The Ninety Three Meg Episode

[fishbang]

IGC's over-stuffed and long-winded E3 episode is now available for download (http://ingamechat.net/audio/IGC20090609.mp3).

We abandoned last week’s recording session in favor of sending Scott to the source of all our favorite noise, and so that the rest of us could be free to ingest all the televised, tweeted, forum-certified hype of the extravaganza without taking pause to discuss it. Having made that sacrifice, we take extra pause this week to make up for lost time. Here’s hoping you have four hours of your life you weren’t planning to use for anything else.

The depth of the information stream coming out of E3 makes it hard to discuss every meaningful aspect of the expo in one session, and just as unlikely that we can do more than hint at the podcast’s content in this summary. We’ve elected to discuss our recollections of the coverage as much as possible instead of relaying hard data or consulting accurate notes. We’re sure to have missed several somethings of importance, but the facts are clearly better gathered elsewhere, and this lets us preserve what may well have been our best reactions had we been together last week and heard the latest updates in unison.

Just off to the side of E3 is the important matter of what we’ve been playing while the industry tells us what we wish we were playing. For us - all but Scott, unfortunately - that time has been devoted to our fascination with inFamous. We intro the show with a half hour of cryptic double talk about the game, and end it with a second half hour on the other side of a spoiler threshold we really hope you can cross.

[Doogie2K]

Jesus H. Christ on a hot dog bun, you weren't kidding about that four hours. I guess I'm doing some cleaning this weekend.

[Vigil80]

It's going to take a looong time to get through this one if I stick to my usual model of saving podcasts for things like driving, grocery shopping, chores...
Four hours of IGC E3 commentary, huh?

MSwrP86ja98

[Gerbs]

Just finished the episode up to the inFAMOUS spoiler section that I'm not going to listen to, great episode as usual (end handjob portion of comment.) Psykoboy2 when I saw your twat from E3 (har har) about losing the Borderlands recording I figured I would at least hear your impressions on IGC. However not only is there no footage to be found anywhere on the net, few people are talking about it. I heard it mentioned on ListenUP but the the only people to go into in any detail on it were the Giant Bomb guys who gushed affection for the title.

I did read your writeup here at CoG which teased a Randy Pitchford interview so all will be forgiven when that interview comes to light. I'm personally hoping for another Dyack-quality interview.

After writing all the above I did find an interview with Randy on Gametrailers (http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-09-borderlands/51347) from E3 with some footage. I think what I wrote is still 80% accurate so I'm leaving it unchanged. Randy is pretty much the most excited dude for his game ever, judging by the GT interview.

[kyrieee]

AvP: the aliens are, as expected :mad:, very slow
Max Payne 3: well... this picture (http://smages.com/i/00/27/00273ad87d24f6ae71847b4787290126.jpg) says it all

Also, I think the Mirror's Edge reveal trailer is pretty amazing because it just showed like 45 seconds of gameplay and still managed to blow everyone away.
I also love this (http://www.gametrailers.com/video/ubidays-07-assassins-creed/19861) Assassin's Creed trailer

[Chris_D]

You guys better f***ing apoligise for the length of the... ...
..
NOT!

I'm about 90 minutes in, it's going to take some time to fully digest this tasty morsel.

[Ravenlock]

Grumbling my way though the "Nintendo got fucked" section of the episode. ;) I don't really think Natal's going to have the impact (against Nintendo) that James is positing here. As far as I know, the tech doesn't have a timeline yet - is it out late this year? Early '10? Late '10? - and I find it highly dubious that they'll start bundling it with low-cost X360's in order to beat the Wii on price. They've been referring to it as "having the magnitude of launching a new console", so I expect if we want Natal we're shelling out another $50-$99 bucks for it.

On the other hand, though, if they don't bundle it with things, they'll have a hell of a time getting the install base for it big enough for it to make a huge impact. I mean, it looks to me like most games for Natal are going to have to be made for Natal specifically, not be ports of other games, otherwise you end up with an even worse version of the Wii ports where waggle "is the button" - something like playing Burnout by waving your hands. [Which, I'm sorry, was to me the dumbest thing ever... you're showing me how getting the controller out of the way breaks the entry barrier and gets me "into the game", and you do it by taking away the physical interface for an activity which, in real life, is entirely about my interaction with and feedback from a physical interface? Fail.] It's like a big brother of the problem Nintendo is facing with the WiiMotionPlus, which is why they're letting 3rd party devs bundle it with their games in hopes of getting it out there as quickly and completely as possible.

