This week's episode has a pretty long Games of the Week segment (mainly because we spend a healthy portion of it talking about artgames), so be ready for that.

After the first half of the show, however, the regular Podtoid crew yaks about Sonic 4, EA's 2011 lineup, and some other stuff I can't remember at the moment.

You can listen to the show here or subscribe to us on iTunes.

Kokoromi's yearly Gamma event has resulted in some pretty spectacular stuff. Passage, if you don't remember, was made specifically for entry into 2007's Gamma256 event. If you've ever played Paper Moon, you may be surprised to know it was created for last year's Gamma3D competition.

This year, the Gamma4 competition theme is "one-button games," and the folks at Kokoromi have run into a bit of a problem; they need more money to fund the event. To this end, the crew has launched a Kickstarter page.

In the likely event that you're not big on donating just for the sake of donating, you should probably know that by donating either $20 or $50 you'll also be getting a few free indie games as a reward for your generosity. The next ten people to donate $20 will get free copies of Crayon Physics Deluxe, and either AAAA(etc) A Reckless Disregard for Gravity, Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor, or Critter Crunch. Throw in $50, and you'll get Audiosurf, Raptor Safari HD, And Yet It Moves, Osmos, and Zero Gear.

If you're into helping out the indie scene just for fun, call this a donation. If you want to get some good indie games for relatively cheap, call it an indie game sale. The choice is yours.

Axe Cop. Read it.

Another Podtoid records tonight, and we're as desperate for conversation fodder as ever. Since we can't talk about Axe Cop, that effectively halves my planned discussion contribution this week.

We need listener questions, so ask them below.

Another TIGSource.com competition is complete, and now the rest of us have at least ten new indie games to waste a few hours with.

We've reported on the Assemblee Competition before (short version: artists created sprites without direction in the first phase, and programmers took those sprites and built games around them in the second), but now the votes are in and the winners have been announced.

As was the case with the Adult/Educational Compo, I much prefer the second place entry to the grand prize winner: Bitworld is a relatively fun roguelike, but Dungeon's of Fayte's overall structure just blew me away.

In Dungeons, you've got a limited amount of ingame time to prepare for the arrival of a Big Scary Boss.If you aren't strong enough to defeat him at the end of the game, sorry -- that's it. Game over. Everybody dies. Oddly fitting that I'd only just play it now, as it has some (very, very) vague structural similarities with the better parts of Mass Effect 2.

But I digress. The finalists can be found here, and the rest of the entries can downloaded here. The competition was surprisingly close, so don't hesitate to check out the lower-placing entries.

Every month, the Destructoid Monthly Musing topic gives community members the ability to have their work posted on the Dtoid front page.

Whether we're talking about videogames or life in general, everyone is good at something. I can read you a hundred-page list of the games I suck at, but I can take some small amount of pride in the fact that I can speedrun Braid like nobody's business, and reliably complete Far Cry 2 permadeath runthroughs.

I deeply envy the sorts of people who can pull off insane combos in fighting games or completely master the mechanics of any given RTS game. Yet even though I will never be able to beat Red Alert 3 on anything but the easiest difficulty, or reliably pull off a half-decent air combo in Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, I've still got my own little skills.

But, more importantly, we want to know about yours. What sorts of games do you positively excel at? Which genres do you understand so completely that you can showcase a level of skill that leaves others confused and mildly jealous? How did you come to possess such, as the kids say, mad skillz?

Hit the jump for a further explanation of the theme.

Image by desfunk.

Ash and I don't watch a lot of anime, but we've watched enough to fill an hour's worth of podcastery. If you've got a soft spot for Cowboy Bebop, or if you absolutely hate Azumanga Daioh, you probably won't like us very much at the end of this week's episode.

I still need to watch My Neighbor Totoro.

If you're into the idea of either (A) meeting Adam Sessler or (B) winning a thousand dollars by luck alone, then you may want to vote for the winner of Gamestop and G4's Indie Game Challenge. The best game nets its developers $100k, and one voter will be randomly given a Sessler-guided tour of the G4 studios along with a thousand bucks of spending cash.

