classic riff, long-time show opener and all-round great tune. It gives a good introduction to the style of the band, the vocal prowess of Axl Rose and the guitar skills of Slash. Nightrain later on in the album, an ambiguously themed track, is one of the un-sung GnR greats; It narrowly avoided the Greatest Hits collection, but remains a staple of the band’s – and Slash’s solo project’s – live set to this day. An upbeat rock-and-roller with a catchy riff and chorus, it’s surprising it doesn’t receive as much airplay as the big singles from this album.

Which brings me to one of the two centerpieces of the album; Paradise City. The great set-closer and fan-favourite; this song has it all. From the smooth chorded opening with the harmonised “Take me down to the Paradise City, where the grass is green and the girls are pretty, Take me home!”, you can tell it’s going to be a great track. From there it kicks into the epic sounding synthesizer power-chordy part, and then into a smooth guitar solo, and finally into the famously hard-rocking main riff. The song builds up and up from there; the instantly memorable chorus and verse add to the power; and then with two minutes to go, the pace doubles for the main guitar solo, which in itself is a masterpiece. Absolutely awesome.

Later on, we encounter the band’s other most famous track; the ‘ballad’ Sweet Child O’ Mine. The universally recognisable opening riff leads to one of the band’s most popular songs. Listening to it now, I can’t help but sway from side to side in spite of myself; infectious grooving. The guitar solo ramps the music up a bit, dropping right into the completely contrasting “where do we go now?” bridge. The music doesn’t suffer at all from it one bit. There is a reason this is one of the band’s most famous tunes, for it is one of the band’s best.

The album as a whole is superb; despite the similar nature of all 12 tracks, it doesn’t get boring to listen to. I haven’t even mentioned some of the lesser ‘big’ songs such as Mr. Brownstone, My Michelle and Rocket Queen which would be standout tracks by themselves if it weren’t for the real standout tracks, and even the ‘album’ tracks such as It’s So Easy and Anything Goes with its show-offy guitar/harmonica solos, show an angrier side of the band, and gives a glimpse at the future tensions in the ranks which led to their messy separation.

Yet 1987 shows the band at full force, writing and performing classic tracks which of course, still hold up well in 2012. This album contains quite a few absolutely classic tunes which are accepted, if not admired and loved, by music fans everywhere.

The Darkness at Download Festival 2011

Until 2011, when they announced their comeback.
A one-off show at the Download festival (which I saw) proved how popular they were among the die-hard rock and metal fans who still remember the outrageous live act and the head-banging tunes.
There followed a UK tour, which I also attended. Aside from a few hardcore fans with their shirts off at the front, the rest of the audience seemed remarkably out of place for a classic rock band. Typically at a gig of that nature, the audience would be packed, getting involved and dressed for the occasion in their old tour t-shirts. Yet the audience there were 20 year olds who represented all sorts of young society. Half way through the concert it dawned on me; these kids knew and liked I Believe seven or eight years ago when it came out; found out The Darkness were touring, and now they could go into the city without their parents, bought tickets. Throughout the concert they stood and nodded a bit, and then smiled when I Believe came on; almost completely belittling the epic stage show the band put on; and the throwbacks to classic 70s icons and in-jokes. Fair enough if they enjoyed it, but for the band on stage to see a few hundred expressionless faces staring back, it must be demoralising.

Which brings me at last to their third studio album, ‘Hot Cakes’.
This signifies the band’s attempt to build up a strong fanbase who do know every lyric, bang their heads and wear the tshirt – an admirable task, but it has one major flaw. The album isn’t that memorable.
Yes, the contradiction does lie there between a band who became too popular due to an overexposed single, and a band whose album is designed to do the opposite of that, doesn’t have any big singles of it. But an album needs a few standout tracks to base the live show around, otherwise it comes in danger of becoming a greatest hits tour with a few new tracks no-one likes thrown in.
From my experience seeing them, the obviously very energetic frontman Justin Hawkins lives for the stage and to perform in his characteristically flamboyant manner, but none of these tracks would hold up particularly well against any from Permission in a live environment.
That being said, the album as a whole is well made; the songs are good standard classic rock, with some variety thrown in to keep it interesting, and a well-done cover.

Given their classic sound, powerful vocals and the mentioned on-stage flamboyance, the band has been regularly – unfairly perhaps – been compared to Queen; and in fact The Darkness do often cover a Queen track live, and Brian May has made a guest appearance with them.
This comparison is probably quite valid throughout the whole album; the musical structure and emphasis on the strong voice does make them sound a bit like a heavier reincarnation of the 70s rock legends, yet they maintain enough of their own unique character to distinguish them and maintain their credibility.

Justin Hawkins

The themes throughout the album are fairly obvious; tracks such as Every Inch Of You, Forbidden Love and Love Is Not The Answer hint at the love-soaked, and sometimes questionably undertoned, lyrical content.

The opener, Every Inch Of You exemplifies all that The Darkness are about – the opening verse talks directly about Freddie Mercury, and how the four friends are in a band. Some strong riffs and an upbeat feel set the album up well; a blueprint which is continued on the next few tracks.

Living Each Day Blind clocks in as the longest track on the album at 5 minutes, but it doesn’t feel overly stretched. A slower ballady tune, it has a lot going on musically – guitars, backing guitars, acoustics guitars, all playing different things – and the song has distinct sections which are all fun to listen to.

Further on in the album, Concrete is the first track which actually made me want to bang my head along to the music, such is the appeal and the design of the music. The chorus of this song is surprisingly good, with Hawkins’ distinctive falsetto wailing “looking for loooooaaaaaave!” over a heavy guitar beat. It works really well. Some nice harmonies during the middle section add another depth to this great song possibly my favourite from this album.

To contend that claim, is the only cover version on the album. Radiohead’s Street Spirit has never before been performed in this way, that’s for sure! A heavier musical track gives this great song more ‘oomph’; the distortion adding another dimension. The smooth guitar solo adds to its greatness. The counter to all that though is the almost comical wailing of Hawkins, whose falsetto can reach the notes, but delivers it so that a serious song such as this isn’t really appropriate. That aside though, the song is pretty well done.

Despite my initial claim that the album has no standout tracks; there are a few which stand out when compared to the album as a whole; but when compared to their previous glory of Permission; I know which I’d listen to.

The spirit of 1970s rock and roll is still alive and kicking, and the biggest new band to reignite that fire is The Darkness.

Hey, I’m back! I realise this is post for week number 3 and I start this 4 weeks ago, but last week I took a week off gaming and podcasting and went away with my girlfriend.

Anyhoo, that’s enough of the real world and onto my backlog. I started Psychonauts 2 weeks ago and today I continued my playthrough. I have two speeds with this game, Naught and Slacking!

The last time I played I went up until I got my basic training badge. Today I played to get my Marksmanship badge. I had a lot more fun than I did last time and now I think this game may jump in the front seat of what I’m currently playing. I will need to find a way to arrange playing this around Back To The Future from Telltale Games on my PS3 and Gothem City Imposters on my PC.

But hopefully I can get this done and make Psychonauts my third game that I have completed from this Steam backlog of mine!

Watch this space for my updates from me, and I’m pretty sure Craig is going to me throwing up a new 50 Years review!

Thanks for reading guys!

(Comment if you want me to play a certain game and I’ll play it (yeah, like anyone is going to comment)).  

Double 5 this week; Jake is missing as we continue our journey through the top 500 Albums OF ALL TIME according to Rolling Stone. This week there’s lots of rap, lots of country, and some other stuff which escapes categorization. Check it out!

Before that though, we talk about what we’ve been doing; including Batman Arkham Asylum, Mad Men, Counterstrike: Global Offensive, a touch more 24 and a bit more. Then we cover some of this week’s hardest hitting news, including tragic deaths, unlikely couplings and new GTA V screenshots, which can be found here, here and here.

