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Weekend Confirmed Episode 61
by Garnett Lee, May 20, 2011 11:00am PDTA special show this week as Weekend Confirmed welcomes the winner of our playforjapan.org charity auction, Tod Curtis, sits in with Jeff, Jeff, and Garnett. Along with his generosity, Tod represents the listeners well on the show, highlighted by sharing a few rarities from his massive game collection that includes in excess of 700 NES titles. In Whatcha Been Playin? the mix of games runs from this week's big release L.A. Noire to the sleeper of '09, Demon's Souls, with a few others thrown in. All that, the news, and Finishing Moves in this week's show.
Weekend Confirmed Ep. 61: 05/20/2011
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If you're viewing this in the GameFly application, you can play Weekend Confirmed Episode 61 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: 00:30:25
- Whatcha' Been Playin Part 2: Start: 00:31:00 End: 01:00:50
- The Warning: Start: 01:02:00 End: 01:33:48
- Featured Music "Don't Hold Back" by Absentstar: 01:33:48 End: 01:37:12
- Front Page news: Start: 01:37:12 End: 02:15:37
This week’s featured music was from Absentstar, hailing from Chicago, with their song "Don't Hold Back” from the album "Where We Begin," available on iTunes and Amazon among other places.
They are out of Chicago, but 3 of the 5 members are from Tod's hometown of Bedford, Indiana. They are currently on hiatus, possibly forever, unless something major occurs. They recorded an album, "Sea Trials", which was released nationally by Columbia Records. They toured with 3rd Eye Blind (Tod Curtis saw them play here in Indiana) for several months, and have opened for Lifehouse among others. You can find more info at www.absentstar.com or by looking them up on facebook.
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!
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'm fairly early in (about 2-3 hours), but have played it enough to get a feel for the overall flow of the game.
I like the game so far.... but I'm already having some reservations about it on a gameplay/mechanical level. To be specific, I'm getting tired of walking around each new environment and "scanning" (picking up and looking at) every single thing I find on the ground as potential evidence. The character interaction and depth of story telling is truly amazing, but I'm already feeling worn down by the repetitiveness of what I'm actually doing.
It is reminding me a great deal of a game I played last year: Red Dead Redemption. A game that carried me from beginning to end purely on the quality of the storytelling and immersion, rather than enjoyable gameplay.
This got me thinking about Rockstar's older games, and how different their strengths and weaknesses were.
I fell in love with Grand Theft Auto 3 because it was just so fun to jump in a car and rip around the massive city. Seeing the environments, finding shortcuts, jumping over rooftops at high speeds.... that was the appeal of the series. The story was told in an over-the-top, silly manner that fit perfectly with the gameplay experience.
The first stumble in the series for me was the early portions of San Andreas. Rockstar was obviously aiming for a more mature, subtle, and complex story, which they delivered. My problem was that this sort of drama just didn't fit well with the tone of the gameplay: wild and silly. As the game went on, the story became more goofy and over-the-top, which lead to some of my favorite videogame memories of all time (Stealing the jetpack, or boarding a freight plane as it's taking off, shooting your way through the cargo hold, then parachuting out the back).
GTAIV never clicked for me. The 'seriousness' of the storytelling completely dominated the gameplay experience. Red Dead and LA Noire are similar, except they've refined the storytelling to such a degree that I almost forget that what I'm doing isn't actually any fun........ almost.
Of course, it all boils down to your own preferences as a gamer. I completely appreciate why Jeff would love LA Noire as much as he does. I just find the shift from "classic rockstar" to "modern rockstar" to be an interesting one
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On a side note if Elder Scrolls had the fighting system Demons Souls employs i would play it for more than 1 hour. Hopefully they fix that in Skyrim.
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I wasn't expecting Jeff Cannata to actually ready my deer story, much to do it with such enthusiasm, talent, and professionalism! Great work, Jeff!
And then, Del Rio made a great track about it? Now I know what they'll be playing at my funeral...
I played both the dramatic reading and the song for my wife kids and they just could not stop laughing.
My 8 year old said "Dad, they make you sound a lot more awesome than you really are."
Much thanks to the Weekend Confirmed crew for the love. You guys rock!
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Modern Family can be best described as smart show for dumb people. Every joke is just "easy".
Watching Community's episode "Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking" sums it up perfectly.
