[Episode 38] Sequelitis

[Ravenlock]

We took a bit of a break after the last episode, hoping that we could get Clayton in for this recording, but even with the delay it just didn’t end up working out – sometimes that’s how it goes. He’ll be back for the next one – in the meantime, I think we’ve still got a pretty great discussion for you to listen to, it’ll just sound like crap without our producer.

The main topic for this go-round is sequels and how we feel about them; we each brought lists to the recordings of the games we’ve enjoyed in the last couple of years and the ones we’re looking forward to in the near future, and we let the sequels and the new IP’s fight it out to see who would come out on top. Who won? Well you’ll have to listen to find that out, obviously.

Also discussed are some Left 4 Dead campaign maps that have been brought over to Left 4 Dead 2 – a development I find delightful – further adventures in SMOD with J_Arcane (video hopefully forthcoming), and the state of OnLive, which as it turns out is surprisingly good in some ways, while still being awful in all the ways we already know about.

One correction – at one point early on I toss out the word “GenCon”, but my brain wanted to say and should have said “GamesCom” there – and a quick note of apology: Clayton sent me his sequel vs. new IP list before the recording and I thought I copied it over correctly, but I did not and they were left out. While you are listening, please mentally add these to the list…

Original IP’s: Metro 2033, Plants vs Zombies, World of Goo, Brink (upcoming), Warhammer 40K – Dark Millennium Online (upcoming)
Sequels: Tales of Monkey Island, Warhammer 40K – Dawn of War 2 – Retribution (upcoming)

Without further ado, please enjoy our exploration of… Sequelitis.

Hosted by Eric [Ravenlock]
Participants are J_Arcane, Steve [Dukefrukem] and James [Vigil80]
Produced by Eric [Ravenlock]… God help us.

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[Dukefrukem]

Download link needs to be fixed. <3

[Ravenlock]

Sorry - fixed. Thanks, Steve

[Dukefrukem]

Oh and best part of the cast: 1 hr 11 min 20 sec

[J Arcane]

Sorry on the no video. I attempted Fraps but apparently the free version only records in 30 sec increments.

[Ravenlock]

Originally Posted by Dukefrukem

Oh and best part of the cast: 1 hr 11 min 20 sec

Far Cry 3: The Farthest Cry

[nabokovfan87]

downloaded, listening tomorrow, editing tonight!

EDIT: Listening, I will deal with the "I expect an email" later....

Some titles you overlooked, or perhaps do not enjoy:

Originally Posted by Ravenlock

Original IP’s: Metro 2033, ...Brink (upcoming), ...

METRO 2033! Cryostasis, Codemasters racing titles, HoI 2/3, Evil Genius, Metro 2034, S.W.A.T. 4, F.E.A.R., F.E.A.R. 2, Day of Defeat: Source/Original, SW:TFU/SW:TFU II, ...

I will add some more when I get home later, biggest omissions were Metro and Fear series, some great games there as well as the CM racing games.

EDIT: OH YEAH THAT ONE GAME: Frozen Synapse.

[Doogie2K]

Originally Posted by Ravenlock

Far Cry 3: The Farthest Cry

On the Moon!

[Ravenlock]

I definitely should have listed Frozen Synapse, nabokov - good call, that was an omission on my part.

As for Metro and FEAR, I haven't played them (horror games are really not my bag) - ditto for the Codemasters racing games, though certainly the DiRT series seems popular enough with enough people that it could probably deserve a spot on the list.

The Force Unleashed, I don't know how I feel about. I didn't play it on the PC, but pretty much every review I read of that version of the game (PC/360/PS3) judged it to not be much of a success. Maybe I'll pick it up for $5 eventually in a Steam sale and find out. I played the Wii version, and it was good, but not great. The storytelling was really good, but it wasn't backed up my a very good game. Maybe they'll get it right the 2nd time around.

[Dukefrukem]

Do you remember LucasArts stating why "The Force Unleashed will never come to PC"... and then it was ported to PC... ?

[Ravenlock]

Originally Posted by Dukefrukem

Do you remember LucasArts stating why "The Force Unleashed will never come to PC"... and then it was ported to PC... ?

They probably said it multiple times in different ways, but here's one version:

NZGamer: PS3, 360, Wii, PS2, PSP and DS... But no PC? There's been a bit of backlash regarding this decision, care to clarify it?

Dan: For us, ultimately it was... technologies like Pixelux, DMM (Digital Molecular Matter) and Euphoria are so processor intensive and powerful that the kind of machine you'd need to run them is not the kind of machine most people are going to have. It's such an advanced spec that we feel we really needed to do it justice. If we pulled that stuff out and delivered a sub-par experience...

We also felt that was a wrong approach as people are going to miss out on this. We didn't want to do it [the PC version] half-way. Every platform is getting a great game and they should all be able to stand-alone; we didn't want to deliver a sub-par experience for PC gamers.

Essentially I guess they felt (or claimed they felt) that they were going to run into the situation where the game would run poorly on so many peoples' machines that it wasn't worth the effort to bring it to the PC simultaneously with the other platforms. Technically they don't say there that it will "never" come to PC (though maybe they did somewhere else).

Whether their opinion changed over time as the "average" PC spec got better, or they were just full of it to begin with, is anyone's guess.

[nabokovfan87]

Originally Posted by Ravenlock

I definitely should have listed Frozen Synapse, nabokov - good call, that was an omission on my part.

As for Metro and FEAR, I haven't played them (horror games are really not my bag) - ditto for the Codemasters racing games, though certainly the DiRT series seems popular enough with enough people that it could probably deserve a spot on the list.

