Weekend Confirmed 131 - Wii U, Borderlands 2, FTL, Black Mesa

Regarding the conversation about being an early adopter, I have a perspective I'd like to share.

After last gen, I felt the hype surrounding new games was getting too much. I decided that this gen, I would only buy a game at $20, maybe $30, and if there is story DLC, I will only buy a GOTY or complete version. In 2008, I bought an Xbox 360 Elite, and Oblivion GOTY and started on my little test.

It has worked out wonderfully.

One immediate benefit you'll notice right away is price. Go on Amazon and look at Dragon Age Origins Ultimate Edition at $20. By buying that now, you are spending $90 less than someone who bought the game and all DLC as soon as they could.

Another benefit is that you don't play hyped up bad games. My usual method is to wait until a game has been out a couple of years or so, and go to various message boards posting "So was that game worth it"? You'd be surprised at how many games fall off the map after being proclaimed the best game ever, and a revolutionary step forward. Am I missing some games? Sure, but even at my vastly reduced rate of consumption, I still have more games than I can reasonably complete in my adult life.

What about the downsides?

Well as many people would say, I'm not in the thick of the release day conversation. Honestly, I don't mind. Usually immediate conversation is very shallow and full of memes and hyped by the fact that you just spend $60 plus tax on this game. It is much easier to have an intellectual discussion on truly memorable games, from SNES era to something recently past, like a Fallout 3 or Bioshock, now than the week they came out.

That's really the only benefit I can think of (of course I'm excluding multiplayer games, I honestly don't find them very fun). Once I realized I was paying a $40 premium to understand the latest memes, and not feel left out on internet forums (a ridiculous fear if you think about it) the decision became easy. Of course if I was hosting a podcast, or had people to talk about games with in real life I may want to keep up, but not to impress anonymous strangers.

The whole video game hype business seems so quaint now. A vast majority of a game's coverage is pre-release. People obsess over trailers, previews, interviews, little bits of information being doled out. The second a game is out, all those hours spent nitpicking trailers frame by frame and all that time spent scrounging around job hiring websites and such is null and void. I find no entertainment in being hyped.

I find myself in a weird position. I'm certainly play "hardcore" games, just a few years later, and usually to more of a complete state than many early adopters. I like buying games at my price point, playing at my pace, and discussing them in a substantial way. There's very few communities for people like me and it's why I really liked the concept of Garnett's idea of going back to a game after release. It could certainly be possible that your guys' views and thoughts and a little skewed due to the sheer volume of games you have to play, and how you are never able to really dump dozens of hours into a game. Garnett, I really appreciated you talking about Lost Odyssey, not only because it's my favorite JRPG of this gen that I've played through twice, but because it represents a refined view of the game, and hopefully inspired some people to pick it up on the cheap.

Well the rumor on CAG this will be Microsoft's bundles for the holidays

1. 250 GB, Skyrim (Digital Download) and Forza 4 for $299
2. 4 GB Kinect, Kinect Adventures and Kinect Disneyland for $299
3. 250 GB Kinect, Kinect Adventures, Kinect Sports and Dance Central 2 (Digital Download) $399

There is also the $99 Xbox plan at Best Buy. I also expect stores to drop prices on Black Friday.

Can someone give me a valid reason for liking Kingdom Hearts? The gameplay is shallow, the story makes no sense, the environments are kitschy and linear. Liking Kingdom Hearts is the equivalent of taking Lindsay Lohan into a night club at 3AM and giving her a line of coke. Square Enix is shit because of people like that. Its not just about their stupid titles. None of their games have been original or ambitious over the past decade. Kingdom Hearts is a huge part of that. No one on a podcast should ever talk about it or give it any kind of hype or credence.

You are WRONG Andrew! Size does matter, and smaller is not better! lol Ask any woman besides your mom. :-P

Was I the only one that heard the "size doesn't matter" comment during the PS3 slimmer discussion? lol

So I just started playing FFXIII-2 never finished XIII, but well you know. I think the universe and fiction of XIII is fantastic!!!! However, man is the writing about as redundant as humanely possible. I'm a hour or so in and I've already heard about how Serah want to believe her sister lightning is alive like oh 20 times.

Either way the battle system is great and could be even better on the tablet. I would love less direct control and more management option.

James,
will you please put black people in Fuse? I don't want to have to be embarrassed by the racial ignorance in my video games anymore.

Garnett,

As a long-time Roguelike fan, it bothers me that you (and others) try to take away this descriptor from something like FTL because it doesn't match your preconception of the genre.