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Also it's so awesome with loads of new guests, I know it has probably been aired but they should really try and lure Dan or Alex (Who are Jeffs co-hosts on TRS) onto the show. That would be awesome, all of us TRS fans already know that the chemistry is there, i remember Garnett coming on the show a while back schooling the TRS guys in BBQing :)
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It's sort of like crediting Sony for the Ratchet games, instead of Insomniac.
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Thoughts?
Battlefield 3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wi2tae2PmmU
Modern Warfare 3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coiTJbr9m04
And to be fair, that intermittent 'alarm' tone idea was used first by the Battle Los Angeles trailer.
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In the demo you get 4 guns to try out including a magnet gun that you can use to send pieces of the environment flying off towards enemies and a singularity gun that creates a mini black hole.
You have a nano ability that allows you to repair the environment around you so if/when you destroy the path in front of you, you can still repair it to navigate through the level.
I'm really excited for it and think it's going to be great. Everyone should try the demo.
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The music rhythm game genre's flameout: Rock Band 3, Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, Def Jam Rapstar, PowerGig, Rise of the SixString (which got completely upstaged by Rock Band 3's pro guitar). Other announced games included Infamous 2, Dungeon Siege 3 (under development by Obsidian, and not Gas Powered Games), Red Faction: Armageddon, MotorStorm Apocalypse, Trine 2, and so on.
And then E3 itself hits. The three platform holders dominated the stage with all of the "NOT FOR YOOOU!!!" items. Project Natal gets renamed to Kinect. 3DS gets unveiled. More PlayStation Move stuff, and everyone's game is in stereoscopic 3D. With all of that, 3DS ends up being the "thing of the show", which seems disappointing after the actual 3DS' lukewarm release this spring. As for games revealed, not much. XCOM got skewered by fans of X-COM: UFO Defense. A bunch of games previously rumored in trademark and domain filings were officially announced (GoldenEye, Driver: San Francisco). I'm having a hard time remembering what games were actually outed the week of E3, since the period of the show itself was more boring than the "burn-offs" in the week leading up to E3.
Hopefully this E3 will be the reverse, with far less Kinect and 3DS to distract. It is funny to see a bunch of "what wild thing would you like to see at E3" from Weekend Confirmed 12. We're already slated to see the Wii HD "Project Cafe" and PSP2 NGP.
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If ever there was a moment in gaming that blew me away with how far we've come, it was back in the mid 90s, standing in line at Toys R' Us for that first glimpse of Mario 64 in that demo station. I was one of those kids who never actually made it into the castle before being told to let someone else have a turn, because just the sheer act of running around in the courtyard was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen.
But I could pin it down even more specifically than that. I distinctly remember running along the drawbridge, heading toward the door, and then spontaneously deciding to jump off the bridge into the moat, just to see what would happen but assuming that I'd either die of brush up against an invisible wall, and to my absolute surprise, Mario hopped into the moat and started swimming!
It's kind of a small thing in retrospect, but that was the moment I realized that the courtyard wasn't just a bunch of walls that led to a door, it was an actual virtual space that you could interact with, though that's probably not the terms I was using at the time.
Incidentally, I never actually owned an N64, but I borrowed one from a friend and over the course of March break, collected all 120 stars.
Any other shakers care to share?
---
(on a side note, I also distinctly remember watching one of my friends play through Metal Gear Solid, and that was the moment I realized that I didn't like the direction modern games were going in. That should tell you something about the kind of gamer I am.)
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I thought that Todd was AMAZING on the show and really inspired me to post a comment and a question for the first time. He stated that he's an orthodontist and still has gaming as a serious hobby. I'm in a similar situation in that I'm a practicing Anesthesiologist (which leaves very little time for fun of any kind) but I still love gaming.
I seem to be trapped between two worlds. I know that gaming is becoming more and more mainstream, but let's face it, it's still sort of a niche hobby. Almost all my professional colleagues have no idea about modern gaming and still tend to look at me weird when I tell them that I'm excited about a new game coming out or that I just enjoyed a really good game online with some people. On the other hand, I also sometimes get "shunned" by the gaming community because I'm not a "regular" on the forums or in multi player games or simply don't have the time to play very many games. Sort of like I'm not "hard core" enough of a gamer to garnish their respect.
Has anyone else felt this way? That mainstream America looks down at you because of your "silly hobby" and at the same time the gaming community rolls their eyes at you because you're "too mainstream"? Of course, the crowd in this forum seems like a very respectful and accepting "hard core" group, but I feel this venue is the exception in the gaming world. I just want to have some fun with games and not be chastised by either side. Ideally gaming will become a mainstream means of entertainment and these worlds will merge, but what should I do in the meantime?
