The Sandy Wii Episode

[fishbang]

You’re right - this episode here (http://ingamechat.net/audio/IGC20090623.mp3) should have been available last week.

Clearly you should have gotten another episode long before now, but the show’s infrastructure suffered a debilitating series of body-blows over the course of the last two weeks, and its personnel haven’t fared much better. We’re still intact, and everything is more-or-less as it should be for our operation, but the demands of meatspace have put us in a bind more than once lately, and on-time delivery is always the first thing to go.

With those reasons out of the way, we’re going to deliver this episode to you without the usual synopsis, and without even its usual bookends of hand-picked music. The content will have to stand on its own, we’re sad to say - squeaky chairs and all.

[TrackZero]

I hope there's some Quest for Glory talk in this episode. ;)

[Psykoboy2]

Keep hoping...although we do address your concerns (sort of) in the episode following this one.

[Doogie2K]

Just so we're clear, since I'm away from iTunes ATM...was this recorded last Tuesday (the 23rd) or this Tuesday (the 30th)?

[Psykoboy2]

This episode was recorded on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009.

[Hawggy]

I hope there's some Quest for Glory talk in this episode. ;)

I thought they called that game Hero's Quest.

[kyrieee]

James reminds me of my old English teacher. He used to talk and then randomly replace words (that he wanted us to fill in) with 'teapot'. James does that except with 'thing' xD

[TrackZero]

I thought they called that game Hero's Quest.

Indeed it is. I even have a boxed copy with both the 5 1/4 and 3 1/2" disks for it, manuals and whatnot. I just referred to it as QfG as most people wouldn't know what I was talking about.

[kyrieee]

Maybe I'm bad at English but I think it sounds really funny to 'announce' you're having a baby, unless you're famous. Maybe that's what hours of game talk does to you :)

[Phil]

Really good show. Sorry for being so harsh on the music problem from the last one. Lots of things I got out of this episode:

Seems like James needs a good place for sitting down in front of his console. Get one of those famous SUMOs or a gaming chair (I know I know, they kind of suck when it comes to internal speakers and all this useless stuff but they're really awesome to sit in) or one of those.... things -> http://www.myluemmel.de/de/index.asp . It's about 'dynamic sitting'. Yeah. Right.

I kind of remembered how crappy and unappealing the majority of Sega Master System boxes looked. That actually was the reason I've never bought one. To be fair, it was the 80's but come on! White box with gray lines and the title in blue...Times New Roman or something? Not good. Nintendo -> way better.

How dare you make fun of Jole Schumacher! He did Falling Down! And Phone Booth! And 8MM! And Batman & Rob.... wait. Damn!

I kind of want Jumpgate Evolution to catch the vibe from the first one but at the same time copying the complexity of Eve Online, gameplay and culture wise. But I think it will never live up to my expectatios. I will try it out for sure, though.

Oh yes, Fight Night Round 4. I love it, everyone should play it once. Love or hate, I don't care. You just need to see how crisp and spot on everything seems coded.

[TrackZero]

Actually, this ep was great. Got me to think of a great question to e-mail for the next show.

[Psykoboy2]

Well, keep in mind we already have a show in the can after this one so we'll be getting to your question on the show we record on 7/7.

[Trak4Game]

Scott & Crew:

Thanks for the mention on the show!

[Doogie2K]

It's interesting that you mention the various survival-type modes that have begun to proliferate -- Horde in Gears, Nazi Zombie in CoD, Survival in L4D -- but in an unusual move, forget to tie the gamestyle back to its PC roots. The earliest I know of it (and doubtless someone on the IM forums can provide evidence of such a thing existing back in 1996 as a Quake mod or some shit) is the Invasion mode in Unreal Tournament 2003. You're not the only ones, though: apparently every member of the gaming press ever completely forgot that this thing had existed in an Epic game at least six years earlier, because while everyone was fawning over how new and original it was in the weeks before the game came out, I was screaming at my iPod that Epic were simply carrying forward an idea that they'd been using for years, and that there was nothing truly new to see here, just refinements on the existing formula. (Go run-on sentence!)

Regarding Activision and Bobby Kotick's pissing contest with Sony, I think it was here on CoG that someone suggested that maybe they were trying to negotiate lower fees for DLC hosting on the PSN. Considering both CoD and Guitar Hero are way into the DLC thing, PSN hosting is probably costing them a pretty penny, and that's something they might want to trim back.

Finally, the retro game I keep going back to? Wolfenstein 3D, as anyone who's read a whatcha-been-playin' thread here will know. Back before XP and Vista broke them, though, I liked periodically going back to TIE Fighter and X-Wing Alliance as well.

[Zecon]

Great show guys.
I wouldn't mind volition doing a burnout game, they handled the driving in saint's row 1 and 2 very well.

[Ravenlock]

Finally getting around to listening to this today, now that you've already got another episode in the bag and will presumably be recording another one tonight. Even at once a week, you guys are apparently too prolific for me. ;)

In any event, happy to hear that James is getting his hands on a Wii to play with, even if the circumstances allowing it to happen pretty much totally suck.

Unfortunately, I suspect that once you do get to try it, The Conduit will disappoint you. I wrote some extended impressions over here (http://www.colonyofgamers.com/cogforums/showthread.php?p=302219#post302219) if you're interested, but the long and short of it is that having played through most of the single-player campaign and several hours of the multiplayer, there is nothing remarkable about this game except that it is a mostly competent shooter on the Wii - which anyone who played Call of Duty: World at War on the Wii already knows is quite possible. In fact, generally speaking I think World at War is a better game in almost every way.

The controls ARE very good - that hype is lived up to. Once you configure them to your liking, I think it's far better than dual-analog and almost approaches a mouse/keyboard experience. * Since I've always thought that was one of the primary appeals of the IR pointer, I'm happy to see that. But so much else about the game - the on-again, off-again AI, the rote story delivered through terrible voiceover, the strictly-corridor level design - just gets grating over time. Forget pre-COD4, this is a pre-Half Life FPS.

I'll finish up the single-player and keep it for the multiplayer (which IS fun, if unremarkable, and feels very Goldeneye-ish), but it's solidly in the "nothing special" camp. Here's hoping Red Steel 2 mixes things up with the swordplay to create a more engaging FPS experience later this year.

All that said, Tiger Woods '10 with WiiMotionPlus IS something special, and you should toss down the $20 to check that out, especially since Wii Sports Resort and Red Steel 2 are also in the pipe and will use the peripheral.

* (As an aside, it was really weird to hear the guys from Giantbomb talking on their podcast about how the game "moves so slow". You can change the turn speed, run speed, all that stuff in the options, and make it as twitchy as you want it to be. Did they miss that somehow?)

[bulletfood]

I'm just posting this to up my post count.

[bulletfood]

This one too.

[bulletfood]

And this one.