You're not hearing things, the audio quality on three of the four hosts in the first 40 minutes of this week's podcast is messed up. But there is a reason for it, which you'll soon find out about. Nevertheless, we soldiered on and ended up with an hour-fifteen's worth of talk on the big games of the last few weeks. That includes discussion of Mass Effect, Rock Band, Assassin's Creed, Contra 4, Trauma Center: New Blood, Uncharted, Super Mario Galaxy (with spoiler warning), Call of Duty 4, Viva Pinata Party Animals and Beautiful Katamari.

Thanks for listening! You can leave us a voicemail comment by calling 713-893-8069 or you can send a comment via MP3 to our email address, playeronepodcast@gmail.com. Don't forget to join our forums if you haven't already!

This week's links:
YouTube: 1000 achievement points in two minutes

This week we talk Xbox Live. The beginning, the middle, and its glorious refinement into the service we now have on the Xbox 360. From XSN Sports to Xbox Originals, we discuss various points in Live's history and go over our favorite/least-liked Xbox Live Arcade games.

Not only that, but we mull over the games we played this week, including Super Mario Galaxy, Call of Duty 4, Blue Dragon, BioShock, The Simpsons Game DS, Kane & Lynch, Mario & Sonic at the Olympics, Halo 3 and Cars: Mater-National.

Thanks for listening! You can leave us a voicemail comment by calling 713-893-8069 or you can send a comment via MP3 to our email address, playeronepodcast@gmail.com. Don't forget to join our forums if you haven't already!

In honor of this week's release of Mario Galaxy, we spend the second segment of this episode talking about Mario games. From Super Mario Bros. on the NES to his latest adventure in space, Mario has been a mainstay in gaming since the '80s--and one of the few video game mascots to star in million-selling games across multiple console generations.

But we begin the show as we always do, talking about the games we've been playing over the last week. In this case the discussion includes Lego Star Wars The Complete Saga, Switchball, Word Puzzle, Phase, Airball, Halo 3, Puzzle Quest, Blue Dragon, Guitar Hero III, Donkey Kong Barrel Blast, Need For Speed Pro Street, and the Uncharted demo.

Thanks for listening! You can leave us a voicemail comment by calling 713-893-8069 or you can send a comment via MP3 to our email address, playeronepodcast@gmail.com. Don't forget to join our forums if you haven't already!

This week's links:
Child's Play Charity
Airball
YouTube: Mario series commercial
YouTube: Super Mario 2 ending
YouTube: Super Mario 3 ending
YouTube: Super Mario Bros Super Show intro

Two segments this week. The first is a rather long (nearly an hour) discussion on the games we played this week. That includes such games as Guitar Hero III, Viva Pinata Party Animals, The Simpsons Game, Ratchet & Clank Future, Portal, Bleach (Wii and DS), Zack & Wiki, Rock Band, Mega Man ZX Advent, Mutant Storm Empire and Namco Museum Remix. We also managed to squeeze in talk about a Kotaku editorial called "Video Game Reviews Are Broken, Please Fix"...that didn't offer any possible fixes but reveled in pointing out the broken points. Way to be.

Thanks for listening! You can leave us a voicemail comment by calling 713-893-8069 or you can send a comment via MP3 to our email address, playeronepodcast@gmail.com. Don't forget to join our forums if you haven't already!

This week's links:
Kotaku: Reviews Are Broken, Please Fix
Kotaku: Reviewer Response To...