So Valve was running a deal through Steam a little while ago offering the original Half-Life for only 98 cents (it being the ten-year anniversary of the game’s release in 1998; I’m aware that Ocarina of Time is also ten years old, but that’s a subject for another discussion). I had never played the game, and I can’t turn something down when it’s 98 cents… no matter what it is.

I started playing the game this evening. Got around an hour or so in (according to Steam, I played for 1.2 hours). I’m absolutely terrible at these games, so I’m playing on “Easy” and I died a lot. Without spoiling too much, here are a couple things I noticed / wanted to mention:

- I hate platforming in first-person. I cannot for the life of me ever fully determine where exactly my character is in relation their surroundings and get any sort of depth-perception. Do you get used to this with time?

- I hate falling in first-person. See the above description for why I might be having this problem.

- I’ve noted this before, but I’m definitely a mouse-and-keyboard elitist, despite barely playing these types of games.

That’s about it, so far. It runs absolutely beautifully in 1680×1050 on this computer (as it should, being ten years old). Kinda nice not having any sorts of stuttering problems! Not much to say beyond those few things… just kinda wanted to write about it…

Damn right we have episode five for you!

It came a little later in the month than anticipated, but hey… everyone’s got busy lives going on right now. Thankfully we were all able to get together and record a great episode, including our buddy Bryce, who’s back once again to shoot the shiz with us.

This time around we had a nice long discussion about all the games we’ve been playing (especially Andrew, who seems to have become a different man). Phones, handhelds, last-gen, current-gen, PCs… we have it all covered. We moved into our discussion about crossover games, and specifically why and how they are created. Is it a simple money-making machine? Is it beneficial to all parties involved? Do they get better over time? We finished up with a very fitting Top 10 list: the Top 10 Special Guest Appearances. Not specifically from crossover games, these characters took a special role in the games they did a guest stint in, and they are all memorable in their own ways.

We’ll hit you back again soon with some regular blog entries. In the meantime, enjoy the show, and let us know what you think about everything! We have big plans for the site (including blog entries, podcasts, design, community, etc.), and we’re thrilled to have you along for the ride.

 

 Conversation 005: Crossover Games and Our Top 10 Special Guest Appearances [156:47m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I am constantly hearing more and more reports on gaming podcasts from journalists and general enthusiasts alike saying that their Wii is doing nothing more than collecting dust. Meri and I both have moments of guilt, ourselves, where we verbally note that the Wii is basically just sitting there for the sake of sitting there and looking pretty.

Why aren’t we using it more? Is it the particular games we own that simply bore us? Is it Nintendo, themselves, driving us away with things like Wii Music? Why aren’t I going back to all those Virtual Console games I purchased?

Let me toss a couple ideas out there.

Something I’ve heard pop up a few times (and more recently Rym & Scott did a GeekNights episode about it) is that instead of playing new games, we just keep going back and playing the same old games from the past over and over again.

I am totally guilty of this (but is “guilty” the right word to use if I don’t feel bad about it…?). Despite owning tons of games (some even unopened) that I’ve never played, I will go back and play through the original Legend of Zelda on NES at least once every two years. There’s also never a bad time to decide to sit down and beat Super Mario Bros. 3 or even the original Kirby’s Dream Land, which for me is almost like a brainless activity at this point. Then there are all the times I’ll hook up the Saturn and play a few races in Sega Rally Championship or Daytona USA. Meri has played through Ocarina of Time at least once in recent memory, and while she’s just now finishing up the first Phoenix Wright, you’ll see Super Mario World sticking out of Slot 2 down there. Then there are “new old games” like (the obligatory mention of) Rock Band. It’s basically an expansion upon Guitar Hero (which is itself an expansion on previous rhythm games), which means we’re really playing the same game that we’ve been playing for years and years and years, only with new content every week. That brings in the whole idea of a single game being its own platform, but I won’t bother getting into that, again.

So I suppose the real question is: am I not playing the Wii, or am I just playing old games and thus inadvertently not playing the Wii?

For people my age and older (anyone post-college, I suppose), another big factor is disposable income and the sheer amount of games. Unlike when I was younger and onwards into college and could only afford one or two games at a time, now I can pretty much own anything I want whenever I want it (for example, buying Dragon Quest IV because it was $20 this week, despite the fact that I have a row of other RPGs to get through first). There’s no need to justify a purchase for myself by forcing an entire play-through and trying to convince myself that a game is pure art when it’s really nothing more than just another game. If I get bored with it or see something shiny elsewhere, I move on.