Thanks guys!
Love the show!
TheGr8Sleeper on XBL, PSN, Steam and Onlive if anyone feels similar and would like a mature, semi-serious gamer to play with sometime (I still haven't started portal 2 multiplayer! Help!)
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Does associating Batman with the game help or would the game be better off with it's own world?
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Most gamers my age (mid 20s) seem to think most highly of the games from previous generations. They savor the memories of playing NES, SNES games and the like.
I don't. In fact, I've grown more passionate about games and enjoyed them more with every passing generation. As a 6 year old, I obviously enjoyed the NES. But not anywhere near enough to think about going back and playing them.
With the SNES and the Genesis as an 8 year old, I started liking games more. I started to have a general understanding of the differences between good games and bad games, and explored new genres.
But it wasn't until the PSX and the N64 that a switch turned in my head and gaming became a big part of my life, and I started really thinking, talking, and studying the industry, upcoming games, and the differences between the truly great games and the rest of the pack.
I love more Xbox and PS2 games than any amount of games from all the previous generations combined.
I've purchased and enjoyed more games this generation, on the Xbox 360 and PS3, than any other generation. And when I think of my top 10 favorite games, most of them are from this generation (albeit, the top 4 are still older).
Anybody else feel as though games and their experiences with games are just getting better? Or does everybody look back on the NES and SNES days as the glory days?
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Bully
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?
We've had several years to come to terms that:
Yes, people use it daily.
Yes, people spend real money to buy fake items.
Yes, Sony and various developers make lots of money on it.
I think Home is really lame, and I have no interest in it, but I accept it for what it is.
It would be nice if others would as well so I don't have to listen to several minutes of lame jokes and groans every time Home is mentioned.
(sorry if this sounds snide, I didn't mean it to ;p)
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I'm reading "The Rape of Nanking" at the moment and have read some pretty important, but brutal historical texts on other atrocities. Books, Plays, and even movies have been able to portray such events due to the passivity of the audience. The author, actors, or playwright is judged on their handling of the events portrayed; the respect for the subject lies in a small group of hands. But one youtube video by a gamer where they "break" the game in fun and wacky ways will birth a thousand imitators and harm the industry.
I'm sure there are indy efforts, as I remember Jeff mentioning "The Cat and the Coup", but can entertainment give way to education in gaming -- more than Shane finding religion on the evil of PMCs due to MGS4?
http://cgi.ebay.com/Final-Fantasy-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-Collections-/200605325745?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2eb50259b1#ht_8121wt_1139
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People seem to have written off the PSP in the last couple years, but I think it's actually gotten some of its best games in that time frame, most of which did not get the sales they deserved outside of Japan BECAUSE they were on PSP. Titles like Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker immediately come to mind, and the first election will be Monster Hunter Portable 3rd (Freedom 3) which from the videos actually looks quite beautiful in HD.
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That said, the first four seasons of Scrubs are AMAZING. One of the best sitcoms ever. On the other hand, the last four (?) seasons of Scrubs were progressively worse and worse and by the time the show ended it was truly terrible - a sad shadow of it's former self.
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If you want to play a niche title from FROM Software aimed directly at hardcore gamers, go play the Otogi games on Xbox.
SO. GOOD.
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Kinda like that Icelandic yogurt, skyr. :-)
Hopefully the game will be as rich and tasty !
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Someone recently asked me what my favorite games of the last couple of years were and as I spouted off the list I realized they all had something in common: they gave me free avatar stuff. Super Meat Boy, Limbo, Red Dead Redemption, and Portal 2 all gave me cool avatar swag.
I also noted that I didn't mention Call of Duty, which has occupied the most amount of my time and money (the game + 2 expansions) and gave me no avatar swag.
It got me thinking. I love all of these games, but things like avatar gifts and free DLC (like Assassin's Creed maps or upcoming Portal 2 challenges) make me feel like a part of the team. Call of Duty, which I love and play the shit out of, gives me the feeling of "We're the best right now, so you'll pay bitch!"
The question is: Who wins?
I've put more hours and money (with DLC, $120) into CoD: Black Ops (and other CoD's). However, I know I'll try anything in the future from the Limbo or Super Meat Boy teams (and of course Valve), while I could be easily abandon Call of Duty for Battlefield if it became the hot new shooter shit.
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*BAP!*
*WHIP!*
*FAP!* *record scratch*
Hahaha, it was a good thing I wasn't driving when I first heard this one.
No, that's not a double entendre.