We're back! Again! Join us for captivating spoiler-free discussions of Portal 2 and Dead Space 2. Plus: the merits of silent protagonists, PSN madness, Chi buys a 3DS, Mike subscribes to Final Fantasy XIV, Tim loses it over Dante's Inferno, and so much more. We were just so happy to hear each other's voices, we couldn't stop gabbing. With Chi Kong Lui, Brad Gallaway, Mike Bracken, Richard Naik, and Tim "Chance" Spaeth.
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Cleveland native Tim Spaeth grew up in a happy household – a household with a father whose major client happened to be an Atari games distributor. This led directly to Tim's first nickname: "The kid who got Atari games before anyone else." Indeed, he knew Pac-Man and E.T. were colossal bombs weeks before the rest of the world, and the resulting celebrity brought him great pleasure.
Through the years every aspect of Tim's life has been touched by gaming. He mastered typing thanks to Space Quest, honed his poker skills on The Sierra Network, and learned to hate after a particularly traumatic game of Tecmo Super Bowl.
Today, Tim lives in Chicago with his three kids and strives to find that perfect balance between family, career, and Warcraft. He enjoys broadcasting, martial arts, rock and roll, growing and shaving his beard, singing show tunes to the homeless, and losing at Mario Kart to his lovely, talented, and amazing girlfriend.
In late 2008, Tim became the producer and host of the GameCritics.com Podcast, and he's thrilled to be bringing GameCritics' unique editorial voice to a brand new medium.
Through the years every aspect of Tim's life has been touched by gaming. He mastered typing thanks to Space Quest, honed his poker skills on The Sierra Network, and learned to hate after a particularly traumatic game of Tecmo Super Bowl.
Today, Tim lives in Chicago with his three kids and strives to find that perfect balance between family, career, and Warcraft. He enjoys broadcasting, martial arts, rock and roll, growing and shaving his beard, singing show tunes to the homeless, and losing at Mario Kart to his lovely, talented, and amazing girlfriend.
In late 2008, Tim became the producer and host of the GameCritics.com Podcast, and he's thrilled to be bringing GameCritics' unique editorial voice to a brand new medium.
Latest posts by Tim Spaeth (see all)
- GameCritics.com Radio 2018 GOTY Celebration - January 12, 2019
- GameCritics.com Radio 2017 Holiday Awards Spectacular - January 13, 2018
- GameCritics.com Radio Episode 5: The Switch and Zelda - April 7, 2017
[quote=Mike Bracken]a company putting all of your personal information at risk.[/quote]
Just to enhance your trust level
https://blog.torproject.org/blog/detecting-certificate-authority-compromises-and-web-browser-collusion
Some general problems with the https/SSL certificates (and a hack happened in March).
+
http://www.rsa.com/node.aspx?id=3872
i have to highlight this sentence:
“we do not believe that either customer or employee personally identifiable information was compromised”
Reminds me of the things Sony wrote… only the not differs. Confirming things with certainty seems rather hard after a hack.
other than that: Thanks too.
