We finally take the time to explain why we have been doing episodes with just Bucky and Daniel. In case you haven’t heard already Blizzard announced at Blizzcon that Diablo III has been underdevelopment and will be amazing. E3 wrapped up this week and there was a lot of news, but not anything groundbreaking. Daniel gives more free advice to big corporations, and suggests that Sony cut their loses and focus on blue ray players. Bucky calls Daniel out for making a stupid comment about Albert Einstein.

Nintendo announces full motion 1 to 1 control…wait wasn’t that what the Wii did already? Don’t fret though Nintendo fans Nintendo did not intend to disappoint this year at E3. They have announced another revolutionary product, WiiSpeak, the ability to communicate while playing online.

Microsoft made some announcements, the most exciting are the Final Fantasy releases and the partnership with Netflix. Somehow the conversation digress to a debate about how awesome Voltron is, and somehow Bucky manages to insult the Japanese yet again.

Finally we close out the episode with a quick news rundown, including a rant by Bucky about the Fallout censorship in Australia.

links:

• Deckard Cain Rap : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMAbNFptzAA
• Meet the Sniper : http://storefront.steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=app&AppId=5051
• Gamasutra E3 Wrapup : http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=19486
• Ctrl+Alt+Del SPORN Comic : http://cad-comic.com/comic.php?d=20080627
• Duke Nukem Trailer: http://www.gametrailers.com/player/36746.html

 

 It's an Activation Blizzard [63:53m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Games are too damn repetitive these days. Seriously. I’m looking at my Xbox 360 games that I haven’t finished and out of 9 games (not including GTA IV, which I’m currently playing), I have finished 4. That means out of 9 ‘next gen’ games, I only had the endurance to finish 45% of them. Compare that to finishing about 96% of every other game I’ve ever played that didn’t suck. What the hell does this even mean?

Simply: ‘Next Gen’ games are too freaking long and too freaking repetitive. Before we go on, I just want to say that I loathe the term Next Gen. What a freaking lame-ass marketing-asshole-type buzzword that means nothing. Damn it. Anyway, I digress. Xbox 360 and PS3 games are ridiculous. I appreciate the thought: It seems right that game developers are trying to give us our money’s worth. It would be great, it really would, if the developers who had wanted to give us our money’s worth on length didn’t skimp out on content or gameplay mechanics, but alas, it seems that with ‘Next Gen’ we get our choice: good gameplay or good graphics and a long game. It seems that most shops are going with the latter, rather than the former.

Well, what’s the big deal? I’ll tell you: Imagine picking up your favorite book, let’s for the sake of this example, say it’s How Stella Got Her Groove Back. Imagine picking up your favorite book, and seeing that instead of it being a hearty 900 pages, the author, who is probably Oprah, has actually increased the length of the book to over 25,000,000 pages! Hooray!! More of whatever the hell it is that’s in How Stella Got Her Groove Back!! But upon turning the page to 901, you realize that the next 24,999,099 pages contain nothing but the first 900 pages repeating themselves 27,777 times. That is what it’s like playing Assassin’s Creed. It’s reading How Stella Got Her Groove Back over. And over. And over. And over again.

Compare that to games that came out for the Super Nintendo. Legend Of Zelda: A Link to the Past is like going out to your mailbox and getting the best-of edition of Penthouse Forum. It’s chock full of things you love reading, and right as you’re about to get sick of reading and go blow up some anthills with m80s, the game ends and you’re left wanting more.

I think we took a wrong turn back in Albuquerque. I mean in the weeks leading up to Forza 2’s release, I could barely sit still. I almost called in sick to work the day it came out. I played it for three weeks straight. I loved it. And then I slowly realized that I was driving on the same tracks that I had been driving on for the past three weeks. Except before, I was only driving two laps around the track instead of six. And those two laps only took four minutes, instead of the fifteen it took to finish six laps. Sorry, Forza 2, I don’t feel like devoting fifteen minutes to driving around the same piece of asphalt that I’ve been seeing for the past three weeks, even if I am driving a wicked awesome M3. Yes, it’s more realistic with longer laps, but some times (most of the time) realistic racing simulation does not make for fun video games.

Somewhere along the way, games went from being fun and providing a great experience to pumping out the sickest graphics and longest gameplay. How is it, that I could devote over 90 hours to Oblivion (which I consider a ‘Last Gen’ game with good graphics) and its two expansions, but I can’t find it in me to finish twelve minutes of driving on a track? I don’t know, maybe it’s that Oblivion provides diverse, rich, unique environments. Maybe it’s because I loathe repetition, which is ironic, because NES and SNES era games are chock full of doing the same thing over and over again, and that’s what I’m sitting here pining for, but I’m seriously becoming disenchanted with the ‘Next Gen’ experience.

In this episode we start off with excuses for why we haven’t been producing any episodes lately. Followed closely by plugs for our other side projects (TallyHoh.com and ProjectPudding.com) and then we actually talk about game stuff.

We explain our goals for the podcast/website and how YOU, the user, can contribute.