Thanks for listening; full cast again next week (hopefully), and we’ll catch you next then!

Please feel free to email us anything (spam and chain mail included) at

Email: podcast@oppsides.com

 Tweet us @OppSidesCast

 Like us on Facebook

 Circle us on Google+

And subscribe to our sub-Reddit /r/OppSidesCast

Times:

0.00.16 -Intro

0.01.30 – What We’ve Been Doing

0.27.45 – News

0.40.10 – WTF News

0.44.13 – Break

0.44.48 – 500 Greatest Albums 480-471

1.13.10 – Outro

1.15.51 – Out-takes

 Download Here!

Check out our awesome music, Anguish by Shide

Songs sampled this week:

Raekwon – Ice Cream (from ‘Only Built 4 Cuban Linx’)

Funkadelic – Maggot Brain  and Wars of Armageddon (from ‘Maggot Brain’)

Loretta Lynn – Fist City (from ‘All Time Greatest Hits’)

Merle Haggard – Skid Row (from ‘Down Every Road’)

The Notorious B.I.G. – I Love The Dough and Mo Money Mo Problems (from ‘Life After Death’)

Elvis Cotsello and the Attractions – Oliver’s Army (from ‘Armed Forces’)

Manu Chao – Mi Vida (from ‘Proxima Esacion: Esperanza’)

The Smiths – The Charming Man (from ‘The Smiths’)

George Michael – Faith and I Want Your Sex (from ‘Faith’)

Richard and Linda Thompson – I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight (from ‘I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight’)

All tracks should be available from your favourite online retailer

Not many bands are remembered for one great album which descends time, and is still popular and relevant to this day. Metallica are one of the even fewer bands to have written TWO great albums; the first being the universally praised Master of Puppets.

By 1986, Metallica were growing as a band, as as musicians. Their previous effort, Ride The Lightening showed a deeper side to them than Kill ‘Em All‘s relentless thrash attack. This theme was continued into Master

The opening track Battery begins with a smooth acoustic segment, which breaks suddenly into full on electric guitars performing the same parts. Then the song hits, with full force classic thrash metal. Battery is still a staple of the band’s live set to this day; its appeal is still obvious.

Feeling already fired up, the album rolls onto the titular Master of Puppets. While not following the classic thrash – or even Metallica – formula of riff, verse, riff, chorus, solo, riff, chorus, riff; the song still flows remarkably well. The song breaks off half way through to enter a slower, lament-type instrumental (an idea which would be repeated in the band’s One later on in their career), which builds up its heaviness over guitarist Hammet’s solo, until it’s back to a chorus, and then a heavier solo. Metallica are known as the bands of catchy riffs, and Master of Puppets contains several of them, each one greater than the last. The song is a true metal masterpiece; one which exemplifies everything about heavy metal in 8 and a half minutes. Superb.

The albums skips along, and some balance to the high=speed, heavy heavy thrash is provided with Welcome Home (Sanatarium), a slower track which still feels somewhat heavy. The soft harmonics opening the song set it up well for the rest. The song is one of Metallica’s unsung (figuratively speaking) greatest songs; the almost poetic lyrics show the great work put into the song, and the album as a whole; and musically it flows so well. Half way through it slides into an up-tempo air-guitaring, head-banger.

Wrapping up the album is the doubler of Orion and Damage, Inc. Firstly the instrumental Orion. This is a slight departure from the band’s normal sound – but only slight. The heavily distorted guitar sound is there,  as are wailing drones, creating a spacey sound the song is named for. But it is slower and more melodic than typical 1980s Metallica.  The song features two bass solos; again showing the musical ability of bassist Cliff Burton, who would die later on in 1986. The 8.30 the song lasts for echoes the space-oriented epics of early Rush, particularly in the prominent bass and unusual guitar sounds. The band liked the theme so much they named their own festival after it, emphasizing their love of the song.

And finally Damage, Inc. rounds the album off. Another fairly standard thrash track, except with another space-age opening, very catchy riff and the whispered a, very memorable, capella phrase “Damage Incorporated” creating a sort of mystical feel to the song. A fitting ending to a fantastic album.

Metallica would again match the level of songwriting achieved on Master of Puppets, but not in as much style as the glamour of 1986 underground America. While their self-titled is disputed by heavy metal purists, Master of Puppets is universally adored, showing four talented musicians at their musical peaks creating songs which, to this day, fans still sing along to the guitar solos at live shows.

“Master of puppets, I’m pulling your strings”

Whaddup folks,

Greg takes a weekend out to drink, but its another fun-filled week on Opposite Sides as we continue our rundown of the Rolling Stone Top 500 albums with numbers 490 to 491, covering country, pop, rock and punk albums.

Before that though, we talk about what we’ve been doing, including some Resident Evil, Skyrim, The Bourne Legacy, Darksiders, and of course, League of Legends. Then we cover some of this week’s news, including GamesCom, how music streaming is becoming ever more popular, and look at Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine’s crazy political views.

With that, episode 54 is in the bag! Thanks for listening!

Please feel free to email us anything (spam and chain mail included) at

Email: podcast@oppsides.com

 Tweet us @OppSidesCast

 Like us on Facebook

 Circle us on Google+

And subscribe to our sub-Reddit /r/OppSidesCast

Times:

0.00.18 -Intro

0.03.00 – What We’ve Been Doing

0.22.56 – News

0.49.29 – WTF News

0.52.13 – Break

0.52.52 – 500 Greatest Albums 490-481

1.23.20 – Outro

1.26.05 – Out-takes

 Download Here!

Check out our awesome music, Anguish by Shide

Music sampled this week:

ZZ Top – La Grange (from ‘Tres Hombres’)

KISS – Detroit Rock City (from ‘Destroyer’)

Husker Du – Folklore (from ‘New Day Rising’)

Cyndi Lauper – Girls Just Wanna Have Fun and She Bop (from ‘She’s So Unusual’)

Earth, Wind & Fire – Shining Star (from ‘That’s The Way of the World’)

Pearl Jam – Nothingman, Bugs and Stupidmop (from ‘Vitalogy’)

Mott the Hoople – All The Young Dudes and Ready for Love (from ‘All The Young Dudes’)

Gang of Four – Natural’s Not In It (from ‘Entertainment!’)

Steve Earle – Hillbilly Highway (from ‘Guitar Town’)

D’Angelo – One Mo’gin (from ‘Voodoo’)

A band whose music has become world-famous, yet rarely receive the recognition they deserve, are Dire Straits. A product of the late 1970s who refined their sound into one of the most important and significant of the 1980s, Mark Knopfler’s distinctive voice and guitar tone paved the way for their magnum opus; 1985′s Brothers In Arms.

Taking a break from the relentless hard rock and heavy-thrash metal of the past decade in this series, I’ve decided to go with the culturally significant Brothers in Arms for many reasons. The album’s biggest single is Money For Nothing, which was accompanied by a distinctive digitally-animated video. With the chorus referencing modern innovations such as microwave ovens and MTV, played over a catchy and instantly recognisable guitar riff, it’s easy to see why it’s one of Dire Strait’s most popular tracks.

Walk of Life follows that, with a moderately upbeat feel to it; the song almost feels like it was written for someone to dance along to. The distinctive “woohoo”s throughout add a lighter side to an already lighter song. Despite the simplicity of it, musically, it’s a great fell-good song. Following that is Your Latest Trick, a significantly slower and laid-back track to contrast the opening third of the album. As the album was released in the 1980s, this track does of course contain a saxophone solo; this, and the smooth and slick nature of the song have cemented it as a favourite of lounge musicians in clubs oriented at the middle-aged. The attributes of this track are echoed in Ride Across The River, yet the album doesn’t feel stale, or repetitive. Another track worth mentioning is the almost anthemic The Man’s Too Strong, which is a non-single album track which is one of the best on the album – it doesn’t rely on a catchy guitar riff, or shuffling rhythm; it’s just a really well-written song.

