The title says it all! Listen to Edie Sellers exclaim that her internet problems are all fixed. Marvel at her frustration as we experience technical difficulties not once but MULTIPLE times. Also listen as Edie and Cooper Hawkes discuss sex, relationships, marriage and Melissa Gilbert... hoootttt... More on topic, we cover the week in gaming news:

• Winners (yes, as in two!) of the Rocketmen: Axix of Evil code! Listener Stonecutter comes in first, and he has a choice to make: the aforementioned Rocketmen code or a copy of Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy for the Nintendo DS. Second place winner William Griffin wins what Stoncutter doesn't take.
• Hawkes makes a heartfelt apology. Yeah, we can hardly believe it too.
• GTA critics decry violence! We have a good idea: If you don't like it, don't buy it. Don't buy it for yourself. Don't buy it for your kids.
• Jack Thompson sends a letter to Straus Zelnick's mom. Gawd, this guy has shot past "sad" and into "tragically pathetic."
• Nintendo won't be cutting prices anytime soon. How do you slash prices on something we can't freaking find!?!?
• Hawkes and Edie launch into an impromptu and heated analysis of the console wars.
• Madden 2009 will add "real football intelligence" and will feature Brett Favre on the cover. Nice way to escape that Madden Curse.
• Portal 2 not coming out in 2008. No surprise there.
• Warner Brothers gives Eidos 60 million pounds, and then Eidos is rumored to have laid off its marketing, public relations and sales departments. Cost cutting or reprisals? Or just a rumor? You make the call.
• Because we just love rumor, Bioshock is rumored to be coming to the PS3 in September. Now everyone can experience of the goodness.
• We're rumor-rific tonight as Halo is rumored to be producing a new entry into the Halo universe: A third-person prequel. Is this the "completely different" thing?

All this and more await you with just a click of the button. Click it. Over and over again!

Back after a two-week break, we bring you GameHounds Episode 13: Contest-o-Rama. Why a "contest-o-rama," you ask? Well, that's because we have two -- count 'em -- TWO contests going on. This is your opportunity to win some pretty damned fabulous swag. If we weren't part of it, we would be all over this like a couple of pitbulls in a porkchop factory. What could you win? How about a code for Rocketmen: Axis of Evil, courtesy of Platform Nation. No? Then how about a limited-edition (as in only 500 made) GTA IV Xbox 360 Elite, and a whole host of other prizes, courtesy of All Games Radio and others. In addition to outlining how you can win these fabulous prizes, we launch into gaming news of the past week, including:

• Blizzard tells legendary purveyor of crap Uwe Boll to go schtup yerself.
• Xbox Live goes down Monday morning for "Spring cleaning." Is that what they call getting rid of all that leftover racial epithets and obscene mail?
• New York Times story laments how Wii owners aren't buying games. Let's face it, I guess the causal gamer is not the Holy Grail of Gaming after all.
• Developers Epic and Bethesda announce that neither Gears of War 2 nor Fallout 3, respectively, won't have demos. Hey, if they make good product, we're willing to wait.
• Metal Gear Online beta put on hold until April 25 due to massive global demand. Again, better to do it late and right than on-time and wrong.
• EA extends its buyout-acceptance deadline for Take Two and lowers its price for Take Two's stock by about a quarter per share. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Federal Trade Commission wants to know more about this fishy deal, but EA isn't talking. Oh, and Luke and Laura are lost on desert island and Cricket thinks she's pregnant with Brad's baby.
• Rockstar Social Club opens for pre-registration and cuts lose with a few tasty features of GTA IV's in-game cel-phone not otherwise noted up to this point. Just makes us want it more.
• In other GTA IV news, a Playstation 3 GTA IV bundle has been announced for Europe for 299 GBP. No such love for the Yanks.
• Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe is koming to a konsole near you in Fall 2008. And k-k-k-Ken is k-k-k-koming to k-k-k-kill you (Thank you, John Cleese).
• Infinity Ward breaks all kinds of records with Call of Duty 4 and the new DLC maps. Nine million copies sold. One million downloads of the maps in nine days. I don't think even they had any idea.
• Girl buys Xbox 360. Xbox 360 breaks. Girl sends Xbox 360 back for repairs. Microsoft keeps Xbox 360 and when she pleads to send it back, Microsoft calls her a thief. This would be funny if it weren't true.
• Note to listeners: If your Xbox 360 gets RRODed and you keep it in a small, poorly ventilated area, please unplug it. Or else it could burn your house down.
• This week's game releases: Something for every platform, but nothing good. Smells like a week before GTA IV.
• From the forums: Is the Wii Wheel worth it? Why can't we get better Xbox Live friends-list organization and slots for more than 100 friends?

Don't forget to get those GTA IV Elite and Rocketmen entries in by the deadlines. And you can check the forums for more info or to ask us questions for next week's episode.

Hey you. Steve Vice!

Thanks for the comment on GameHounds Episode 11.

However, this is not our site anymore. It's just where our RSS feed goes.

If you actually want to comment where everyone else is, and where everyone else looks and reads comments on our podcasts, you need to go to the main GameHounds site.

