Conference Call

GWJ Conference Call Episode 157

Extra Swearing, Dungeon Hunter (iPhone), Scribblenauts, Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, Lucidity, New Boardgames, Our Donation Drive Winners, Your Emails and more!

This week we surprise Julian "rabbit" Murdoch and storm rabbitcon to do a live show. Donation drive winners are announced, games are discussed and we take questions from the live audience. Warning to our more delicate listeners, this episode is a bit more rambunctious and foul-mouthed than usual. If you want to submit a question or comment call in to our voicemail line at (612) 284-4563.

To contact us, email [email protected]! Send us your thoughts on the show, pressing issues you want to talk about or whatever else is on your mind. You can even send a 30 second audio question or comment (MP3 format please) if you're so inclined. You can also submit a question or comment call in to our voicemail line at (612) 284-4563!

Sponsor
Good Old Games

  • Subscribe with iTunes
  • Subscribe with RSS
  • Subscribe with Yahoo!
Download the official apps
  • Download the GWJ Conference Call app for Android
  • Download the GWJ Conference Call app for Android

Show credits

Music credits: 

Intro/Outtro Music - Ian Dorsch, Willowtree Audioworks

"PodunkStump" (Ian Dorsch) - www.willowtreeaudio.com - 0:34:22
"Los Pistoleros" (Ian Dorsch) - www.willowtreeaudio.com - 1:07:03

Comments

I blame McChuck for the rambunctious and foul-mouthedness.

"PodunkStump" (Ian Dorsch) - www.willowtreeaudio.com - 0:34:22
"Los Pistoleros" (Ian Dorsch) - www.willowtreeaudio.com - 1:07:03

Pulled out the classics for this extra-special episode. Nice!

Rat Boy wrote:

I blame McChuck for the rambunctious and foul-mouthedness.

You're just jealous because he be rollin' sexy in ladies sleepwear.

Did I hear Rabbit saying they needed to remake Warlords for XBLA?

Coz they did: http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-GB/games/media/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d80258410851/

(UK marketplace link - hopefully that will work for others!)

Also, I find Chaos in the Old World initially looks confusing and complex but once you get to grips with it, the system really is extremely simple to play. It is probably one of my favourite strategy games to come out this year. By the rules it's playable with 3 instead of 4 but personally I really wouldn't recommend it. I've experienced serious balance issues playing 3 player as the game mechanics expect the gods to be fighting against one another. If you take one of them out, the inherent counter to the other gods powers is missing and it's easier for one person to get a runaway victory

I tried to listen to those digital cowboys but the British accents smacked of a level of elitist pretension that I just can't stand on any show other than Top Gear. Gamers with Jobs, on the other hand, is clearly the work of AWESOME proletarians.

Also, what are your favorite boardgames that you play on PC/console? Feel free to answer that in an upcoming podcast.

No Brutal Legend talk? Surprising and a little disappointing.

Good podcast - if a little short.

With regards to the favourite game music, Braid mainly used licensed music: Shira Kammen and a few others to be specific so that pick is pretty much void, Amoebic! My pick would definitely consider a Nintendo game (I think most of the podcast crew are overly dismissive of Nintendo's contribution.. as if it consists of Mario 1 and Metroid etc (not that i'm saying those sounds tracks are bad - they're just simplistic) Zelda Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess have some great sound tracks (including the song of storms and the Zora homeland song). I also really liked Diablo 2's Desert city music. One last contender, perhaps a bit obscure, is Total Annihilation. That game had a full-blown orchestral score which i actually listened to outside of playing the game.

Congrats to the donation drive winners!

Blind_Evil wrote:

No Brutal Legend talk? Surprising and a little disappointing.

I believe they recorded this on Friday or Saturday - pre- BL release.

Dysplastic wrote:
Blind_Evil wrote:

No Brutal Legend talk? Surprising and a little disappointing.

I believe they recorded this on Friday or Saturday - pre- BL release.

It was Saturday, which I think is when they record every podcast.

I'm sure the next show will have plenty of Brutal Legend discussion, especially if Elysium is there.

Great show. Good to have a female voice in the mix.

I'm playing through Bioshock again on Hard. On my first play through I was in head down, get to the end, fps mode. This time I'm taking in more of the story and the enviroments. There seem to be hundreds of voice tapes in the game that I missed the first time (I still recon the tapes are a brilliant way to deliver back story. Much better than intrusive cut scenes or screeds of text.) The Big Daddies are much more satisfying on hard difficulty. I have to take a deep breath and hope for the best before initiating a fight with one.

