Chatty: Diablo III, Dragon's Dogma
FileShack: Unity of Command, Skyjacker
Daily Filter: Planetside 2, Deadlight
Weekend PC digital deals: strategy-o-rama
38 Studios, Harry Potter Kinect - Shacknews Daily: May 25, 2012
Minecraft for Xbox 360 dev working on 'Adventure' update
Demon's Souls servers extended again
Resident Evil: Chronicles HD Collection coming in June
Sony patent would interrupt gameplay to display ad
Weekend Confirmed 114 - Diablo 3, Max Payne 3, Lost Planet 3
Weekend Confirmed Episode 53
by Garnett Lee, Mar 25, 2011 11:00am PDTThe Nintendo 3DS arrives in Europe and North America over the weekend but Jeff and Garnett have already been playing with the new handheld for a week. Their impressions of the hardware and some of the launch games fill most of the opening Whatcha Been Playin? section but there's much more to come includine Crysis 2, Shogun 2, Mortal Kombat, and Patapon 3. Shacknews's own Jeff Mattas and good friend of the show Christian Spicer round out the cast this week and brought their A game for the Warning where the group covers game criticism, behaviorism as applied to discovery in games, and more. All that, plus this week's videogame news in the Front Page and Finishing Moves make this a can't miss show.
Weekend Confirmed Ep. 53: 03/25/2011
Subscription Links:
- Subscribe to Weekend Confirmed in iTunes
- Weekend Confirmed is also available in the Zune Marketplace
- Subscribe to Weekend Confirmed via RSS
If you're viewing this in the GameCenter application, you can play Weekend Confirmed Episode 52 directly.
Weekend Confirmed comes in four segments to make it easy to listen to in segments or all at once. Here's the timing for this week's episode:
- Whatcha' Been Playin Part 1: Start: 00:00:00 End: 00:29:52
- Whatcha' Been Playin Part 2: Start: 00:30:40 End: 01:01:34
- The Warning: Start: 01:02:40 End: 01:34:46
- Featured Music "All My Life" by David RuffinJr.: 01:34:36 End: 01:38:02
- Front Page news: Start: 01:38:02 End: 02:13:11
This week's Featured Music comes from the supremely talented David Ruffin Jr. In the past years, highly touted music publications such as Rolling Stone, The Source, and Rap Pages have labeled David Jr. as "talented and is up-and-coming". However, perhaps his most thrilling moment in music came when he heard a world wide, multi-platinum song, called...Gin & Juice. A Hip-Hop Classic now! A song that Dr. Dre, T-Green, Snoop, and he collaborated on and recorded together. David Jr. recently relocated to Los Angeles in an attempt to get some recognition for his latest creations. David credits his father, along with current soloist, Joe and 80s crooners, Alexander ONeal, James D-Train Williams, and the great Marvin Gaye as the major influences on his style of singing.
Pick up a copy of his new CD "All My Life" at CD Baby. You will not be disappointed. And keep up with the latest and greatest from David Ruffin Jr. on ReverbNation, facebook, and twitter.
Original music in the show by Del Rio. Get his latest Album, The Wait is Over on iTunes. Check out more, including the Super Mega Worm mix and other mash-ups on his ReverbNation page or Facebook page, and follow him on twitter
Jeff can also be seen on The Totally Rad Show. They've gone daily so there's a new segment to watch every day of the week!
Remember to join the Official Facebook Weekend Confirmed Page and add us to your Facebook routine. We'll be keeping you up with the latest on the show there as well.
Comments
I was comparing Crysis 2's "sandbox" approach with Halo's "sandbox" approach, and trying to pinpoint why I find Halo's approach so satisfying, while Crysis 2's design ends up feeling very dull to me.
I think the difference is that Crysis 2 literally spells out the different ways a player can approach and area, while Halo leaves it up to the player to explore the environment and find their own approach.
When I play Crysis 2, I scan an area, look at the points that get marked, pick one, and go there. I don't even bother looking around anywhere else, because I already know there is nothing important or useful there (if there were, the visor would have marked it).
In Halo Reach, it is up to the player to decide if a ridge is a good position to snipe from, or if a hallway leads to a good flanking position, etc. The game never spells it out for you. To me, this both encourages exploration and rewards creative approaches to each situation.
So far, Crysis 2 feels like moving from one target on my hud to the next.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 8 replies.