 

We're back on our regular podcasting schedule, which means we bring you Episode 12: Gerstmann's Revenge on time and in classic GameHound form. On this week's episode, we rehash a few old topics, and some we've touched on before, and we clean up the last of the week's gaming news, including:

• According to Rob Taylor, deputy editor of Xbox World 360 magazine and the first gaming writer who's finished Grand Theft Auto IV, the game is not only as good as the hype, it's better. Drooool.
• We've been linked by (I kid you not) IHeartMorganWebb.com. Of course we had to welcome them to the GameHounds fold and let them know that we still think power-jawed Mrs. Webb is a cum dumpster.
• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed will be unleashed to retailers on September 16 in the US and September 19 in Europe, and with last-gen exclusives. Why are we so excited about this game? Because it looks so damn good. But we hate the idea of having to buy every iteration just to get all the exclusives.
• Playstation Home open beta promised to open "very soon," according to Sony. Does that mean sometime before next GDC?
• Josh Larson, the "suit" who fired Jeff Gerstmann from GameSpot, has been shown the door. Who would you rather be: The editor who stood up for his principles and left a corrupt site or the asshat who corrupted the site and then couldn't do well enough to keep his job? Three cheers for Gerstmann's Revenge!
• Sony discontinues the Sixaxis controller as it releases the new and "improved" DualShock 3 controller. Sony early adopters cry in their beers.
• Saints Row 2 coming to consoles on August 26. Ya think they cleaned up the bugs? Naaah, neither do we.
• New Call of Duty 4 maps hit Xbox Live. Xbox Live hits back with massive outtages, and a dubious silence from Redmond.
• Horror author Stephen King weighs in on the handwringing over video-game violence. Now we know why they pay him the big bucks. I loved your book, you magnificent son of a bitch.
• And a very special bloopers reel at the end. Figured you want to hear a little of what goes on behind the scenes before we start the show each week.

As always, remember to let your opinions be heard on our forums at PlatformNation.com. Next week, we're back to Saturday nights, so don't get all damp about this one-off. We wish we could do it more, but until this becomes a paying gig, we gotta get some work done.

Exciting week here at GameHounds central.

First, we have a multi-episode week. Not two days on the heels of the drunken debauchery of Episode 10, we bring you Episode 11: Menage a Trois.

Why name it that? Well, that's the other good news: It's a three-man (or woman) episode. Hawkes and Edie are joined by George Ettinger, an old friend of ours who made his name in the gaming underground with his brilliant Flowers for Jack.

This rather long-ish episode features some of the same topics from Episode 10, simply so Hawkes could weigh in, and a few new ones, including:
<ul>
    <li>We announce the winner of our dinosaur-sound contest, who nabbed for himself a copy of Turok. Congratulations to loyal listener Alex the Deadite.</li>
    <li>Hawkes and George get their chance to weigh in on Morgan Webb's appearance on the Tyra Banks show.</li>
    <li>Depsite the fact neither he nor anyone else in one in the UK media has apparently read the Byron Report on video games, Times of London columnist Giles Whittell sounded off about how video games are like "teenage pregnancy" and "heroin": They don't need to be understood to be hated. Lucky for us, so is ignorance.</li>
    <li>Hawkes has his own interesting theory about why Microsoft zeroed-out gamerscores of Xbox users, and it's pretty darned plausable.</li>
    <li>50 Cent II defies logic on many levels and is set for release by Vivendi. Why does the ludicrous story make us want to play it?</li>
    <li>George, having been away from the podcasting world for some time, weighs in on a host of topics, including IGN vs. Game Informer, Two Worlds for PS3 cancelled, Army of Two, Smackdown vs. Raw 2008.</li>
    <li>Listener's Corner: We answer questions about our predictions for E3, our opinions on multiplayer coming to Grand Theft Auto IV.</li>
</ul>
Bon appetite!

This episode of GameHounds, Episode 10, comes with a disclaimer. GamerEdie and her guest co-host, Elaine from 360Arcadians Podcast, start drinking at the beginning of the episode. By the end, they had both consumed a vast quantity of alcohol and become complete tards. Well, not so much Elaine, but Edie gets sloppy and starts making no sense whatsoever. When they do get on topics, here's what they slur their words about:

• Achievement: Relocked! Cheaters lose their gamerscores, no appeals!
• Morgan Webb has betrayed us and needs to fucking sufficate on her own tits.
• UK shrink issues report opining games should carry warnings like cigarettes so that parents can take better care in what games they give their children. And a Brit newspaper whores for interviews of people "turned to crime by video games." Lord, you people need to suck it hard, now.
• Sluring, rambling, more slurring.
• Rockstar announces "Rockstar Social Club" and GTA IV achievements leaked? If true, it just shows how much more awesomist this game will be.
• Another glass of wine poured. Badly.
• Prototype and Grand Tourisimo 5 will have no mulitplayer upon release. Why are you even releasing it then? How stupid do we look?
• Madden 09 will be Madden-free? Does that really matter to you?
• Head Coach 09 will be released only with the collector's edition of Madden 09? Is this really a good idea?
• Alcohol-induced amnesia and running off at the mouth commences.
• Another rum-and-Coke consumed.
• NASDAQ Stock Exchange warns Atari that it must prove its value or face delisting from the exchange. Bad news for Phil. Worse news for two drunk people trying to pronounce "NASDAQ Stock Exchange."
• Much more significant slurring of words and even less coherent rambles.

Feedback and comments appreciated. You know what to do.