Cracka, I wrote another lengthy response to your latest post, but honestly, we’re at the point in any disagreement where it becomes obvious that we don’t agree and there’s not much common ground. Our differences on this issue are like night and day — and that was pretty much obvious from moment you said that hardware failures were much more troublesome than a company putting all of your personal information at risk. That’s cool — it takes all kinds to make the world go ’round. That being said, we’re going to have to agree to disagree on this one. You… Read more »
[quote=Tim Spaeth](And at the risk of giving Richard an aneurysm — I had a WAY better time with Force Unleashed II than I did with Dante’s Inferno.)[/quote]
The notion that someone actually enjoyed Force Unleashed 2 is legitimately frightening to me
[quote=Mike Bracken]That statement tells no one anything.[/quote] It tells exactly what Richard argued did not happen: “We had a breach and we are on it.” [quote]It didn’t even hint at the scope or far-reaching implications of what happened, or that we all might have had our personal information compromised.[/quote] Imo it would have been implied in such a message if not everyone would directly have thought of anon doing DDoS-attacks. DDoS is not intruding. So the wording doesn’t fit. A hacker within a network, an intrusion… what else should it mean? That the intruder installed Other OS on Sonys servers?… Read more »
[quote=crackajack]But already on 22 April they posted that “an external intrusion on our system has affected our PlayStation Network and Qriocity services.”[/quote] That statement tells no one anything. It didn’t even hint at the scope or far-reaching implications of what happened, or that we all might have had our personal information compromised. I’m willing to bet that three days in they had a pretty good idea if important personal info was involved or not — but they instead decided to cover their own ass instead of their customers just to be safe. How telling is it Kaz Hirai went out… Read more »
[quote=Trent Fingland]I think the biggest problem Sony has had, even beyond the wait period, was that they have just been terrible at disseminating the information they HAVE shared.[…]Sony has done a poor job of combating the rumors, which is a shame for the customers and Sony alike.[/quote] The shame is that news sites publish any rumor, speculation and free (mis-)interpretations of those Sony blog informations. Maybe statements from eg. CCC or Sophos would be interesting but the speculations beside the official infos are imho pointless when it’s not coming from real experts. [quote=Richard Naik]Tell us there’s a problem and that… Read more »
[quote=Richard Naik]There is quite a bit of hyperbole out there, but the fact that Sony sat on the information they knew about the attack for a week without saying anything makes them fair game for the harshest of harsh criticism. Even if it wasn’t accessed (btw, where’s your source for that?) that’s still far too long to wait to inform customers about the potential that it had been accessed.[/quote] Oh yeah, they definitely deserve the ass-whipping they got for being quiet for so long. BUT, when they did come out with the relevant info–they stated credit card info was not… Read more »
[quote=”crackajack”]Sony!? The only ones who know when and what happened are the hackers. So the second best source is Sony. They and their assigned security firms are trying to find out what happened and that’s presumable not that easily as finding footsteps in the backyard, a broken window and the open and empty safe when coming back from a weekend holiday. A “good” hacker and outdated server software, as is rumored, might result in excessive sever log studies before they can say anything that’s not just poor guessing.[/quote] “We have experienced a potential data breach. We don’t know the severity… Read more »
[quote=Mike Bracken]Sony still hasn’t — that I’ve seen — confirmed much of anything other than they got hacked.[/quote] + that file named “anonymous” incl. the text “We are legion”. Which is a pretty worthless detail for anything. But this might have been really the only other thing that was confirmable, so they said it. No company would confirm anything that they don’t know for real. You don’t commit suicide without a strong reason. And i doubt any company would have been able to clarify more details of the breach faster. A good hacker doesn’t leave much and i guess getting… Read more »
[quote=Mike Bracken]Did you power up the cross on the dark side? I played that path, and you still get a great “world-destroying” ranged weapon on that side, too as I recall.[/quote]Not that I recall…but to be honest, after about three hours I’d zoned out almost completely, only offering my full attention to the nude scenes.
Did you power up the cross on the dark side? I played that path, and you still get a great “world-destroying” ranged weapon on that side, too as I recall.
[quote=crackajack] A potential thread is worrisome, true, but so far we are raging about something that is not confirmed to have happened. And as long it hasn’t, i think MSs HW design hustling is the more significant issue to me.[/quote] That’s why I said “potential.” Whether that’s more worrisome to you or not is subjective, but I think the vast majority of people out there (unless I’m just an “outlier” :p) would find even the potential of their personal information being compromised way more problematic than a broken console. [quote=crackajack]And Sony being hacked did so far only make MP temporarily… Read more »
Regarding Dante’s Inferno: I chose the “Dark Path” and thus never unlocked the “Cross of Holy OMG” power. I wouldn’t go so far as to say blocking off your coolest game mechanic is a design flaw, but why would you block off your coolest game mechanic? Lame.
(And at the risk of giving Richard an aneurysm — I had a WAY better time with Force Unleashed II than I did with Dante’s Inferno.)