And finally, we arrive at the final, titular song. Brother In Arms is another laid-back track, but is one of the strongest on the album. Opening to thunder, and what sounds like an accordion or a kazoo softly accompanying Knopfler’s rough vocals, the tracks grows into something a lot more. The obvious references throughout to war add to the feel of the song, as do the bend-heavy guitar and the keyboard solos in the middle. While not Dire Straits most technically impressive song ever, it’s another one which is written extremely well. Pop culture agrees – the song was used as a dramatic finale to a season of West Wing, and has been covered by bands as diverse as Metallica and Joan Baez. The song doesn’t really go anywhere; its climax is with the chorus and the closing guitar solo, but it is more about the journey than the destination. A truly superb track.

This album proved itself to be one of Dire Straits very best, but also its last good one. Their next, and final album failed to live up to the success of this one. Despite that, the band’s reputation remained intact – the diversity of all great tracks on Brothers In Arms cemented their status as legends of the the 1980s contemporary rock world.

Last week I finished up Portal 1 and Limbo. Two for one! Well this week, I’m ashamed to report, I’m Naught for One. Naught I say? Yes, last week I drew Psychonauts to play and, well, I just didn’t play. Instead I just read Hunger Games: Catching Fire and played FIFA 12‘s Head to Head Seasons Mode. I played what little of Psychonauts I did play, today. I only played the first stage but, wow!

I don’t understand why I hadn’t played this sooner. The game is a fun platformer. It’s something a little new and different. Obviously, platforming is ancient in gaming terms, but the little niche of casual psychic powers is an awesome touch (it has the same effect the Evoker from Persona has on the game, it’s its own little niche).

Hopefully I get round to finishing up this game this week and then I can go back to having a mega-long post with my entire Steam backlog list in and then have a delightful trip over to Random.org for a new game to play!

So far, for a game I got in an Indie Bundle, Psychonauts looks like an incredibly deep game and I simply cannot wait to play more!

Thanks for reading, until next week,

-Jake!

G’Day folks,

an exciting week this week, as we launch our NEW SEGMENT!!
We begin our epic segment of looking at Rolling Stone’s top 500 albums, doing 10 every week. This week we covered numbers 500-491; please check it out, and let us know if you like the segment!

Before that though, we have an unusually short What We’ve Been Doing section – beefed up a lot by us talking about Jake finally finishing Portal – also covering Toy Story, Breaking Bad, League of Legends and The Darkness, and then we cover some of this week’s news, including another Last Guardian update and an exciting Avengers announcement!

Thanks for listening and, and we hope you enjoy albums 500-491! Be sure to keep going t the end, for 10 minutes of out-takes.

Please feel free to email us anything (spam and chain mail included) at

Email: podcast@oppsides.com
 Tweet us @OppSidesCast
 Like us on Facebook
 Circle us on Google+
And subscribe to our sub-Reddit /r/OppSidesCast

Times:
0.00.20 – Intro
0.00.55 – What We’ve Been Doing
0.22.32 – News
0.39.45 – WTF News
0.43.17 – 500 Greatest Albums 500-491
1.30.43 – Outro
1.32.02 – Out-takes

 Download Here!

Check out our awesome music, Anguish by Shide

The music clips we used for the Top 500 Albums segment were:
OutKast – Synthesizer (from ‘Aquemini’)
BB King – Worry, Worry (from ‘Live in Cook County Jail’)
The Stone Roses – Waterfall and Fool’s Gold (from ‘The Stone Roses’)
White Stripes – Fell in Love With a Girl and Hotel Yorba (from ‘White Blood Cells’)
Boz Scaggs – Loan Me A Dime (from ‘Boz Scaggs’)
Bonnie Raitt – Love Me Like A Man and Nothing Seems To Matter (from ‘Give it Up’)
MGMT – Time to Pretend (from ‘Oracular Spectacular’)
Wilco – I’m The Man Who Loves You and Kamera (from ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’)
Eurythmics – ABC (freeform) and Here Comes The Rain Again (from ‘Touch’)
Albert King – Oh, Pretty Woman (from ‘Born Under A Bad Sign’)

All tracks should be available from your favourite online retailer.

 

 America in the early 1980s had Metallica and thrash metal; a reflection of Britain’s 1970s metal scene of Black Sabbath, Diamond Head and Judas Priest. Yet with the turn of the decade, Britain was back to innovating again, and what was born became known as the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. Leading this charge were Saxon, Def Leppard, and most of all, Iron Maiden.

Powerslave is the band’s fifth album, arguably the last of the ‘Big 3′ of Number of the Beast and Piece of Mind. By this point in their career, the band had found their niche, and developed their own unique formula. Their punk beginnings had been left behind when vocalist Bruce Dickinson joined, helping to form the image the band revels in today.

The album artwork instantly indicates what the band are all about – infamous mascot Eddie as a Pharaoh on a pyramid. This is the setup for the titular track, Powerslave, with lyrics about Osiris and Ancient Egyptian culture. With a testament to the musicianship of the band, the riffs, fills and solos all sound Egyptian; it all adds to the atmosphere and thrill of the track. Normally if a band were to write a song with a very specific theme, the song has musically little to do with the theme itself – the relevance is in the lyrics. Yet Iron Maiden are masters at composing songs in a completely relevant manner, as shown again in Passchendale later in their career.

The double opener of Aces High and 2 Minutes to Midnight set the album along on the right path – two great tracks whith anthemic choruses, great musicianship, and catchy riffs. Both are clearly single-oriented, and mark a slight move away from the classic Iron Maiden formular of heavy and very prominent bassline and horse-hooves rhythm, but maintain the lyrical formula – the songs themselves are about World War Two pilots, and the countdown to the apocalypse.

The clever titled Losfer Words (Big ‘Orra) is an instrumental, and gives the listener a nice break from Dickinson’s vocals, and gives the rest of the band more time in the spotlight. Back In the Village sounds like a look back to their early punk days, while the vocals put me in mind of Judas Priest’s Rob Halford; the power and range is impressive.

Finally, the album closes with the 13 and a half minute Rime of the Ancient Mariner covers all bases; it almost sounds like a mini-album of its own in terms of contrast between the different segments. A crowd favourite, it reflects a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In full, it exemplifies the qualities of Iron Maiden; mystical themes, prominent bassline, wailing powerful vocals, epic guitar solos, and foot-tapping, head-banging music.

At only 8 songs long, this may seem like a short album. Yet the popularity of it goes to prove that this is indeed a case of quality over quantity. 8 fantastic tracks which have retained their relevance and awesomeness.

Well it’s been a week since my first post and I was able to surpass my expectations of what I was able to do!

First up, Portal! I hadn’t realised this at the time, but I was already up to the latter stages of Test Chamber 18. And with only 1 more to go before the ending, I decided to finished the game. Then a few days later (probably around 1am – 4am)…I started and completed the whole game again in 1 sitting with no pauses or YouTube tips. It filled me with a sense of pride as I have always been terrible at puzzle games and being able to breeze through Portal this quickly was a great feeling! GLaDoS’ dialogue made the game so much more enjoyable, especially the end of the game when you throw out the core that stops GLaDoS from pumping Neurotoxin’s into the room, and she keeps repeating the term as if a regular, everyday word!

Once done with Portal, I did nothing for the whole week! But yesterday night (Saturday), I went over to random.org, and generated number 30… LIMBO!

