Ryan Scott: What about online play? I know, at least when you were playing a lot of racing games, you went through a period when you raced online quite a bit.
Jim Scott: Loved it -- loved Forza. Forza was really good until my Xbox Live membership ran out and I didn't renew it in time. I lost my Gamertag because I didn't renew it; I didn't know that you could lose it. It really made me mad, because I had every car, I had gifted cars, I owned every track, I was the lord of Forza 2 -- and because Xbox Live wouldn't let me have my Gamertag back, I quit playing it. I didn't want to go through and try to get all that back again.
Ryan Scott: Yeah, we never did figure out why that happened. I don't know why you lost it. I know we went through a couple rounds with Microsoft tech support, but it's still a mystery to me. But when you did play online... tell me about your experiences playing with other people on Xbox Live.
Jim Scott: I enjoyed it very much. You can meet a lot of people that... don't play the game for what it is. We'll go with Forza as an example: You're on a track racing, and some idiot will come online and run the track backwards, hit people head-on, and do all kinds of stupid stuff. So I got to the point where I always ran the games. I set 'em up, and if someone acted too stupid, I just booted 'em. And I would ask my other players, "What do you think, should we boot 'em?" "Boot 'em!" I think it's the younger people that do that.
Ryan Scott: Haha, my audience, perhaps?
Jim Scott: Well, I don't mean to pick on your audience, but if they want to play stupid, silly games, go play Mario Kart.
Ryan Scott: Oh man. That's gonna cause a ruckus in the comments! I know you're no fan of slinging banana peels and turtle shells around.
Jim Scott: Yeah, banana peels and bombs and all that. If that's how you want to play, play that game. But don't take a game like Forza and do that -- you ought to be playing Mario Kart! That's all, it's nothing personal.
Sorry, everybody -- this is a baby game.

Ryan Scott: Let's talk about some of your specific games. I think the first big one that you played on the 360 was Fable II. That game really hooked you.
Jim Scott: Fable II was my first one, and then I went back and played the first Fable because I enjoyed Fable II so much. And then they screwed that up.
Ryan Scott: They screwed what up?
Jim Scott: Fable III.
Ryan Scott: Oh, hold on, we'll get to that. But Fable II, I remember -- spoiler warning -- that you played through it, and then you called me and said, "Ryan, they killed my dog at the end. I picked the choice to save all the people but I lost my dog. Is there any way to get him back!?"
Jim Scott: Yes! I tried everything to get my dog back. So finally, I went back through and played it again. I chose differently, and I saved my dog, because he could dig up treasure. And I missed having him with me. He was a teammate. I don't know how else to put it. I just didn't like to go anywhere without my dog.
Ryan Scott: Yeah, I think that was a pretty common feeling in Fable II. Players did not want to lose their dog. That was a sad moment for a lot of people.
Jim Scott: You might kill your sister, but you didn't want to lose your dog! Haha!
Ryan Scott: Well, your sister couldn't dig up treasure!
Jim Scott: Right. That's how I thought, too.
Ryan Scott: You also played Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age: Origins -- Awakening, including every last piece of downloadable content. So is it safe to say you liked Dragon Age a lot?
Jim Scott: I really, really enjoyed Dragon Age. I played through that several times and enjoyed it each time I played through it. I played as different characters -- the warrior, the rogue...
Ryan Scott: You usually default to warrior when you have that choice, right?
Jim Scott: I do, but... well, I'll tell you, I just played... what's that game I played just before Mass Effect?
Ryan Scott: Dead Space 2?
Jim Scott: Dead Space, yeah.
Ryan Scott: That struck me as a weird one for you, because some of these games -- like Alan Wake, Red Dead Redemption, etc. -- you'll ask me about them, and I'll say, "You should play this." And Dead Space was one that you just picked up on your own. You called me and said, "I just bought Dead Space 2," and I thought that was a weird game for you, because it's a horror game. It seemed... outside of what you would typically pick up on.
Jim Scott: Well, I was over at GameStop, and I asked a couple of people over there, if they could recommend anything. One of them showed me Dead Space 2, and I gave it a shot and enjoyed it. Alan Wake was another one that surprised me when I got into it. I'll definitely get the next one.
Ryan Scott: Eh, don't count on that happening.
Jim Scott: Well, if that comes out, I'll be there!
Sequel, please!

