Daily Filter: Birds of Steel, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition
Waveform releasing on Steam in early March
Capcom, Sega, Namco Bandai collaborating on 3DS title
Simpsons free-to-play iOS game coming soon
Moby Games Classic: MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat
Weekend Confirmed 75 - Deus Ex Human Revolution, Street Fighter 3: Third Strike
by Garnett Lee, Aug 26, 2011 11:00am PDTDeus Ex Human Revolution made its hotly anticipated debut this week and everyone's been playing it. But don't think Weekend Confirmed would spoil the game for you! Xav, Jeff, and Garnett along with regular guest Christian Spicer spend the first segment of Whatcha Been Playin? talking about their experience with the game, and how it struck them from a variety of perspectives. There's sure to be more to come on this one, but there are other games this week as well, like Street Fighter 3: Third Strike and Madden NFL 12. The Warning begins with a blog posted by a game designer in response to Garnett's Diablo 3 complaints, and then moves on to a discussion of the importance of replayability in modern games. Xav leads the debate through a full new segment. There's Finishing Moves, and then, the first NFL Tailgate of the year. It's a jam-packed show.
Weekend Confirmed Ep. 75: 08/26/2011
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If you're viewing this in the GameFly application, you can play Weekend Confirmed Episode 75 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: 00:30:52
- Whatcha' Been Playin Part 2: Start: 00:31:26 End: 01:03:19
- The Warning: Start: 01:04:23 End: 01:35:43
- Featured music High Frequency Bandwidth "Hidden Foto Banks": 01:35:43 End: 01:39:02
- The Front Page news: Start: 01:39:02 End: 02:13:21
- Tailgate: Start: 2:14:06 End: 2:21:11
Our featured music this week, "Hidden Foto Banks," comes from the PixelJunk Shooter series soundtrack by High Frequency Bandwidth titled HFB: PixelJunked. It's available directly on your PS3 through the PlayStation Store. Digital copies can also be purchased through Amazon and iTunes.
High Frequency Bandwidth will be appearing live at Ketama in Moscow on the 10th of September. And Alex has a weekly radio show going called "Chewy Choosedays" that you can listen to on Fnoob.com every Tuesday at 20:00 British time. Highly recommend giving it a listen!
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 Cannata 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
The crowd is only dead in Toronto because the fans are too cool to cheer or show up on time.
Go to a game in Winnipeg this year, bring your ear plugs.
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So I want to know, what is YOUR most anticipated game this holiday season. Based purely on raw emotion. Don't take more than 5 seconds to think about your answer, weigh the options logically by taking replayability, or feature-set or anything else into account. Just go with your heart or your gut, and spit out the first game that comes to mind.
Love to hear this from Jeff, Garnett, Xav, Spicer, Andrea or whoever else is on the show this week, too.
Mine: Assassin's Creed Revelations.
Not even close.
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Was it probably the worst fucking way to handle the situation? Absolutely.
As a marketer, if I was to set up a promotion that put anything in the box with a product WITHOUT ALERTING THE RETAILER or marking it explicitly on the box, then I'm opening myself up to a whole bunch of shit.
Now, most SMART retailers would call me up, tell me that they're not doing business with me anymore because of my underhanded practices and pull the product off shelves until we sorted it out (if at all).
Had Gamestop simply refused to sell the PC version of the game, they could have avoided the PR mess, but would have lost out on day-one sales to Steam. So they worked out a ridiculously poor solution and got caught.
But I'm not shocked AT ALL to see that Gamestop has simply pulled the product now, and that BOTH Squeenix and Gamestop are apologizing. Square Enix apologizing to Gamestop, and Gamestop to customers (with gift cards).
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Now granted, I am not purchasing Madden this year but its mainly because I cant devote as much time as I use to do when i was younger. But Garnett's complaints about the game are somewhat outrageous. My man complained about the fact that the CB does not turn and locate the ball before intercepting or defending the pass. I'm thinking how would that even work? Would I hold down on the trigger button to force him to swivel his neck back then, hit the other button to intercept or deflect the pass?
Now his biggest complaint has always been against the Offensive line. Not once has he mentioned the Offensive line audibles or the sending players in motion. Now after the snap, if every block is made wouldn't we then complain about how easy it is to run the ball?
