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Max Payne 3 slowly dives onto Mac this week
Report: Frostbite 3 games to be 'optimized exclusively' for AMD cards
Weekend Confirmed 87 - Zelda: Skyward Sword, Halo Anniversary, Skyrim
by Garnett Lee, Nov 18, 2011 11:00am PSTLink's next adventure, the Legend of Zelda: Skyward sword kept Billy--who also penned the Shacknews.com review--enthralled for over fifty hours. Jeff also dusted off his Wii to play it and the two of them have plenty of praise for the game to get the show started. Xav also returns to round out the rest of the cast joining Garnett this week. He's been adventuring in Skyrim and rediscovering Halo, in the ten year anniversary HD remake. With the momentous time on everyone's mind, we look back at the original Xbox, and lest we be remiss, Billy makes sure we remember the GameCube as well as it too turns ten. Along the way we also talk about how the big games of October fared at the register, which of them now reigns supreme online, and more before wrapping it up with Finishing Moves and weekly football tailgate.
Weekend Confirmed Ep. 87: 11/18/2011
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If you're viewing this in the GameFly application, you can play Weekend Confirmed Episode 87 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 to 00:26:07
Whatcha Been Playing Part 1 00:26:41 to 00:53:15
Whatcha Been Playing Part 2 00:53:43 to 01:17:05
Listener Feedback/Front Page News 01:17:33 to 01:50:38
NFL Tailgate 01:51:21 to 01:58:42
Join our guest this week Billy Berghammer and many others on the Second Annual Nintendo World Report Live Podcast Telethon for Child's Play and help out a great charity. It's taking place Sat 11/19 starting at noon Eastern.
Official Bethesda contact form for submitting Skyrim technical issues.
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!
Follow the Weekend Confirmed hosts on Twitter, too! Garnett Lee @GarnettLee, Jeff Cannata @jeffcannata, and Xav de Matos @xav.
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 only horse worthwhile is the possessed horse from the Dark Brotherhood, and still the reasons for it's utility aren't fast travel and horse-mounted combat, but rather it has a shit-ton of hit points and can slaughter Dragons and other outdoor creatures with minimal assistance.
Keep up the great work guys, happy Skyriming
The multiplayer...
WOW
Brotherhood was absolutely amazing. I have no idea how they found ways to make Revelations so much better. Every kill feels like an accomplishment, it just makes you want to keep going, one match turns into two, two turns into twenty next thing you know it's 11 o'clock, you suddenly have strategies, you have plans set up with the random individuals from the lobby, you've got four new friends and you just have to play a few more matches.
I don't see why you guys seem to ignore AC games for the first few weeks, but I would really like to hear your guy's opinions.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50u0zUeCmU
The big question I have what's this mean for the Wii. I know, I know, nothing many will say, but it now has the best Mario game ever IMO and 3 of them on the console. Plus the best Zelda game in 3D by most accounts and 2 of them. Add to that Wii sports. Also now that we've seen how good motion games can be does it change the feeling about motion in games Zelda won't be the same without it.
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Then on December 14 I picked up SSBM and never looked back. I heard talk of lack of games on the GC that never effected me I had smash bros. And that game was in my GC almost 24/7 I logged over 600 hours on that game. Beat the target smash, played the side scroller, and omg event mode is my favorite. I could join Zelda in the fight against Gannon anytime of day best Zelda boss ever:)
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I did find it interesting that Xav felt that the tower defense element took Ezio, and the player, out of the role of master assassin and into supervisor.
While I didn't particularly enjoy the Den defense stuff (although I didn't have enough trouble with it to hate it either) I thought that the CONCEPT of that, as well as the concept of the Master Assassin training missions, actually made a lot of sense.
Ezio is getting old - he's one of the few playable protagonists past their 50s, and it makes sense that as his stature increases but his body starts weakening, he would take on a role that was more about shaping the future and overseeing operations. So I liked the concept of taking an older character there, though I didn't particularly care for the method.
And when the character Yusif jokingly asks Ezio 'When were YOU ever young?' I'm sure every gamer thought 'Hey! I've been doing this since I was a teenager!'... and then realized how far they'd gone and how much they'd been through with Ezio.
Indeed, the theme of maturing, growing past one's initial, personal motivations and seeking something greater echoes across all three of the protagonists stories in the game (including Desmond's emo home movies), and it's an interesting Jungian idea that isn't often explored in games because it fits more within the context of a mid-life crisis or late-life fatalism.
Jeff appears to think Skyrim has good story telling is because he grafts together many disparate elements to make "his" story. But just because you traversed the world with the game mechanics to see different story elements, doesn't make those elements inherently relevant to one another.
And while forcing the player to make an inference about a situation is a perfectly valid form a story telling, forcing a player to imagine why a situation is relevant is extremely crappy story telling.
If the game has no way, or makes no attempt to connect its details into a coherent thrust, filling in the gaps with your "imagination" merely highlights what is fundamentally broken about the game world.
Again, I have to emphasize, first hand experiences, and story---ie narrative, are NOT the same thing. Retelling a first hand experience (as in "tell me your 'Skyrim stories'), is a form of story but actually living that experience is not a form of story.
Also, there's no accounting for taste, but I'm thoroughly Song of Ice and Fire, and the books in Skyrim are fucking boring as hell and not particularly well written at all. That said, I can't even get through a one of those in its entirety.
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The first game was basically 'here are some mean aliens, they don't like us, shoot them'. In order to make a sequel relevant, they had to explain WHY the Covenant were doing what they were doing. Personally, I didn't mind those elaborations, because the notion of religious zealotry causing immense violence didn't exactly feel out of place in the early 2000s *cough*.