Ryan Scott: Well, having loved Fable II, you bought Fable III.
Jim Scott: Yeah. Big mistake.
Ryan Scott: What did you think of that?
Jim Scott: Waste of money. Absolute waste of money. They absolutely destroyed that game.
Ryan Scott: How so?
Jim Scott: They took away all of the adventures, the planning. They dumbed it down to the point that it wasn't an enjoyable game.
Ryan Scott: That's a pretty common sentiment. It's interesting to hear you take such a hardline stance on that one -- my dad, the game critic!
Jim Scott: Well, it is what it is. Now, see, if they come out with another Fable, I'd be afraid to buy it. They dumbed it down so much that... well, what are they going to do now? Go back to the old way? You just can't trust it now.
Ryan Scott: You never know what [Fable developer] Lionhead is up to. You never know what they're going to do with their games. They pull things out of left field sometimes, and sometimes they're good and sometimes not. Another game that a whole lot of people have accused of being dumbed down is Dragon Age II. You enjoyed the original Dragon Age a whole lot, so what did you think of Dragon Age II?
Jim Scott: Definitely pre-ordering ordering the next Dragon Age. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I thought they actually improved the game. If there was an annoyance at all, it would have been in my team's armor, their upgrades. But with that in mind, if you go through and make sure that you get all the upgrades, you know that their armor is going to be up to par. That was the only annoying difference I really saw in the game. I really enjoyed it.
Ryan Scott: Another game that I urged you to get was Red Dead Redemption, and I was surprised at just how much you liked it.
Jim Scott: Red Dead was very good. I thought it was one of the best games that I ever played, until I got to the zombies.
Ryan Scott: I've said this before, but they knew the zombie expansion was kind of goofy, they weren't trying to be serious. It was just a silly Halloween thing. It's almost like this running joke now: "Haha, video games have to have a zombie mode, Call of Duty has a zombie mode. Zombies everywhere!" It's a little absurd, that's the bandwagon they were on. I thought it was fun...
Jim Scott: It was fun to play, but it was... goofy, to me. I'm playing a Western. And then all of a sudden, you're fighting a bunch of zombies. It was just odd to me. I'm not saying that they shouldn't have put it in; I'm just saying that for me, I enjoyed the game as a Western -- a shoot-'em-up, if you will. And then all of a sudden, I wind up having to fight all these zombies. It just shocked me.
Ryan Scott: You're playing Mass Effect 2 right now?
Jim Scott: Correct.
Ryan Scott: That was another one that I wasn't sure you'd like. Basically, what I told you was, "It's like Dragon Age, except sci-fi." I didn't know if that would click with you, but you seem to be digging it.
Jim Scott: Yeah. It's a good game.
Dragon Age... IN SPAAAAAAACE.

Ryan Scott: Do you like it better than Dragon Age?
Jim Scott: I think it's equally fun, but it's cast in a different time frame. It's hard for me to explain. But if you like Dragon Age's team-building and such, you probably can't help but like Mass Effect 2. It's the same type of game.
Ryan Scott: Right. They're both BioWare games; those guys have their formula, and they stick to it. People really enjoy it. You seem to be quite the BioWare fan -- but on the contrary, you played a little bit of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Fallout 3 (which are both games that Bethesda published), but you didn't like either of those too much, right?
Jim Scott: Oblivion, I got bored with; it was so repetitive. Once you owned the best horse and the best armor and the best weapons, and your castle and all this stuff that you own... once I owned all that, it got so boring that I finally stopped playing. I just got tired of it. It's like if you eat shrimp all day, I'm sure you'd get tired of eating shrimp. That's how I felt.
Ryan Scott: I don't know, I like shrimp a lot...
Jim Scott: I do too, but I'd still get tired of it, if it were the same thing, time after time. At least you can cook up shrimp in different ways. The other game you mentioned, Fallout 3... that was early in my playing, and I felt so inefficient at playing it, at the time. I may go back and try it again, now that I know how to play everything better. I didn't understand it, and didn't learn well enough how to move in the game. That's probably my fault; I should probably give that another shot.
Ryan Scott: Well, if you go back to Fallout 3 and you like it, there's also the sequel, Fallout: New Vegas...
Jim Scott: Yeah... I'd have to go back through that and try it again before I'd buy another one. It's probably more me than the game, on that one.
Ryan Scott: The other big game that you played recently is Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood.
Jim Scott: I really enjoyed Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. I would still play it, but I'm too slow. They have too many areas where you have only so much time to finish a portion of a quest, and I'm just too slow for some of the timed events. The quest that I got stuck on, I wound up having only 10 seconds to complete a run-through. I gave up on the game, because I don't like games where you have a time frame, and if you can't beat the clock, you fail the quest. For younger people with more dexterity, that's OK -- but for us older guys, it's difficult!
Ryan Scott: Well, I tend to get irritated at timed sections in games, too. A lot of times, it creates kind of an arbitrary difficulty. So, don't necessarily attribute that to your age! Anyway, of all the games you've played so far, what is your favorite?
Jim Scott: Wow... I've gotta say Alan Wake, and also Dragon Age. Those two.
Ryan Scott: Alan Wake, huh?
Jim Scott: Yeah, Alan Wake was very enjoyable to me. I liked Red Dead, too. But if I had to pick one... it would be Dragon Age.
Ryan Scott: The first, or the second?
Jim Scott: Oh, well... Dragon Age II.
Ryan Scott: One of the still-common stigmas associated with games is that they're just a hobby for kids. You still see people get all up-in-arms about violent video games on the news; parents letting their kids play Call of Duty and then trying to sue game publishers, things like that. Games are still a major hot-button issue for sensationalist mainstream media. When you compare games to, say, movies -- movies don't get nearly as much flak as games do, even though games have their own rating system and such. I'd say that the media tends to attack games a lot because they're perceived as a hobby for kids, so they freak out when something comes along that doesn't fit into that box. Now, given all the games that you've played so far, what do you think about that?
Jim Scott: I think it's a bunch of hogwash. First off, if they think these are kids' games, then it's a parent's responsibility to watch what kids are playing. You need to raise your children with the realization that it's a game, not reality. It doesn't form a child; the parents form the child. If you don't want your children playing a certain game, don't buy it for them! I put that back on parents. The media wants to blow everything up. They want to embellish everything they can to keep a story going. But in reality, parents are responsible for their children. If you raise your kid with enough sense to know that what he's doing is playing a game, not life, then I see nothing wrong with those games.

Now, as far as just being for children, I believe that for us older people, games keep your mind very busy, they keep you active, they keep your coordination up. These are challenges for older people. As we get old, we get more and more sedentary. Games give you some excitement; they give you things to do. I don't only play games -- I still build my hot rods, I still build my trucks, I still build muscle cars and things like that. But video games are a filler for those cold days. They keep your mind active. They're not just for children. Games are for all ages.