And the fact that we keep attempting to compare the game to a soccer game is laughable. I understand comparing soccer to hockey or basketball because they have similar zone schemes and plays. Most of our complaints are about the AI but none of these other sports depend on the AI as much as a football game does.
And also lets not keep thinking that back in the day that 2k made the greatest football game. They had another shot at it a few years ago with that heap of crap that no one played called all pro football with barry sanders and elway and how the hell even touched that or shouted for more of that. And the greatest thing about the old game was the commentary and the animations of the game. Back then it was more sim than madden was because madden was more about fun. but madden is very "simmy" now.
I am not saying that madden is the greatest football game that it can be, but its not the horrible game that Garnett seems to make it sound. I have only played the demo and I found myself just not ready to put it on my shelf next to my other wall of shame games i have not finished like Batman & GOW 3...
I'm not talking score here, I'm talking song. I recently finished one of my pile of shame games (Alan Wake) and immediately downloaded the featured song Poe's "Haunted". I'm not a fan of hers, but my connection to that song in that game made me want to buy it.
It's what movie soundtracks used to do for me. I would never have bought Stealers Wheel's "Stuck in the Middle with You" if not for Reservoir Dogs and now I wouldn't have heard of Cage the Elephant's "Ain't No Rest For the Wicked" if not for Borderlands.
I've got a growing list of game soundtrack songs, but I'd love to hear everyone else's.
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I wonder if companies understand if this is offensive or if they just don't care. Please let's keep this conversation as adult as possible. I know Jeff and Xav finished the game, I wonder if they came across this and if so what did they think about it?
Here is the dialogue in question.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He09JaBVZdE
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Most of my favorite games are the ones that I've beaten 15+ times and many of them offer no mechanical incentive for replay. They were just such good games that I like experiencing them again, like a great book or great movie that you read/watch periodically.
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I haven't played any of the Resistance games myself, but I do favour the idea that an established universe can be opened up for interpretation by other studios. Having seen the 343 Industries panel at HaloFest, I'm very excited about where the Halo universe is moving given the new direction of that team.
Are there any existing IP's that you think could benefit from a new direction through the eyes of a different studio?
I for one hope that Uncharted and Gears of War are not developed by Naughty Dog and Epic once their third instalments have hit the shelves. I don't say this because I think those franchises are beginning to wane; but more so that I'd like to see both studios tackle new IP's in different genres as opposed to churning out another sequel in each franchise.
So Jeff (or community members): could you do a begginer's guide to board games? What games would you recommend ( specially good for 2 people)? I would appreciate yf you posted them here, and I know it's Garnettยดs "damn show", but if you could talk about them on the next episode would be great.
Thanks a lot!
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1. Vick
2. G. Jennings- top 3 rated receiver on the board decent pick up at 18.
3. P. Rivers- my motto is always draft talent above need early on in the draft. You'll always have needs but there is only so much talent. And in weeks 3,4,5,6 when you sit down at the trade table you'll have the power point blank talent sells itself.
4. D. Clark- my back up TE but he was higher rated and might have been picked up. I went after TE because all the other categories were already mid tier players:)
5. K. Winslow- my starter man I just like the way he plays tough great receviever!
6. K. Moreno- safe late round RB again not my starter but there's was a chance he wouldn't be there in the later rounds.
7. B. Marshall- yeah that's right that's how you make a 7th round pick!
8. C. Wells- and this is my main RB. He's my sleeper, I hope he arrives the way I expect. I love the way he runs, and he's got the new QB to help power the offense:)
9. T. Hightower- he's insurance policy, and just one nice thing about him his coach!
10. New England
11. M. Crabtree- hoping he reaches his potential.
12. B. Edwards- contract year! He's gonna make that money.
13. Bucs D- bye week defense.
14. L. Tomlison- I just picked up another RB I really don't like this pick.
15. B. Celek- again don't like the pick just adding a TE.
16. J. Brown- you need a kicker and 3-4 from plus 50. Plus always go for a dome guy IMO.
17. C. Newton- who knows with this guy, but he's gonna run so that's good. And the added bonus if he does do great he can't hurt me, anyone you have your opponent doesn't.
