New game releases of May 27-June 2
Wargame: Airland Battle trailer details dynamic campaign
Halo 'Bootcamp' confirmed by Microsoft
Weekend PC download deals: Tomb Raider for $14
Game Dev Tycoon studio outlines future plans
Weekend Confirmed 156 - Tomb Raider, SimCity
by Ozzie Mejia, Mar 15, 2013 11:00am PDTThis week, Garnett Lee welcomes back his partner-in-crime, Jeff Cannata, along with Nikole Zivalich and Marcus Beer of Annoyed Gamer fame. It doesn't take long for Garnett and Jeff to have their first friendly disagreement, like all couples do, as they have a spirited debate about Tomb Raider. There's also talk more about SimCity and its tumultuous roads (that may or may not be curved), as well as God of War: Ascension and Mass Effect 3's Citadel DLC. And after her epic Pokemon rant, Nikole Z's ready to give everyone an encore when she talks Gears of War.
Weekend Confirmed Ep. 156: 3/15/2013
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If you're viewing this in the GameFly application, you can play Weekend Confirmed Episode 156 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 - 00:00:36 - 00:35:05
Whatcha' Been Playin Part 1 - 00:36:32 - 01:05:57
Whatcha Been Playin Part 2 01:06:34 - 01:37:10
Listener Feedback/Front Page News - 01:37:55 - 02:09:51
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Weekend Confirmed @WeekendConfirmd
Garnett Lee @GarnettLee
Jeff Cannata @JeffCannata
Nikole Zivalich @NikoleZ
Marcus Beer @AnnoyedGamer
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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
...and we wonder why publishers feel the need to patronize females with 'girl games'...
Well, some people wonder. I don't.
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I was enjoying the valid rant that Sim City deserves and the points that Marcus and Jeff were making was interesting. It was then spoiled by Jeff making fatuous comments.
Please Jeff just grow up and try to have an intellectual point without resorting to shouts, screams and acting like a moron or a demented child.
I must not buy a console for a single game
I must not buy a console for a single game
I must not buy a console for a single game
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That said, one of my pet peeves about the show and Garnett in particular is when you guys talk shit about something you haven't played. So when Nicole is talking about how much she enjoyed the Citadel DLC and you guys mock her and talk about how Bioware is going downhill and on and on without ever having played it yourselves, that really bothers me. Informed disagreement is great. But ignorant disagreement is just pointless. I understand that you're trying to be entertaining and get some jokes in there, but when you're saying more than the person who actually played the game, maybe you should back off a bit.
Still love the show, but just a few thoughts.
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In a nut-shell, I couldn't disagree more with Garnett's take on this. Lara Croft as a character has historically been paper thin. Having played most of the games she starred, in I could tell you these 4 things (note - I have not read any novels [if they exist] or seen the movies):
She's British.
She's rich and pretty.
She often uses 2 handguns to shoot a lot of people and creatures.
Did I mention she's British?
While Garnett is (of course) free to dislike the 'New Lara', objectively this game spends far more time on fleshing out who she is and what her motivations are. I would contend that side characters like Roth are richer and more well developed than Lara herself was up to this point. Garnett's attachment to 'Old Lara' seems both nostalgic and to tint everything he sees and does in this game. This game was the first time I felt (literally) any attachment to her character.
Sure, Lara quickly racks up quite a body count. How many video game players would have stayed with another several hours of 'helpless' Lara? Personally, I found her character's progress through the game relatively believable. She is quickly pushed into some horrific situations, makes it through, but is changed by them. You see it in the way she moves, in her journal entries, and the way she interacts with the other characters.
Last thing (since this got too long a while ago): I think the game is lousy with exploration, it just doesn't always force it. The player gets to choose how much they want to do, and I'd contend that's laudable. Not only does it make the game accessible to a different segment, ultimately it makes the exploration feel less like finding the way through the level and more like actual exploration.
Sorry - that's my 25 cents. I do really enjoy the show and look forward to it every week. Just got a little hard to listen to Garnett be so adamant about weakness of the writing / Lara's character.