Now, it's true that FTL doesn't look much like Rogue, but many modern Roguelikes have moved away from the classic fantasy dungeon crawl that originated the genre. The main thing that sets FTL apart from most RLs is the real-time combat, but the ability to pause and give orders offets this somewhat, though it's probably enough to push it into the category of Roguelike-like along with games like The Binding of Isaac and Spelunkky.

In every way that matters, FTL is a Roguelike and the things that people are finding engaging about are the things that Roguelikes have to offer. The sense of discovery and consequence. The stories that come out of fighting your way out of a dire situation. The unexpected interactions that you couldn't have predicted. These are all things that are characteristic of the Roguelike experience. So when you enjoy a game so much but try to separate it from it's brethren, I find that insulting to the genre.

People often find the permadeath aspect of Roguelikes to be too punishing. But this misses the point. Without permadeath, you would miss out on so many of these experiences. In a game where death means nothing, you'd never get yourself into a horrible situation, have to think of something clever to escape and possibly go on to victory. You'd just reload from a previous save point and avoid the catastrophe altogether. Permadeath doesn't exist to punish you. It is there to give your actions consequence. To make every decision matter. I'm sure you noticed that in FTL.

And in a game where you can play from start to finish in a couple hours, as you can in FTL and many Roguelikes, starting over isn't a big deal. And not to be too cliche, but the point of a Roguelike isn't really about getting to the end anyway, it's the journey. Though it's true that finishing a Roguelike can be one of gaming's most satisfying experiences.

@Andrew Yoon

The Wii and Wii U situation ARE NOT THE SAME AT ALL.
The Wii came AFTER the 360 and was less powerful !
The Wii U is coming after the 360 and PS3 and is more powerful.
The Wii U SHOULD NOT BE COMPARED TO THE Wii but to the 3DS.
Nintendo had to make had to find the sweet spot between affordable machine, powerful graphics and making profit from Day 1.

The PS3 and 360 are accidents in history, because those 2 consoles were way ahead of their time in terms or specs and were selling AT LOSS for years !!! The PS3 cost 800 $ to make and was sold at 600 $. Sony was making a 200 $ loss on each machine. Those days are gone ! So you should NOT expect a gap as important as Wii vs PS3/360 during Next Gen.
So the Wii U is be less powerful than the PS4 and 720, but nothing in comparison of the Wii vs the 360/PS3.

The Wii U will to be to the PS4/720 what the 3DS is to the Vita.
Is the 3DS suffering from against the Vita ? Not at all.
Because Nintendo created a machine that can give great looking games. Look at Monster Hunter 4, Mario 3D Land or Resident Evil Revelation ? They don't look as good as Uncharted Golden Abyss does that mean that the games looks awful ?

That power debate has to stop, especially when we haven't EVEN seen any PS4 / 720 to date...


For Halo 4,
As a hardcore Halo fan and as many Halo fans outhere, I'm REALLY septical about Halo 4.
Your feeback looks encouraging, but until now I haven't seen anything telling me that the game will be worth the hype. I mean the new enemy doesn't have the charisma of covenants. Maybe I should see more...
Reach is one of my favourite game of this gen ( and my favourite after Halo CE ). So the bar for Halo 4 is REALLY HIGH.
I keep the faith thanks to your comments now :)

Great episode guys, and it was cool you revisited the Wii U topic again and with James there it really helped even it out a bit.

Regarding Andrew's comment about being nothing of graphical note, he was right and it really sucks, but I guess it's to be expected on a Nintendo machine - unfortunately. During launches it's really up to the first/second parties to show off the machine and what it can do but that's just not really in Nintendo's DNA. Maybe Retro could have something in the works but who really knows what they are doing.

Other than that, third parties will just port stuff across from 360/PS3 to make their sales. That said, if the Wii U was leaps and bounds ahead of the current gen, we might have seen them go 60fps 1080 as an easy option and check on the box.

I'm suprised at the lack of enthusiasm to the launch window lineup. I think this is one of the best launch lineups in recent memory. Wonderful 101, pikmin 3, new mario, ZombiU, Rayman, Monster Hunter, Lego City all look like fantastic games plus it has a strong third party lineup for once. this is probably the BEST nintendo launch ive seen

It's interesting to me that Andrew said that online community will be non-existent (I'm paraphrasing) in Wii U games. Have we forgotten about Miiverse already? Perhaps Nintendo should have talked about it a bit more.....

the PS3 super slim price point is so confusing, what is Sony thinking?

I gotta admit, the first time I connected my gaming PC to my TV I was blown away. I hooked it up to a wireless Xbox 360 controller, so playing Crysis 2 in 1080p at 60 frames per second on this setup kind of made me feel like I was playing a new console.

