Skulls of the Shogun escaping Windows 8 exclusivity
Rayman Legends wouldn't sell enough on Wii U, says Ubisoft
Criterion staff assisting Ghost Games with Need For Speed: Rivals
The Bureau: XCOM Declassified first DLC is Xbox-exclusive
Hotline Miami 2 preview: curtain call
Weekend Confirmed Episode 60
by Garnett Lee, May 13, 2011 11:00am PDTBrink, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and Gatling Gears get the show off to a fine start in Whatcha' Been Playin? this week. Andrea Rene of Clevver TV joins Xav, Jeff, and Garnett in the studio for the conversation. A look at some of the top IP's created this generation in the Warning brings out just how many great games we've had over the past few years. There's the latest update on the continuing downtime for the PlayStation Network in the news but it closes out on happier matters with a handful of game announcements and Finishing Moves.
Weekend Confirmed Ep. 60: 05/13/2011
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 GameFly application, you can play Weekend Confirmed Episode 60 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: 00:30:35
- Whatcha' Been Playin Part 2: Start: 00:31:08 End: 01:03:20
- The Warning: Start: 01:04:22 End: 01:33:40
- Featured Music "Fever - We Love You" by Hello Ninja: 01:33:40 End: 01:36:06
- Front Page news: Start: 01:36:06 End: 02:15:50
Boston's Hello Ninja rocked the Featured Music break this week. They are a quartet featuring the vocal power of Cat Basile, the percussive talents of Anthony Geehan (Gee-han), the melodic guitar of Will Deeks, and Tim Thomson's bass expertise. Their newest single, "Fever (We Love You)," recently had a music video released that you can catch on YouTube or the band's Facebook. Their new EP and other songs are also available on the Hello Ninja Bandcamp page.
Please help support Weekend Confirmed engineer extraordinaire Brooklyn Fraser in her charity ride as part of the AIDS/Lifecycle. She'll be biking from San Francisco to Los Angeles, riding some 545 miles over seven days in support of the cause. To make the ride, she needs to hit a donation goal of $3000. If you can, please help her make that goal and be able to ride by making a donation on her AIDS/Lifecycle page and, of course, your charitable donation will be tax deductible as well.
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 delriomusic.
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!
Andrea Rene hosts daily video game news updates on the Games channel at Clevver TV.
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
Planning on buying both AdamK and Hello Ninja's stuff on iTunes if I can find it.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 4 replies.
It never ceases to amaze me the effect that game seems to have on some people.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 6 replies.
Let's assume that lots of those subscribers buy the new expansions when they come out. I think Cataclysm sold 5 million in the first month. So let's guess 3/4 of their subscriber base will pickup the expansion within the first year. At $40 that works out to $280-million dollars in revenue. Let's be extra conservative and say that blizzard only gets their hands on 25% of that (retailers other than the blizzard store etc). That's $70 million in revenue for an expansion pack.
That does not include the monthly subscription fees that they generate.
I think the impact of losing 400,000 subscribers a couple months after an expansion isn't significant for them to start thinking about what comes after WoW. 400k is a drop in the bucket of the revenue they are generating. If they say that they are thinking about speeding up expansion development, it's because they make a metric shit ton of money off them, not because they are losing subscribers.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 2 replies.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 25 replies.
In terms of the exploration element and how it was different between BioShock and BioShock 2 I'd go as far as to say that System Shock 2 did it best. You started in one area of the ship and progress through them somewhat linearly, but you were always free to go back and re-explore and there were in fact many times where you had to go back, almost like a Metroidvania.
There might have been a part where you'd have to gather chemical ingredients in one part of the ship or something and then make it back down the the lab in the science deck in order to mix them into something you need in order to progress to an entirely new deck. It made the entire place feel like a real, working ship rather than just a progression of levels.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 4 replies.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 4 replies.
The game is really only punishingly difficult until you figure out how the combat works and can survive long enough to stockpile some heal items. After that point, when you die it's usually obvious why you died, and you learn from the experience and get a little farther next time.
You will have to let go of the notion, common to many modern RPGs and action games with save-anywhere systems, that it's unacceptable to repeat sections of a game. Think of it more like a level of Mario where if you die you lose all your coins and go back to the beginning of the level. The objective is to become familiar enough with an area to get through it in one go.
The environments are gorgeous and filled with hidden paths and secrets. The feeling of exploration is heightened as there is real risk involved in exploring a new area.
