Weekend Confirmed 81 - Rage, Dark Souls, television on Xbox 360
by Garnett Lee, Oct 07, 2011 7:00pm PDTBilly "plan B" Berghammer joins Jeff and Garnett on a show that sounds like it would be full of angst. Rage and Dark Souls both came out this week, and there's a lot to talk about, including how the guy who "loves loving things" takes to a game renowned for its bleakness. Microsoft's additions to the television offerings on Live also become a hot topic, but the group doesn't seem nearly as impressed as the press release would lead one to believe. The iOS update and iPhone 4S also spark some debate on how mobile gaming continues to grow, as does the news that Unreal Engine 3 runs in Flash 11. The rest of the news of the week, a few other games, and your feedback and questions round out the show before wrapping up with Finishing Moves and the weekend football tailgate.
Weekend Confirmed Ep. 81: 10/07/2011
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If you're viewing this in the GameFly application, you can play Weekend Confirmed Episode 81 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:
Show Breakdown:
Round 1 00:00:00 - 00:30:20
Whatcha Been Playing 00:31:07 - 01:01:33
More Playing and the News 01:02:30 – 01:29:12
Featured Music Break: 01:29:12 - 01:31:42 -- "Sun Dog" – Thunderhead
Listener Feedback 01:31:42 – 02:05:43
The Tailgate 02:06:25 - 02:13:34
Weekend Confirmed is brought to you this week by Random House Audio where you can experience books like you've never heard them before. That includes titles like the excerpt in this week's show:
Stand by Me and Star Trek: The Next Generation star Wil Wheaton reads Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.
Wade Watts escapes his grim surroundings by spending his waking hours plugged into OASAIS, a virtual utopia that lets you be anything you want to be. When the OASIS creator hides a series of puzzles in the game, will Wade be able to complete the challenge and stay alive in the process?
Featured music this week comes from Thunderhead, a 17 year old drum and bass and soundtrack producer from Edmonton, Canada. Get all of his latest tracks for FREE on Soundcloud.
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!
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Killzone: Mercenary shoots onto Vita on September 10
Trion Worlds hit with more layoffs, Defiance team impacted
Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault defending Vita next week
Game & Wario was originally going to be pre-installed on Wii U
The Last of Us digital download lets you start playing sooner










Comments
Now before you get into the semantic "any game is a role-playing game" argument, forget the actual word "Role-Playing Game" and focus on the elements that have come to define the word. This is just me talking, but I've come to identify three or four over the years (depending on how you split it up):
1)Combat/Stat Management/Dice Rolls
2)Nonlinear Exploration
3)Storyline
4)Characters (I choose to count this separate because there are RPGs where I've hated the story but still enjoyed the characters)
Right now I'm loving Dark Souls for its core combat and equipment-based gameplay, and that's almost all the reason I need. On the flipside, I know people hated Dragon Age II and to an extent the Mass Effect games because of dumbed-down gameplay, but I still really enjoyed their characters and parts of their stories enough to really enjoy those games overall.
If I do get into Skyrim, it'll probably be for great exploration above all else. Conversely, The Witcher 2 had completely unbalanced combat when it first launched, and it is quite linear compared to most RPGs, but the main thing that sold the game was how well CDProjekt portrayed the narrative and atmosphere of Andreji Sapkowski's world.
Maybe I'm just weird like that when it comes to RPGs. Maybe a lot of people should step back and ask themselves why they even like each of these games.
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