As far as games music is concerned, the music from all the alliance starting zones in WoW was/is fantastic. Not sure it's down to nostalgia or not but they give me chills whenever I hear them.

Case Deep King Corona wrote:

It's better than Diablo II.

I'd like to revisit this in a month.

Best part of coming back from 2 weeks of vacation: 3 GWJ podcasts in the queue!

Fantastic. After spending five months telling my girlfriend how insightful and well done the GWJ podcast is, this is the one she decides to finally listen too. She loved it, but is really questioning my understanding of the word "insightful".

Wow, never noticed the coffin part in Bioshock. Just hearing about that is bumming me out.

Amoebic wrote:
Rat Boy wrote:

I blame McChuck for the rambunctious and foul-mouthedness.

You're just jealous because he be rollin' sexy in ladies sleepwear.

Just to be clear, I wasn't indicating that I thought the board game discussion was boring. The plan was already set in motion and I was changing when the conversation had already switched topics. I had no idea what they were talking about when I entered. If I'd know it was Endeavor, I would have waited since that game is awesome. Should have interrupted Rat Boy's question, instead. As for the the haters in the chat channel who didn't like the board game discussion, you can suck it.

McChuck wrote:

Should have interrupted Rat Boy's question, instead.

You're now officially my least favorite podcast interrupter.

I guess I'm an uncultured lout, because I got confused when the hosts started talking about board games. But it was a awesome show, and congrats to the donation drive winners!

McChuck wrote:

The plan was already set in motion and I was changing when the conversation had already switched topics. I had no idea what they were talking about when I entered.

It was a good plan. Not sure we got the execution right. But the plan was solid.

Favorite game song ever? Deionarra's theme from Planescape: Torment. Hands down one of the most memorable themes from gaming, for me.

Kudos to Rob for editing that together. I almost bought into their enthusiasm when Certis announced the drive winners.

I feel like I need to apologize for how crazed this podcast was. And thank everyone who tuned in live and is suffering for it delayed!

Listening to this podcast just underlined the fact that I do not have enough close friends who like to game. Sounds like you all had a great time.

Great (if a bit zany) podcast!

But how could no one even mention "Still Alive" from Portal in the song discussion?!?! Portal's soundtrack overall may have been just OK, but that's gotta be the best single from a game EVAH!

rabbit wrote:

I feel like I need to apologize for how crazed this podcast was. And thank everyone who tuned in live and is suffering for it delayed!

They should have listened to the outtakes and watched the video to show how really crazy it got.

Dear LORD I have a potty mouth. No wonder you had to add a warning about the swearing. Someone ought to wash my mouth out with soap.

Is there a link to those videos? I looked on the forum and on Ustream on Monday and couldn't find anything.

Katerin, you have to get your avatar photoshopped to include the GWJ logo on the cofee mug. Drink the goodness everytime you post =)

I find it kind of strange that you folks don't finish all that many games, or that you find it hard or all that time-consuming. Just this year, I finished the Mass Effect campaign multiple times with various characters, finished Muramasa twice, getting all 108 swords each time, finished Spectrobes, MySims Agents, Dead Space Extraction, Dawn of War 2 campaign (also twice on separate difficulty levels), Space Invaders Extreme, Rock Band Beatles on Hard, Dawn of Discovery, Plants vs. Zombies (thrice plus garden), House of the Dead Overkill, Punch Out!!, Megaman ZX Advent, and LKS - I'm sure I'm missing a bunch more.

And all that is on top of regular games of Civ IV on Emperor, Rock Band2 and Guitar Hero sessions with the kids, and some smatterings of GalCiv2, Sims3, board messaging and Facebooking, and whatever other random game I happen on from time to time (like Bookworm Adventures which I also finished multiple times this year).

By my count, I finished something like 15 games this year so far, on top of my regular game rotations. How are you guys managing to NOT finish games?

PS: the fact that I don't go out drinking and don't sleep a lot might have something to do with that, though.

Do you have kids? Married? Those are usually huge contributors around here.

Have two kids - 2 and 5. Married, have some semblance of a home life. Occasionally, the kids would play LEGO while I'm playing Muramasa or something, or we'd play games together, or I'd boot up MySims Agents and they'd tell me what kind of clothing or hair they'd like our character to have. Also, we get silly and run around and chase each other and generally horse around. Also, we sometimes go out and bike around the neighborhood - maybe once every month or two months.

I mainly completed Beatles so fast because I practiced the game so much with them on Quickplay - by the time I got to playing the story mode, I was pretty much passing Hard at 96% or better every time.