2PP Episode 11: Literally Hours of Moderate Fun
We start off by introducing our new pundit, Brian. Then we explain why we don’t care about Metal Gear Solid 4, and Bucky admits he is clinically insane for not liking Ninja Gaiden. Daniel is disappointed with the Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit demo. We attempt to explain Yen to Dollar conversion for some reason. Daniel explains to Netflix how to expand their business, by adding video games to their catalog. Brian has purchased and played Wii fit and he thinks it is creepy. Bucky and Brian think Will Wright doesn’t know what he is talking about, oh and Bucky thinks Daniel is a Jack @$$. And amazingly we made it through the whole episode without burning Michael. Daniel is sick of the internet cloud, and everything on it.
score:
+1 Topical Humor
+1 New Pundit
+2 Friends of Bucky
+1 First!
+3 Poos
links:
- Corey Hart - Sun Glasses at Night : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9p0Ac5bLlI&feature=related
- Street Fight: The Legend of Chun Li : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0891592/
- Devil May Cry Movie : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0932986/
- Duke Nukem Forever Sneak Peak: http://crackle.com/c/Jace_Hall/Jace_Hall_Ep_1_DUKE_NUKEM_FOREVER_-_SNEAK_PEEK/2298717/#ml=o%3D12%26fpl%3D297045%26fx%3D
- Age of Conan Bust Nerf : http://www.gamingnewslink.com/2008/06/03/age-of-conan-bust-nerf/
- Cambrian explosion : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion
- Limbo of the Lost Screen Comparison : http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=310683
- Famicon Disk System : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famicom_Disk_System
- Great Image of SF Ryu : http://www.gamasutra.com/db_area/images/news2001/18784/Image1.jpg
- Valve Perspective on Game Development : http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=18843
- NY Times Article about Miyamoto : http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/arts/television/25schi.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=1&adxnnlx=1212769006-fhd535269tyJsyb48rFLZQ
Repetitive repetitive games Or: why I’ll never finish Forza 2
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.
Episode 9: Fatslob or Need More Monkey Island
We start off going over the big releases. Followed by all the GTA news we could gather. Daniel compares Choose Your Own Adventure books to GTA. Some guy thinks he knows more about good games than Daniel and Bucky. XBox’s are the new Patch Adams. There are a slew of great games coming to the Nintendo DS! Daniel is over Spore, and all their lies and propaganda. Gamestop is the reason why Daniel will never be a millionaire. Diablo 3 Is Offical, not really but…maybe. We created a new bit for the podcast…listener email, thanks to TimTom for the first question.
links:
- Team Fortress 2 Free Weekend : http://www.steamgames.com/goldrush
- Meet the Scout : http://www.steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=game&AppId=5032&cc=US
- Fewer Mechanics, Better Game : http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3621/fewer_mechanics_better_game.php?page=1
- Mummy’s Tomb (Choose Your Own Adventure, No. 24) : http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FMummys-Tomb-Choose-Your-Adventure%2Fdp%2F0553152947%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks%26qid%3D1209695741%26sr%ZD8-1&tag=danroo-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325
- Game Theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory
- Tim Tom : http://suckit/
Episode 7: Stop and Pop
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
Death to the Silver
I got home today and planned to download the new Devil May Cry 4 demo. But what do I see, a big fat access denied?!?! Basically
You Suck! Upgrade to Gold!
I think we talked about this on a previous 2nd Player episode, but I cast it aside, because I figured I would get a Gold account when I got my XBox, but as I have been spending all my time playing Dragonball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 3 for the Wii I didn’t see the need to drop the green on the Gold account.
Well now I have to wait like a chump to get the demo, but if anyone does try it please let me know.
No commentsDevil Bringer Coming Tomorrow
It is official Capcom has announced tomorrow January 24, 2008 that the Devil May Cry 4 demo will hit the XBox 360 and Playstation 3. Assuming Capcom has not screwed this up (see Devil May Cry 2), this game is sure to be amazing.
As for the demo it supposedly has a sampling of the Devil May Cry goodness, mostly focused around the new character Nero and his Devil Bringer powers. This ‘training demo’ leads you up to a final boss fight against this guy who looks curiously like Balrog from Lord of the Rings. I guess there are only so many demons in the world.
Irregardless (that is for you Bucky), I am very excited about this demo and so happy I got an XBox 360.
No commentsskate.
To purchase this item click here!skate.
I initially fell in love with EA’s skate.. I’m sorry including the second period there, but the literal title of the game is skate.. So every time the title of the game ends a sentence in this review, there will be two periods, GRAMMAR CONVENTIONS BE DAMED!!!!
