Weekend Confirmed 126 - Darksiders 2, Sleeping Dogs, Papo & Yo

Man, the JRPG talk has me itching for what they think of Persona 4 Vita when it comes out. The whole quick skip thing just doesn't make any sense to me. If you want to skip the game part of the game, maybe the game just isn't all that fun to you to begin with, so what's the point? I mean a lot of battles in JRPGs help you get used to all the variance that can come in battle. These games live and die on their game part, I mean sure they're mostly remembered for their story and characters but they have to be fun somehow to keep yourself going, right?

Wanted to comment on the Video Game review content vs Scores issue.

I don't read reviews. I used to read reviews when the primary way to get information about a game was in magazines. With how easy it's become to put up video I'd rather simply see the game for myself so I'll go watch a Let's Play video or a "Quick Look" on giantbomb.

To me the written review is an obsolete medium that was useful when putting a picture in front of someone was difficult. I used to love reading computer gaming world because that was the only place you could see a lot of that info.

The internet has changed that. And youtube and other video hosting services have made it possible to see for myself what so many reviewers are taking the time to write about.

Show me actual gameplay. I don't want to read someone else trying to describe it when you can just as easily watch it first hand and decide for yourself.

Weekend Confirmed Fantasy Football update:

League one is up and filled.

Now to see if we need a second league. Here's where I stand. I don't have time to work in another draft before the season starts (I have five more yet to go). We could, I think, effectively run the draft on the league forum at NFL.com once we get all the teams setup.

Again, I ask that anyone saying they want in be sure about the commitment. It's a lot of time for all involved and even one person dropping can really impact the league.

So, if this sounds good to you and you're up for it, reply here and we'll see if we can make another league.

Has anyone else picked up Fall of Cybertron? It's AWESOME!
Nothing particularly groundbreaking, but very polished on a mechanical level and a fantastic sense of scale. They've done an amazing job of making you feel like you are in the middle of a planet-wide battle. Can't wait to try the multiplayer :D

What do I look for in a review... One thing matters and tells me all I need to know SCORE. Personally never click a review link on shack because there's no score, and anything you've wrote is just a rehash of what has been written in your many previews of said game.

This is all I need
-genre- ie action RPG that plays like MMO, or open world driving game with leveling mechanics, or platformer metroidvania style with devil may cry combat.

- length how long it took to play the game.

- did it ever get frustrating a simple yes or no.

- and one screenshot

That's all you need to know then attach the most important piece the score and you know what the game is. None of this how it made you feel or anything helps its wasted text to me.

Garnet brought out the 'blue chevrons' joke again on this show and it got me thinking about PDZ.

You'll never hear me argue that it was a fantastic game, but I had fun with it. Decent launch game.

What got me thinking was, Garnet is still taking shots at it this long after it's been out, so it clearly left a fairly strong, negative impression on him. He's not alone.

So what becomes of the franchise after a case like this? Are people even willing to see the franchise given another chance.

Would we be excited to hear about Rare making another Perfect Dark game? Worried? Upset? Garnet, for example, was peeved that EA would put development resources to a new Army of Two, how would people react if Microsoft took development resources and put them toward a sequel to a game that most people remember as an epic disappointment and misstep?

What if Microsoft, who owns the license, gave it to another developer? Would that cause excitement or an uproar?

What's to be done with a franchise like this after a major misstep and lots of time on the shelf?

Sony closed their Liverpool studio, basically killing the last of what was Psygnosis. :(

Pour one out for WipeOut, the best, most stylish futuristic racing franchise ever.

*Plays WipeOut HD*

*Cries*

Fantasy:) hey guess what guys Andrew luck is a sleeper (last time you'll ever hear that with his name) in the any round after the 2nd. Yeah that's right pick him up in round 9 and you have a top 5 QB. Don't forget to get Reggie Wayne to compliment him.

Two short thoughts:

1. I'd love a "short" mode for longer RPGs so that I could actually, you know, finish them.

2. It would be nice if DLC reinvented the experience of a game, not just tack on more of it. I'd love a Ocarina-style Master Quest for games like Bioshock and God of War. Remix things and make it so the experience feels new.

