So here’s what you missed!

• Niki says Brink is not so good. The MP mode is repetitive, there is ostensibly no campaign (just MP with bots), and the level design fails to provide any sense of verticality that would make the parkour movement worthwhile.
• Adam loved the Red Faction: Armageddon demo, shrugged at the Gears 3 beta, and talked relentlessly about Dong Dong Never Die, a free 2D fighting game for the PC that is so full of indescribable wonder…. and a guy named Violent Dong Dong.
• Pete has been playing a ton of Bust-a-Move 2, which he attributes to how it’s a near perfect puzzle game.
• Daniel (Cruz) played some game, but I wasn’t paying any attention to him. I think it was Barbie Horse Adventures?

And that’s pretty much it! Sorry folks, we’ll be back next week with redundancy back in place!

You know how usually by this time there’s a spanking hot new episode of Fall Damage ready to be cast upon your glorious earholes?

Well, sad news folks. It seems that the program we use to record crashed mid episode this week, so the resultant audio file is… well… nowhere.

We apologize for the unexpected week off, but we’ll be back next week for the next live show on Wednesday, October 6th at 6:30 CST on our Justin.tv page.

And if you think this sucks and wish to complain, consider poor forum fanatic Slither, who was in the right place at the right time this week to step in as a last minute fill-in for Aevan. His maiden voyage on the Starship Fall Damage shall never be heard.

Shed a single tear, fellow Fallites.

To get an idea of how it’s looking these days, here’s a random snippet from last week’s show.  Mass Effect 2 goodness starts about a minute into it.

Scares mentioned it yesterday, but we’ve made a handful of bonus announcements regarding the Level 20 event tomorrow.

Most notably, we will be broadcasting the podcast LIVE as it’s being recorded. If you visit the forums, you will now see a “Stream” tab along the top of the page. Click that and you’ll see a nifty little popup video player. Click it on Saturday, January 23rd at 10:00CST, and you’ll be listening to the newest show, LIVE.

So join us in the Forums chat tomorrow at 10CST for this killer event. If it works, maybe we’ll look at doing this for all shows going forward. If it doesn’t, well at least you’ll have a story!

I’m currently using up what precious little laptop battery power (and cell phone battery power) I have left to notify you. How special do you all feel?

I’m not certain it was sabotage, but who would have the most to gain from a postponement of the show? All signs point to current Listener of the Week Trefoilknot, looking to extend his reign of terror.

What he has against Laotians I’ll never know…

It took me officially Way Too Damn Long, but a hole in my budget opened up long enough to let a copy of Borderlands slip through, and I’m really wondering why I didn’t get this sooner.

Right now I’m about 75%-ish through my first playthrough. I’m playing the Soldier class; since he is a planet-hopping mercenary with a hip urban attitude, I have named him Deltron. I’m currently at Level 32 with a Support Gunner class mod, closing in quickly on 33, and for the moment I’m mostly focusing skills on physical endurance, dealing good damage with all weapon types, and getting the most use out of the deployable turret. My only complaint is the lack of any ‘alternate’ character models, since while I do love my Soldier’s skillset, I still feel awkward not playing a girl, and I’ve found I’m pretty terrible with the Siren(stealth is decidedly NOT my forte).

It’s interesting, as I play through this, to note just how damn greedy I am. I’ve reached a point in the game where I effectively have more money than I could EVER need, as healing items are relatively cheap, and buying weapons/shields is a really rare thing, since the general selection is usually meh and the ‘special buys’ are pretty much never anything useful to me. Despite this, I still OBSESSIVELY pick up everything I see, cart it back to the vending machines, and sell it off. At this point I’m up to something like $2,000,000+, and I literally have no idea what I’m going to do with it all. I have noticed the selection improves as I level up, so maybe by the time I’m on to the New Game+ I’ll have a use for my vast supply of wealth. As for actual gear, between farming the chests in New Haven and just grabbing random drops, I’m set up pretty well for the moment. Just for personal reasons I’d love to find a Revolution, because carrying a gun named “Glorious Revolution” is goddamn awesome.

Overall? I’m having a blast with this game, it’s the most fun I’ve had all year. Dragon Age may have a better narrative, but Borderlands is DECIDEDLY more satisfying to actually play. Definite belated thumbs-up: as soon as I get enough money to afford a wireless adapter for the 360, I’ll be looking forward to blasting around Pandora with friends.

Also, apologies for my recent absence from the podcasts: real life has been seriously ganging up on me lately, and I’ve either not had the time or not had the energy to put anything together for the show. Rest assured, however, I’ll be back in action soon, hopefully with plenty of new stuff to talk about!

All of us here behind the scenes at Fall Damage believe that all great developers get their start with nothing more than an idea, a dream, and a passion to see it through..  To celebrate and honor this ideal, we will be bringing you new games that we’ve found through our adventures.  Hopefully, this will mean that we will do our small part to see up and coming developers reach the rank and prestige of companies such as Level 5, Valve and Naughty Dog.

This week I would like to introduce you to a marvelous little game called Tipoli.  It’s a one button iPhone game with huge potential and unlimited fun brought to our eager hands by Proper Walrus and published by Divide By Zero Games.  If you are craving something indubitably addictive and you just happen to have an iPhone at your disposal than there is truly no reason not to go and get yourself a copy of Tipoli.

The good news gets even better once you hear that for the first week Tipoli is only 99 cents in the apps store!  Yes, you read that right.  Only 99 Cents, People.  So go out there, support those big time dreamers with even bigger ideas, and who knows what wonderous things we might see from them in the future!

Oh, and for those who want the game but just can’t be bothered searching for it?  [I know, the internet is a scary place. o_o]  Here is a direct link for download!  Or, if you want to read more about the developers themselves, and the process that Tipoli has gone through to become what it is now; here is a link for your reading enjoyment! 

And because writing a whole article with piles of information would mean that I’d have to pretend to be an actual journalist, keep your ears open for a future podcast [fingerscrossed] hopefully interviewing one of the Proper Walrus team!

Requirements are minimal… you just need to have interesting things to say about video games, and you need access to Skype (which is free.) Additionally you need to be able to set aside up to 2 hours on a Wednesday evening (usually 6:30p to 8:30p CST) to record the show!

To apply to join the show, simply record a couple minutes of your thoughts on a recent game you’ve played, and email it to mixmoff@fall-damage.com!

Also if you look to the right sidebar you will find a new way to interact with the show! Call our Google Voice number and leave us a voicemail, and we’ll try to work it into the next show! Either call us at (209) 7-DAMAGE, or click the Google Voice widget in the sidebar and enter your phone number to be connected to the show’s mailbox!