I had heard nothing but great things about this game, and I have to say that this game is truly horrific and disturbingly beautiful all at the same time! Being another puzzle game, and my given track record with them, there was a few instances where I had to Shift+Tab into the Steam overlay and launch the web-browser to get some clues from YouTube. One little hint would usually do it for me, and then I was away. One thing I hate about this game; the spiders! Why in the love of God did it have to be spiders!? The first time that huge thing crawled onto my screen I had to quickly hit the Escape key to pause and compose myself… I’m not great with Spiders… even typing this about them now, it feels like I have some crawling on me! But nonetheless, I finished the game fairly quickly, and I would like to go back and do the game again, maybe on an achievement run just to see more of the world! The style in which the game is presented is second to none, a fantastic concept, and breath of fresh-air!

So now this is the updated list. I have striked-off Portal and Limbo and add them to the Completed List! I have also added my latest game to the list, Payday: The Hiest!

1. Amnesia: The Dark Descent
2. And Yet It Moves
3. Anomaly Warzone Earth
4. Avadon: The Black Fortress
5. Bastion
6. Binding of Isaac, The
7. BIT.TRIP RUNNER
8. Braid
9. Cave Story+
10. Cogs
11. Crasher
12. Crayon Physics Deluxe
13. EDGE
14. Flight Control HD
15. Grand Theft Auto
16. Grand Theft Auto 2
17. Grand Theft Auto III
18. Grand Theft Auto IV
19. Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City
20. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
21. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
22. Gratuitous Space Battles
23. Half-Life 2
24. Half-Life 2: Episode One
25. Half-Life 2: Episode Two
26. Hammerfight
27. Hard Reset
28. Jamestown
29. Jolly Rover
30. Lone Survivor
31. Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012
32. NightSky
33. Osmos
34. NEW GAME! Payday: The Hiest
35. Psychonauts
36. Sequence
37. Shank
38. Snuggle Truck
39. Super Meat Boy
40. Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP
41. Swords and Soldiers HD
42. Test Drive Unlimited 2
43. Toki Tori
44. Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon
45. Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter
46. Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2
47. Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Desert Siege
48. Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Island Thunder
49. Vertex Dispenser
50. VVVVVV
51. Witcher, The
52. World of Goo
53. Zen Bound 2

The Completed List:

1. LIMBO
2. Portal

Thank you for reading… now enjoy some amusing screenshots I took from Portal!

I actually though I was getting cake!

Someone was really disappointed about not getting cake! I was too, but this was just… wow!

Valve really do love their games!

Oh! Oooohhh! Daylight! Sweet Daylight… wait, where am I being dragged to? :O

Wait… So there WAS Cake!? Aww!

But I forgive you, purely because of this masterpiece of a song!

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Times:
0:00:00 – Intro
0:01:16 – What We’ve Been Doing
0:33:43 – Break
0:34:24 – News
1:19:28 – Outro
1:22:31 – Outtakes

Download Here!

Check out our awesome music, Anguish by Shide

 

Firmly establishing the new generation of 1980s heavy metal came a new band, with their own unique style. Heading the popular charge of the ‘Big 4′ of Californian thrash metal were Metallica; four young men with anger, respect for 1970s British heavy metal, and a desire to play fast. Very fast.

Kill ‘Em All is album is the debut from Metallica, and to this day is still considered one of their best. Some of the songs were relics from previous lineups of the band – which included guitarist Dave Mustaine, who went on to found Megadeth after departing Metallica – but the overlying themes of death, destruction, are constant throughout; a constant feature of Thrash.

The album kicks off with Hit The Lights, a favourite gig-opener of the band to this day. It’s fading in of chords sounds like an ending of a song, but the heavy beat and riffs kick in before long to get the song going and get heads banging. The Four Horsemen, a sort of eerily autobiographical fan-favourite follows that. The biblical themes are obvious, and the song builds from them. The Metallica formula is obvious; riff, chorus etc., but the delivery of this, and all the songs on the album, is so well done that the songs flow perfectly, and come across really well live every time. You really can’t go wrong with catchy riffs and memorable choruses like Kill ‘Em All has.

A testament to the musicianship of the band, (Anaesthesia) Pulling Teeth is a bass solo song with some added drums; bassist Cliff Burton’s impressive ‘lead-bass’ skills showing how a rhythm instrument which normally hides towards the back of the band can be prominent in the music.

While every track on the album could be played live to great reception, Whiplash seems logical to play; a song about being in a music crowd: “Thrashing all around.. Acting like a maniac”. Another song which follows that Metallica recipe: riff, chorus, solo. But the upbeat, fast nature of the song make it a lot of fun to listen to.

Finally, the band’s favourite gig-closer Seek and Destroy deserves a mention; its main riffs are one of Metallica’s defining points, and the song is a real crowd-pleaser. What else can be said? It’s a great track; a fact the band seem to agree with; which always delivers with its, again, catchy riff, chorus and solo, and even some audience participation towards the end. Bravo.

Spearheading the Big 4 movement and the emerging thrash (and its subsequently inspired genres) in the early 1980s were Metallica. Despite the critique the band have attained over the years, Kill ‘Em Allis undoubtedly a very significant and important album.

Greg and I have both agreed that our backlog’s are getting excessive and need to have some of these games completed! Steam sales, Humble Bundles, Indie Royale’s and Amazon has all contributed to this amass of games! I’m an unemployed student, currently with a lot of spare time on my hands, so I think I will be able to get through a lot of these game sharpish. This intro is going to indicate what I will do through the coming weeks and months!

The Backlog (in alphabetical order)

1. Amnesia: The Dark Descent
2. And Yet It Moves
3. Anomaly Warzone Earth
4. Avadon: The Black Fortress
5. Bastion
6. Binding of Isaac, The
7. BIT.TRIP RUNNER
8. Braid
9. Cave Story+
10. Cogs
11. Crasher
12. Crayon Physics Deluxe
13. EDGE
14. Flight Control HD
15. Grand Theft Auto
16. Grand Theft Auto 2
17. Grand Theft Auto III
18. Grand Theft Auto IV
19. Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City
20. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
21. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
22. Gratuitous Space Battles
23. Half-Life 2
24. Half-Life 2: Episode One
25. Half-Life 2: Episode Two
26. Hammerfight
27. Hard Reset
28. Jamestown
29. Jolly Rover
30. LIMBO
31. Lone Survivor
32. Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012
33. NightSky
34. Osmos
35. Psychonauts
36. Sequence
37. Shank
38. Snuggle Truck
39. Super Meat Boy
40. Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP
41. Swords and Soldiers HD
42. Test Drive Unlimited 2
43. Toki Tori
44. Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon
45. Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter
46. Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2
47. Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Desert Siege
48. Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Island Thunder
49. Vertex Dispenser
50. VVVVVV
51. Witcher, The
52. World of Goo
53. Zen Bound 2

That’s it (he say’s with a sigh)! Obviously there are a few games I’m not counting though.

My Plan

The plan is to play a game in my backlog until the ending of the game! I would prefer to play on hard, however if that is, actually, too hard, I will drop the difficulty down in order to get through quicker. If I manage to complete a game before the week is up, I will start another game and mention that in my next update. If I do not finish a game during that week, I will continue that game on into a second week, and then however much longer it will take. I plan on only playing that game solely until completion, but obviously playing my PS3 and PSVita around there too! And should a new release come out, that would end up taking priority! Dishonored and FIFA are right around the corner! All of the games in the list are numbered, so I’ll head over to random.org and grab at random. If I draw a number that is right in the middle of a series, such a GTA or Ghost Recon, I’ll skip over that game and move to the first in the series (e.g. should I draw GTAIII, I’ll play GTA 1 instead).