We go over all the stuff we got for Christmas. Michael explained how much he hates his favorite game of all time. Bucky mocks him, and Daniel finally got Dragonball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 3 and an XBox 360.

We confirm what the rest of the internet has said about the repetitiveness of Assassin’s Creed. Bucky gets a brand new used PS2…that’s right: PS2. He is so 2000. Oh and Surprise, Surprise, he offends another group of people!

Publishers are going the way of banks and merging into the One Publisher! The console makers respond by removing the need for a publisher via Microsoft XNA and WiiWare.

Editors Note: Sorry I had some mic issues (with placement) that I wasn’t able to fix in editing… I am a little out of practice.

links

• Microsoft GDC ‘08 Keynote http://www.gamespot.com/video/943273/6186465/microsoft-gdc-2008-keynote-address
• XNA http://www.xna.com/
• Fairuza Balk http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000103/
• No More Heroes Cover Art http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/46/No_More_Heroes.jpg/256px-No_More_Heroes.jpg
• Show notes Image Mistake http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2260/2276473379_2eb8ef3368.jpg?v=0
• Monster Party http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_Party
• Soulja Boy Yahhh http://youtube.com/watch?v=UfCmYyG-yg4

 

 Stop and Pop [62:42m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Merry Christmas everyone! I am one happy gamer! My brother and I finished up our Halo 3 co-op game, and I’m about 3/4’s of the way through Bioshock (thanks Bucky!). Santa’s helpers were kind of enough to get me Assasian’s Creed, Mass Effect, The Orange Box, and Forza 2….. THE SPANISH VERSION.

I’d heard about these fully spanish-translated games. It seems like a great idea, but PLEASE make the “spanish only” label larger than a dime (or at least as large as one)!Basically my 2008 will consist of Triple AAA gaming and Spanish classes. :)I hope everyone else had a Triple AAA Christmas!

We started this episode off with the obligatory conversation about Super Mario Galaxy in comparison to Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Zombie Ninja Pro-Am. We then transition into a riviting discussion about the passing of game genre of the past.

Bucky then unleashes into a discussion about his dreams coming true, starting with EA Chicao shutting down and ending with a Morrowind MMO. Mike once again doesn’t get how exciting the wii and it’s zapper are even though Daniel tries to convnice him.

Unfortunately none of us got a chance to play Assasin’s creed yet, but we sure have an opinion! But more importantly Earth Worm Jim may return!

Daniel attempts to bring credability too using video games as a educational tool and someone the conversation ends up at the best Market Training game ever Drugwars.

Finally an all call was made to our listeners to remind us of a video game to movie conversion that worked well.

links

• Counter Strike Source Exploits : http://youtube.com/watch?v=c2Jus-ptkhw
• Desert Combat Exploits : http://youtube.com/watch?v=JKaPsE4LRCw
• Playing to Learn By David Hutchison: http://www.playingtolearn.org/
• Mario Bros Theme on Tesla Coil : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1O2jcfOylU

 

 Yoshi is Mario's Mech [65:56m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Episode 4 is, as they say, in the can. I think we figured out most of our audio issues this time, I personally think the sound is an order of magnitude better than previous episodes, and hopefully it will continue to improve.

We have our first sponsor, thanks to Pudding by Ataraxis Software. Go check out the promotional site, and sign up for a free trial.

In this episode we talk about Bungie going out on it’s own, but not straying far from home. Michael asks to mooch a game that Daniel hasn’t even acquired yet. Bucky tells us we can get over our Wii Slippage by ordering the free remote sleeves from Nintendo, especially since the Wii has the most abundant game Christmas lineup.

We all are getting discouraged with the numerous SKUs per console and can’t wait for the 6-axis Dual Shock controller from Sony. Michael rants about another Mech game, which destroys a perfect transition about missing release dates. We talk about Team Fortress 2 some more, and unfortunately at the time of recording we didn’t yet play Portal, although we are extremely excited about it. Finally we want better niche reviews, so we are asking you the listener to send us your suggestions, and if it is an audio file we will tag it and include it in the feed, for the world to hear.

links

• Pudding: http://projectpudding.com
• Free Wii Remote Glove: http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/jacket/jacketrequest.jsp
• Team Ninja Interview: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=15699

Amazingly enough we managed to retain all the audio tracks this time. Which is good because we were using close range microphones, so we wouldn’t have been able to publish the episode without them!

 

 Bungies the Chick [59:29m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

We made an attempt to wrap up the violent video game discussion. Is steam the new live? Bucky and Daniel got into the Team Fortress 2 beta and gave their impressions. What is the big deal with Halo 3? Daniel doesn’t mention DBZ Budokai Tenkaichi 3. We contemplated what makes EA tick. Michael plugs MechAssault again, and Bucky was willing to offend everyone except the Irish. Oh and we didn’t lose Bucky’s track this time, we lost Michael’s.

My Odeo Channel (odeo/7f6542a9696cb7cc)

 

 It's a Wanker [66:19m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download