At any rate, I digress. I initially fell in love with EA’s skate.. It was charming, it was new, it was fresh, and above all, it was fun. The Tony Hawk franchise has dominated this genre for nigh on a decade now, and why not? The games, although mostly rehashes with slight changes, are a lot of fun. They don’t focus on realism, rather on arcade fun, so you’re not worrying about bumping into a rock and falling off your board, or how often you have to push to get some speed, or how perfectly straight you have to land not to fall. skate. tries a new approach. The entire view of the game, save for some specific instances (more on that later though) is shot from the perspective of a guy following your skater filming him. All the action is close up and down low. Further breaking from Tony Hawk tradition, skate. focuses more on realism than showiness. In Tony Hawk, it is expected that you throw together 3 flip tricks two grabs and 720 degrees of spin before you jump in on a rail and grind for 15 minutes. Not so in skate.. You are rewarded big for doing a large ollie, throwing a simple flip trick, grinding for 10 feet then jumping off and landing cleanly. While the more realistic approach to skating is nice, the biggest difference between the Tony Hawk games and skate. is the way tricks are executed. All board control is handled with the right thumbstick. skate. follows EA’s next-gen paradigm by eliminating button mashing. To ollie (skater lingo for jump), you push down on the right stick, then flick it straight up. To do a kickflip or heelflip, push down on the stick, then flick it 45 degrees right or left. Using the thumbsticks for tricks is challenging, but not so much so that it’s frustrating. It also allows for some much more complicated tricks later on, using any combination of thumbstick spins, flicks and twists. This, combined with the lower view, slower pace, and more realistic trick expectations leads to some really fun and fulfilling sequences. It’s extremely rewarding and fun to skate up to a 2 foot high ledge, launch into a flip trick, grind on the ledge, then flip trick out. It gives a feeling of accomplishment that was never present in the Tony Hawk button mashing sequences. Grinding, as well, is handled a little differently in skate.. To grind, you simply ollie up at an obstacle and situate your board so that it slides across the ledge or rail. It’s a pretty easy concept, and it helps with the overall smoothness of the game. skate.’s realistic approach works well; the realism isn’t tedious or frustrating - it finds a very harmonic balance between realism and fun.
skate. is also loaded with style. As with any game worth its salt that incorporates scoring points based on tricks, there is a points multiplier that goes up based on how technical and difficult your trick sequence is (read: how many points you score). As your points multiplier goes up, the color temperature and saturation of the game’s graphics change. Get a one-and-a-half point multiplier and the game gets more colorful. Get a double point multiplier and the game gets a little brighter. Get a triple point multiplier and the saturation increases drastically. The colors are brighter, and the the world takes on a very bright and yellow hue. It’s an interesting concept that works well with the game, providing both a visual cue to how well you’re doing and adding a nice element of style. Your player takes on the role of an amateur skater rising to the top of the skateboard world.
The game starts with you picking your skater’s name (I chose the staple, Asschaps) and customizing his appearance. As you gain notoriety (read: complete goals), you start gaining the attention of skate magazines and sponsors. Each time you reach a milestone you get a phone call on your T-Mobile Sidekick to travel to a spot to meet a photographer for a magazine shoot. You have to perform a certain sequence while he takes pictures. It’s actually kind of cool, he’ll snap a sequence of shots of you doing your trick, and you get to choose which shot you want to appear in the magazine. After you’ve taken photos, you can upload them via XBox Live to the skate.ea.com site and share them with the world. Another cool feature going hand-in-hand with the photo aspect is the replay editor. If you complete a killer sequence, you can go back and watch and edit your footage. It’s a really cool idea, but unfortunately, it needed a bit more tweaking to reach its full potential. First, there’s no real way to tell how far back the footage will be saved. You could spend twenty minutes practicing for a killer line down a hill, go out and nail it flawlessly, only to go back and see that half of your footage (or ‘footy’ as the game calls it - more on that soon) isn’t there. Another let down with the replay editor is the static camera angles. This is a full 3D game in a full 3D world, but when you’re editing your footy, you can only choose from five canned camera angles. It’s not even that big of a deal, it’s just disappointing to see a next-gen game on a next-gen system fail in something that Super Mario 64 mastered a decade ago; that is a full-on 3D camera.
This is the point where the honeymoon starts to end and my love with skate. starts to wan and I start to get fed up with EA (as usual). The game starts out being a blast! It’s new and fresh and fun! You get the sense that you’re not going to be asked to do any ridiculous maneuvers like ollie down from a twenty foot high building and grind around a basketball hoop, a-la Tony Hawk. In skate., while you’re not asked to do the impossible, towards the later stages of the game, I got the feeling that the earlier principles were abandoned in favor of flash. All of a sudden, I was asked to ride down 100 foot ramps and jump 200 feet in the air. While it was fun, it came out of left field and it felt like it was tacked on as an afterthought. Another extremely annoying aspect of the game is the commentary your camera man gives. Speaking in some kind of hybrid New Jersey-Long Island accent, he says things like, ‘Hey my man, I’ve been keepin’ this spot under wraps for a minute!’ when you roll by a good skating spot. He insists on calling his film ‘footy,’ which is not only annoying, it’s fucking obnoxious. I don’t care if skaters really call their footage footy. It’s obvious that some old (or maybe just extremely nerdy) assholes were trying to be hip and XTREME!!!!! (notice how extreme that is! no e at all, that is so XTREME!!!!) to give themselves some ’street cred,’ ‘dawg’ ‘.’