I posted this last week as a respone to EternalGamer2's statements about game critics being overly forgiving towards "Blockbuster" games. He compared gaming critics to movie or literature critics, which is a comparison that I don't at all agree with. Here's my response:
"In my opinon, there is one giant descrepancy in your argument.
Generally speaking, there are many different reasons people watch movies. Yes, they are 'entertainment' in the broad sense, but it is very common for people to watch a movie for reason's other than "to have fun".
Now, I will be the first person screaming from the rooftops that videogames are capable of delivering a wide range of experiences on many different levels. Games can be scary, thought provoking, exciting, emotional, funny, sad, and everything in between. But, there is one key uniting factor between all great games: they are FUN. This common thread means games cannot be judged in a similar fashion to movies, books, music, or other forms of art/entertainment.
Since delivering a FUN experience is a major part of the end goal for just about every single game ever made, it must be judged accordingly.
With this in mind, I have absolutely no problem hearing Jeff say that Bulletstorm is silly, immature, yet fun to play. Even if it is a faliure from a creative/dramatic point of view, it can be an incredibly fun game to play.
Now, some people put more weight into narrative in games than others. For someone who really deeply cares about strong narrative, then Bulletstorm probably isn't for them. But a critic cannot ignore the fact that Bulletstorm delivers in the area that is the most important to the greatest number of people: fun gameplay."
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 28 replies.
I picked up Crysis 2 yesterday, after hearing so much praise over the game. I went in expecting a slow start, since the general consensus is that the early hours of the game are its weakest. I spent an hour playing the game before I put down the controller, grabbed Halo Reach off my shelf, and jumped into matchmaking. I was thinking to myself "I'll get back to Crysis 2 later", but I've said that about almost a dozen games in the past 6 months, and it simply never happens.
Over the course of the day, I found myself wondering about all sorts of topics that we've been discussing here in these threads for months now, as if they were all crashing into me at the same time.
Why am I constantly drawn back to a select few games, even with a stack of fresh new games sitting on my shelf virtually unplayed?
Are the top tier games THAT much better than the "very good games"? I can't help but compare Crysis to other shooters that I love, like Halo, Bad Company 2, or Gears of War. The gunplay in Crysis 2 is compitant, but not nearly as satisfying as Bad Company, nor as strategic and dynamic as Halo. Is it possible that even a game as good as Crysis 2 simply can't compete with other AAA shooters in the long run, because it simply isn't quite good enough?
Is it a matter of spare time? I do find myself feeling like 2 hours with a "good game" is time I could have spent with a "great game". This pressure often propels me to dismiss a game if I'm not completely hooked by it instantly, which I know could be considered a disservice. But hey, I have precious little time to spend gaming, and I want to enjoy that time as much as possible (geeze, I even min/max my spare time lol)
Another element that comes into play is when games like Halo Reach do such a fantastic job with their player-investment features. Reach's daily and weekly challenges keep me coming back every single day. The credit system itself would never be enough to make me play a game, but when I enjoy a game as much as I enjoy Reach, this kind of player reward system can be the tie-breaker when I'm faced with a choice between finishing Bulletstorm, or playing some more Halo.
Personally, I think I'm moving towards a situation where I will continue to play fewer and fewer different games, with a select few titles soaking up all my time.
This makes me think about Cliffy B's statement last month that the 'middle of the road' games are dying. For me, this is beginning to ring true.
Thoughts?
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 11 replies.
Assuming Epic optimized the engine to run on the 360, that also suggests they undermined multi platform development, which could be part of the reason so many initial PS3 ports were pretty crappy. It's just kind of interesting that this engine that at least a couple years ago was almost monopolizing next gen game development could be that unethical.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 3 replies.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 9 replies.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 2 replies.
Videogames find themselves in a very interesting place. They are the first intersection between media - typically used to express ideas or pass on stories, and games - typically used for entertainment.
Think about games outside the videogame industry. How many of them even attempt to push towards 'art'? Board games have been around forever, and none of them are considered art. The people that mae them and the people that play them aren't artists.
Games like Football, Hockey, Basketball, and their ilk are considered sport. Not art. They don't aim for anything other than to provide those to play them an watch them with entertainment.
Adding media - the video in videogames - into the equation adds the possibility for the expression of ideas, themes, stories and visions into the act of playing games. They can add rule-sets and systems that help bring the player into a role or a world.
I don't consider this crossroad a problem. I consider it a boon. I welcome games that seek nothing more than sport - to entertain those who play or (one day) watch the best play. I also welcome those games that seek to use the medium to present ideas, and use it's unique strengths go pass on messages and themes.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 14 replies.