18. K. Collins- a wildcard same principal as Newton, and who knows Collins.
Overall I very happy LT and celek are my only disappointments but I'll drop them soon
A more savy illusion is games like GTA, oblivion, and Fallout. We are told these are open world games go anywhere do anything, it's your story. However that's impossible the games a very much linear storylines you still progress through these games from point A to point B to point C. There's no ability to skip a certain story event and go half way through the story without beating level 1-1. There still stuck in the old Mario format, and this is called choice? For shame.
Then a game like Mass effect, and it's conversation wheel. Which might I add already has certain options locked away unless you level in the right direction. Sorry I've never been a fan again your forced to hit story beats. You can't hit a scenario that the program hasn't intended. I'll be more intrigued when they give me the option to speak as I would and the game reacts to my decisions not this choose your own adventure turn to page 92.
I realize these are baby steps to get to that choice point, but it be nice if we could stop acting like 5 year olds. Being all did you see how the game let me do whatever I wanted. I'm pretty sure the WC staff can see the man behind the curtain, but they still call him a Wizard for some reason. I want choices too unfortunately we are still playing make believe and pretending that these games a fooling us. Pick yes or no.
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What an awesome story! I had a good laugh at that.
I can sympathize. I grew up in a poor family and I ached to play the Ninja Turtles Arcade game SO bad that I would watch other people play it and then I'd go home and, on a long roll of butchers paper, I'd draw out the entire levels in pencil. Then I'd cut out small Ninja Turtle characters and foot soldiers and, supplying my own sound effects, I'd battle my way through the whole game. It wasn't anywhere near as good as the real thing but it was something to quench my addiction.
I'd like to hear some more stories from gamers about the desperate measures they've employed in times of financial turmoil. What lengths have you, or someone you know, gone to in order to sedate your gaming related urges?
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I'll be waiting for Deus Ex to drop in price, it just doesn't sound like a good game, it just sounds like it's being applauded by some of the hosts because they want to praise something/anything different. The enjoyment doesn't seem sincere.
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First of all, you're absolutely right - Activision is so cost-effective that they can't keep a talented studio on the payroll to create potential future hits, but hey, let's hire a fucking rapper to close our their Call of Duty expo just to show how big and awesome CoD is.
Second of all, and god willing there's somebody involved with GTTV, G4, or any other games-relation TV broadcast reading this, I DONT GIVE A FUCK ABOUT WHAT CELEBRITIES THINK OR SAY ABOUT VIDEOGAMES. Ever. Geoff Keighley (who's actually a pretty smart guy, all things considered) tweeted about how excited he was to interview Kanye at this thing. Why? Interview somebody involved with making the game, or hell, talk to the marketers about how big CoD has become, anything.
Asking a rapper what videogames he likes is like asking an actor what car he likes to drive. Who the FUCK cares?!
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Whoa, Christian, take it easy on the facial animation comparison. Remember that LA Noire was probably the best that cutscene acting could get, given that it was a full facial motion capture of an actor's performance.
Compare that to this blog post from Masanori Takashima at Platinum Games on the facial animation work for Bayonetta (complete with a really nice demonstration video clip): http://platinumgames.com/2009/09/04/the-face-of-bayonetta/
As far as in-engine cutscenes versus a pre-rendered video, there are tradeoffs to each approach that I can only guess at, since I'm not a game developer. I imagine that pre-rendered would have a consistent framerate on the majority of systems, or if one of the consoles in a multiplatform game had slowdowns or space/memory issues with an in-engine cutscene. While listening to Kamiya's Bayonetta commentary series, he mentioned that they tried to get as much in-engine as they could (but had to do "filmstrip" still image in-engine cutscenes since they didn't have enough time to mocap and choreograph all the scenes in motion), and they only used CriWare pre-rendered videos for a small set of scenes (the "flashback" sections in sepia tone with fast cuts or special effects).
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I really hope that lawsuit against EA goes through and that EA loses the NFL exclusivity. It really is the worst thing to happen to Madden (and all football video games in general).
In the week before GoW3 comes out, a few buddies and I are going to play co-op through the campaigns for GoW and GoW2.
And you can be DAMN SURE I'm going to be playing through Halo: Reach again right before Halo: CE Anniversary, so I can connect the storylines together. :D
Does anybody else go back and play through the previous games in a franchise before playing the next game they're REALLY anticipating?
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Seems like there are/could be F2P models out there that we just haven't discovered yet that don't immediately lead to the game designer having to compromise on fun to achieve revenue.