The nominees themselves are something of a mixed bag: many  are great, a few aren't, and some don't even have playable demos (I guess you're supposed to vote for them based on how cool their trailers are). I'm personally rooting for AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!

Go here to vote, or hit the jump for my (brief) opinions on all the nominees I played.

In the final installment of my two-part editorial series entitled, "How to make it look like you hate a game you genuinely adore," this Rev Rant addresses the issue of quantifying morality in games like Fallout 3 or Mass Effect 2.

In it, I essentially argue that allowing alternate dialogue options for extremely "good" or "evil" players basically reduces many ethical choices in ME2 into the punchline of this comic.

Or this one.

_{Last week, Brad Nicholson reviewed Mass Effect 2. Awarding the game a ten out of ten, Nicholson called the game "one of the best real-time action RPGs I've ever played." This is a counterpoint to that review, and focuses more on the narrative aspects of the game.}

Two of my crew are dead. I knew that lives would be lost on this mission, but it still came as a surprise to see two of my crew members -- one of whom I especially cared for -- die right in front of me.

On the one hand, I mourn their loss. On the other hand, I'm ecstatic that Mass Effect 2, unlike so many videogames, goes beyond mere fantasy empowerment and actually tries to build its mechanics around tragedy and loss. On a third, mutant hand, I take serious issue with the way those little tragedies are implemented.

Mass Effect 2 thrilled me, frightened me, and made me shout at my television in surprised, tragic loss. Yet, I can't help but think of the game as a first, flawed step toward something even more remarkable.

Assuming you already know that the game ends with a mission where your crew members can die, there aren't any huge spoilers here. I do discuss the basic parameters of that final mission, however.

There's some spoilery Mass Effect 2 talk in this week's Podtoid, but you can avoid it pretty easily: it starts at about the 45 minute mark and ends at 1:05:30. In it, we discuss the final mission of the game.

Otherwise, pretty typical podcast; really long games of the week segment, some slightly games-unrelated discussion of the iPad, and a few listener questions at the end. Hope you like it, don't really mind if you don't.

Podtoid now records on Mondays because of LOST.

Don't ask.

Anyway, I know we'll be talking about the death of Cursed Mountain's developer and how that ties into the place (or lack of one) of mature fare on the Wii, but beyond that it's more of the January news slump. Samit will probably try to help out with a few topics but, if things go as they did last week, we may just discuss last week's large releases and rely on some listener questions.

Which, of course, is where you come in. Start asking stuff.

Also.

At the conclusion of a recent episode of "Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin," Anthony Burch instantly and remorselessly bought Shadow Complex off Xbox Live Arcade, subsequently funding an author who has referred to homosexuals as "hypocrites."

When reached for comment, Burch was typically full of sh*t. "I didn't mean to buy it," he told Destructoid, "Ash just handed me the controller, I don't hate gay people," the gay-hating game critic said.

After delivering said comment, Burch punched every gay person in the face and high-fived Glenn Beck.

I agree so much with this infographic that it actually hurts.

Podtoid listeners are probably tired of hearing me bitch about gamers' unwillingness to spent fifteen bucks on stuff like VVVVVV while gladly shelling out $60 for Assassin's Creed II, but I couldn't pass up an opportunity to link to such a clear and entertaining summary of why rage over $15 price tags is ridiculous.

In other news, you still don't own Machinarium or A Reckless Disregard for Gravity.

Beard.

This rant is a slightly tweaked version of an editorial I wrote a year ago; in anticipation of Mass Effect 2 and what it claims to accomplish with its "suicide mission" finale, I thought it was worth re-examining how the first game handled dramatic tension and character death.

(Which is to say, not very effectively.)

In the video I occasionally applaud Dragon Age: Origins as superior to Mass Effect in terms of character death and plot branches. That said, Dragon Age still has its own nearly identical Wrex Paradox moment (albeit with a different character).

I'm linking to Company's blog on the subject because it's pretty similar to this rant, albeit more focused on the sequel than the first game. Also, I used these two YouTube videos for the rant background.