Andrea's awesome. On the motion control thing; what's missing with something like Kinect is feedback from the game. People have always been comparing it to Minority Report, but in Minority Report Tom Cruise wore a glove; a glove which gave him feedback.

Andrea, I play Mass Effect 3 all the time without a headset because my wife is asleep in the next room and I don't want to wake her :)

I've actually had a lot more luck playing ME3 with randoms than most other games. Even without vocal communication, most players do a good job of looking at their squadmates character classes and equipment pre-game and choosing their loadouts accordingly. You can still play with a great deal of co-ordination and teamwork.

Don't get me wrong, I always prefer playing on a team that is talking to each other, but you can still get by just fine without headsets.

And if someone quits out mid-game, the matchmaking system will replace them. You'll be back to a full team in a minute or two :)

So who's got Sleeping Dogs?

What do you think of it?

I would never had taken a second look at this game is it wasn't in this game releaase slump but I was SO ravenous for a new game I picked up a copy. So far it's pretty solid. The things I like are the brawling and storyline. They're both a cut above what I'm accustomed to in open world games. I'm also digging the setting, having a vacation from America is nice. And, as an Aussie that drives on the left side of the road I feel right at home in Hong Kong (I still, to this day, jump into the passenger seat of the Warthog in Halo and wonder why it doesn't drive).

The thins that are underwhelming me is the driving. I like the driving in other open world games like GTA and Just Cause a lot more. It doesn't feel as natural for some reason. And I dislike the shaky effect when you reach a considerable speed. But I LOVE the ramming mechanic. It's really satisfying to dash from left to right and slam cars.

To come back to the brawling, I find it really enjoyable and voilent. It's clear a lot of effort has gone into it. You could almost have a debate about this game being an open world game that happens to have good brawling, or a brawler that happens to have an open world.

Re: Game Reviews.

I don't read written reviews any more, and I've been doing a lot of thinking about why that is. Here's what I've come up with:

Modern AAA games are HUGE. They are absolutely packed with content, missions, game modes, and mechanic layered on mechanic layered on mechanic. They are designed to offer hundreds of hours of enjoyment for months after launch.

Most reviews are written based on 10, 20, or maybe 30 hours with a game. Now that is certainly enough time to form a valid opinion on a game, but I would argue that after 30 hours you are just learning the BASICS of what most games have to offer.

We also have pre-launch coverage to deal with. If there is a game I am excited about, I will spend months following preview coverage, watching gameplay videos, and reading developer blogs covering new systems and mechanics, gameplay modes, etc. I know months in advance of release if I am going to purchase a game or not. So reviews have no value to me as a form of "buyer's guide". I would love to read reviews simply for an in-depth critique of a game, but I feel most reviewers spend too little time with a game to offer the depth of discussion I want to read. I want to read how the combat mechanics feel once you've truly mastered them, not just the basics. I want to know how the multiplayer modes hold up once the community has had time to dig their collective teeth into them, not what it's like to play with 15 other journalists for 5 hours at a review event. There's nothing wrong with these kinds of reviews, they just have very little to offer me based on my gaming habits.

So what would make me read reviews? I don't have a simple answer to this question. I have a concept of what I would like to see, but I'm completely aware that it is too impractical for major sites like IGN, Shack, or Gamespot to implement.

I would love to see each site publish fewer reviews. I want to read reviews that are longer, more detailed, and ongoing in nature (and therefore, without a "score"). I want to read reviews written by journalists who have a deep, expert-level mechanical knowledge of the game in question. And above all else, I want to read follow-up coverage that is more "discussionary" in nature.

For example: When GT6 comes around, I would love to read an article from Garnett covering his initial thoughts and impressions of the game. I'd love to see semi-regular follow-up articles, covering his deeper experiences with the game as time goes on. How has the multiplayer experience evolved? Has the recent Title Update impacted his experiences with the game? Has he discovered subtle nuances in the mechanics that he likes or dislikes?