Games that don’t count

If I have already completed a game on another console, like Modern Warfare 3, there isn’t much point in my playing it again. There are some games that are multiplayer only so I don’t think setting the objective of completing Team Fortress 2 is a good idea! Also games like L4D & L4D2 I would prefer to play in a multiplayer setting (Plus there isn’t much of a “story” there anyway).

Amnesia: The Dark Descent… I think me and Greg should play this over Skype together to give each other internet bro-hugs!

The Upcoming Week

My plan for this week is to play the the first Portal! I have completed Portal 2 on both PS3 and PC (4 times overall, PS3 single and co-op, PC single and co-op), but never got round to playing Portal 1. I think that was to do with the fact that by the time I had a laptop that could in fact run Portal, Portal 2 was out.

So yeah, a nice, excellent game to get me started! Should I get that done, I’ll choose a game at random and then play through it!

Hopefully I keep up with these!

Thanks guys!

JAKE!

My Steam backlog is large, actually no, it’s excessive. Years of Steam sales has left me with an overwhelming list of games on Steam that I am yet to even play, and now I’m on a mission to complete them all. Over the coming months and possibly years depending on time I plan to clear this backlog and through this blog, chart my progress and thoughts on each game as I complete it. In this post I’ll set out the games, some rules I’ve set for myself and other information I think is necessary for both myself and you the reader.

The List

Below is my list of games on Steam that I intend to complete throughout the course of this backlog clearing. I in fact own more games than this on Steam, however I have excluded several games from the list for reasons including completion on another platform (Mirrors Edge, Borderlands…), Online games with no or no true online (TF2, CS:S, Unreal Tournament games) and games I’ve already completed on Steam (Half Life 2, Portal 1 and 2, Limbo…). The rest however, I plan on completing. Now, lets get on to that list, in alphabetical order…however I may not play them in alphabetical order.

• Amnesia: The Dark Descent
• And Yet It Moves
• Atom Zombie Smasher
• Bastion
• Bioshock
• BIT.TRIP RUNNER
• Braid
• Bully: Scholarship Edition
• Cave Story+
• Cogs
• Commander Keen Complete Pack
• Crayon Physics Deluxe
• Darwinia
• Doom II: Hell on Earth
• Doom 3
• Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil
• Doom, Final
• Dreamfall: The Longest Journey
• Gratuitous Space Battles
• Half Life 2: Episode 1
• Half Life 2: Episode 2
• Half Life 2: Lost Coast
• Hammerfight
• Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders
• Hexen: Deathkings of the Dark Citadel
• Hitman 2: Silent Assassin
• Jamestown
• Long Survivor
• The Longest Journey
• Max Payne
• Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne
• Monster Trucks Nitro
• Multiwinia
• Nightsky
• Plants vs. Zombies: GOTY
• Psychonauts
• Quake
• Quake II and expansions
• Return to Castle Wolfenstein
• Rock of Ages
• Saints Row 2
• Shank
• Star Wars: KOTOR
• Steel Storm: Burning Retribution
• Super Meat Boy
• Superbrothers: Sword and Sorcery
• Toki Tori
• Trials 2: Second Edition
• Trine
• Uplink
• VVVVVV
• The Witcher: Enhanced Edition
• Wolfenstein 3D
• Wolfenstein 3D: Spear of Destiny
• World of Goo
• X-COM: Apocolypse
• X-COM: Enforcer
• X-COM: Intercepter
• X-COM: Terror from the Deep
• X-COM: UFO Defense
• Xotic

My laptop isn’t the most up to date system, and so some games may not run well, or run at all. I will try my hardest to get a game playable, however if this is not possible, I will have to skip a game. I may also be taking a break from the game for the odd week if I am away, or for big current gen releases that we will be focusing on in the show, such as Dishonored, Borderlands 2 and Assassins Creed 3.

Next Week

Now that the introduction and outline of what I aim to achieve is done, I best decide on  game to play for my first week. To ease myself in I shall choose something shorter and simpler, and that shall be…Toki Tori!

So thanks for reading folks, and I hope this is something that interests you as much as it interests me, and I hope to see you next Sunday when I’ll have hopefully completed Toki Tori.

The Walking Dead was first brought to our attention in October 2003 when issue number one of Robert Kirkman’s masterpiece was released. The comic series has been released, re-released and re-re-released in lots of forms. Since the comic gained so much fame, AMC caught onto it and made it into a TV Series. The TV series really doesn’t do the comic’s justice, with it not following the story, or contain some of the characters, but it is decent! Now Telltale Games  has hopped onto the franchise with their own iteration. Although this is a completely different story, it takes place at the exact time as the comic series. So early on in the game, it’s easy to assume that the main series protagonist, Rick Grimes, is still in his coma. With any TellTale game, The Walking Dead is a five-part series, with part 3, due for release this month!

I am going to TRY and make this review as spoiler free as possible.

The story of The Walking Dead follows a criminal named Lee Everett who meets a bizarre “get-out-of-jail-free card” thanks to the end of the world. After escaping the clutches of the law, Lee tries to seek help in the nearest house to him. After hearing one of the most chilling answer-machine messages in history, you are brought the company of your “sidekick” Clementine. You make her a promise to protect her with your life until her parents find her, but Clementine knows is smart enough to know that they are probably gone. As you progress to find out key things in Lee’s life, learn a lot about your group, how people are dealing with the fact that the world is ending, and come to terms with some huge events (just wait until the latter part of Episode 2, you will feel the shivers down your spine through out the whole thing!) Episode 1 is a great set up for the rest of the series and episode 2 just proves it.

Game-play has one of two options for PC users. Keyboard + Mouse, and, just like the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, a game pad. There is no camera control, but this game is so linear that the camera angles are perfectly placed around the situation you are in anyway. In order to progress, you have to use your cursor to interact with the area, change your point of view, pick things up, and make critical story-line decisions. Obviously, W+A+S+D (or the left stick) is used to move around the area’s. The combination of the two make this a very simple game to control.

The Walking Dead's UI... during an attack

Now, for decision making! The big point that Telltale wanted to make for this series was that, no matter what choices you make, you will end up with a different story and different dialogue. You even get a message at the start of every episode saying that you can mould the game based on your choices and the game becomes tailored to you for your own experience. Simple decisions like siding with one person or another in a fight, or major decisions like murder are always being made, so of which are time-limited so you really need to think on your feet and make a decision.Often, decisions need to be made where you think, “maybe I shouldn’t go with my gut here, because I have a child with me,” or “I could make enemies with this hard decision.”

Lee meets his part of his group in a familiar farm owned by Hershel from the TV show. He leaves there after major decision, and you find the rest of your group at the drug store that was owned by Lee’s own family, and the story goes from there, with “real-life” decisions that would have to be made during a Zombie Apocalypse.

"Clementine, I ain't a bad guy."

Telltale Games has said that they wanted to follow the comic series as closely as possible, and they have very much done that just in the graphics. The artwork in here looks like it has been ripped right out of a comic strip. It’s a nice breath of fresh-air. With all of the games that are being release these days being filled with realism and life-like graphics, it’s nice to play a cartoon-y type game which is so easy on the eyes and beautiful. Just simple things like faces and cars look excellent in this style of graphics. The zombie look very, um… Dead!

The writers have managed to create something phenomenal in The Walking Dead! With so many dialogue choices branching off into even more pieces of dialogue, the writers must have had many headaches over this thing. It has 100% paid off though. This is incredible how just one simple click (or button press) for a speech decision can take you on a journey and then you may never here any of the other writing again (unless you choose to play the game again obviously). They didn’t forget to write in some massively gripping stuff either. There is a lot of stuff in this thing that will leave you with your jaw smashing off the floor, especially the ending of both episodes. More so episode 2, although episode 1 does leave you fearing for Lee’s “secret”.