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Magic. Well done again. Raam on a train had me rolling.
There, that's the 'Bros before hoes' scene. The trophy doesn't pop up until the end. Garnett and Jeff are once again starting conversations about topics they have done no research on. This has defiantly been a theme in the last few weeks and I first started to notice it after the PS4 announcement.
The video is showing Kratos fighting one of the Furies that are hunting him down, the enemy is laughing at Kratos while being pummeled for 3 seconds (wasn't pummeled by the fist weapons as they weren't even in the game) and she wasn't even hurt because it was an illusion. The trophy pops up two whole minutes after the fight and only because Kratos was captured and then saved by the Furies creation, Orkus. The trophy wasn't about the beating at all, it was about Orkus choosing to save Kratos instead of allowing the Furies to have their way.
It was as easy as a Google search to figure this out, I haven't even played the game and I don't intend to for a while, I just dislike when the games media hop onto bandwagons without actually doing their job and researching the topic they are ranting about.
I except better of Garnett who is a veteran in this industry and if he wants to make the games community a better place then he should be against situations like this one where false information is thrown about and hive minds are created within the enthusiast press.
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This was the most wrong I have ever heard Garnett be. EVER.
Jeff nailed everything and while I think the new Tomb Raider could use more Tomb's and puzzles. It is an incredible game, and much better than Legend and Underworld. I think Anniversary is an almost perfect game but it's hard core puzzles go beyond mainstream appeal.
This was a perfect reboot and serious game of the year material. Now give me a sequel with more puzzles.
I love the Uncharted series, but I think Tomb Raider is vastly superior to the Uncharted games.
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So, uh, what was Marcus talking about at the end there? I mean, setting aside the fact that there are legitimate reasons to be offended by the God of War and Dead Island stuff (reasons that I would for the most part argue with)
People getting on their soapboxes over things for the sake of making a scene is indeed a problem, but almost every other thing Marcus brought up bordered on offensive in of themselves. The notion that males in a prominently male industry shouldn't be speaking out against legitimately concerning problems just because they aren't the targets of the offense is incredibly narrow.
'You don't get to be offended by sexism, you're a MAN'....I'm barely even paraphrasing.. What a bizarre sentiment. I don't need to be female to recognize that a lot of things in this industry are problematic and regressive from both the perspective of a woman and just someone who enjoys games.
Some guy got offended by a mutilated and bloody figure of what is essentially an over sized and barely covered pair of breasts marketed as an incentive to sell a game. I don't care if your wife wasn't concerned with it, that is in no way reflective of what women or society should think, and this industry can only benefit from discussing why this is potentially hurtful, indicative of a larger problem, or at the very least in bad taste. Doesn't matter if that conversation was started by a man.
Marcus tweets at someone who took similar issue, "A man has no right to tell a woman what is sexist or not". That is a true statement, because nobody has a right to tell anybody, regardless of gender, what is objectively offensive. But the way he's blatantly framing this discussion implies that men don't get to have a stake in feminism, feminism is for females only. That's crap.
But what do I know, I'm not a woman, I shouldn't even get to talk about this stuff.
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I agree with Marcus that a ton of male video game journalists hop onto the bandwagon to get hits by writing about this stuff. I think the worst offender of this is on another podcast that I love. But calling people out for doing this and then leaving out a vital detail yourself is hypocrisy.
Bit late to the comments. Tomb Raider is a great game, lots of points made were great and proved what made the reboot great.
Also, I have noticed you guys like interrupting Nicole or when someone is making an argument. Not sure how others feel, but its childish and really rude ,it makes me feel like I should stop listening to this podcast (granted I have only listened to 30+ episodes).
Please Garnett, do NOT apologize for what you said in this podcast. I notice you do this as if to peddle back on what you said before. Accept what you said and move on to the next subject.
I understand adventure games have disappeared from the mainstream market. Maybe we do need a new Myst to re-popularize the genre. The Walking Dead already came kind of close. However, adventure games are starting to flourish again in the indie market on the PC. Someone else on this page already mentioned Miasma. There are even other games similar to Amnesia showing up on PC. One really good publisher recent has been wadjet eye. Most of their games have been reminiscent of 90's graphic adventure games.