When Halo 4 comes out, I want to read coverage that really examins the subtlties of the sandbox, weapon balance, map design, etc. I want to read updates as the reviewer experiments with the forge mode and sees community-made maps added into matchmaking. I want to read about the nature of online matchmaking once the player base has had the chance to spread itself out across the skill-spectrum. I want to read about how various armor upgrades effect the balance of combat.

Nobody can write about all these things without spending months with a game. But that's what I do as a gamer, so that's what I want to read about.

I know this sort of coverage would mean each reviewer would be forced to cover fewer games each year. Personally, I think that's a good thing. There are certainly gamers out there who play a new game every week. For them, the current nature of reviews probably works fine. But for gamers like me, the current nature of reviews just does not give us the level of information we're interested in reading.

The problem with motion controls is that they're mostly being shoehorned into existing genres. I also think you guys (along with most developers) are playing down the advantage of the pointer - that thing was potentially more useful than the motion control.

If you track down the original TGS 2005 video revealing the Wii Remote, none of the people in it are playing games in established popular genres. They're playing games about fishing, cooking, dentistry, orchestra. One kid in that video was playing a shooter. I think Nintendo really wanted developers to go back to the drawing board with their game ideas around motion control, and most of them didn't.

That said, a lot of the best stuff on the Wii revolved around the pointer, not the motion control. Trauma Center is an excellent example. That Silent Hill game almost amounted to a classic point n' click adventure with full 3D movement. I also heard a lot of praise for the Wii versions of the Pro Evolution Soccer games and how they used the pointer for more fluid team control. I still wonder why no one at least tried to make an RTS for the Wii.

So in hyping myself up for the Dark Souls PC relaunch and mistakenly thinking the DLC was also this week :(

I went back to before I was listening to the archive episodes about the game and was wondering how far all you guys actually got through the game? I agree with JeffC that the earlier areas are not 'hard' but once you truly open the world and the real quest begins I think the bosses transmute into much harder creations that are even more taxing on the player, along with the regular foes.

Ornstein & Smough / The Four Kings are more than just things which require patience.

I'm so glad Lost Odyssey finally got a mention this episode. I still to this day think it's the best JRPG of this generation and how sad it is it never got a sequel. It's the only RPG i have ever put 80 hours in. I would love to see what Mistwalker could do now with the Unreal engine or their own engine. Blue Dragon was also another amazing game that didn't get enough love. To this date, I think it has some of the nicest graphics of any game.

I'm interested in Last Story as well, but being on the Wii sort of turns me off. The Wii is the most un-used system in my house next to the DS, I completed Skyward Sword and loved Zelda, but I don't think i can put another 30 hours of a game using that controller.

The review that Garnett was referring to was Jim Sterling's review of Last Story.
People have called him out on it because he complained about the combat, but failed to implement the choice of taking the game off of auto-battle.
Once again, Sterling is an unprofessional maroon that bases his scores strictly on how many people he thinks he can get to click his review by stirring up controversy.

I just wanted to chime in and say that I personally think Garnett is a little biased when looking at the Japanese developed games like Puppeteer and Rain. I also think they look great, and there is no doubt that Japan has its own strengths and unique take due to their culture. Japanese developers can create games that Western developers can't (and vice versa). So, yes, they are super valuable, and I want to see more games like that.
However, to say that they have a monopoly on those types of games is just not accurate. You can definitely make a case that Japanese Publishers are more willing to promote those ideas (i.e. AAA), but that just further cements my point that, if anything, we should be pushing Western Publishers to give more attention to the creative Western games that already exist.
I just don't think we should make it sound like Japan is the savior of these creative games. They just have their own take. I think Japan gets a write-off a little too easy sometimes. They create a few games like this, and they sometimes get more praise than the dozens of Western games released at the same time.
I fully appreciate Garnett's viewpoints, and I just want to clarify that I'm not upset or yelling or saying that Garnet is "stupid" or anything like that. I just wanted to give my counter view..in a respectful way. :) It's a complicated conversation, I think...hard to put into a short post, but I hope I was clear enough.