I feel Sony is going to support the PS3 for a few more years and putting their new slim model at a much lower price right now will give them nowhere to go in the future. This new model should give them a bump in sales for October and early November. I'm guessing Sony will have very competitive deals for Black Friday, ending November on a high note. After the November and December high X-Mas sales die down they will be able to have a price cut next year, possibly at E3 after the announcement of the PS4.

To people saying 'the people who want a PS3 have already bought one' must have forgot that the PS2 has sold around 153 million units worldwide to date while the PS3 and Xbox 360 are at around 67 million units sold to date.
What this means to me is there are plenty of people around the world who will continue to support the older console like they have done with the PS2 after the new console has come out. This slimmer, cheaper to make model, gives Sony the opportunity to lower the price over the next few years.
The PS2 has sold around 54.2 million units since the PS3 launch in 2006. The PS3 is a long way from being dead even if people like me have moved on to the PS4.

There was this brief moment in this show where I thought "Del Rio's gone dubstep? NOOOOOO!" but thankfully, it turned out not to be the case.

Good tunes, as always.

Bet you guys aren't laughing at or mocking Andrea any more for her Vikings pick. :)

I'm obviously biased because of the Halo talk. but I loved this episode. :D

This is probably the biggest waste of a question ever, but is anyone other than me gonna pick up "The Denpa Men" this Thursday?

http://denpamen.com/index.html

This is what I love about Japanese games: zany shit. Maybe the game's good, maybe it's bad, but it's that special kind of batshit insane that no Western studio would release to the world, not because of a lack of imagination, but because it takes a certain kind of mindset to show something like this in public with a straight face.

When Western Devs do zany, we get things like Cthulhu Saves the World and Fart Cat! which are great, don't get me wrong, but when Japan does Zany, we get Tokyo Jungle, No One Can Stop Mr. Domino!, Muscle March, Captain Rainbow, and the Denpa Men.

Great episode guys!

Lots of fun game talk this week. FTL sounds awesome, loved hearing James' insight on Fuse, and I'm sure I don't even need to mention Halo 4 ;)

... but I will anyway! HA!

I'm really glad to hear Andrew's excitement over the campaign. I've only had a tiny little taste of Spartan Ops, but I also found the Prometheans thrilling to fight against. I described 1 particular encounter on my podcast last week. If anyone's interested, it's here:

http://waypointmodcast.com/episode-28/

Skip to about the 22:20 mark if you want to check it out :)

There must be an internal contest at Square Enix to think of the strangest titles. Not having KH2 is a huge problem (Andrew is probably right, there will be another HD collection with KH2, the psp title and the cutscenes from the mobile game...cellphone...remake...yay?). Its like a love-hate relationship with this franchise. They release awesome versions of the games that never come here and now they don't include the best PS2 game in a collection of PS2 games and yet...I love the games. The HD collection is kinda like "okay...take my money".

Hey can't have a contest and not include everyone. I started a link to a little WC Football Pool for the listeners thru CBS Sports. Link Below:

http://wkc2012.football.cbssports.com/e
Password: Ghosts01

4 games a week, I'll try to post the same ones as Garnett. Post here if there are any problems getting in.

Great episode, guys. James Stevenson was a great guest. And Garnette, props for mentioning Le Mans on Dreamcast. That game blew me away when it was released. I still think it's one of the best racers available, and was sadly overlooked by a lot of people.

Regarding Jeff's question to James about Wii U games that was something along the lines of, "If you pick up the system later, but don't go back and play the games that were available at launch, then do you really care about those games?" I think James' answer was interesting. There is something fun about playing a game at the height of its hype, and being a part of the conversation surrounding current games. However, there's another reason that I personally wouldn't go back to many of the first batch of games if I were to pick up the system a year after launch. By then, there will presumably be dozens of other games to play. I buy older games that I missed at launch all the time, but it's hard to find time to play them. I don't want to miss NSMB WiiU, ZombiU, and other launch games, and I know if I wait until there's a price drop that I won't bother checking them out.

This wouldn't be as much of a problem if I only gamed on one system, but I'm a giant nerd and play games on every system I can get my hands on. Shit, I even backed the Ouya.

Anyone looking forward to State of Decay?

The original coverage of this zombie game focused on ambitious principles of base building, gathering supplies, setting up camp and defenses or going it alone or teaming up with friends. It seemed really interesting to someone like me who has zero interest in Zombie games.

But the trailers coming out make it seem like a bit of a vanilla zombie co-op game.

Until we play it we won't know the whole story I suppose.