[quote=Mike Bracken]As we all pointed out, there’s a big difference between going through the inconvenience of a hardware failure and the potential of having your identity stolen, credit ruined, and bank account emptied.[/quote] A potential thread is worrisome, true, but so far we are raging about something that is not confirmed to have happened. And as long it hasn’t, i think MSs HW design hustling is the more significant issue to me. [quote]Particularly when MS would fix that broken hardware for you free of charge.[/quote] And Sony being hacked did so far only make MP temporarily impossible, will give you… Read more »
There is quite a bit of hyperbole out there, but the fact that Sony sat on the information they knew about the attack for a week without saying anything makes them fair game for the harshest of harsh criticism. Even if it wasn’t accessed (btw, where’s your source for that?) that’s still far too long to wait to inform customers about the potential that it had been accessed.
This podcast might have come off a bit biased becuase the GC crew didn’t seem to have the full story. Whenever something like this happens, the internet fills with crap and hyperbole, and it’s really hard to sort the shit to find the real story. I’ve heard everything from millions of CVV2 numbers being sold on the open internet to 7.7 million card numbers being taken because Sony didn’t use encryption or have a firewall of any kind. This just ain’t true. In short, Credit Card information was never accessed at all. Sony said this much, with the addendum that… Read more »
I appreciate the responses, and you guys make fair comments as usual. Incidentally I finished listening to the rest of the podcast today and was surprised to hear Brad say he thinks Dantes Inferno is ten times better than God of War III. I knew he wasn’t a fan of GoWIII, but I have to admit I laughed at that comment. I usually tend to admire his views, but — much like with MGS4 — I’m massively indifferent with him on this one, and cannot understand on any level where this opinion comes from. To me when playing both games… Read more »
I’ve actually been getting into OOTP baseball lately. It’s great if you want to feel like you’re in charge of all aspects of the team. Stuff like MLB2K doesn’t appeal to me though.
[quote=Mike Bracken]Our one glaring weak spot is sports games. I’ll play Madden or hockey or tennis, but I don’t think any of us play the various soccer/baseball/NBA/pro wrestling titles. We do at least have good ol’ ‘north-south’ Chi to keep us abreast of MMA titles, though.[/quote] I consider wrestling games more martial arts so of course I got it covered. In fact, from the launch of this site to about the Xbox 360/PS3, Dale and I reviewed nearly every wrestling game right here at GC. Between the two of us Mike, we could actually would do sports pretty well. I… Read more »
[quote=Chi Kong Lui] As far as needing more genre-liking diversity on our pod, MMOs are well covered by Mike and Tim, Richard has got competitive FPS and PC games covered. I love my Pokemon, Dynasty Warriors, anime/mecha games and anything remotely martial arts/fighting related. Brad plays *everything*, but JRPGs (Persona being the exception), but Mike, Tim and I have JPRGs covered pretty good. General FPSes and RTSes are perhaps our weakest genres, but none of us are oppose to playing them either. Brad was just singing the praises of Crysis 2 and Richard and Tim played StarCraft 2. [/quote] Our… Read more »
Haha! Sorry Richard — I phrased that poorly. I meant you were the exception in terms of being an old gamer, not that you were the exception when it came to having fond memories of Nintendo.
[quote=Crofto]I honestly respect you guys at GC, and this is probably my favourite gaming-related website, but I do think you all tend to have some animosity towards Sony even before this PSN thing happened (if anything this incident was the perfect excuse for you to let rip fully). Is kinda the same with Nintendo too, since most of you dismiss the Wii, and even the actual games that make it a good console for a lot of us (Zelda, for example), and ignore others like Kirby’s Epic Yarn, Donkey Kong Returns, and even future games with massive potential such as… Read more »
[quote=Mike Bracken]As older gamers (with the exception of Richard) we all have fond memories of the Nintendo of old. [/quote]
Hey now, I have pretty fond memories of Nintendo as well. They didn’t truly lose me until the Wii. There are some good games for it, but the motion controls get in the way of pretty much all of them. If the next system is just a more powerful Wii that I’ll pass.