Apart from some unnecessary crashing on the PC version, I cannot thing of anything the devs have done wrong here! Maybe there is some texture pop-in here and there, but you look straight passed that stuff when you see the sheer excellence in the story and choices. If you only ever buy one Telltale Games’ game in your life, make sure it’s The Walking Dead! It will keep you on the edge of your seat from the get-go and you will no be disappointed with either episode 1 or 2. And since both episodes are free for US PlayStation Plus users for this month, you (in America at least) have no excuse not to try this game! It is sheer greatness in terms of story and I rate this game as (going to be) one of my favourite games, ever! I give this game a 9/10. The game is not perfect, but holy crap is it close! I love this game, and hope Telltale don’t keep us waiting like they did with episode 2!

Into the second half of our first centenary now, and it’s a shorter show this week.
Greg’s been dungeon cralwing, Mark’s been watching elderly butlers beat up the social underbelly, Jake’s been beating up Greek mythology, Craig’s been rounding up The Sopranos and Nigel’s been finding his inner house-elf in Amalur. And we all saw the Olympics opening ceremony.
In news we look at Final Fantasy, Farming Simulator 2013, Firey Vitas, Skyrim and Dishonoured. Plus some usual WWTF news.
You can find the Dishonoured trailer we talked about here.

Thanks for listening!

Please feel free to email us anything (spam and chain mail included) at

Email: podcast@oppsides.com
 Tweet us @OppSidesCast
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And subscribe to our sub-Reddit /r/OppSidesCast

Times:
0.00.26 – Intro
0.00.56 – What We’ve Been Doing
0.35.04 – Break
0.35.36 – News
0.49.20 – WTF News
0.50.49 – Outro
 Download Here!

Check out our awesome music, Anguish by Shide

Please enjoy, and I appreciate any feedback!

Heralding in the new generation of slightly silly heavy metallers who take themselves very seriously (in terms of clothing, hair styles, and lyrical content), were Manowar with their debut Battle Hymns.

Manowar are an interesting group; their visual and musical style is a cliché stereotype, and they know it. The band are represented traditionally as loincloth-wearing, overly-muscled, long-haired gods who preach about heavy metal, motorcycles and Norse mythology. Their vast legions of devoted fans (fittingly named ‘The Immortals’) devote their lives to Manowar and all they represent.

This reputation may be unfair, but it seems to fuel the band. And it all started in 1982, with Battle Hymns.

The album opens in a foretelling manner, with the sound of motorbikes on Death Tone, setting the scene for the rest of the album; heavy metal “loud as it can be” as stated on Metal Daze.

Shell Shock barely hides its anti-Vietnam message, but the band focus on the aftermath and the common soldier. A slightly slower track, it provides a little balance to the album. The self-titled track Manowar follows, telling the listener exactly what the band is all about; pure heavy metal. I realise the repetitive use of this phrase throughout the review, but quite frankly that’s what Manowar do; they literally sing about themselves and the power of heavy metal. Manowar features a guitar solo which is as catchy as the tune itself.

Throughout the whole album, but especially noticeable in Manowar, the main focus is not just the guitar sound – the centrepoint for most bands of this ilk – but spread equally between the guitarist, vocalist (a genuine powerhouse, who has performed Nessun Dorma live onstage several times with the band) and the main boss of the band, Joey DeMaio, who shreds his bass guitar as if it were the lead instrument.

This is never more apparent than on Dark Avenger; the intro of which is a bass solo – distorted to hell but bassy enough to convey the dark feeling. The song itself centres lyrically around a mythical tale of gods and demons, and features an epic instrumental section with a narration by Orson Welles, who speaks about a confrontation in Hades. When the album was recently re-recorded for the modern era by the band, this task fell to the legend that is Christopher Lee, whose distinctive and fearsome vocals fit the song perfectly. The end of the narration marks the introduction to the second half of the song, where singer Adams squeals into the thrashy half, with the inevitable solo. Superb.

DeMaio shows off his guitar skills on William’s Tale, a bass arrangement of the famous William Tell Overture. It’s amazing to think that a song known for its intricacies and speed can be played on a bass, but this is the man who would later cover Flight of the Bumblebee on the same instrument. Nothing is too over the top for Manowar.

Rounding off the album is the title track Battle Hymns. At almost seven minutes long, and several finales where the band just don’t want to stop playing, everything about this track is epic. Inevitably, this song’s lyrics talk about victory, going ‘over the top’ and battle in general. Everyone gets their chance to show off; an extended drum solo (even louder and longer live), guitar solo, vocal squealing and bass shredding ensure this song is an expression of the whole band. The choir-like backing tracks add to the feeling of epicness.

Before Manowar earned their global reputation for loincloth and cliché, Battle Hymns was an indisputably a great heavy metal album. A well-oiled band playing 8 well-composed and technically impressive songs which are all catchy; the album’s legacy is so great that the band re-recorded it in 2010 as Battle Hymns MMXI and played it in its entirety on the subsequent world tour.

Battle Hymns; paving the way for great heavy metal in the 1980s.

EPISODE FIFTY!

We finally made it to half a hundred of these things, and the gang is all here. And to celebrate, we talk at length about one of the summer’s most anticipated blockbusters: The Dark Knight Rises. Yup, we talk plot, strengths, weaknesses, Batman in general and give a sneak peak at our Movie of the Year considerations. This of course comes with SPOILERS, so you have been warned.

Before that though, we chat about what we’ve been doing; 24, League of Legends, Fallout, Spiderman and some of Jake’s Mexican wrestling all get some discussion; and then we cover the news of the week, including the tragic passing of Jon Lord and how FFX13 is getting on.
Finally in the first half, we look at some seriously freaky news, which left us in tears.

Be sure to listen to the end, where you might get a hint at next week’s show!

Thanks for listening, and we hope you’ll be here for the next 50 shows!

Please feel free to email us anything (spam and chain mail included) at

Email: podcast@oppsides.com
 Tweet us @OppSidesCast
 Like us on Facebook
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And subscribe to our sub-Reddit /r/OppSidesCast

Times:
0.01.11 – Intro
0.01.58 – What We’ve Been Doing
0.22.11 – News
0.31.43 – WTF News
0.36.47 – The Dark Knight Rises discussion (SPOILER ALERT!)
1.22.02 – Outro
1.24.02 – Out-takes

 Download Here!

Check out our awesome music, Anguish by Shide

Another fun-filled week in the lands on Opposite Sides (see what I did there?),

Greg is still on holiday, so it’s up to four lazy men to record a show.
In What We’ve Been Doing we talk about ‘ted’, 24, Rev Theory and the new Snow White and the Seven Huntsmen movie,
Then in News we cover the happenings at San Diego Comic Con, including new PS3 designs, Ouya, The Walking Dead, and some Batman. And our THREE Weekly WTF stories are classic ones. The video we refer to in one of the stories can be found here.

And that is episode 49! One away from the big five-oh, which we will treat no differently. Enjoy!

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Times:
0.00.16 – Intro
0.01.31 – What We’ve Been Doing
0.20.12 – News
0.48.48 – WTF News
0.55.40 – Outro
0.58.21 – Out-takes

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0:00:00 – Intro
0:00:49 – WWBD
0:15:56 – News
0:39:18 – Break
0:39:55 – Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut DLC Discussion *SPOILER WARNING*
1:05:27 – Outro
1:07:35 – Outtake

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Check out our great theme music, Anguish by Shide!

Many apologies regarding the lateness of the show, Both Lord Nigel of Ellerslie and myself have been awfully busy this past week, but with the show finally complete, you may now commence listening.

