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
Weekend PC download deals: Borderlands 2 for $11
Metal Gear Solid: The Legacy Collection coming to PS3 in July for $50
Madden NFL 25's $99 'Anniversary Edition' includes Sunday Ticket
Final Fantasy 8 getting PC re-release (in Japan)
More Game Gear titles headed to 3DS eShop
Weekend Confirmed 127 - Darksiders 2, Dust: An Elysian Tail, Madden NFL 13
by Jeff Mattas, Aug 24, 2012 6:00pm PDTBack in the studio this week, Garnett and crew are back to deliver another game-packed episode of Weekend Confirmed. Jeff "2N1T" Cannata, "Indie" Jeff Mattas, and returning 'confirmer' Mike Schramm bring some more Darksiders 2, Sleeping Dogs, and Papo & Yo love. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Dust: An Elysian Tail, Puzzle Craft, and Madden NFL 13 get some well-deserved time in the spotlight, before the show gets whacked with a big bag of Finishing Moves.
Weekend Confirmed Ep. 127: 08/24/2012
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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 00:00:31 – 00:28:04
Whatcha Been Playing Part 1 00:28:39 – 00:55:07
Whatcha Been Playing Part 2 00:55:50 – 01:26:19
Listener Feedback/Front Page News 01:27:12 – 01:59:58
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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Original music in the show by Del Rio. Get his latest Album, Club Tipsy 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.
Comments
Steam, £29.99 with a few gigs of bandwidth, no postage, no disc, and the same free pre-order stuff?
so over 10% cheaper at launch? and whats the betting your be able to activate the product on steam using your play.com copy? glad to see Steam is still the value for money it always was lol
Im bored at work btw ;)
I think this is absolutely, 100% true, and I'm glad a Western Dev finally came out and said something about it.
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I didn't need to see Krogan babies and Zaeed relaxing on a deck chair. The 'we did it speech' topped of the pandering.
I felt the characters and races had received immense closure, the entire game was about how their personal conflicts began and finished. I didn't need a "see, they all
lived happily ever after" token.
When you watch Lord of the Rings, you don't see Gimli and Legolas go open a quaint little crepe' shop in Hobbiton, you don't need to bolt on an extra resolution to characters that already have been tastefully resolved during the meat of the story.
And the scene at the end where the man talks to a child about the mystery of space was made completely obsolete. It ended with a galaxy so scarred it didn't resemble itself before the conflict happened. It ended with hope, potential, mystery, the forging of a new galaxy. Now it ends like a Disney film.
Anyway, that's just what I think. I'm neither right or wrong I spose.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=YenjWMAQzS8
With all the Persona love going around in these threads, I thought maybe someone else would be as hyped as I am.
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Here's where we are in filling a second league as taken from the thread I started yesterday in last week's show notes:
1. asianorange
2. aterangelus1
3. carpcarter
4. JPtheProdigy
5. Innernaut
6. bodiddlie
7. AndrewJFry
8. EvilEnvi
9. Buttersnaps
10.
11.
12.
13. Jeff C
14. Garnett
So we have three spots left. Just need to know you're all in and no bitching.
It's .5 PPR, 20yrd passing (instead of 25), 1 QB, 2RB, 2WR, 1 WR/TE, 1TE, 1K , ! DEF
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Do they tell the whole story? Of course not. But if a Halo game receives a 5 out of 5 from a reviewer nobody really needs to read the review to know if they should pick it up. If it gets a 2 out of 5 then something obviously went horribly wrong and they should stay away. I can play the game and decide for my self if a game connects with me on a personal level. But no reviewer is capable of providing me with that information. All I want to know is whether the game is recommended or not.
That having been said, most scores are "maybes". And in those cases you need the review to help you decide if the game's strengths are things appeal to you and if it's weaknesses seem like things that you can live with.
Reviewers who hate scores usually do so for their own reasons. They want people to read what that took the time to write and want to share their personal experiences. There is a lot of value in that but that isn't what a review is necessarily for. Maybe it is time that games journalism be divided into "reviews" that are recommendations and "opinion pieces" that tell us more about the persons experience with the game and give us deeper discussions about games. If you are a consumer both have value and then we can quit having this argument every few years.
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They 'writers' of these games need to think of something more than their usual safe audience; Japanese teenage boys.
One of the reasons why I stopped watching anime and playing JRPGs is because they keep using the same tropes over and over again. Bear in mind, many western games are not free from this accusation; I'm look at you; steroid pumping, brainless meat head space marines that are located somewhere inside a suit of armor stabbing dinosaurs on the planet Zog!
But seriously, how bad would it be if there was a JRPG that had a somewhat experienced, but gentlemanly protagonist? Or, better yet, a grown up woman that has a whole three dimensions to her character, where such a thing is almost unheard of in JPRGs?
They could take main characters as deep and complex as the Silent Hill 2 and 3 protagonists and insert them into JRPGs, imagine the potential.
I got to play a few rounds of multiplayer at Fan Expo this past weekend.
I played competitive multiplayer, Big Team Battle. We played on 2 different maps: one larger with vehicles, the other smaller and more of an arena-style environment.