And, by the way, while I haven't tried it I wouldn't be too quick to shit on the improvement WiiMotionPlus could make to the Wii's controls. The Gamers With Jobs guys have been non-stop lovefesting for a couple days now about how incredibly awesome Tiger Woods apparently is with WMP, and I'm excited to give it a spin. Of course, I'm still pulling for Red Steel 2 to be good, so backing long shots is a practice I'm familiar with. ;)

Off to listen to the next half hour in the car.

EDIT: James, hearing you say that Sony "finally got the 1-to-1 motion that the Wii doesn't have" kind of makes me wonder if you've seen the tech demo videos for WiiMotionPlus. I mean, I watched the Sony demo, and while I liked it, I actually thought it looked jerkier and less precise than the stuff I saw WMP do in tech demo videos a year ago. I mean, take a look at the stuff that starts at 1:00 into this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VixIFLe4LmY) from last July. It's obviously not as pretty, but from a motion tracking standpoint that's damn near perfect. Whether it'll show up in games that way or not, obviously, is totally up in the air, but from a hardware standpoint what Sony showed didn't look that impressive to me in light of how long ago I was seeing this stuff.

I did like Sony's "take your image and superimpose virtual objects onto it" idea with the camera, but I wonder if they can get it responsive enough for actual gameplay. That "hit the ball with the stopsign" bit didn't look quite right.

[Doogie2K]

Got through the new episode on the weekend, and...wow. Time flew there. I actually found the discussion of the story of inFAMOUS and the depth to be found therein quite surprising, coming at it with the idea that it was essentially, "Crackdown with Force lightning." Given that narrative depth was not one of Crackdown's finer points, it's definitely a pleasant surprise to see that style of game with something more to it, since there wasn't really anything wrong with blowing shit up for its own sake to begin with. (No, I haven't played inFAMOUS myself, and no, I don't plan to in the forseeable future, since sadly, I lack PS3.)

In other news, I listened to the Portal episode (EAR #78) from mid-October '07, which I was linked to for some reason a while back, and it's very interesting listening to the reactions not only to Portal, but to then-current events like EA's acquisition of BioWare and Pandemic (there was a lot of doom and gloom at the time, which turned out to be largely for naught, since EA had started getting their shit together by that point), and the related pondering of the future of Irrational and whether they'd ever put out anything really interesting again, being under 2K's thumb (BioShock says hi). I always enjoy looking back on the contemporary thoughts on the news of the day, and seeing where people got it right, and where future events diverged from what we thought we knew at the time. There were even a couple of timely "the more things change..." moments, in Gabe Newell dissing the PS3 and the hosts, particularly James, bitching about Jack Black being in Brütal Legend. It's also weird hearing the old live format after all these months of all-aftershow, uninterrupted, uncensored goodness (also, Dennis). In any case, it kept me entertained on a dull Tuesday at work, so that was good.

Edit: I almost forgot - there was a time before Rock Band came out? It's so hard to believe now; it's amazing how quickly it's just become an engrained part of our gaming consciousness, given that it's only been out about a year and a half.

[Ravenlock]

I also have no PS3 and probably no prospects of getting one, and greatly enjoyed the inFAMOUS talk. Sounds like another game that makes me sad not to have a PS3. (The other ones being Uncharted and its upcoming sequel, and to a lesser extent Little Big Planet.)

[lucklesswonder]

For Scott:

http://instantrimshot.com/

[Shrinn]

EDIT: James, hearing you say that Sony "finally got the 1-to-1 motion that the Wii doesn't have" kind of makes me wonder if you've seen the tech demo videos for WiiMotionPlus. I mean, I watched the Sony demo, and while I liked it, I actually thought it looked jerkier and less precise than the stuff I saw WMP do in tech demo videos a year ago. I mean, take a look at the stuff that starts at 1:00 into this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VixIFLe4LmY) from last July. It's obviously not as pretty, but from a motion tracking standpoint that's damn near perfect. Whether it'll show up in games that way or not, obviously, is totally up in the air, but from a hardware standpoint what Sony showed didn't look that impressive to me in light of how long ago I was seeing this stuff.


But there's the biggest problem. Nintendo says "Hey, look, 1:1 motion. Watch us sling arrows." Bows and arrows have already been done by the wiimote. Sony gives us writing and sword swinging and neat stuff like that that showed a greater distance from what the wiimote is already capable of.

As far as Natal goes. I think it's neat that they can do that stuff, but I don't think that's how I'd like to play games. Similar to how I wouldn't enjoy rock band if I was drumming on air instead of plastic.

Loved the show guys. Especially interesting was the inFAMOUS talk, since I won't be playing it anytime soon.