Cracka, As we all pointed out, there’s a big difference between going through the inconvenience of a hardware failure and the potential of having your identity stolen, credit ruined, and bank account emptied. Particularly when MS would fix that broken hardware for you free of charge. Neither thing is good, but in the grand scheme of things I’ll take having to mail in my Xbox 360 for repairs over trying to reclaim my identity and stolen money every day of the week. And, for the record, I’ve blasted MS over RROD on the show a few times and have said… Read more »
[quote=Bornie]I mean, do you really think that Microsoft or Nintendo would have done things better if they were the victims of a hackers attack? Please allow me to have serious doubts about that… Major companies have shown many times that the only thing they are good at is making money. If we are lucky, the way they choose to make money is the right one (to offer us good products). Other than that, I don’t expect much more from them.[/quote] Definitely agree with this. I honestly respect you guys at GC, and this is probably my favourite gaming-related website, but… Read more »
While our dislike of Nintendo is pretty well documented, I take exception to the statement that we don’t like Sony either. I just bought a PS3 this year (finally) and have been happy with the games that are exclusive to the console that I’ve played (in fact, the two Uncharted games have become instant favorites). The problem there is, those are pretty old games — and while no one will ever accuse of us being timely, it’s pretty much pointless to build a show around games that are several years old. I’m late to the PS3 party, otherwise we’d be… Read more »
Hey guys… I have missed your podcast these weeks. I know there have been major issues that explain this delay but anyway I was even starting to feel worried about you. It’s great to have you back. The contents of this last podcast have been specially interesting for me. The best of all, the comments on last Sony’s disaster. Anyway, although Sony does not deserve to be forgiven, I don’t trust the other companies, either. I mean, do you really think that Microsoft or Nintendo would have done things better if they were the victims of a hackers attack? Please… Read more »
I found it rather strange that you all seemed to agree that selling HW which almost inevitable breaks (10%, 20%? or what ever it was) is better than a company which gets hacked, victim!, and don’t know how to handle it to not cause more rage. Actively fucking up is better than don’t want to admit anything that’s not certain until they sort out what really happened? The point of being alarmed right before it happened by anonymous’ threat is valid though. This is imo the only real lapse that happened. Everything else is what i would expect from any… Read more »
[quote=Matt]The ignorance in this podcast is startling. You’re really going to point to BP as an example of how a company should handle a crisis? BP shamed themselves in how they bungled their handling of the oil spill disaster by lying to the public, deferring blame and avoiding reparations. Also, there is no evidence whatsoever (nor do you present any) that American companies would, for some reason, have been more forward with their customers than Japanese companies. [/quote] No one said BP did a good job of handling the oil spill crisis — in fact, Richard points out how they… Read more »
Tron:legacy- a flaming bag of digital dogsh*t, yes.
Disturbingly it made like 70% of all bluray sales last month or something….?! oof
*shivers*
to me, thing the film missed is that in 1984 graphics were stylized representations of things. So a representative videogame world based on our world made some sense. But videogames today look more real THAN real-life- so the idea of a representational videogame world doesnt even relate to itself in any kindof useful way.
I wasn’t the biggest fan of DI, obviously, but I loved hearing Brad talk about the awesomeness of the Holy skills in that game.
That sense of ridiculous strength was the one thing I honestly loved about that game.
The ignorance in this podcast is startling. You’re really going to point to BP as an example of how a company should handle a crisis? BP shamed themselves in how they bungled their handling of the oil spill disaster by lying to the public, deferring blame and avoiding reparations. Also, there is no evidence whatsoever (nor do you present any) that American companies would, for some reason, have been more forward with their customers than Japanese companies.
So why were we gone so long? About 3 1/2 weeks ago we were maybe 15 minutes from recording the *first* version of Episode 53 when Brad came down with his puking disease (detailed on his personal blog). Once Brad healed up I went through some crazy turbulent stuff at work and couldn’t carve out any podcasting time. And so, here we are.
We should be back to the normal bi-weekly schedule from here on out, barring any unanticipated puking and/or turbulence.
gee that took ages, my god… So much going on and not a word from GC… Keep up the good work girls!