Some standount impressions:
* The game feels very polished. The engine is greatly out-performing the Halo Reach engine. Better lighting, frame rate, smoother animations, greater detail, and that annoying "ghosting" effect is gone.
* Weapon balance feels finely tuned. Every weapon I got my hands on felt uniquely useful and powerful.
**** Player movement ****
I do feel 343 has made a fundamental change to the classic Halo formula in terms of the manueverability of the spartans.
The general pace of the game is faster than Reach. Kill times are slightly faster, weapon rate of fire feels a little faster. All players now have sprint as a default ability, so you can get around the map much faster.
BUT... the base player movement speed feels slower. Your spartan feels heavy and clunky during standard movements. I think this is a big part of why the kill times are faster... the players aren't able to strafe and jump around as quickly during combat. You definitely feel a little more pinned to the ground.
On the flip side, the right thumb stick (your "look" control) feels much faster and twichier. It makes turning and looking up/down much faster and more responsive, even with a low controller sensitivity.
The effect this has on gameplay is interesting. I felt like it forces the player to focus more on accuracy and weapon efficiency, rather than bouncing around the environment during a firefight. I still felt very mobile thanks to Sprint and some of the other armor abilities, but when the combat starts the movents definitely slowed down. This makes close-quaters combat particularly frantic, since players will alternate between stationary firing and sudden sprint/melee attacks.
Overall, I found it to be very different, but very fun. I'm definitely excited to play more.
I recorded a podcast with a friend who was at fan expo with me. If anyone wants to hear more about what we thought of Halo 4, here it is:
http://waypointmodcast.com/episode-25-halo-4-hands-on/
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Jeff I don't lack context because I always have my general interest in a title a base for context. Also reviewers in general use a score system that does not stray from 7-9.5 or 2.5 stars-4.5stars. Anything above or below is extreme quality or lack there of.
Tim was it? I realize you work hard on that review, but it does matter very little too me. Most of the time your review is released after my purchase so it's no good for that. And as I said previews cover everything I need to know, a example is all stars battle royale I know the line up, the style of graphic, and the type of gameplay already I don't need much else.
Let's talk 2 simple reviews "dust a Elysian tale" spiritual successor to Odin sphere. That's enough of a review right. Provides plenty of context and you can know the game type, now add 8.5 to that and you've got all you need.
Second review "Little big planet 3" 8.5 they fixed the jump or 9.5 jump is still the same. Is that a good enough review? I believe most would say yes.
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Someone on the show suggested that Sony has been "better" at promoting indie games and Garnett suggested that maybe they're just better at courting indie developers. I'd rather say that Sony, through the years, has been more willing to greenlight out-of-the-box game concepts. Last gen would Microsoft have really greenlit Ico or Shadow of the Colossus? Sony is the company that put a full AAA budget behind Heavy Rain and is doing it again with Beyond.
On the subject of which platform might be the best for indie games, I definitely think XBLA had a leg up in the beginning, but I think more than one developer (someone at Epic maybe?) has come out and said that the PC is still the best place for indies to make their initial releases. You have to admit that Steam makes indies more prominent on the front page when you log in and goes to great effort to actually sell the games. It's gotten to the point where when a game comes out on XLBA I've started waiting for the inevitable Steam release.
In a show that praises the co-op experience every week, I cannot understand that there was no mention of the fact that EA removed the co-op option from Madden 13. To many of us older Madden fans, couch co-op with a friend, trying to win the superbowl together, was the whole purpose of the game. Now it seems that EA is pushing the consumers into an online experience, and thereby further removing the social aspect of the game. To me this is a tremendous blunder that will keep me from purchasing this years' edition.
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I think Persona 4 is a great example of a game that would be diminished by being shorter. I feel like the reason I'm so tied to the characters Is because I've spent so much time with them, both in and out of battle. This is why you really need to play P4, Garnett. I think it presents a real interesting way to pace a game. A game that's 60 hours of combat can get really boring, but the fact that that game splits between giving you character moments and dungeon combat really helps make the game much more well paced.
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For other games, I generally find myself on Metacritic to get an idea of the consensus of the gaming media rather than focusing on one particular site's review. The further below your arbitrary threshold (in my case, 80) a game is scored, the more likely your are to be disappointed by it. So why not focus on games with higher scores? Sometimes a game I'm looking forward to will receive a middling review and instead of buying it, I'll take a chance on a better reviewed game and I've discovered a few gems this way that I otherwise may have overlooked. If I'm really on the fence about a game, that's when I'll look at reviews of specific people (like Jeff Cannata) that have similar tastes as me.
Scores are so arbitrary anyway. Here's only scale that matters:
Is this game worth my money?
1) No.
2) Yes.
3) Hell yes.
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Also as a heads up I'd like to hear something about the iOS version of The World Ends with You. You guys have to have something to say about that price point next week and what exactly they are trying to do there.