I agree with Garnett with Madden. When I play Madden I try to copy the real life counterparts.
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I totally agree with Garnett that this auction house is going to undermine the game completely. If you have played any amount of high level Diablo you know that after you complete the game you are basically just going back through and killing bosses to gain the most epic of loots. Now the system in Diablo 2 just lets you grab items off the ground so when you are in a group of 5 people and one of those gold unidentified items drops it's a mad scramble to pick it up and the fighting that goes on because of this is ridiculous. Now I know Blizzard will probably have some sort of rolling system in place much like in WOW but how much more fighting is going to take place when you know that these gold items are worth real money? Also who is going to put any good items into the in game auction house when there is real money to be made?
Also to Jeff's point that it's different than WOW where people who buy items won't affect my play experience I would have to disagree. Diablo 3 looks a lot like WOW to me in the sense that to play in groups and kill bosses people will still need to know their roles and know how to play their characters effectively. Buying items negates a lot of time spent playing and getting to know the ins and outs of your character. It's the reason Blizzard won't let me buy a level 80 character in WOW and let me start from there.
In short I know that Blizzard is a smart developer and that Diablo 3 will be fun. I'm going to buy it and put an ungodly amount of time into the game. But I think Blizzard needs to remember what got them this far in the first place...making great games first and making money second.
P.S. How could no one mention the load times in Deus Ex?
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I think the one thing you could argue is that its not fair to have an auction house where the certain items are so expensive that they're inaccessible to a portion of your audience. That's essentially recreating a free market economy where the 'game' so to speak is rigged.
I do have a question I want to leave for the show as well. I don't know if this is the right place or not so forgive me if I'm putting this in the wrong spot. Here it is.
Earlier this week I noticed a friend of mine on Live had a Voltron costume for his Avatar. I loved Voltron when I was a kid and was excited to see this thinking it meant that there was a Voltron game coming out soon. As it turns out there is one releasing in October (I think). I watched the trailer and some other videos the developer has released and I have to say the game looks awful. However I am still excited for the game to come out and will eagerly pay my 1200 msp or whatever it cost on day one. And I will enjoy what I'm sure will be horrible controls, voice acting, animation, and story as much as if it were a big budget AAA title that would receive review scores in the 9-10 range. So my question to you guys (and lady if Andrea is on the show) is. Has there ever been a game that you just knew was going to be horrible for whatever reason, but you knew you were still going to pay good money for it and enjoy playing?
Thanks for reading my question. Love the show and keep up the great work.
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http://www.behaviormusic.com/artists/michael_mccann/music.htm
I find myself replaying games with branching narratives/objectives frequently to see alternative outcomes or search for things I missed with a FAQ. I'll always remember the first time playing Mass effect and not getting the best outcomes in certain situations (I guess that krogen will not appear in Mass 2) replaying it to see different results essentially reminds me of my previous time with the game.
So has anyone found a guy complaining about the lack of swim augments in Deus Ex: HR? (Deus Ex: Human Resources?)
Also I am very sure the pig is happy getting filled up with such enthusiasm :o)
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Of course games have a definite end, but that definite end isn't necessarily the point where you, the player, are done playing. If you don't get there, the point where you stopped doesn't become the ending, it becomes the point where you stopped. If you keep going, it doesn't mean you didn't finish the game.
My point is more to the effect that not finishing a game doesn't inherently mean you've wasted your time or money, or that you didn't "really" experience the game, or that you missed the point or whatever. It doesn't even necessarily suggest that you were dissatisfied with the game. I could break out the old cliche about the journey and the destination, but I think you get the idea.
I'll admit, part of this comes from a classic gaming mentality. Maybe modern games are designed in a way that puts all this emphasis on completion, because that's how you get to see all the content that the creators put in there, so maybe gamers aren't really to blame for this shift in our playing habits, it's the games themselves that push the players to play them a certain way.
Meanwhile, I find that, lately, I've become a lot more interested in games that I can sink my teeth into, either because of a certain level of complexity, challenge, or even simpler games that generally reward higher level play in some way. There are games I've started that I can't even begin to see myself making it through to the end, but that's okay, because they're engaging to play in the here and now, and that's more rewarding than seeing end credits and a winner is me. Then there's games like Minecraft...
Anyway, thanks as always for reading my comment on the show. You guys rock!
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