Heck, judging by the previous Tomb Raider games, I would've been just fine with one that was all exploration and puzzle-solving without combat. The exploration and puzzle-solving have always been the main appeal of those game for me.
Just saying. There are genres other than action games.
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There's this game called Dawn of Discovery, which is pretty much the predecessor of ANNO 2070, made by the same developer, with the same game play, only that it doesn't have UPlay and set in a medieval era, it came out quite a few years ago so should be fairly cheap now.
Also I agree with you on the whole Tomb Raider thing, i couldn't take the story seriously because all the brutal murders Lara's doing contradicts with what they are trying to portray her as a character, so i only enjoyed the game for its gameplay.
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I also think it is hilarious that Garnett spends so much time bitching about how reboots like Tomb Raider and Devil May Cry ruined their main characters when Lara and Dante could honestly not have been more one dimensional to begin with.
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I'm conflicted. He came into the job with the right idea, trying to get EA to stop relying entirely on a narrow range of yearly titles for their revenue, and create new IP that would ensure their strength in the future.
But after trying it for like, 2 years (Dead Space, Army of Two, Mirror's Edge, Skate, etc), apparently there was enough internal pressure (or pressure from investors) to change course entirely and basically try to emulate Activision in every way.
So all the company's money went into those same core franchises, and super-expensive projects to compete with Activision in completely over-saturated markets (modern shooters, MMOs, etc). They changed course mid-way through his tenure, which is weird and really difficult for any major company to do.
On the other hand, EA has been a complete shit-show since 2010, so hopefully they can get somebody in who will focus on the service element of gaming and not send smaller projects out to die while focusing on the Activision penis-envy projects.
Now I don't know about you, but that is the time where I hang off and not buy it. It reeks of entitlement for a nostalgia influenced product that can never be lived up to. The same thing with Diablo 3, I spent infinity+1 hours playing Diablo 2, WHAT you aren't making Diablo 2 again screw you.
I guess what I am really saying is Nostalgia is a very very dangerous thing and people need to be aware that the game the developers make is not always going to be the one you want and by extension no one is making you buy / play any game you don't want to (except for reviewers :P)
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Cheers,
Shane
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Probably as a result of having the excellent no-bullshit Marcus Beer on as a guest, consequently both Garnett and Jeff brought their A-game to match Marcus in the heated discussion stakes.
This brings me to Nikole, S-L-O-W I-T D-O-W-N.
The ADHD chipmunk delivery style might have worked wonders at G4TV but in podcast land its pure finger nails down a chalkboard, you’re a good contributor and you've already earned brownie-points by the simple fact you’re not Andrea Gearbox Rene but just take some deep breaths and slow it down.
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In regards to Garnett, I feel like you have made the mistake that many people make when it's rebooted. You are bringing your baggage and expectations to your experience and its causing you to resist what the developers were doing. This is a reboot. It's taking the character and changing them in a way that fits with a modern audience. I think Crystal Dynamics retained the spirit of the Tomb Raider franchise while easing new players into this world. I think they did so amazingly.
You are free to explore each area once the threat has been dealt with. Which I did and I 100% the game at the time of completion. I understand nostalgia because I too, love the Tomb Raider series. I accepted very quickly that the game wasn't going to be like old Tomb Raiders. And I would up loving it.
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This question reminds me of Dante’s Inferno (the game). When I saw the first preview for it I laughed and thought ‘They just had to make it so that you kill stuff.’ Before seeing the preview, but knowing the game was being produced I was thinking they were gonna make something more like ‘Ico: In Hell’-where you play as a poet (or his guide), and try to make your way to paradise. I didn’t expect to do any killing, but instead to just wander through dark and beautiful, but intricate (puzzles) environments with a very character driven story to keep the player interested (mostly about Dante, but also about the other famous residents that he meets-who wouldn’t be excited to have a dialogue with Helen of Troy or Judas Iscariot in a videogame?). Maybe you’d try to help ease the suffering of the inhabitants somehow, or maybe you’re given tasks to complete so you don’t join them, or both, but the emphasis would have been on adventure more than action.