This week the scoundrels from the north are loaded with insults, Duchess Craig has been attending some lower class music gatherings, while us New Zealand gentlemen partook in a delightful musical comedy show, which was tip top! We then move on to a chin wag over the moving picture Prometheus, which is currently showing at the local Cinemaplex. Marvelous.

And with that, we bid you good day.

Pip Pip and all that.

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00:00 – Intro
01:48 – WWBD
36:20 – Break
36:58 – Craig talks about some stuff, not sure what it was, something about a Music Download Hellfest??
1:03:34 – Flight of the Conchords gig review
1:10:52 – Long overdue Prometheus discussion
1:34:30 – Outro by Me!!! Because Jake doesn’t know how to upload a file!!

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0:00:00 – Intro
0:01:08 – What We’ve Been Doing
0:24:05 – Nintendo Bashing
0:34:24 – More E3 News
0:51:23 – Outro
0:54:09 – Outtake

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Before that though, we complete our Game of Thrones episode reviews with episode 10: Valar Morghulis (Spoiler warning!); we look back on the season and look forward to the eagerly anticipated third season!

Before that, we cover the usual what we’ve been doing. But the meat of the show is in the second half; if you listen to nothing else, make sure you check that out!

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Times:
0.00.25 – Intro
0.02.16 – What We’ve Been Doing
0.42.06 – Game of Thrones review/critique
1.02.37 – E3 overview
1.04.24 – Microsoft conference recap
1.29.09 – EA conference recap
1.44.59 – Ubisoft conference recap
2.04.25 – Sony conference recap
2.36.21 – E3 wrap-up
2.40.14 – Outro

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Hodor?

My name is Alan Wake....

The gameplay on the PC is kept exactly the same as that of the first game. Modern computer keyboard and mouse controls are used to manoeuvre Wake around, with various letters around the movement keys to interact. Even though the genre of psychological thriller may suit the mechanic of a few Quick-Time Events here and there, but this game has none. Instead, you have to have your wits about you and not be cornered by the Taken. It’s simple enough to defeat the Taken too. Just as the last game, focus your flashlight on an enemy and once the Darkness has gone, start firing. You have a lot more choice in terms of weaponry in this outing too. The standard revolver is not default anymore; instead it’s a standard 9mm or a nail gun. The standard gameplay is something that makes this game great.

Visuals and presentation in this game are incredibly crisp and polished in this spin-off. Automatically when this game started, the HUD of this game is very much streamlined and made easier to follow. There is even a compass-like radar at the top-left side of the screen which tells you various pieces of information like where your waypoint is or if there is a manuscript nearby. I found this to be a bit of an improvement over the first game, as you never really knew if going certain places was going to land you a manuscript collectable. The Taken look to be very high quality in American Nightmare too. The detail looks to have been heightened a lot in this game compared to the first Alan Wake. Side-by-Side, these game look similar but American Nightmare takes it in my eyes. Detail like the nails fired from the Nail Gun will stick in enemies exactly where you fired them. I did like the alternation between game graphic and live-action; it made the game seem like a TV show, like Night Springs. The main character models however, seem a little stiff and resemble an elaborate version of The Sims. Realistic looking people are not captured perfectly, but it is still something you can look straight passed.

Some nice visuals!

The writers of this game are some smart people. They allow you to ask yourself, “What the hell is going on here?,” allow you to question a lot of things about the direction of the game and the timeline between this game and the last game, if that exists at all, and intersperse some light humour here and there. The story is incredibly fleshed out. It sounds like a book that was abandoned and made into a game. The background has been created and then both Alan Wake games have been made to fit this universe that the writers have created. It was enough to make the universe, to then make a full game in it and DLC, plus a new standalone game in American Nightmare to make some more of the same but execute it differently is fantastic.

As well as the story mode of this game, there is an added Arcade Mode. Wake has to survive waves of Taken for 10 minutes, by which time the sun will come up ending the game since the darkness cannot live in daylight. This is a very simple horde mode, but is strangely addictive. All it is, is the core game mechanic, with a time limit added to it. It theoretically shouldn’t be fun at all but it’s great! That mode will end up eating a lot of your time should you choose to get this game.

Wake in the Arcade!

I will say that you definitely need to have played the first game before this; otherwise you will not understand some of the references made by Mr Scratch or the manuscripts.

Overall, I would say this game is addictive. Although it does not look like it from the outside looking in, but it really and truly is. The few bad points about this game bring it down a couple of marks, but as a fan of Alan Wake being critical as a video game fan in general, I feel that everything in this game was captured perfectly and this game is just a way to please the developers and the fans of the series, which is a win/win situation. I give this game and 8/10 for its general atmosphere, gameplay and presentation. However some elements of the story and visuals let it down, but they can be looked passed and this is still a fantastic game! It is definitely a buy (…you know, after you have bought this first game).

Rating: 8/10

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0:00:00 – Intro
0:01:20 – What We’ve Been doing
0:23:08 – News
0:48:34 – Break
0:48:52 – Game of Thrones S02E09 Review
1:12:56 – Outtro
1:14:54 – Outtakes (both of which were Jake’s fault)

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Send anything (except birds, birds are weird) to podcast@oppsides.com
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Times:
0:00:00 – Intro
0:01:48 – What We’ve Been Doing
0:45:30 – News
1:28:08 – Break
1:29:27 – Game of Thrones
1:45:54 – Outro
1:49:15 – Out-Take

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Please feel free to email us anything (spam and chain mail included) at podcast@oppsides.com
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Times:
0.00.39 Intro
0.01.52 What we’ve been doing
0.30.18 NEEEEEEEEEWS!
0.53.31 WTF??? News
1.00.35 The Avengers movie critique and general discussion
1.32.34 Game of Thrones Episode 7 discussion
1.53.24 Outro
1.56.00 Out-takes

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Check out our awesome new music, Anguish by Shide

Hodor?

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0:00:00 – Intro
0:01:15 – What We’ve Been Doing
0:45:53 – News
1:07:44 – Break
1:08:12 – Game of Thrones
1:31:43 – Outro
1:33:21 – Outtake

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Join our Facebook Group

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0:00:00 – Intro
0:01:49 – What We’ve Been Doing
0:31:07 – News
0:48:13 – Break
0:48:37 – Game of Thrones S02E05 Discussion
1:15:56 – Outtro
1:17:38 – Outtake

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Fairly simple show this week, what we have been doing, news and Game of Thrones talk. What more could you ask for? Whats that? Professionalism? Effort? Craig learning to pronounce words correctly? This is Opposite sides people! This place is an escape from all that! Enjoy!

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Download Here!

Times:

00:00 – Intro
01:08 – WWBD
16:19 – News
36:58 – Break
37:30 – Game of Thrones Spoilers
1:01:06 – Outro

Make sure you check out our intro/outro music, Anguish by Shide

(editor’s note: Jake still has a 1920s microphone, so it sounds like he is recording in a submarine, and Mark and Nigel’s mixer has been playing up, so there is a bit of background noise. I’ve done what I could, but please bear with it! Thanks)

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Times:
0.00.26 Intro
0.01.23 What we’ve been doing
0.39.26 NEEEEEEEEEWS!
0.55.51 WTF??? News
1.00.51 Game of Thrones Episodes 2 and 3 discussion
1.21.23 Outro
1.23.13 Out-takes

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G’day folks, we’ve got a cracking show lined up for you this week.
First up is what we’ve been doing, where we chat more That 70s Show, more Mass Effect, and the new Flying Colors album. News time, and we chat about GAME’s recent administration (note: it has since been bought over, although we don’t expect it to do well, sadly), the success of The Hunger Games, Schwarzenegger and his brothers DeVito and EDDIE MURPHY?!?!, and laugh at Nigel’s choice of literature again.
In the second half we chat about the first episode of the second season of Game of Thrones. SPOILER WARNING!!