Pulling the Wii back in, let’s look at Super Smash Bros. Brawl versus the previous Super Smash Bros. Melee on the Gamecube. In the previous game, I not only unlocked every character, but made it a point to beat the game with every character in both single-player modes to get each version of their trophy. I would spend those coins to try and get more trophies, spin them around to look at them, read up on their history, etc. I’m not sure how much time I put into that game, but it was certainly a lot…! However, with Brawl, I only went so far as to unlock all of the characters and stages. I never actually finished Subspace Emissary (I think I got about 75% of the way through), and I didn’t put any time into creating any of my own stages (or collecting all of the parts to be able to do so). That’s not to say I never play the game ever again, though. There are instances where I’m craving some Nintendo fanboy catering, or have to laugh at how incomprehensibly bad the online-play integration was, and I pop it in for a few minutes. A get-together of friends is another great time, since I do have four Wavebirds… The point, though, is that despite dropping the $50 on the game, I simply don’t feel the burning desire or any real compelling reason to attach myself to that game solely as I would were I twenty years younger.

How about straight-up dropping games? Personally, I’ve dropped just as many games on the Wii (sorry, Super Mario Galaxy) as I have on other systems, so there’s nothing inherently there to jump on and pick apart.

So am I really just playing the same games over and over? Let’s take a look at what I’m playing just in the last week and see if there are any trends:

- Rock Band 2 (360): Mentioned above; basically just Guitar Hero evolved, so yes, the same game over and over.

- DragonBall Z: Infinite World (PS2): A mash-up of Budokai 3 (which I played through twice; US PS2 & JP PS2), Shin Budokai (which I own and dropped) and Burst Limit (which I own and dropped), so yes, the same game over and over.

- DragonBall: Origins (DS): Whoa, a totally new game! Fancy that. I’m quasi playing it “for work“, though.

- Final Fantasy VI (GBA): New to me! Classification is up in the air on this one, though, since it’s an evolution of games I’ve played before (III & IV) and a predecessor to ones I’ve also played (VII, VIII, X).

How about a game I only recently kicked the bad habit of? That’s right, Pokemon. Well, FireRed was an enhanced remake of a game I had played when it first came out (in my case, Yellow) and Pearl is really just another evolution of the same game (if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it).

So what does that say about me? Am I just playing it safe? I will admit to starting to unfortunately feel that apprehension and insecurity when I start playing an entirely new game, something I never expected myself to feel with regards to any technology.

How does that relate to the Wii? Shouldn’t I be right at home since it’s basically a Gamecube and all my old games are there on Virtual Console? I’m totally ready to go with Shining Force II (again, another old game I’ve played through multiple times) but I really need to finish some of these other games I’m playing, first! Our Wii actually gets used like clockwork every time Andrew and Jeff are over, if only to mess around on the Everybody Votes Channel. I know, I know… it sounds ridiculous… but it’s an event in our household. We even have our own lingo to go along with it, talking about who’s the biggest “conformist” when their choices are closest to the general population, and so on and so forth.

I also wonder if it seems like I use the 360 more than I actually do because I use it as a media center for displaying programming up on the television. Combine that with the Rock Band constant state-of-being, and I suppose it would look like I’m attached to it.

What about you all? Does your Wii collect dust, or is it at the center of your gaming experience? Does any of that other nonsense I’ve spouted relate to you, or is it just the gibberish of yet another ranting lunatic on the intarwebz?

My friends list on the 360 is looking pretty funny, lately. It basically consists of 10% random games, and then 90% Gears of War 2.

While I appreciate all the co-op / multiplayer gaming requests I’m getting from everyone to play GoW2, unfortunately (for you) I don’t have the game and don’t have much of an interest in playing it :P.

You’ll be getting a pretty hefty update on what we all have been playing on episode five of the podcast. Right now we’re scheduled to record not this coming weekend, but the weekend after… so look for the show very soon after that. I know Andrew’s been playing more games than I can even fathom, so he’s sure to have a lot to say. You’ll probably get some crossover discussion outta me due to a couple new releases, but… well, just wait to hear about it on the show!

Harmonix has done a great job of promoting Rock Band as a “platform”. DLC is backwards/forwards compatible (meaning it works in either the first or second game), and the same goes for the fake plastic instruments. You can even export the majority of songs from the first game right into the second game, something Bemani fans have wanted forever (helping contribute to projects like Stepmania and pirated collections of hundreds of step and song files from all DDR games).

That is exactly why the game has become such an investment. With everything working together so beautifully, it makes complete sense to say “Money be damned!” and go ahead and spend lots of virtual space money on the game, racking up a collection of dozens upon dozens of downloaded songs to play.