If you can stick with it long enough to finish 1-1 and aren't totally hooked, I'll eat my hat.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 9 replies.
It's a great way to learn a game's maps and weapons without having to play with random people or organize your friends. If gameified right it can also provide near endless replay value without having to cram multiplayer into every game (kinda like Horde and Firefight mode).
Only current-gen shooters that have bots:
Gears 2
Killzone 2
Killzone 3
COD Black Ops
Team Fortress 2 (training mode)
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 9 replies.
Also, there's not gonna be any Witcher 2 on the show anytime soon is there?
Just listened to last week's spoiler cast after beating Portal 2 this afternoon, and I want to thank Garnet for at least briefly trying to differentiate between story and exposition. I really felt like the game began to drag in terms of pacing after GLaDOS was turned into a Potato.
Contrary to Jeff, I found it incredibly anti-climactic to have the plot progress so rapidly and then be forced back down into another series of rigidly designed Portal puzzles. Like Garnet, I found Wheatley's turn from impotent lab dweller, to wrathful overlord to be incredibly trite and predictable. This is basically the same villain archetype of the bad guy in The Incredibles, right?
Incidentally, I think a lot of the problems I have with this game's presentation are the same ones I have with Bioshock. Although I like how thoughtful the back story to Portal 2 was (the moon rocks, etc), I find the conceit of presenting everything via loud speaker in the world to be very lazy and a creative crutch.
I'm sick of this structure in games of recent years where all plot development is thrown out the window, and instead we get a running radio play, or basically a podcast in the background of what's actually happening.
This is sort of like in Mass Effect games, if Bioware took the audio encyclopedia found in the game's start menu, and only that the entire game's plot. Structurally it's a complete cop out to the challenge of designing story around the experience of the player.
Again, its the same in Bioshock. All the actual "drama" occurs in expository files, or recorded diaries---oh and then occasionally you get to see a character murdered from behind a convenient giant glass window. I find this whole notion of "story" to be incredibly uninvolving, and really sort of insulting to gaming audiences.
I think the irony of people who complain about cut-scenes in games, is that when you don't have the legitimate plot development they provide, your character ends up becoming a passive vessel to the game's world. You're not only not engaging with the plot as a character, you're not even in a plot. All the so-called story is a distant thing involving other players.
I of course loved Portal's clever dry humor though, and generally found it to be a fun experience. I just found much of the last half or so to be quite painfully lacking in any significant plot development.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 7 replies.
I am. Why?
Two words: Spec Ops.
It's coming back baby!
Anybody else ever pick up a game soley for a single mode or piece of content?
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 7 replies.
Garnett's description of all the moving parts made me think of ARMA - game with so many moving parts that you can't really blame its ridiculous bugginess.
Then of course there's the way people play it, which sounds like the situation with Team Fortress 2 on 360 versus PC (already discussed below).
Grand Theft Auto IV (including two HUGE DLC stories that have totally different tone and mood).
Red Dead Redemption
LA Noire
It has to be asked. Is Rockstar Games the most daring, sophisticated, and downright TALENTED group of developers on the planet?
The worlds they create across all manner of settings, the stories and characters they write to fill them, and the sheer technical realization of both make it harder and harder to argue with every game.
Thoughts?
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 13 replies.
I'm sure it's fun for you guys actually involved in the game, but for me, it's like spectating a board game. I'm not actually involved, I'm just waiting around to hear who wins. And that in of itself isn't particularly interesting.
I'd rather you did something more thoughtful. If you want to bring out a mystery subject for something impromptu and unprepared, there are better ways to use those subjects
Like say, this weeks topic was 'FPS games from the 90s'. Instead of just going around naming them, why not talk about why FPS games in the 90s were important, or which ones are your favorites and why. Something that really gets you to think about the games being mentioned, instead of just names being thrown out.
Just my 2 cents. :)
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 6 replies.
I also love the finishing move segment.
Thanks for the great show every week
I know I'm going to jump on some Warhawk soon to celebrate the announcement of Starhawk, but it will be a while till i use my credit card on there. From now on I will be 100% PSN cards.
Speaking of Warhawk, I hope Sony gives it away as their "reward" for the outage. It would serve a couple of purposes- it would be great advertising/hype for Starhawk, it has a ton of DLC that people could buy to help Sony recoup the cost of giving the main game free, AND the game is a ton of fun.
What do you guys think? You ok with PSN again? Anyone else a Warhawk fan?
PS- Add me on PSN or Live if you want! I'm Valor79 on both!
