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

Ok, so I tried to exchange my Espanol version of Forza 2 at Best Buy, but all they had were the Spanish versions! So I got cash back instead. My wife volunteered to go to Gamestop for me and buy Forza 2 - THE ENGLISH VERSION.

I come home from work today and she says, “I hope I did the right thing…..”

Apparently people are trading in their Marvel Ultimate Alliance/Forza 2 pack-ins at a blistering rate. She was able to grab a copy of the combo for $20 and spent the rest of the refund money (+$10 from her mother - the original purchaser of THE SPANISH VERSION) to buy an extra 360 controller.

Side note: Dan and I were bitching up a storm about how much current-gen controllers cost. I believe I would have to trade in my entire Gamecube collection to equal the cost of a Wii remote/nun-chunk combo.

Anyway, my wife and I had a great time playing the X-Men Legends games, but we had a bad experience with Ultimate Alliance for the Wii (thanks to Dan & our another co-worker for lending us the Wii and game.) with it’s tacked on Wii controls and blurry as hell graphics - blurry on my HD TV anyway.

We’re having a much better time with the 360 version. It plays like it should and the graphics are awesome. The frame rate is rather slow at times. We’re still within the first few hours of the game so I’ll report back on wether or not the frame rate is universally…. ug.

In case the title doesn’t give it away, I got the new Dragonball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 3 for the Wii.  The game is fun, but I feel like I am starting from scratch because the controls are quite different than 2.  The other game goodies I got included, Mario Galaxy, an XBox 360, and Halo 3.  My XBox came with Ultimate Alliance and Forza 2, but if you listen to the podcast you will know, I am not really all that excited about either.I am happy with my loot, although I don’t have an HD television, so I will have to enjoy my XBox on standard definition television.   Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas/Chanukah/Kwanzaa/Some other holiday I probably missed.

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!