I actually briefly brought up this idea with my wife (hehe! fun to say!) earlier. She thought that maybe the term “investment” wasn’t really accurate, since you’re not, for example, making any money off of it. I think it really is accurate, though. For me, that return on investment is the fun that you get from having all of it in such a convenient mass (my time and effort is worth money, I say). There’s nothing more enjoyable in gaming to me, right now, than having a bunch of people over and having the awesome ability to scroll and scroll and scroll to whatever type of song any particular person wants to play.

Anyway, those decisions just got a lot more interesting with the release of Guitar Hero: World Tour. Suddenly you have two completely separate “platforms” that both work in the exact same way and perform the exact same function(s).

What is a music fan to do?

Unfortunately for Activision, I’ve already made a decision on what my platform is going to be… and it’s Rock Band. Why is this? Quite frankly, it’s because Rock Band was there first.

I am currently up to 247 songs available in the game, including 108 downloaded songs (which itself includes those 20 free downloads with a new purchase of Rock Band 2). With such a huge amount of entertainment at my disposal in that game, it makes little sense for me to start doing the same thing in a separate game that (like I just mentioned) works and performs in the exact same way.

This feeling is further heightened when you consider just how much overlap already exists between the games. In terms of straight-up on-disc songs, there are 13 overlaps between the two latest games. When you count DLC as-of this writing, you’re up to 19 songs. There has been very little pure exclusivity announced, so there is always a possibility that a song that shows up as DLC in one game could show up weeks (or even months) later in the other. Again, Blink-182’s “Dammit” was an on-disc song for Guitar Hero: World Tour, and even though Travis Barker was involved with that game, it didn’t stop the song from appearing as DLC for Rock Band just one week before their competitor’s launch. Billy Corgan has the exact same role in Guitar Hero: World Tour, yet “Today” appears on-disc in both games, and Rock Band already has “Siva” and “Zero” as DLC (in addition to “Cherub Rock” being on-disc in the first game). Guitar Hero: World Tour launched with Hayley Williams and “Misery Business“, but Rock Band was there first with Paramore’s “crushcrushcrush” and “That’s What You Get“.

This is why I am so frightened to purchase any DLC within Guitar Hero: World Tour. Why purchase it for that game if there’s even the slightest possibility that I can purchase it for Rock Band and add it to the larger, pre-existing collection of music?

If Activision wants to compete on this level with this information and these situations in mind, they’re going to have to do something that is horribly anti-consumer-friendly… bring in the exclusivity.

There are already confirmations of this with Metallica, and they’ve even noted that Rock Band getting an Aerosmith song took place before they grabbed the band for Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. The consumer (read: ME) would need this knowledge that there is absolutely no chance of them getting a band’s music in the other game (in this case Rock Band) before they would consider purchasing it for the new game (in this case Guitar Hero).

So what is the point to this tirade? Is it just more pro-Rock Band shenanigans from me? Possibly; I certainly wouldn’t deny that. If nothing else, it proves that Harmonix was the one with the foresight to plan for all of this and get there first.

Finally, as a brief follow-up to yesterday’s “Subtle Harmonix Genius” post (and pretty much falling in line with the above conclusion), they’ve announced that next week’s Rock Band DLC is going to be the entire Foo Fighters album The Colour and the Shape. It’s not the No Doubt pack I was expecting, but it *is* a giant pack of music from yet another artist that is also featured in Guitar Hero: World Tour, and that’s more or less exactly what I expected them to do (I just predicted the wrong artist :P).

EDIT: In thinking about this a little more this morning, I realized that I’ve basically described a typical video game console war… except the games, themselves, are acting as the consoles. Sure, we’ve always had this type of competition (especially in things like yearly sports games; EA vs 2K for example), but never has it reached the $200-to-entry threshold level between competitors (for the full experience, anyway).

Hey, all. I’m back! I have a lot to talk about on whatever (and whenever) the next podcast is about gaming on a honeymoon, but until then, it’s business as usual for me.

(That basically means that I talk about Rock Band in some capacity, if you’re new here.)

So I picked up Guitar Hero: World Tour (game-only) Monday evening after getting back into the states. I was considering getting the guitar bundle as the new guitar looks pretty sweet, but since my Guitar Hero III one is still kicking pretty well and the whammy bar is the only broken component of my original Rock Band one, I’ll just hold out until something major actually snaps somewhere before I upgrade. I’m not going to talk about the new Guitar Hero just yet, though. I do have a whole lot of comparisons and such I’d like to make, but it’s not time for that yet.