The Force Unleashed, I don't know how I feel about. I didn't play it on the PC, but pretty much every review I read of that version of the game (PC/360/PS3) judged it to not be much of a success. Maybe I'll pick it up for $5 eventually in a Steam sale and find out. I played the Wii version, and it was good, but not great. The storytelling was really good, but it wasn't backed up my a very good game. Maybe they'll get it right the 2nd time around.

Spent the whole weekend playing TFU and civ IV. I'm stuck in one part on TFU, pissing me off. Still love the game. As you said, here is to hoping that the sequel is better.

If you enjoy games like STALKER, then be sure to check out cryostasis/metro. I wouldn't consider them horror games, more like murder/mystery type deals where you sort of go through it trying to find out exactly what the hell is going on. F.E.A.R. is definitely going to make you shit yourself, especially if you play them back to back. Screw that school.

[Ravenlock]

I'm not actually sure whether I enjoy STALKER, to be honest. I love the general tone and atmosphere, and I really enjoy the way it handles character interaction, but fuck me if I want to go down into those dark bunkers where shit is going to leap out at me when I can't see it.

Maybe I should rephrase my position as "games where horrible shit jumps out at me from the dark are not really my bag." Took me forever to get through the Half-Life 2 games for the same reason. Goddamn black headcrabs and leaper zombies.

[Dukefrukem]

Originally Posted by Ravenlock

I'm not actually sure whether I enjoy STALKER, to be honest.

[Ravenlock]

Well read the rest of the post, man. I love everything about it except how it wants to scare the crap out of me. That's been enough to deter me from actually playing it much, regardless of how much I might like it otherwise.

There's a high likelihood that I will purchase Darksiders and play through everything up until the spider temple and then just stop. Fuck spiders. I'm still looking forward to buying and playing that game, but I know I might not get to the end.

Some things are just that way.

[Dukefrukem]

Originally Posted by Ravenlock

Well read the rest of the post, man. I love everything about it except how it wants to scare the crap out of me. That's been enough to deter me from actually playing it much, regardless of how much I might like it otherwise.

There's a high likelihood that I will purchase Darksiders and play through everything up until the spider temple and then just stop. Fuck spiders. I'm still looking forward to buying and playing that game, but I know I might not get to the end.

Some things are just that way.

I did. It didn't take much time playing STALKER to convince me that I was enjoying STALKER... but being scared is something I enjoy. It's not for everyone. Love the tension.

[Vigil80]

Whenever I start to get scared, I get my night vision and my auto-shotgun. Better than a blanky.

Seriously, anything that's going to jump at you while you're STALKing can only take so many shotgun blasts to its twisted, mutated face. The NPCs even tell you that.

[Doogie2K]

So Ravenlock, how does your opinion on shit jumping out at you change between games and a TV show or movie? Just curious, because I know you enjoyed the most recent season of Doctor Who, and there's some definite jump-scare type of stuff going on in that one (Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone springing to mind as the worst/best of the lot for that, though those are also more generally high-tension stories).

[Ravenlock]

Strangely, my mind separates those out pretty well. I'm not a huge fan of the "boo! made you jump" style of horror movie, but I can deal with it and appreciate it when it's well done. And certainly high-tension movies that aren't horror are something I can really enjoy a lot.

But when it's a game - a first-person game most especially - my brain suddenly has a much bigger problem engaging with something I know is designed to invoke fear. I don't enjoy the sensation of being scared enough to drag a character I'm controlling into it willingly very often. You won't find any Silent Hill or Fatal Frame games on my shelf. Resident Evil 4, yes, but the series basically became an action game at that point (and I still haven't beaten it anyhow). Probably the "scariest" game I've beaten lately was Bioshock, and that's more disturbing than outright scary (though certainly the houdini and wall-crawling splicers can give you a good startle).

Oddly enough, one series that doesn't bother me at all is Left 4 Dead. I mean, the Hard Rain campaign can get pretty hairy when the storm is going and there's witches around and you can't see or hear anything but the wind and rain, but it being a co-op experiences serves to make the tension much more bearable for me. I can't say whether that would work with other games, but I suspect it might.

[Ravenlock]

Is there any more surprisingly addictive gameplay device than the matching of gems? To look at the last decade of casual game development, you certainly might not think so. Bejeweled now exists on almost every device with a screen capable of displaying it, with versions and variants almost too numerous to count, and as sold a mild boggling 50 million units since the franchise began in 2001.

Eager to share in this success, other developers have naturally tried to adapt this extremely popular mechanic to fit other games and genres. One of my favorite titles last year, Henry Hatsworth and the Puzzling Adventure, mixed match-3 gameplay with a side-scrolling action game to make a great game that felt like more than the sum of its parts. Probably the best well-known peanut butter & chocolate mixup involving match-3 puzzles so far, though, has been Puzzle Quest. Combining everybody’s favorite puzzle mechanic with the gamer’s natural drive for loot and levels, Puzzle Quest was a surprise hit when it came out in 2007, and it was quickly (perhaps too quickly) followed up by numerous follow-ups with Puzzle Quest: Galactrix, Puzzle Kingdoms, some Neopets thing….

In any event, the real deal is back now with a full-fledged sequel in Puzzle Quest II, and we thought we’d talk about it a bit. What have they changed in the core gameplay? There are some new gametypes now – how well do they work? Is the multiplayer any good? Is the AI still a cheating son of a bitch? Does the Puzzle Quest formula really merit a sequel? Find out what we thought in our latest IndieCast.

EDIT: Oh! Here's the link to the League of Legends FWEP thread I mention in the intro. It's kinda defunct now, but if you're interested, go get it going again.

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