Anger, Sadness And Envy Episode 2: Crow's Nest

Please. Please. On the next podcast please don't do the Narcogen on the left and Trindacut on the right speaker. It gets very distracting when you get audio artifacts on the opposite speaker. I was listening at work and only placed one earbud in my ear. It took me about 30 seconds to realize that I was only listening to Trindacut's side of the podcast.

Is this only encoded for play on iTunes? I have tried to play it on multiple machines in Windows Media Player and the Zune Player and cannot get either Episode 1 or 2 to play. I really want to hear you commentary

Hi guys. I've finally been getting a listen to a few of your podcasts - specifically the first two, so far. Here's a bit of belated feedback, mainly on the second one.

I got something quite useful out of the Crow's Nest talk. You mentioned the grav lifts in the motor pool Brute encounter and I didn't know about using those at all. After that, I fired up the level and had some fun using them to get upstairs like you said. And I realized that I also hadn't noticed the little weaponry side-rooms up there before! Well, they are kind of dark. So thanks for the tip.

You were talking about how nasty things are if you try to fight from downstairs near your entry point, and I wished I could've butted into the discussion there. With a battle rifle or carbine you can do LOTS of damage quite safely from the bottom of the ramp, maybe even taking down the guy with the funny hat - which will certainly be one less thing to worry about! You can even backtrack for more ammo while the door remains open (it seems to remain open as long as you don't advance too far).

But sheesh, doesn't it annoy you when doors close behind you? Halo 3 is really bad for closing stuff off, and don't even get me started about the rediculous mystery-rockslide business. To me it's a bit symptomatic of what's going on with H3. The power of the 360 let Bungie take two steps forward in what they can do, but some of their design decisions took them one step back. Arrgh! Or did I mean three steps back? Depends on how mean I'm feeling today.

I explored fighting upstairs but found that things can get pretty hairy using those side-areas for cover, when Brutes come up. I especially had to watch out for blasts from a Brute shot, fired from over on the other side. Admittedly Brutes do also close in on you when you're down below, but below I think you've got better cover and evasion possibilities; and if you have the patience to stay back on the ramp and pick off enemies one at a time, there's very little danger at all. Still, it's nice to have that grav lift option and I expect I'll continue to use it for variety.

On another matter, wow, you guys talked a LOT about the voice changes! I clocked that as a good 18 minutes, with another 10 minutes of related follow-up. I have to admit, I was tearing my hair out for you to get on to some actual gameplay talk, but it wasn't until about 38:34 that you said "Moving on to the level itself...". Phew! I guess you made a conscious plan to just pick out a few aspects to discuss in depth, but for what it's worth, more gameplay talk please!

As for the voice-change thing, I hadn't really been aware that Miranda Keyes and Truth had changed, but then again H2 is somewhat of a distant memory for me. In any case I'm not deeply into the storyline business, so Truth has only ever been a peripheral character to me; just another miscellaneous baddie that I briefly met in my limited time playing H2. But although the voice changes haven't affected me, I certainly agree that it's not good for voicing to change.

But my own trouble is that whenever I hear Truth, I see Terence Stamp's face. That's the trouble with using well-known people, though I guess he's not as well known outside the UK. Plus there's nothing even remotely alien about his voice. That really detracts from things. It's not an alien we're up against, it's just... Terence Stamp. And apparently he's got religion REAL bad.

Anyway, keep it up cyborg dudes, and ta very much. I'll be catching up with the Tsavo podcast soon I hope.