They'll think that if you LET them, sure. But why let them?
All it would take is one publisher with guts to put a AAA marketing campaign behind a $40 game. If Homefront had been advertised from day one as a $40 game and received exactly the same marketing campaign, the game would have sold just as well if not better.
It's hard to think a game is crap just cause it's $40, if every piece of advertising and game footage looks impressive. Then it's not an inferior game, just a good deal.
And if it paid off big, then you would see other publishers follow suit.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 6 replies.
Upon the PS3 launch, multi-platform developers seemed to get very defensive when asked about what their "lead skew" is/was.
Now that we are over 4 years removed from the PS3 launch, thus developers having more time to get used working with the platform (along with Xbox 360), how relevant does the question of "lead skew" become? Is it no longer applicable now that we are so far in the console generation?
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 7 replies.
I appreciated that you guys picked up my topic, but I was kinda bummed that my main point was never really addressed. I guess that is what I get for writing a five paragraph essay rather than a quick hit response, so let me try again in shorter form:
The big difference I see between games criticism and other media's criticism is that game's criticism is focused almost exclusively on how "fun" or instantly gratifying the experience is whereas other mediums try to cultivate tastes above and beyond this.
Let me be clear that I have no problem with enjoyment for its own sake, but I just don't see that as something worthy of truly high praise. Instant gratification is something that tends to find its audience automatically whether we are talking about getting hammered and going to to eat greasy hamburgers or an inane music video about how awesome "Friday" is. Instant gratifciation is not something critics generally need to champion, it finds its audience on its own. Critics in other mediums--at least the pre-blog-o-sphere traditional ones--seem to be generally aware of this.
And the ultimate problem is that when you start throwing out the 9/10 and Five star reviews behind the big blockbusters because they are "fun" and they instantly feel good to play, that is putting the stuff that truly is something special that goes above and beyond this at a distadvantage.
Goddamn it. I still ended up with five paragraphs. I hate the confines of the Twitter era.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 22 replies.
Halo, CoD, Crysis, all of them have 'helpers' or superiors yelling at you to complete mission objectives. Typically, these objectives are surrounded by people trying to kill you.
So having these voices repeatedly yelling at you to hurry up and complete the objective, gets just a little bit annoying.
I get why they're there - so that players know what they're supposed to be doing at all times. But if I, as the player, know what I'm supposed to be doing and am in the middle of completing it, it would be nice to hit a button and say 'I'm fucking WORKING ON IT HERE!'
Just a pet peeve. :D
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 3 replies.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 2 replies.
Happy gaming!
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 4 replies.
Signing up for an account at CheapAssGamer.com is free, and you are guaranteed to be rewarded with saving galore.
"How so?" you ask. Well, here's an example using Amazon.com pre-orders and some simple math:
1) Portal 2: $54.99 + $20 Gift Card + free S&H + no tax (most US residents)
2) Mortal Kombat: $59.99 - $20 Gift Card (see above) = $39.99 + another $10 Amazon Gift Card
3) InFamous 2: $57.99 - $10 Gift Card (see above) = $47.99
...so, as you can see, by just rolling some Amazon Gift Cards over and factoring in free S&H and no sales tax (again, for most US residents), you just got 3 BRAND NEW GAMES for $47.66; or, for arguments sake: 25% off on launch day.
The best part of this is, pre-ordering nearly all the big-budget 3rd party releases gets you some type Gift Card bonus, free "Release Day Guarantee" shipping, and terrific customer service, all without ever leaving your house.
Also, Amazon doesn't charge for purchases until the item actually ships, so no need to have the funds available at time of pre-order. Finally, Amazon's trade-in program tends to give you exceptional amounts of store credit when compared to other retail outlets, so you can always, say, finish Crysis 2 within a week or so and net $37 towards your next purchase.
So, in summary, to those who say "Death to the $60 price point", my response is this: "For the slightly informed, it's already dead."
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 3 replies.
Sometimes you really get carried away with entusiasm :)
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 2 replies.
I don't fault games for this, just think of the effort it would take to allow a huge number of approaches to every scenario. I personally find it better if the game kind of lets me know what might/might not work and let me pick from those options.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 2 replies.
I enjoy it, but some serious lag problems aside (they are getting better with every day, btw), I don't think it's top tier stuff in the same league as Halo, CoD or even Gears of War.