Apart from the absolutely obnoxious and grating dialogue, which is not only uttered by your cameraman, but also spoken by the pro skaters who make cameos in the game, the game has a pretty sad soundtrack. Perhaps I was spoiled by the eclectic (and good) soundtracks of the Tony Hawk games, but by the end of the game, I was sick of hearing Surrender by Cheap Trick and Green Onions by Booker T. Green Onions works well in The Sandlot (possibly because it was recorded during the time the movie takes place), but fails in a modern XTREME skating game. The game also feels unfinished, and buggy. I had several hangups while playing the story mode, and many sound glitches. Not all of it was bad though: I somehow found a way to mute the cameraman’s commentary once, which was a Godsend, but unfortunately, I haven’t been able to replicate that bug (although I do have a team of four monkeys working ’round the clock to figure out how I did it).
While playing online, I also found that if you pause the game for too long and then resume, your own voice is played through your XBox Live headset, as well as through the headsets of people you’re playing with. I don’t think it needs to be said, so I’ll say it: This is friggin’ annoying!!! I hate the way my voice sounds when it’s not reverberating around inside my head, almost as much as I hate hearing what I just said played through that annoying voice. While I played over Xbox Live for only a total of about three hours, it was pretty underwhelming. I played free skate with my younger brother, hoping to be able to cruise around the city and find some fun spots to hit. Wrong. You are only able to skate at certain selected spots with certain selected boundaries. These are the spots that you skate at throughout the whole game anyway, so you’re already familiar (read: bored) with them. I also played attack the spot locally with two other friends, which was fun, but wasn’t anything special. It consists of you each player taking a turn trying to score the highest trick sequence off of a specific spot. Good for about 30 minutes before one player starts dominating and it gets boring.
Included in skate. is EA’s usual business model of ‘advertise till the user’s eyeballs melt and they’re forced to buy these kickass Oakley sunglasses.’ For the most part, the advertising isn’t a bad thing.. It’s a game about skating, and what skating game would be complete without real shoes, board, trucks, and wheel sponsors. That is fine, because it fits in perfectly with what the game is pushing for: a realistic skating experience. My problem is this: it’s clear that a lot of money is being made by EA for advertising. That would be fine, had they delivered a flawless product. The problem is, the game is not polished, it wasn’t finished, it was buggy and didn’t work completely correctly. I can understand charging 60 bucks for a game to cover development, shipping, and advertising costs. What I can’t abide is charging 60 bucks for a game that is buggy but full of ads. I felt like I was being duped by EA, as if they were saying, ‘yeah we’re going to charge you 60 bucks and make money off of that, and after we’re done making money off of that, we’re going to become filthy-fucking rich off of all these ads we’re shoving down your throats, and you’re going to like it.’ It doesn’t detract from the gameplay any, it’s just a pretty big annoyance.
skate. failed to live up to its potential, which is quite disappointing, because it had oodles and oodles of potential. Unfortunately, the story mode got a bit ridiculous, and the bugs became quite old after a while. The multiplayer left a lot to be desired, although some players will surely find merit in it. This is a game I’ll probably break out now and again throughout the next year before I shelve it entirely.
My rating: stars
Circle gets the square!
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.
No commentsDaniel’s Christmas - Kamehameha
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.
2 commentsEpisode 5: Spark of Intuition
In this episode Bucky claims that all things good in video games is doomed. All the players apologize to Too Human, because we are all excited about the game. Michael tries to claim that Daniel is stupid for playing video games on his Mac, and we discuss the big news about LucasArts and BioWare working together on a Mystery MMO.
Dragonball Z is explained, and compared to the likes of Tekken, and Street Fighter IV, and we all wonder if GTA IV is going to be as bad as GTA San Andreas. Finally we wrap up discussing some of the news that came out about Nintendo over the last few weeks.
Thanks again to our sponsor Pudding by Ataraxis Software. Go check out the promotional site, and sign up for a free trial.
links
- BioWare Interview with Gamasutra about EA Acquisition : http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=15840
- Pandemic Interview with Gamasutra about EA Acquisition : http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=15834
- GameSpot Hands on With Too Human : http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/toohuman/news.html?sid=6181072&om_act=convert&om_clk=multimodule&tag=multimodule;picks;title;2
- Cyrsis System Specs : http://www.joystiq.com/2007/10/09/crysis-pc-requirements-a-new-pc/
- Nintendo Press Conference wrap up : http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=15804