Electronic Arts is doing their press conference today at 1PM Pacific Time. After that will be Ubisoft, and then some other stuff.
We will be streaming the events and talking over them, giving our thoughts as things are revealed. Both the feed and the chat are embedded below. If those don’t work, then you can go here to see it on Twitch: twitch.tv/spoilerwarningshow. We’ll probably start streaming about ten minutes before the event begins.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Hangout: E3 Day Zero Coverage”
Thanks to Josh for editing this episode while I was recovering from injury and trying to catch up with my work.
Download MP3 File
Download Ogg Vorbis File
Hosts: Shamus, Campster, Josh, Mumbles, and Rutskarn.
Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #108: Jurassic World, Town of Salem, Steam Summer Sale”
E3 kicks off tonight with the Bethesda press conference. Josh and I plan to stream it and give live commentary. We expect Bethesda to discuss Fallout 4, Doom 4, and maybe even Dishonored 2.
You can watch the stream here: twitch.tv/spoilerwarningshow or try your luck with the embed below:
(Stream over. Since Twich refuses to archive anything, the embed has been removed, rather than turned into a broken link.)
If it works, we’ll upload the thing to YouTube. If not, we’ll just play another videogame.
EDIT: So that’s it! Thanks for watching everyone.
It didn’t really work out the way we wanted. People had to stream our channel AND the Bethesda channel, and the two were of course out of sync, and it was awkward and not ideal. I have no idea if it will be legal or feasible to have a proper archive version of the exchange. We’ll see.
We tried.
For those that missed it:
Doom 4 (Called simply “DOOM”) looks like a high-speed, high-damage, crowds-of-foes experience like the original, and not a slow-paced peek-a-boo in the dark like Doom3. Also a super-easy map editor. We were surprised and interested.
Dishonored 2: You can play as Emily? Sounds interesting. Too bad they still have Captain Boring as the outsider.
Battlecry: Meh.
Elder Scrolls Online: Huh. I guess they haven’t shut the game down yet. Good for them, I guess.
Fallout 4: Mixed reactions. YES you can be a woman. (Yay!) YES your protagonist is voiced. (Probably not going to be great.) YES it will be a “hunt down the people who killed your family”. (Yawn.) YES the interface is even more atrocious than before. (Sigh.) Some parts look stupid. (World-building.) Some parts look intriguing (crafting, base-building) and some parts are still up in the air. (Game feel.) Release in November. Fingers crossed.
Last time we talked about how the writers completely misinterpreted and subsequently bungled the themes and tone of the Fallout universe. Now let’s get into the brokenness of the Fallout 3 setting. Last time they just made things really hard for themselves, but this is where the plot of the game melted into radioactive nonsense.
Let’s start with my favorite question…
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Blistering Stupidity of Fallout 3, Part 2”
So E3 is this coming week, and Twitch.tv is doing something new. They’re allowing people to re-stream their feed. Which means we can watch a press event and comment on it in real-time. Josh and I (and maybe some other guests, I dunno) will stream the Bethesda press conference, and talk over it like a couple of opinionated jerks.
Honestly, I have no idea if this will work, if it makes sense, or if you will enjoy it. We’re off the edge of the map here.
But maybe it will be fun. I’m sure they’re going to spend a lot of time talking about Fallout 4. You can be there to witness the hardening or melting of our hearts in real time. You can type questions into chat like, “Will you fix your reprehensible karma system?” Josh and I can ask each other those questions, conclude that we have no idea because Bethesda is still talking about plasma rifles or whatever.
The event is at 7pm on Sunday night on the West Cost. Here’s a countdown to to event:
If the Bethesda thing falls through, maybe we’ll just hang out and watch Josh play a videogame. If it works out, we might cover a few other events later in the week.
When the event is live you’ll find it here: twitch.tv/spoilerwarningshow
Link (YouTube) |
So that’s our first week of Arkham Asylum. I’m really glad to be covering something we like.
There’s a good bit of tension between this game and Arkham City, to the point where it’s hard to discuss one without bringing up the other. I think this one makes more sense and it has a more focused story, but I find City to be more fun to play and explore. The combat is smoother, the combat is deeper, the enemies are more varied, but the overall plot is muddled.
In Arkham City, it was like the team was compelled to use every Batman villain in existence, including some of the obscure D-listers. The game has Hugo Strange, Penguin, Two-Face, Catwoman, Joker, Harley Quinn, Mr. Freeze, Bane, Zsasz, Hush, Deadshot, Soloman Grundy, Clayface, Poison Ivy, Mad Hatter, Riddler, and Ra’s al GhulAlso Calendar Man is there, perplexingly the only man in all of Arkham City who is locked in a cell.. That feels like extreme overkill. It feels like they were overcompensating. Which is odd, since the first game was great and they didn’t need to compensate for anything.
Link (YouTube) |
This is the first time on Spoiler Warning that we’ve covered a game that Josh really doesn’t care for. The good news is that we’ll get to cover a game that’s really different from our usual fare, and Mumbles and I have a lot to say about it. On the downside, he’s not interested in the game enough to master it, which means he’s probably going to struggle a bit.
I think I get why he doesn’t care for the Arkham seriesWhat I don’t understand is why *I* like it. It’s pretty far from my usual thing, but I really dig it.. Josh favors games with a lot of planning and strategy, but here it’s more about execution. There’s no way to “break” the game mechanically like in a Bethesda title, and you can’t experiment with different builds like in Dark Souls. There aren’t even that many different approaches for each encounter. If guys are armed then you ambush them, if they aren’t you just wade in and punch them. It’s got some low-level tactics involved when you decide how and when to unleash your combo meter, but those decisions are short-lived and only apply once you start to master the rest of the mechanics. If you don’t care for the base mechanics, then the promise of, “Master this reactionary face-punching gameplay and once in a while you’ll have the opportunity to make a small tactical decision” isn’t exactly a great sales pitch.
Yes, there are choices to make when you level up and choose what ability to unlock, but you’re not really going for “different builds” in the RPG sense. By the end of the game you’ll have unlocked everything.
Since I didn’t explain it in the video, here’s how it works:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Arkham Asylum EP2: Officer Frank BALLS”
The product of fandom run unchecked, this novel began as a short story and grew into something of a cult hit.
The game was a dud, and I'm convinced a big part of that is due to the way the game leaned into its story. Its terrible, cringe-inducing story.
We were so upset by the server problems and real money auction that we overlooked just how terrible everything else is.
How did this niche racing game make a gameworld so massive, and why is that a big deal?
What makes the gameplay of Borderlands so addictive for some, and what does that have to do with slot machines?
The plot of this game isn't just dumb, it's actively hostile to the player. This game hates you and thinks you are stupid.
I'm not surprised a fighting game has an absurd story. I just can't figure out why they bothered with the story at all.
What's wrong with a game being "too videogameish"?
I wanted to take the file format of a late 90s shooter and read it in modern-day Unity. This is the result.
What does it mean when a program crashes, and why does it happen?
T w e n t y S i d e d