Crysis 2 has a lot of good ideas, but they don't come together in as polished a fashion as those games. Everything just feels... 'almost there'.
Single-player: 9/10
Multiplayer: 7.5/10
IMHO.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 2 replies.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 2 replies.
But his E3 3DS AR wall idea was great, and it made me think about all sorts of amazing concepts for the AR.
Like, what if Nintendo put a giant AR Donkey Kong on the Empire State Building so it looked like King Kong? Walking through the streets of New York with the 3DS, you look up and see a huge Donkey Kong? That would be amazing. Or they could put out a bunch of AR blimps in the sky and, using the 3DS, they looked like the Sky Fish from Link's Awakening or Arwing from Starfox? They could turn fire hydrants in New York into the pipes from Mario. Is any of this possible? Probably not...but it's really cool to think about.
Nintendo needs to hire me. I could be like the Peter Molyneux of Nintendo's AR Department! ;p
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 4 replies.
Later, Garnett commented that "Patapon is a game he could take to bed." This of course sparked laughter.
Christian Spicer made the "woman's cycle" joke.
These are what I remember off the top of my head from the show. I'm pretty sure there were more.
I don't think there's ever been a Weekend Confirmed without numerous sexual innuendo jokes. Garnett's made a seemingly uncountable amount of "that's what she said" jokes.
Yet, somehow, "Duke never comes early" cues groans from everyone.
So, as someone who just doesn't find almost any sexual innuendo humor funny at all, I'm wondering where the line is drawn.
Is "Duke never comes early" not funny because it's a marketing thing? I feel like the line is being drawn because games should be art and not childish humor, but apparently childish humor is fine on a podcast... I'm not really sure how that's fair.
Personally, I'm a much bigger fan of JeffC's sometimes incredibly cheesy humor. The whole thing about Chihuahua, Mexico a few weeks back had me in tears while I was at work...
Anyways, love the show. I'm starting to develop a serious man crush on Mr. Cannata. His enthusiasm is much appreciated, if I wanted to hear people being consistently negative about video games I could just go read the comments section of pretty much any video game website anywhere.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 5 replies.
Give the die-hards a whole month to call the game their own. Then after the month, the standard edition gets released for $60. I think that would be profitable for game companies.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 2 replies.
1. I don't know about you guys but I could care less if Facebook games become more like the traditional stuff because I really don't see Facebook as a gaming platform. For me it's something I use to stay in touch with friends and even though I have a lot of gamer friends we play traditional games. As for mobile the only game I play on my Droid is Angry Birds. When I play it it's for about 5 minutes before I tire of it and move onto something else like browsing or texting my friends,
2. There seems to be a belief in the games industry by both publishers and developers that all 'gamers' want to somehow play their game of choice every waking minute. While it does sound cool to tune your GT5 car at work via an app or from a Facebook option on your game I personally would rather do it at home when I'm actually playing my game rather than have the feature taken out of the game and the devs require me to actually do it on another device.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 4 replies.
I understand now why everyone raved about that game. It was truly exceptional.
My question though, given that the story was what hooked me the most, should I go back and play 3 and/or ODST?
Any thoughts would be welcome.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 8 replies.
"The Writer" DLC has a playable spinning house, that itself is worth the price of admission.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 5 replies.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 4 replies.
3D Dot Game Heroes had sales expectations of 25,000 units and thanks to it's $40 release price and good word of mouth, it sold over 250,000 units and Atlus was extremely happy with the result. Something similar could be said for Deadly Premonition.
The God of War: Collection and the Sly Cooper: Collection have also met with success, with one selling around 2 million units and the other selling around 200,000 units. They were both very successful and it was partly thanks to their prices, but without the name or the media gushing, then I doubt either of them would have sold as much.
Other games have not been so lucky though. Activision has tried that business model a few times and it hasn't worked out that well for them. Blood Drive, Jurassic: The Hunted and Secret Service were all released for $40 to $50 and they were all universally ignored by the media and the consumer base.
Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom is another example of a game being released at a lower price, but was ignored by the media and the consumer base. Majin is a pretty good game, it's a budget game, but it's still really fun and interesting. At it's release the forum goers who wanted lower priced games ignored Majin and instead called out 'bomba' or 'Namco knows its crap, so they're getting desperate'. Homefront went through something similar when Amazon and Walmart had a sale, gamers tend to contradict themselves way to often. Front Mission Evolved suffered from a similar situation (though it wasn't as good).