I’d still like to see a reboot of what was released.
…And for Nikole’s Chronicles, could she do movies? Prometheus (and the Aliens movies)????
I love Nicole, and I found her description of the DLC hilarious (as I believe it was intended to be), but I felt like Jeff, Garnett, and Marcus were taking Nicole's whimsical summary as a hard-lined review, and thus trash-talked it a bit.
The point I feel was missed in this week's discussion is that the Citadel DLC is pure 100% fan-service. Its a chance to revisit all the characters you've come to know and love throughout the Mass Effect trilogy, take them on a fun adventure together, and see them in some hilarious social circumstances. Many ME fans in the community are calling it "the perfect sendoff". So I would hardly say Mass Effect has "jumped the shark". It's a fun, light-hearted adventure with lots of genuinely funny dialog and character moments.
The issue is that many gamers want the immediate satisfaction and excitement that most modern AAA games provide (at least some of the time). Even the lot of you who want better, non-violent games also want violent games. And there is the issue; the big money goes towards what will sell more games to more people.
There is a pretty good corollary with movies here: most of the top 10 grossing movies every year also appeal to a lower common denominator. When most people go to the movies, they usually want to be entertained, ergo The Avengers earning the top slot. Was it a good movie? Yes. Was it profound and moving like Lincoln? No. Nor was it meant to be.
Still, both movies still got made. I saw both in theaters multiple times. They both made money. There is room for both. Just don't expect "good" movies (or games) to outperform or replace "entertaining" movies (or games).
Nobody probably ever played it, since it was a Nintendo DS game series from Japan by Konami. The two games that were made for the DS actually did get localised and fully embrace the whole 'stranded on an island and have to survive with this other person' experience. Hunger, hydration and I think even health was a factor. You had to keep the characters well fed, make your own equiptent and explore the island for resources to survive. They weren't perfect, but they did have a charm to them that only Japan made games could have. To bad nobody bought it!
If you really want that kind of experience, go play one of the 3 'Lost in Blue' games that came out, and hope that they do a new game in the series for 3DS or something.
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On shooting in games, let me say this, I LOVE text adventures and exploration games, and we need a lot more of this in our games. But it is not an either-or. Beyond Zork introduced combat to the Zork series, and it was AWESOME! We want both-and. Too many games are about nothing but combat.
However, I do not think you can "replace" combat the way the hosts were implying. The pleasure of outsmarting your opponent with your tactics and your reflexes, and then blowing their head off, is its own special thing. There is no replacing that with building a fire or something. Other types of gameplay are fun in their own way but they are not replacements for one another.
Also, all of the examples cited in favor of non-violent gameplay were also non-action games. I really don't see how you could make a good action game that wasn't about fighting in some way, shape, or form.
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And just to support Garnett's point of the original tomb raiders having better characters - I think the games themselves had a more interesting character. They were charming games where as a player I was the one exploring and solving puzzles, so there was a thematic cohesiveness with Lara the intrepid archaeologist. In the new Tomb Raider there may be a lot more dialogue, cut-scenes, and set-pieces that build Lara up, but I'm not really engaging with the story apart from pressing x sometimes. Lara might say that she's scared, nervous or struggling to survive, but I'm pinging arrows through skulls and taking on 5 guys at once and finding it all simple and easy - it's the same old dissonance that ruins what attempt they make with the character.
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In the new SimCity things generally take a while to get better. There are no instant plop-this-and-fix-it solutions which means you actually have to pay attention to your city before thing go to shit. If you throw down a clinic and a few ambulances and people are still complaining about health issues, you're either zoning them too close to pollution or you need to fix your traffic situation. All you have to do is pay more than the absolute minimum amount of attention.
As far as Tomb Raider goes, it is definitely not a shooter first. The shooting was AMAZING and I loved the cover system, but in terms of time spent playing I'd have to estimate my time with it was something like 50% traversal/exploration, 35% sneaking/stealth kills, 15% shooter. That's the great thing about it. If you want to take your time to enjoy the environments and systematically take out your enemies, there's room in the game to do that. And if you're determined to dislike the game and want to force yourself into a combat-driven gameplay loop so you can bitch about it later, you're free to do that too.