I want to talk about some, as I’ve titled it, “Subtle Harmonix Genius”. Harmonix, as you may well know, is the developer of Rock Band (and originally Guitar Hero, before the four or so involved companies all got split apart, sold, acquired, formed new alliances, etc.). I’ve been keeping an eye on what Harmonix has been doing with Rock Band (more specifically Rock Band 2, though it’s all one big platform, as they’ve accurately described it) as the release of Guitar Hero: World Tour neared. It’s all extremely intriguing, and quite sly if you dig really deep into it. Let me give you a few examples.

Foo Fighters’ “Everlong” is an on-disc song in both Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero: World Tour. Months ahead of time (back in July), Harmonix began heavily promoting their game with “Everlong“.

System of a Down’s “B.Y.O.B.” is an on-disc song in Guitar Hero: World Tour. On August 5th, Harmonix made “B.Y.O.B.” available as DLC for Rock Band.

Nirvana’s acoustic (MTV Unplugged) version of “About A Girl” is an on-disc song in Guitar Hero: World Tour. Two weeks prior to the game’s release (on October 21st), Harmonix released a seven-track pack of Nirvana songs as DLC for Rock Band.

Travis Barker, current drummer for Blink-182, was involved with Guitar Hero: World Tour in that he was motion-captured and appears as a playable character/avatar. Blink-182’s song “Dammit” is an on-disc song in the game. One week prior to the game’s release, Harmonix made “Dammit” available as DLC for Rock Band.

The week of Guitar Hero: World Tour’s release, Harmonix announced that the 20 free downloadable songs promised with all new purchases of Rock Band 2 would become available.

I haven’t even touched on a whole ton of other songs that are available in both games, via all sorts of combinations of on-disc and DLC (”The Middle“, “Lazy Eye“, etc.). Take a look at No Doubt, though. I’ll make a prediction and say that Harmonix’s promised “The Best of No Doubt (Rock Band Edition)” pack will be made available extremely soon, hot on the heels of Guitar Hero: World Tour and its on-disc “Spiderwebs“.

None of these are coincidences. These are all calculated and smirk-inducing examples of the genius over there at Harmonix. I can see plenty of examples of a potential Guitar Hero: World Tour consumer who already owns Rock Band looking down the set-list and saying, “Why buy the whole new game when I can just spend $10 on DLC and get just the songs I want in a game I already own…?”

More Rock Band / Guitar Hero discussions coming from me will be on the topics of the series as a platform and choosing one side to make an investment in, actual comparisons between the two games and their gameplay, and a whole heck of a lot more.

No, there will be no Rock Revolution discussion. Sorry, Konami.

** WARNING: You better bet there’s f***ing foul language all over this b***. **

At the end of my shift today I heard laughter erupting from one of the rooms in our employees only area. Gazing past many many people crowded in a little room I was able to catch what everyone was watching: a YouTube video of a guy cussing the hell out of one of those “Impossible Mario” (or Kaizo Mario as I’ve heard it called) levels. Watching those levels being played without audio is funny enough (just search YouTube for “Impossible Mario”), but this added commentary– done by a guy who obviously was just over-dubbing his own vocal to the video– really made it hilarious.

It brings to mind, however, the kinds of things I would say or have said when playing video games that were just WAY too hard. I can recount many times where I’d get to a point in the night where I’d be so tired and so bereft of sleep that I’d start talking to myself. These videos sound exactly like me as a kid. More than enough times I’ve said, “Ok, Mario, that was not my fault. That was your fault. I push the buttons, you jump. That’s how it works.” As if any of this made a fucking difference!

Other favorites of mine: “Listen… I know you don’t like me, Toad, but all I’m asking you to do is drive you FUCKING kart through FUCKING Rainbow Road in this FUCKING race. You don’t have to be #1 the whole time but AT LEAST stay on the FUCKING track for one full FUCKING minute!!!”

It’s really bad when you’re doing a marathon run of SimCity (the original) while singing the entirety of BoyzIIMen’s Cooleyhighharmony in mid-broken voice and neglected girlfriend on your bed. So very, very sad.

Anyway, to share in the hilarity, I’m embedding here the three parts of… well, I don’t know the official title since it looks like four people have uploaded this same video in three parts… let’s put it this way. This guy has a lot of fans. Be sure to watch in order, and you might find yourself stopping at the middle of part 2 since it does get a little repetitive and somewhat hard to watch all the way to the end. Part 1, though, is absolutely the best. Minus the Family Guy comment.

So, what dumb shit have you ever said when frustrated at a video game?