Podcast Reaction: The No Watson’s Club Edition

On this week’s podcast we were without the melodic tones of one William DB Watson as he served his one podcast suspension for last weeks tirade that will be henceforth known as “The Incident”.  However, the remaining geeks fell into the age old trap of talking about Watson continuously throughout.

I find this phenomenon happens in my group of friends outside the Gabbing Geek community as well.  We have a buddy who is larger than life, he’s funny and witty and a blast to be around.  (At the Gabbing Geek offices he would be referred to as “Anti-Watson”.)  But he has also some, shall we say, quirks.  I won’t get into them, but suffice to say he leaves us with lots to talk about.  And when he isn’t around, that is what we do.  So much so that we have to force ourselves not to talk about him.  We will lay down rules like “no one is allowed to talk about Anti-Watson for the next 30 minutes”.  Or a rule that whoever brings him or his antics up first will be penalized in some way.

That’s what I felt like listening to the podcast.  It was like all Watson, all the time, and he wasn’t even there!  You guys should have taken advantage of and enjoyed the moment more.  Who knows when the next time you will have this opportunity?  Actually, given Watson’s track record, another suspension could be just around the corner.

In Geek News, Ryan talked about the excellent new Deadpool trailers.  The trailer teaser trailer, the red band trailer and the green band trailer, which we haven’t posted so here it is:

It’s an interesting exercise to compare the red and green trailers.  It harkens back to last weeks podcast reaction which discussed the censoring of dialogue when making trailers, etc. age appropriate.

You are “very turned on right now” Mr. Deadpool? That’s not quite what you said yesterday when I watched the red band trailer. Speaking of which, I love the “commercial” at the end of the green band trailer for the red band trailer.

Up next, Ryan crushed Jenny’s hopes and dreams about the new Fantastic Four movie…and it had nothing to do with the fact that the FF never go into space!

Much like poor old Ralph Wiggum, you could just hear Jenny’s heart breaking as she loaded up the Rotten Tomatoes score for FF after just declaring 30% as probably her cut off for not seeing a movie.

But don’t listen to them Jenny, go and enjoy FF (though they may be right).  I usually take reviews with a grain of salt anyway.  Everyone is different, to each their own, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, you know those guitars that are like double guitars?  You get the picture.

Ryan and Jenny then turned to the world of games figuring without Watson around it would be their only chance to discuss games that didn’t involve a safe word.

Up first they talked about mobile games.  I’m not much of a mobile gamer.  I’ve plugged away on a few to waste time now and again like the various incarnations of Angry Birds, Cut The Rope, Plants Vs. Zombies, etc.  But the only game I ever immersed myself in was Spider-Man: Unlimited.  Thanks to the constant hounding recommendation from Ryan I really got into the game and played it constantly for a long time.  I’ve covered this already in my Spider-Verse write up.  It is a fun, but repetitive game that I eventually tired of and haven’t touched since.

I’ve never been big into board games and that was glaring to me when Ryan and Jenny recommended games I had never even heard of let alone played.  The missus and I will bust out a board game now and then but it is usually something classic like Scrabble or Battleship or Trouble.

One game I haven’t played recently but did a lot in the past and will recommend is Cranium.

It’s a fairly simple game, but is a lot of fun and oftentimes pushes you out of your comfort zone.  The basics of it is the roll of a dice, land on a spot and do activities from one of four categories.  These activities include: Pictionary like drawing and guessing, with and without your eyes open; sculpting a clue out of clay; trivia, multipe choice and true/false questions; charades, impressions and humming or whistling a tune; and word games including spelling, anagrams and lexicons.  In short, it is like a lot of different games rolled into one.

Cranium has grown with a tonne of different versions and spinoffs over the years.  I’ve only played the original, but sounds like you have lots of options to try out.

With regards to video games, I’ve always been a console gamer.  I’ve never gamed much on PC and have never owned a hand held device like a GameBoy, 3DS or Vista.  I understand the portability of them, but I could never get into the “inferior” graphics of many of their games after being spoiled by console systems.  And the screen…so tiny…is it a screen for ants?

I had to post this again, simply because it is hilarious.

I’m sure I’ll be banned in some geek circles, and in keeping with the Anti-Watson theme, I have never owned an XBox.  I started with an Atari 2600 and have since owned every incarnation of Nintendo and Playstation with the underrated Sega Dreamcast jammed in there as well.

While I have always had a system or three hooked up, my actual gaming repertoire is very limited.  I tend to stick to action/adventure third person shooter, open world type games like Uncharted, the Batman Arkham series, Fallout and Grand Theft Auto.  Or zombies.  I love killing zombies and have played most of the Resident Evil series.  All those games are recommended to varying degrees.

 If I had to pick one, as much as it pains me not to be Batman or Fallout, it would have to be Uncharted.  With the advancements in gaming since the first two episodes were released in 2007 and 2009, going back and playing them now you might not be as awe inspired.  But playing them then, especially Uncharted 2, was just jaw dropping.  I’m sure they still mostly hold up.  I am very much looking forward to Uncharted 4 next year.

Oh, hey Emma Watson! It’s ok, come on in. It’s a No Watson’s Club…we’re allowed to have one.

P.S. Tom, come back soon…