So, holodeck. Even though we won't see it in our lifetimes (perhaps ever, given that it seems a little too sci-fi), I got to thinking, purely a hypothetical post:

If you guys were operators/creating the regulations governing its use, how would you do it? I think TNG barely scratched the surface of the...questionable...ethics of a true simulator.

1. How do you approach copyright?

The same way we do now? In current day, we have idiot companies squawking if you use one of their characters names for a half second in a movie or game, so how far does it go in the future? Would there be some huge fine for creating a Batman program?

2. How do you approach personal rights/privacy?

So, given that everyone )yes, everyone, don't lie) would undoubtedly create a sex program featuring a celebrity or something right off the bat, how does that work? It's just a projection of light, but is it infringing upon their personal rights to create a hologram of him/her? Personally, I wouldn't care if someone wanted to use my likeness, and I doubt most people would. Any usage of my person is a projection of me and not my actual self, so I don't see how I could complain in any way.

3. How do you approach violence/crime?

What if you had a potential murderer, pedophile, rapist, or some other such delinquent who wanted to use the holodeck to get their "fix"? Do you allow it? Not only is there no harm in what they do inside a simulation, but it keeps them from doing it in the real world where actual people could be victims. How tight would your restrictions be?

There are probably a million other questions just as disturbing. :/

Really looking forward to the crew's thoughts on Darksiders 2.

For me, the entire Darksiders series to date has been the evolution of the Zelda formula that Nintendo seems so reluctant to offer. Oh, and a heavy metal veneer to go along with it.

Love.

I'd definitely one of those guys who only looks at reviews after having already made up my mind about whether to buy and/or whether I like a particular game or not.

Part of it is certainly an unhealthy habit of wanting my opinion validated, but also because I can really only speak for my own tastes and playing habits, and it's really interesting to hear an outside opinion on something. Particularly if the reviewer didn't like something that I did, because a lot of times I find that the way they play games differs from mine in such a way that it didn't work for them, if that makes any sense.

If I want to know more about a game, I usually prefer to hear about it in a less formal setting, such as a podcast or forum thread.

I've found that some games are impossible to be given a score review because aspects of their game are so polarizing.

A recent example of this is Spelunky. I totally loved the game. One of my favorite parts of the game is that the levels are random. To be good at Spelunky is to understand the mechanics of the game and not about memorizing the layout of the levels like so many other old school platformers.

A friend of mine thought the game was broken. He found it incredibly frustrating, random, and punishing every time he died. He said he would have liked it a lot more if there was at least some persistence to keep his loot instead of losing everything with each death.

He hated pretty much everything I loved about the game. Even so I found a lot of his complaints, totally valid, but that's just not what Spelunky is. Unfortunately, what a game "is" or should be, is different for different people. As a reviewer, I would be torn to give it a high score representing a recommendation, yet at the same time knowing that a lot of people will hate the game. There are a number of other games that have fallen into this camp recently, Demon's Souls, Deadly Premonition, etc.

I would agree with what Andrea said at first Sony made a bunch of announcements about games no one will care about.

I am so excited about Remember Me. It looks like a combination of Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell.

Darksiders 2 combines the structure of Zelda, the combat of God of War and the loot of Diablo. But does it achieve those aspects as well as any of those games, and does it offer the variety that those games flaunted? Combining those things shouldn't be the selling point of Darksiders 2; enhancing those things should be.

Sleeping Dogs looks pretty cool. I'm not a fan of open-world games, but it could hook me in because of its Hong Kong Cinema feel. The storyline reminds me of 'Infernal Affairs' - one of my favourite Hong Kong films.

Papo & Yo does not interest me. The gameplay looks dull and buggy. I'll probably wait a few months and read the Wikipedia plot synopsis or something.

I am going to try and articulate why the original Darksiders did not work for me and what will keep me at arms length at least until the game hits bargain prices.

