Killzone: Mercenary shoots onto Vita on September 10
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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
Weekend Confirmed 91 - Metal Gear Rising, Last of Us, Syndicate
by Garnett Lee, Dec 16, 2011 11:00am PSTThe flurry of new game trailers unleashed during the VGAs last week leads the conversation on Weekend Confirmed this week. Shacknews' own New York-based editor Andrew Yoon joins Xav, Jeff, and Garnett to wade through them, starting with Metal Gear Rising, and moving on through Last of Us, Fortnite, and Mass Effect 3. Andrew recently attended a Sony event back in New York and shares impressions from playing Syndicate, Journey, and Lumines. Listener Shadow13th called out Jeff for using saves to control his fate in role playing games and the group picks up the subject of the min/max approach to gaming and how it exposes the mechanics potentially to the detriment of immersion. There's still more too, with a quick look at November's NPD sales numbers, Trine 2, and Finishing Moves.
Weekend Confirmed Ep. 91: 12/16/2011
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If you're viewing this in the GameFly application, you can play Weekend Confirmed Episode 91 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 00:23:50
Whatcha Been Playing Part 1 00:24:25 to 00:49:54
Whatcha Been Playing Part 2 00:51:00 to 01:16:18
Listener Feedback/Front Page News 01:17:23 to 01:48:25
NFL Tailgate 01:49:09 to 01:56:36
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
(note: some NWS audio; same guidelines as the podcasts)
8/3/2010: Jeff goes around various character voice types: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajj2WVhetL0
8/17/2010: Guest reader Jeff Green reads off "myNotebook Carbon" and "Just SING! National Anthems": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBGupEFsbuM
9/7/2010: Jeff reads off the description from "My Exotic Farm", discovers that it's a reskin of "My Farm": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMBQrbtjPWI
Eventually, even this started to get old, so in early 2011, they cut the Nintendo Downloads from the main podcast; Jeff ran a small podcast called the "NintenDownload Express", but that eventually got old as well. The Bombcast never did announce eShop game releases for the 3DS.
From an outside perspective, the WiiWare / DSiWare / eShop looks like a microcosm of the boxed goods games market, where there are a small amount of outstanding games among the population of mediocre or flawed games, but it seems more skewed toward repeated reskins (IIRC there's been over 6 versions of "myNotebook" and over 5 versions of "My Farm").
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 6 replies.
1 - You really need to do your own research in order to find the standout titles. There's some great games, but there's also a lot of junk, and I don't just mean the non-game apps, I mean flat out bad games, and while the eShop showcases are a step in the right direction, there's still not very much differentiation between completely random junk and worthwhile games. Even Nintendo's own website isn't all that helpful, you really need to check external sources in order to know enough about the products to make informed decisions about which ones to buy.
(Nintendo Life tends to be pretty generous with their review scores, but they still have the most comprehensive database.)
The eShop does it a little better by allowing you to watch videos of the games in action. (as soon as I watched the Pushmo video, that game went straight into my wishlist, and I bought it as soon as it became available.) but it's still predicated on going to the eShop every Thursday to check out the new releases.... which I do, but I'm also a handheld gaming enthusiast, so that sort of thing is up my alley.
2 - The price. I'm no fan of the IOS $0.99 race to the bottom, to be sure, (hearing Jeff describe Pushmo's $7 price tag as "steep" made me cringe a little) but for what you get out of it, Nintendo's downloadable software does cost a couple dollars more than it should, most of the time. For the really great titles, it's more than worth it, but it's also just slightly above the "buy everything on impulse just to try it" range, making it harder for the hidden gems to command the attention they deserve.
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