I'll listen to the rest of the podcast later.
"What has become of Bioware?", Garnett asks, shaking his head.
Let me offer another viewpoint: this might be the best piece of Mass Effect content Bioware has produced. The Citadel DLC was done by the the writers that did ME 2, NOT the bulk of ME 3. If you liked ME 3 the best you in particular will like Citadel.
It's also extremely dense content -- tons of variations and hidden content depending on past choices and choices within the DLC.
It also has what I think is the best soundtrack work since the ME 1 map screen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxzKKFejGL4
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Miasmata. It's almost exactly what you were describing. Do check it out!
Jeff it also right that MInecraft taps into this, and I think it does show that even insanely popular games don't need a 30 second shoot-people loop.
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It is called Escape Paradise and is a mod for the original Crysis that can be found here: http://www.moddb.com/mods/escape-paradise
The entire goal of the game is to find enough fuel to drive a vehicle off the island that you (a NK escaped prisoner) find yourself on.
Obviously there is still violence because survival and violence go hand in hand, however being stripped of your Nanosuit and scavenging for Weapons / Ammo / Food / Fuel turns the completely free form jungle of Crysis on its head into a puzzle game of really choosing actions carefully.
It is a pretty remarkable mod.
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I think this information is incredibly important to cash strapped gamers who want to know how much time they can get from a single player game. Games don't have to be a certain length for me to enjoy them, but I like to feel I am getting my moneys worth.
I might want to invest in Skyrim instead of Black Ops 2 if I only have enough for one game and are not interested in multiplayer.
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At the beginning of the game, she's at a crossroads in her life. Archeology doesn't excite her anymore. She's happy to work in the background despite, from what we gather, being the brains of the operation. She is disillusioned with her life, going through the motions and resenting it. Over the course of that game, she is forced to the brink, discovers new strength inside her, becomes a leader instead of a resentful follower.
It's worth noting, that the back story for the 'original' Lara was that she was a posh socialite who's plane went down in the alps, and she had to survive. It was that experience - the thrill of it - that drove her towards becoming a treasure-hunter explorer. In that regard, this story of Lara isn't too far off the original story, we just get to play through it this time instead of coming in when she's already a super-hero.
Was it perfectly executed? No. But look, we're working with a medium where schlock like the Metal Gear series is held up as great story-telling. I'm willing to overlook a few instances of clunky execution for what is otherwise, overall a really great journey.
The major issue I have is that the gameplay is incongruous with the character growth. It's the same problem that faced Uncharted, and it's a problem of cowardice. Crystal Dynamics seemed scared to make players wait too long before the action started, and put too much room between gunfights. But they had the PERFECT franchise to do exactly that with, all they had to do was open up the environment and push a harder emphasis on exploration, rather than pushing more and more badguys for you to gun down.
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From minute one Uncharted is winking and laughing at everything going on, the characters exist for the story and really aren't trying to change they are just caught up in the adventure (much like Indiana Jones or better Han Solo(who does aid in killing a LOT of people it should be pointed out)).
Tomb Raider wants to have it both ways, it wants you to REALLY care the first time you off a dude and then never again, it wants to make you think it is a survival game and be upset about the deer but then never have to worry about it again. The content of the story and the gameplay are completely at odds because they go for completely different tones.
All of a sudden I'm agreeing completely with Garnett and his gripes.
WHAT HAVE I BECOME?!
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Cause that is just absurd to me.
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Having Saren as an antagonist and discovering the truth about the Reapers beats playing 'Space therapist' for 90% of the time, then going on one meh final battle.
I disagree with Marcus that Mass Effect 2 had the best balance between action and rpg mechanics. Mass Effect 2 stripped pretty much ALL of the RPG mechanics out of Mass Effect, a few of which were put back in by Mass Effect 3 (albeit in refined form... managing inventories in ME1 was NOT fun).
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