Don't get me started on the talking plant though. Ugh.
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Just wanted to say I love your show. I just started getting back into gaming with Skyrim so I have been listening to a lot of gaming podcasts at work. I started out listening to IGN and to be frank any podcast seems unbiased compared to theirs :D
You mentioned a bit about Skyrim in your last episode, and how you like the way Skyrim allows the player to make their own story. I started doing a character blog of my adventures in Skyrim and thought you might want to check it out:
http://deardiaryst.blogspot.com/
You also talked about character names and meaning, so if you are interested in reading mine, there is a post way back explaining my character "family" here:
http://deardiaryst.blogspot.com/2011/10/tersius-family-long-history.html
Anyway I look forward to the next episode and thanks for keeping me entertained while I work! :)
Also Xav you and Billy might need to step into the octagon over this Halo thing, you sounds pretty harsh to him
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I just got the game yesterday and haven't cracked it. Fallout 3 and NV are the only Bethesda games I've played to this point. I wouldn't say either had a great story or great story when it came down to the core narrative. Interesting premises in both cases, but the stories are too easily overshadowed by the worlds themselves.
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If they aren't on or willing to jump on, I pass on multiplayer more often, and play something else. The experience with friends online is just as fun, as you are still in a group chat, still exchanging comments and verbal jabs like you would in the same room. It also saves me the sore upper arm from everytime a buddy would punch me for every time I killed him in Goldeneye. Playing with friends in a party chat certainly makes a match that I'm struggling in a lot more enjoyable for at least myself.
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If a smaller, less well-known game had come out with the same kind of bugs that Bethesda's games came out with, it would get slaughtered in the press.
I have no idea why game sites seem to go easy on Bethesda where they wouldn't on a different developer.
And no, I'm not just ripping on Bethesda for no reason. I bought the GOTY edition of Fallout 3 for PS3, brand new. I got nine hours in and couldn't continue. The game locked up and froze every time I left Megaton. It wasn't my PS3 either. I ended up trading it in and buying the 360 version.
There's absolutely no reason for that to happen.
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I thought it was a forgone conclusion.
The FPS category is the fastest growing category in gaming, year over year, so obviously the arrival of a major, heavily-hyped FPS was going to outsell a single-player adventure game.
As for RAGE sales, I'm disappointed for Id, but on the other hand, Bethesda and Zenimax left them out to dry by releasing that game under the shadown of the impending BF3/MW3 war and not offering enough marketing to break through.
Loved the hell out of that game though. Right up there with Crysis 2 and Bulletstorm as the best FPS games of the year IMO.
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Zemorg from Australia.
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I feel that there have been more hits and 'okay' tunes than there have been tunes that just straight out assault my ears. Even the tune Christian brought wasn't that bad (especially since people responded by recommending the supplimentary music video).
I may be in the minority, but I enjoyed them for introducing me to stuff that is outside of my usual comfort zone (now with expanded range).
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Full confession - I didn't buy an original Xbox til last year.
At the time the Xbox came out, I was a full on PS2 fanboy.
Also, I was (and still am) a huge JRPG fan, and all I heard about the Xbox was Halo, Halo Halo, so I just tuned out.
Last year on my reading week, I had a week to kill and a bit of extra cash to blow, so I picked up KOTOR 1&2, Oddworld Stranger's Wrath, Project Gotham 1&2 and Outrun 2.
Ended up spending the whole week playing the first KOTOR and didn't regret a single second of it. Easily in my top ten games of all time.
What I didn't expect from the Xbox was
A) the glut of really fun mech games - Gungriffon,Gunmetal, Gunvalkyrie, Mech Assault 1&2 and Phantom Crash
B) the glut of ports of PC games that I found really unique and interesting - Broken Sword, Call of Cthulhu, Dreamfall The Longest Journey, Myst 3&4, Still Life, Syberia 1&2, Thief 3
Hell, even Fable isn't that bad a game. I went into that with pretty low expectations and found myself enjoying it.
So, I fully confess I was wrong about the Xbox. It has lots of unique and interesting titles on it, even if you're not into Halo.
Happy birthday!
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Anyone here ever heard of it?
My Pokemon trainer is named Kaplan (the guy from Yo La Tengo)
My party in the Dark Spire were named Gilmour, Waters, Mason and Wright.
My party in Secret of Mana were Jimi (Hendrix), Janis (Joplin) and Kim (Mitchell)
Jimi and Ringo are my two most common go to names. Sometimes I name people after Pulp Fiction characters.
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NES- you know the big three
Super NES- Mario kart
N64- smash bros.
GC- pikmin or animal crossing
Wii- sports
That's just the big titles but you have wave race, pilot wings, Mario rpg, luigis mansion, starfox, and a ton of others that I don't really care to list. That's alot of new titles, but I understand most people only see Mario, and Zelda.
I feel so alone. :(
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here's a scenario/question inspired by the discussion about the Catwomen DLC a few weeks ago: a developer designs an ambitious game they could only convince the publisher to release because they guarantee a day one release along with a game systems launch. However the developer realizes that they can't finish and release the game in a functional state so instead of trying to delay the game or cutting content they decide to release half of the game (it's a long single player game) and pack the game with a code that ensures that users who have new copies will receive the rest of the game for free while others must pay to get essentially the rest of the game when it's released sometime after the holiday season. The question is if this results in a better game than cutting content to reach a launch day release is this better than getting a smaller inferior game? even if the first half ends with a "to be continued...in spring of next year" title card until after fall?
The game was designed to feel exactly like the original game, so all of the underlying physics, movement, weapon damage, etc are all the EXACT SAME CODE as the original game.
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