That's basically what optional side missions and difficulty scaling are for in western RPG's. It is different for every game and every person but at some point a game is going to wear out it's welcome. The mechanics, setting or story will get a little stale and you will have to decide if it is worth wading through the filler that so may games add in so that can claim 150 hours of gameplay on the box if you want to see the end or if you want to experience some of the best content the game has to offer.
Some people want a serious relationship with a game and some people just want to have fun then move on. If a game can satisfy both groups with a quick mode why shouldn't it.
Although having to pay more to play less of the game is an appalling idea. I'm already upset at all the "digital waste" in video games in the form of content that I pay for but never see and have no desire to see. How many people finished Arkham City with less than 50% completion. I did and I'll bet I'm not the only one.
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I have to say that the review system is BROCKEN !
The best example is how IGN gave a perfect score to MGS 4, but denied it being in the best 25 PS3 games.
If game that receive 10 does not deserve to be in the top 25 games of a platform, so that means that the 10 has no value whatsoever.
How serious websites can gives games like Mass Effect 3, Uncharted 3 or Skyward Sword perfect score, when there are far from perfect...
There is no logic or consistency in the review system in the videogames websites or magazines.
Now I make my own opinion, because the professionalism is review of a Greg Kasavin is long gone...
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Thankfully, someone compiled all of the PS1 versions and packaged them up exactly how the PC ones are, so you can just download that file, and swap the folder out. It completely fixes the problem but it begs the question; If it is really that freaking simple, couldn't Square Enix be bothered to do it themselves? If there was one game I really expected them to go all-out on, it was FFVII.
Anyway, I've really been enjoying it thanks to the Character Booster.
It's been very frustrating reading reviews of NSMB2 which generally fall into the pattern of a single line somewhere in the middle saying "oh yeah, and by the way, the level design and play control are top notch , as usual" followed by several paragraphs bitching about how terrible the game must be because it didn't reinvent the wheel or some other nonsense that really doesn't matter. It's as if the game being great fun to play were some kind of caveat on the thesis that the game must suck because it lacks novelty.
Meanwhile, backwards moon-logic games like Braid and boring as hell games like Dyad get praised up the wazoo in spite of their gameplay deficiencies because of novelty and presentation. Final Fantasy XIII gets hours of discussion while Dragon Quest IX barely gets a passing mention.
Here's the issue, Braid and Dyad were designed with the experience in mind, New Super Mario 2 wasn't. It was designed to be a fun platform game first and foremost and if anything, the experience is meant to feel old and familiar, the novelty is in the level design. Final Fantasy is all about spectacle and novelty whereas Dragon Quest is all about iterating on a traditional format with mathematical perfection, and don't get me started on Etrian Odyssey.
Reviewing games by experience naturally leads to reviews favoring games that play to that particular expectation. Games that are equal if not better in quality but lack that whiz-bang presentation get shafted, if not ignored outright.
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You made such a good point about Puzzle Craft that I decided to give it a try. Well I think you should know that I am about to rage quit after the first item......how on earth am I supposed to come up with a decent city name in 11 characters? 11! It's so disappointing. Kristininople out. Kris Angeles? A no go. You get the idea, but why limit people's creativity to 11 characters. So disappointing.
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I'm not saying that it would ever happen, but that is where I see it having the most value. The Onlive experience worked well but I never felt like it was equal to the experience on consoles or PC. And I was never comfortable "buying" games on Onlive because in reality you were really licencing them for a period of time. Paired with Steam though it could work. When you buy a game you could download it to your PC if that works for you or you could stream it to your PC, Laptop, or TV. Games would also be available for trials/demos and rental and If you are impatient like me, you can buy it and start playing it immediately, then download it later when you are off doing something else. If your PC can't run it, stream it until you can buy one that can. It seems like a perfect fit with game saves on the cloud and steam communtiy.
I stuck with Final Fantasy XIII for a mere few hours. Very sad for a game that spent so much time and money in development.
On the flip side, I played Dragon Quest IX for over 300 hours. Now there's a game that stuck to its simplistic roots but has an insane amount of depth. You can play through the main story and never mess with the job system, alchemy, grottos, multiplayer or super high level classic bosses. Unless you want to. The story might not be anything dramatic or original but it doesn't take an anime aficionado to understand what's going on.
In my opinion, JRPGs have fallen into the same trap that 2D fighters have. They've become too complex and intimidating to all but the most hardcore players and have declined in popularity as a result. I can still pick up and play Final Fantasy IV and Chrono Trigger the same way I can pick up Street Fighter II but not any modern fighters.
It's a shame Dragon Quest doesn't have the same level of popularity in the states because perhaps it's the JRPG a lot of people are looking for.
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Funny that you guys brought up Hellgate during the D3 discussion. I've been playing the free-to-play version of Hellgate from Hanbitsoft and it has me addicted all over again. Despite the lag from time to time, the game is fun as hell and definitely worth checking out if you liked the idea of the game back in the day. The community is there as well which really helps. This is the first cash shop in a game that I don't mind spending a couple of bucks in either. I really wished a solid company was in place when Hellgate first launched, as I've always been a huge fan of the game. A real shame that the whole thing was a disaster when it first launched, that is undeniable.
Anyway, felt like chiming in.
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