T w e n t y S i d e d
We’re actually getting to some of the more fun stuff now, and the next few episodes should contain 33% less bile! Also, I’d like to remind viewers that you shouldn’t try to extrapolate the severity of a complaint by how long we spend talking about it. Sometimes we’ll barely mention something major. Sometimes we’ll blow seven minutes talking about something really trivial. We don’t plan these conversations out ahead of time. We just go where they take us.
I think we’re starting to feel a little Fallout 3 fatigue. Not dire by any means, but it’s clear this series isn’t going to remain entertaining through the rest of the plot and all four remaining DLC packs. I know I don’t want to spend the next three months dumping on this game [even more].
We’ve been kicking around ideas of what to do next. It’s got to be a PC title, and it has to be something we’ve all played. I think we’ve taken Dragon Age off the table, simply due to the length and combat density. Dragon Age would probably take over 30 hours to beat, even without sidequests. That’s almost eight months of episodes, and most of them would be nothing but fighting Darkspawn. That’s fun when you’re playing, but less so when you’re watching, and much less so when you’re trying to fill the time with commentary. I think we’d basically devolve into a generalized gaming podcast with an unrelated video feed in the background.
Mass Effect 2 is obviously on our list, but I’m against doing it next. I’d like to do one more game between Fallout 3 and Mass Effect 2.
I also thought it might be interesting to do something old and beloved. We had to dismiss Deus Ex because not all of us have played it, but I’d like to do a game like that at some point. I love that game, but I’m sure I’d nitpick it just as much as poor Fallout 3 here. It’s just in my nature.
There are actually a lot of requirements for picking a good game for this series:
1) Needs to be PC, due to our setup.
2) Needs to run reasonably well. So crappy unstable ports likes GTA IV and Saint’s Row 2 are right out.
3) Needs to have a good story / conversation density. Anything that regularly gives you a half hour of unbroken combat is right out. (Special exceptions could be made for games with lots of varied exploration or puzzles.)
4) Needs to be fully voiced or come in a LARGE PRINT EDITION, because small text and video compression go together like swimming and cinderblocks.
5) Needs to be lit well enough to survive video compression without turning to mush. Which means dark corridor shooters like Quake 4 and Doom 3 are out. I’d have a ton to say about those games tech-wise, but it would probably be better to save that for some sort of standalone video.
6) Needs to be something we’ve all played.
Ideas we’ve kicked around:
* Half-Life 2
* Oblivion
* Jade Empire
* Deus Ex
* KOTOR
* Dragon Age
* Mass Effect 2
* Alpha Protocol
* BioShock (And you think I’m hard on Fallout? System Shock is my sacred cow. BioShock is to me what Fallout 3 is to Krellen. People say we’ve been petty and unfair to FO3? I promise I would be relentlessly petty, unfair, and unreasonable with this game.)
* Assassin’s Creed
Go ahead and nominate games if you like. It will have no bearing whatsoever on our decision, but it’s a fun way to fill the time.
EDIT: Added a couple of games that we’d discussed.