I think businesses are willing to release budget games at budget prices, but it's the gamers and the games media who need to break out of the 'AAA' or nothing mind set. Some sites are getting better by talking about Iphone games and Indie games more often, but it's still not good enough when the budget retail game is nearly always ignored.
he contradicts himself with every other sentence.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 4 replies.
Concerning Shift 2, I am so excited. The shift franchise re-invigorated racing games for me in a similar fashion to the first Underground. It is the perfect balance of sim/arcade. And the helmet cam is exactly what the "cockpit" view needs. Intuitive head turning will help with the loss of peripheral views. I would like to see a form of this with small Kinect implementation to make the experience more immersive.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 4 replies.
Similar to this is the marketing (most noticeably with EA products) practice of item codes from bottle caps. This doesn't seem as egregious at first glance, since the cost is minor and possibly something you'd buy anyway...but not everyone wants that other product. It's basically just DLC that you have to go to a convenience store and buy some other crap to get.
I think the recent Tron games may have the best idea on how to deal with multiplatform without it being just the same game ported over. Different games were durign different points in a timeline...but, as far as I know since I haven't played them all, didn't add items or perks to each other, just rounded out the story and history.
Even various series titles did similar with their Wii games by keeping things related but different...though I do'nt know if the sharing between Wii games and other console/PC games was an option, admittedly.
The fact is, the Jeff Cannatas aside, most of the websites are covering the same very small percentage of games with a narrow conversation largely defined by PR.
Also, the assertion that film critics don't love movies the way gamers love games is incredible.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 6 replies.
The games at launch aren't very exciting, but we already know there's a new Mario game on the horizon (as if there was any doubt), we know there's a remake of Cave Story coming, Mega Man Legends 3, Devil Survivor, Layton vs Phoenix Wright, etc.
In fact, just look at this list of games:
http://3ds.nintendolife.com/games/soon
I'm not sure where they're getting their info, and some of those are probably 2 years away, but it's still a promising list.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 11 replies.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-crysis2-face-off
Please try to at least do some research guys, maybe invest in an "in-studio dedicated" ipad ;)
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 2 replies.
what does the NGP need to do in order to beat what Nintendo is offering? If sony can come with a 250 dollar wifi only NGP, trump Nintendo in the AR field through better software, and really show the value in $40 dollar games or even have like, let's say, a 60 dollar release that includes both the console and NGP versions....I mean more generally what does the NGP have to do to compete in the landscape of a post 3DS launch? Is price everything?
Also, I think we to get that Douche Crumpet remix asap....
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 2 replies.
The reason why reviews for blockbuster games often come across as rah-rah cheer leading is that current game criticism is aesthetics/tech first and design second. Most games simply have to meet that base competence to be competitive, and they do indeed hence the 7 - 10 review scale phenomenon. The conversation needs to shift towards what money can't buy: design/complexity.
I like the podcast but some of you guys, Jeff especially, fall prey to waxing poetic about how a game looks and feels rather than how it functions: "Crysis 2 is like Battle: New York" instantly brings to mind lavish Hollywood budgets and gorgeous visuals that ooze money while saying next to nothing about what it going on beneath that surface.
How does it function? How does it handle its concept compared to other shooters of a similar nature? How much free reign do you have and how well does it handle player agency? Is this open design inherently better than that of a more rigid/scripted nature? Indeed, some of these questions were answered, but it wasn't the main thrust of the conversation. It should be.
After all, if it really is Battle: New York then why don't I just buy a movie ticket instead?
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 2 replies.
This auction is part of the Play For Japan campaign, a video game industry initiative to raise money for earthquake and tsunami relief in Japan. To find more info on this initiative, and to learn how to participate, visit us at http://www.playforjapan.org.
"Your gift to the American Red Cross will support our disaster relief efforts to help those affected by the earthquake in Japan and tsunami throughout the Pacific. On those rare occasions when donations exceed American Red Cross expenses for a specific disaster, contributions are used to prepare for and serve victims of other disasters.”
What's up for Auction?
Sit in on a live recording of Weekend Confirmed (The Video Game Podcast) with Garnett Lee, Jeff Cannata, Jeff Mattas and Del Rio. Winner must pay for travel to the studio which is in Santa Monica, Ca. and be available on a Thursday from 2pm - 5pm. Winner will also receive a swag bag of some sort.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 3 replies.
They would play fine with the dual-shock, and the music would sound great coming through my home theater speakers.