Welcome to midweek madness
June 27th, 2013

Posted by Kathleen

I post a lot (about 99%) of my blog posts on Monday, when our three main weekly series go up, but did you know LoadingReadyRun is a never ending shower of content?* We are making funny stuff all week long! If you’re bored on Wednesday, Thursday or even Friday, we have some video (and audio) goodness for you.

On Wednesday afternoons, we put up a new weekly Feed Dump. It’s a talking heads news show where all the talking heads and the news are quite mad. This week Cam and I discuss whether a skeleton in a slightly used coffin adds, or removes value when you’re putting it up for sale on Craigslist.

Making videos can be hard work. That’s why we also film ourselves making videos (which really, just adds more work to the whole process) and turn that into another video! If you’re interested in how to make and film internet video, you could probably  do a lot worse than watching our Loading Time series. You could probably do better, but that’s besides the point.  The most recent one is for PlaceholderURL.com. Otherwise known as “the funny business behind your back episode of Loading Time.”

But wait you say, I would like to hear more LRR talking about what it’s like to be in LRR. Can I have that? YES. We are back (mostly) on our podcast bandwagon, and we’re making LRRcasts semi-regularly again. We don’t always LRRCast, but when we do, I’ll be making up a silly song to go at the beginning.

*

 

We welcome our new summertime overlords!
June 17th, 2013

Posted by Kathleen

It’s the middle of June. That means it’s summer (in the Northern hemisphere…) and that means it’s warm and we are silly.

It also means it was just E3, so the whole video game industry is waking up from a three day hangover of peak silly. Much like the Farmer’s Almanac can be used to predict which years will be good for specific crops (Martha! It’s a good year for beans!), the new console generation unveiling assured us that 2013 was going to be a particularly rich year for video game industry silliness.

As usual, the game trailers themselves were pretty silly. Grandiose and over the top, E3 is often just a shouting match were games try to out-edge, out-dramatic, and out-HOLY-SHIT-THAT-LOOKS-COOL one another. This week on Unskippable, Graham and Paul give a three of the most excitably nonsensical trailers what’s coming to them.

 

There was also the proper console reveals themselves. Much fun has been made at the expense of the Xbox One, but this week we take a new track on CheckPoint. Graham goes On Point, not in a judgemental way, but in a “look guys, here is the problems we are seeing and if you addressed them, this would not be so much of a problem, have you considered this?” kind of way. We also talk about Top Gear!

Another fun fact, you can hear a punch in the intro. That sound effect was from last week. I thought I deleted it. I clearly did not. Whoops! JUST TRYING TO MAKE SURE YOU WERE PAYING ATTENTION, RIGHT?!

 

This week’s LoadingReadyRun video PlaceholderURL.com isn’t about E3 per say, but it is about winging it when your whole presentation appears to be going down in flames. I’m not trying to kick people when they’re down, but it seems like it could be at least… tangentially useful to the boys down in Redmond.

 

And remember! If you missed it last week, Alex and I were in a Feed Dump together. What’s not to like? If you can think of something, don’t say it. Shhhh. SSHHHH. SSSHHHHHHHH!!!

 

 

So many videos about us!
June 10th, 2013

Posted by Kathleen

Happy Monday! It’s almost summer and what better way to celebrate than a brand new episode of Commodore Hustle!

Written by an all-new team, Homebrew Hobby dodges perilously close to what I call “continuity” — Graham and James take up a new hobby, Kathleen deals with stress, and Paul and Cam help out, to varying degrees of success.

This week’s Unskippable covers Spec Ops: The Line. Now, while this game is supposed to be very good, I can’t help but feel it is getting a bit sabotaged by opening cutscene’s helicopter issues. There is such a thing as too many helicopters guys. Do you really need ALL 15 helicopter crashes in the first two minutes? Have you considered… fewer than 15? Maybe 5? When it comes to helicopters crashing into buildings, it turns out less is more!

Speaking of cutting things down… This week’s CheckPoint is OMG The Bubble Popped. Zynga is slashing it’s headcount, but it’s not all bad news. Meanwhile Precursor Games has given up on its Kickstarter, EA is killing its Season Pass and Doodle Jump is coming to the Kinect. File that one under: Sure, I guess so?

And last, but not least, the latest episode of Friday Nights is up! This month, the crew wants to draft Modern Masters. But also finally watch some Pro Tour coverage. Everyone has a different idea, but it seems a lot of them involve physical violence. And some sort of slaw.

Remember, a new episode of Friday Nights comes out on the first friday of the month! You can subscribe to the WizardsMTG YouTube channel to be sure to catch them when they go live.

Also, many people might remember I said way back in March I’d be putting up the new crew cards from the opening titles of Friday nights. Even more of you might remember that I said that, and then totally didn’t! Well, to make up for missing April, May and June, here’s the cards for Cam, Matt and myself. Who do you guys want to see next? Jer, James Paul or Alex?

Ways to Update Videos on Monday
June 3rd, 2013

Posted by Kathleen

Happy Monday. Hope you’re all recovered from last week’s Memory Eel Day.

It’s a new week and that means… New videos. It’s now June, and with the start of summer, it also means the start of summer job hunting season. If you’re looking for a bit of extra cash, you should probably not use any of the ideas in this week’s X Ways to Y video, Ways to Make Money. Well, you could… I just… don’t recommend it. That’s all.

This week’s LRR video also gives us this gif, which is the best gif ever created.*

Next up is this week’s Unskippable, taking on Aliens: Colonial Marines. This game has it all — tons of developers, reviews that contained words, graphics of a certain quality, what could loosely be defined by common terms as a “plot”… What are you waiting for? Go watch Graham and Paul improve the quality of the opening cutscene by approximately 3000 percent.

After Unskippable comes this week’s CheckPoint Cube Vindication. Turns out the German government is kinda sketched out by the Kinect’s “always on” thing. I personally think that decades spent living under the surveillance of the Stasi might have given Germans a bit of prejudice against organizations that are always watching them, but maybe Microsoft doesn’t see it that way.

 

While you’re watching videos, be sure to check out last week’s Feed Dump, Threats, Murders and KFC. We had two very special guests, Erika and Amy from Strip Search! Be sure to check out their comics Oh Joy Sex Toy (NSFW) and Citation Needed.

* Not actually the best Gif ever created.