It all stems from the Mash-Up and that ideologies interaction with video games. Now this is not a mash-up wide thing, I love Tarantino films and Girl Talk and the Kleptones and the Hood Internet yet with those other mediums the goal of the mashing is to make it seamless and create a new musical or film experience out of the composite parts.

With video games I can always see the barriers between the influences that I walk through. The composite pieces are still too removed and feel like separate entities in a disjointed experience, which in turn makes me want to just play one of the pure examples the game is showcasing rather than continue with the fractured experience.

Anyone else in this boat?

I wished you guys talked about Dust. I know Summer of Arcade has been disappointing but I think Dust maybe one of the best downloadable games this year. The art style reminds of Vanillaware games and the action of a Devil May Cry and all in a Metroid-Vania type of game. It also has crafting.

It is kinda a sad that indie developer like Dean doesn't really get the recognition as some other indie devs just because he really is not vocal and doesn't have any controversial statements.

Seriously, you guys really should try Dust: An Elysian Tale.

This game is a treat.

I only look at reviews if I don't know anything about the game, or whether I'm sitting on the fence about getting it. Games like Batman, Mass Effect, or Uncharted that I have waited months for I'm buying at midnight.

When it comes to reading reviews, the first thing I do is look who is writing the review. If I don't recognize the name I really don't put much stock in the review. I listen to various podcast from different gaming sites. This is how I get to know the mind set of the person giving the review. Knowing this I can make a better informed decision if I should pick this game up.

I don't necessarily think review scores are bad. I've been influenced to buy a game and not to buy a game based on a number. I read ign, I saw they game Deus Ex: Human Revolution something like a8 or 9. I had no interest in that game but after reading the review I bought it and loved it.
Papo & Yo was a game I was somewhat interested in playing. When I saw the review score of a 4 out of 10. My desire to play that game was gone. Whether is right or wrong, I don't know. Since then I have gone a read the review. It scored so low for numerous game breaking bugs. I think there are so many opinions on what a review should or shouldn't be you'll never please everybody.

I still think a niggling problem with the Vita is that Sony didn't build it from the ground up as an extension of PSN, rather than another arm of their precariously divided digital platforms. To me, adding Playstation Mobile to the pie only makes it worse. It would have benefited their strategic positioning in the market so much more to create a OS platform that would allow titles like Pixel Junk, Flower, Braid, Trine, and Limbo to be transported to handheld hardware.
In today's market, the industry can't afford to support another ivory tower for software. It doesn't matter how many gizmos and whose-a-whatzees Sony packs into the hardware. They should have learned this with the PS3---they made an expensive, proprietary platform, while Microsoft made a platform that allowed PC developers to easily reach new audiences. Having first party developers is a nice thing, but as long as Sony is so bullheaded about making Playstation devices individual islands, their business will continue to suffer.

The perfect review has no score. Putting a score on an experience is one of the most counter intuitive ideas in journalism. To experience a competition, a story, an adventure or a world and then put a number on it is so draconian and crude.

The fact that the 1-10 system is a joke aside, a single sentence has more power and insight than a single number.

The perfect review just talks about the reviewer's experience with the game, what they enjoyed, what they didn't enjoy. If it has to be summarized it should have a little 'pros and cons section and if there really needs to be a final word or score it should be either 'buy', 'try'' or 'deny'. At the end of the day a game is either worth your time or it isn't. End of story.

I enjoy reviews that talk about the the full experience. I like hearing about five different reviews when I make a "prejudgement". A reviewrs opinion is just that, their opinion. What I do find irritating is that I feel like people are hunting for trolling opportunities instead of having a conversation. Darksiders, for example, had some frame rate issue, camera issues, and a loss of quest issue. DID THEY CORRECT THAT. I don't care about trailers, I don't care about hype, I want to know if the game improves. Some reviewers never get past "the hype" and they forget to dissect the game.

This podcast is further proof that proximity to a cat is inversely proportional to inanity of statements: http://xkcd.com/231/