That is episode 37; enjoy!

(editors note: my audio recording is messed up a bit, so it may seem a bit disjointed. I apologise, and assure you I am looking into ways to fix that)

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Times:
0.00.26 Intro
0.00.43 What we’ve been doing
0.19.43 Newstime
0.53.57 WTF News
0.57.19 Game of Thrones Episode 1 discussion
1.15.58 Outro
1.17.15 Out-takes

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Check out our awesome new music, Anguish by Shide

It was back in 2007 that the original Mass Effect came out for the xbox 360, published by Microsoft it was destined to only be released on the 360 and PC. Fortunately I had a 360 for a secondary console and after hearing such great reviews I picked up Mass Effect. Am I ever glad I did, Mass Effect was one of the best written games I’ve ever played, featuring player choices that felt like they had an actual impact on the game, not to mention an effect on future games in the series.

Fortunately Mass Effect 2 came out for the PS3 (eventually, it took a year to get it over) and that quickly became one of my favourite games of all time. Many people complained about the RPG side of things and while it did feel a bit shallow and insubstantial, I thought it did add some additional depth to the game and prevented it from being just another generic sci fi third person shooter. In addition Bioware did a great job getting the game balanced, so while playing on Insanity difficulty (the highest) the game felt challenging and hard without being cheap, whenever I died it was because of a mistake I’d made not because the game had me stunlocked in a corner somewhere.

2012 has seen the release of the final game in the Commander Shepard trilogy although hopefully not the end of the Mass Effect universe. One thing that has been the mark of this series of games is the tremendous quality and depth of the universe, including detailed backstories and great characterization for both individuals and different races. Everything in the universe feels like it belongs there and fits in. One of my pet peeves with games/movies that involve aliens is so often they are naked brutes who for some reason have the technology to travel between worlds but not to create advanced weaponry or clothing. There is none of that here, everything works.

For those of you who haven’t played Mass Effect before (seriously, go and play it now) the games follow the story of a human named Shepard, the player decides on first name (that never comes up again), gender, appearance and class. Shepard quickly becomes the first human spectre and then learns that an ancient race of sentient machines called the Reapers are coming to wipe out all advanced life in the galaxy as they do every 50,000 years. Mass Effect 3 picks up as the Reapers begin the process of galaxy wide genocide. This game feels a bit narrower in scope than previous games, although that’s not necessarily a bad thing as the events in this game are quite focused, as they should be.

Earth is the hardest hit planet during the initial invasion which prompts Shepard to head off across the galaxy to gather allies to try and defeat the Reapers after having had his warnings ignored. The story kicks off on Earth as the Reapers arrive with devastating effect, from there Shepard heads off to Mars and then further into the galaxy meeting up with old friends.

Sadly many of my favourite characters were not available to join my party (Grunt, Mordin, Miranda) however Liara returns after her brief stint in the Shadow Broker DLC and Tali and Garrus become the only characters to be fully usable during all three games. Joining them is James Vega who I couldn’t stand and as soon as I had enough characters to leave him behind that’s exactly what I did, EDI gains a metallic body to inhabit and while she proved moderately useful I didn’t really care about having her along and if you pick up the DLC you also gain the only living Prothean Javik who aside from talking with a thick Jamaican accent has some brilliant dialog, especially when talking about or to the other races.

Pacing is a small issue for this game as when you leave Earth and Mars everything is feeling very exciting but once you reach the citadel and pick up the first dozen “I need a Mars bar” missions the excitement drops instantly. All of the Priority missions have a distinct feel of urgency though and feature some brilliant, exciting and occasionally heartbreaking moments. The final missions in particular are all go, with very little downtime excluding a break that allows you to catch up with most of your former teammates for a last minute pep talk.

No discussion of Mass Effect 3’s story can be conducted without touching on the ending. Without spoiling it, I was disappointed when I first saw it but since then I’ve come to realize it was actually a decent ending for Shepard but a bit more for everyone else would have been nice as it’s a bit narrow. Bioware (the developers) have announced that there will be some more closure coming but I’m just hoping it’s a bit more of an epilogue rather than an ending re-write like a lot of people seem to want.

The action takes place from the same over the shoulder view you’re used to from the previous two games, utilizing cover and various abilities to destroy your enemies. This time around there are two separate forces you’ll come up against, being Cerberus and the Reapers. Although most of the enemies in the two groups fall into similar categories (footsoldier, footsoldier lvl 2, big beastie, elite long range soldier, elite short range solder) the actual tactics of the two groups does feel distinct enough that it can make a difference in how you approach battles and who joins you on the ground.

The actual shooting feels accurate and tight (once I’d increased the sensitivity slightly) and the power use feels balanced against the guns. In a change from previous games Shepard can now equip any gun regardless of class but the more guns, and the heavier the guns you carry the slower your powers recharge, ranging from 200% reduction in cooldown to 200% increase. In practice I found two guns optimal, giving a good balance between powers and shooting without running out of ammo. Melee has been beefed up slightly giving you a ‘heavy’ melee option by holding down the melee key (o on the PS3) which is generally enough to kill most enemies if they have no shield or barrier. With the camera view though I found myself mainly using it against husks or the final couple of enemies left alive.

Scanning returns once again, less annoying than the second game and not as necessary but unfortunately still annoying due to the Reaper chases that occur when you scan too much in a galaxy. This time around as you fly around a star system you can ping the map which will identify important items or resources, you then use a probe to collect the item in question. Unfortunately after two or three pings a group of Reapers will appear and if they catch you it’s Game Over reload time. This just feels like needless time delays since the items never move. Also there’s nothing to indicate which systems have nothing to be collected in.

Once again there are six classes comprised of three primary classes soldier, adept (biotics) and engineer (tech) and the other three being mixtures of the above. My first, ‘normal’ difficulty playthrough was done as a Vanguard which is a soldier/biotic hybrid and proved extremely effective against most enemies with an assault rifle utilizing Incinerate Ammo with the Particle Rifle. This configuration would destroy any enemy with ‘health’ (red bar) or armour (yellow bar). I fell down a bit against enemies with shields (I normally switched to an SMG) and barriers (same again) but I did have Biotic Charge which sends you flying across the intervening space to smash into an enemy and slow down time, this also proved very effective against enemies above me as I could Charge up levels if they were visible.

The graphics in this game are about the same as Mass Effect 2 meaning you get a small amount of pop-in when loading a scene and some of the textures look a bit low res compared to graphical powerhouses like Uncharted 3 but nothing looks really awful. The PS3 also has a few technical issues resulting in some very noticeable frame rate drops throughout the game. My personal favourite bug was a conversation involving Liara where her model didn’t load at all, so Shepard was conversing with a wall. The game engine was good enough to create some truly phenomenal scenes though such as the Turian fleet facing the Reapers around Palaven or the Turian Primarch standing on the moon looking up and Palaven burning, a couple of these gave me goosebumps and left me breathless.

Overall I would say that this was a great conclusion to the series, it has a few flaws, especially at the ending and suffers from a few technical issues on the PS3, but overall the writing is fantastic, conveys a sense of urgency and desperation perfectly. Bioware has promised closure, which if done correctly could fix the issues. As it stands I think Mass Effect 2 is the best game in the series but not by a wide margin, with some good DLC, the third could become the best game. Whatever you do though, play this game! And if you haven’t played the other games in the series, play those too!

9.5/10 (in a word: bitchin’)

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Times:
0:00:00 – Intro
0:01:58 – What We’ve Been Doing
0:23:49 – News
0:44:50 – Break
0:45:22 – Walking Dead Episode 13 Discussion
1:05:22 – Mass Effect 3 Spoiler Discussion
2:12:00 – Outro

Make sure you check out our intro/outro music, Anguish by Shide