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 6 replies.
The communities are vastly different in terms of size and how seriously they take the game. But I never have problems jumping into full games of TF2 on Xbox 360 with buddies, and everybody in those games is always looking to learn, try out new classes, and contribute to the objectives.
I do agree that the console crowd seems to gravitate toward the easy jump-in-and-kill-stuff shooter experience than the deeper, more complicated game modes.
I always cry a little on the inside when I see the SWAT playlist in Halo Reach has 3000+ players at any given time, while the Team Objective playlist (the best in the game) has under 500. :(
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 6 replies.
ESAF Computer & Gaming Scholarship Program
http://www.idealist.org/view/program/bM3kB3gw9c2D/
Show related:
re: Portal 2 co-op, the game saves your progress regardless of who you are playing with. You will always do the calibration course with a 'virgin', but once you enter the hub world any progress you have made will be indicated by the colored bars above each chamber's entrance. Blue for Atlas, yellow for P-body.
Playing a versus match with two full teams is VERY fun.
But interestingly, most of my friends playing this game have fallen into a habit of playing it like an objective-based Left 4 Dead. Full team of humans vs. a full team of bots and running through the missions. It's also pretty fun, especially on higher difficulty settings.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 6 replies.
The more expansions Blizzard puts out the harder it gets to justify WoW. In my friend's situations, they were able to justify it, because we'd have a full 5-man crew with them, but I honestly can't imagine many people who'd be willing to throw down that small mountain of cash to get into the game now. There's something to be said for nickel/dimed expansions, but when your game is approaching triple digits just to get into it, I feel that WoW's playerbase is going to continue to decline with just a bump now and then from each expansion. Granted, it's so massive that it'll be declining for a looooooooooong time before it becomes an issue, but it's still something to keep in mind.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 3 replies.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 15 replies.
I think the developers of Section 8: Prejudice (Timegate studios) did everything that the panel this week seemed to want out of Brink. S8P is a game that rewards co-ordinated teamwork, and also allows players to fill a role in battle that suits their playstyle. Deathmatch fans can go full offensive and focus on attacking the enemy team and capturing bases, while other players can focus on deploying ammo despensers or automated turrets. They can even focus completely on fortifying and repairing their own base.
The game also adds "mission" style bonus objectives into the multiplayer matches for extra points. These range from needing to escort a cargo vehicle across the battlefield while the enemy team tries to destroy it, to picking up an airstrike beacon and delivering it to a target somewhere on the map. These objectives create great incentive for tighter teamwork and communication, without de-railing the regular flow of the match.
I really think this game deserves a closer look from the show.... the campaign is nothing special, but the multiplayer is really interesting.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 3 replies.
Did anyone ever start the #Garnettisms twitter feed? ;-)
My opinion is that the only way to get rid of the deathmatchers is to make a game where kills are worth few points and not to track KDR.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 3 replies.
Though would The Witcher count if it's based on some Polish novels? Would Rock Band be allowable even though it's basically Harmonix's previous Guitar Hero 2 but better and with more instruments? I guess Red Dead Redemption wouldn't count either because of Red Dead Revolver, even though the games are unrelated aside from their titles and themes.
Was the 360 version of Left 4 Dead 2 ever updated with Realism Versus? One tiny addition like that increased the replay value of an already highly replayable game. Still one of the most fun and unique multiplayer games I've ever played. I've put over 400 hours into that series and still play it when I can.
On second though I would say Rock Band is a new IP.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 6 replies.
Fail :P
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 7 replies.
Speaking last night at BAFTA in London, the Gearbox boss said, "Sexuality is part of the Duke personality", explaining that the original idea behind the sidekick was "to explore how Duke would relate to a peer that might have a different sexual orientation".
He added: "I don't want to spoil it because we might go there. Ultimately the robot was in a situation where for an order for victory against the aliens to be accomplished, the robot's inner workings -- a nuclear generator -- had to be sacrificed.
"The exploration was all very sincere and real and maybe we'll come back to that at some point."
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 6 replies.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 10 replies.
Who knows, maybe there is a lawyer reading this that can find out...
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 7 replies.
On a related note, remember the discussion about what the best iphone/ipad/facebook compliments to boxed games? How great would an app be for doing your character/gun customizations for brink be? I know I dump way too much time when I boot it up futzing with all my new unlocks.
Thanks for the support and for listening to Weekend Confirmed every week.
Del
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 3 replies.
You must be logged in to post.