Conference Call

GWJ Conference Call Episode 268

Saints Row The Third, Assassin's Creed: Revelations, X-Plane 10, Red Box D&D, Spelltower, Your Emails and more!

This week Shawn, Cory, Julian and Elysium talk a bunch of games and catch up on your emails.

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.

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Tech Thing Daily
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Good Old Games

X-Plane 10
Saints Row The Third
Assassin's Creed: Revelations
The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
Skyrim Mod Thread
Spelltower

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Show credits

Music credits: 

Intro/Outtro Music - Ian Dorsch, Willowtree Audioworks

Menu Theme - The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword - http://zelda.com/skywardsword/ - 35:30

The Old Republic Theme - Star Wars: The Old Republic - http://www.swtor.com/ - 31:38

Comments

Strap it on.

Good. Now nobody else has to say it. You're welcome.

EDIT:

On "expansion pack" talk, I feel like you can call it whatever you want but when Brotherhood and [I'm assuming] Revelations has as much or more content as the previous AC games, it really doesn't matter if the word is "sequel" or "expansion" it's still a substantial, full game.

Though having not played Revelations yet, that Den Defense minigame doesn't sound too great. But Ezio is such a terrific character IMO and I'm completely sucked into the crazy story Ubisoft has crafted.

Then again, this all could be stemming from my having just finished Brotherhood 3 hours ago.

About the nerdshame:

It's not internal at all! I work at an airport, so I have different coworkers around me all the time. And sometimes someone will interupt a perfectly valid discussion about destruction magic, just to tell me to "get a life". Now I don't feel ashamed at all. What business of theirs is it anyway? Especially when I just had to listen to them, ranting about some braindead reality show.

For some people it is still ok to belittle the nerds. Don't feel bad, just pity the fools.

Two AC: Rev bombs everyone should try:

You can craft an explosive bomb in a sticky pouch. If you need to take out a target surrounded by guards you can lob a bomb onto the back of the target (or onto one of the guards) then watch as they walk on oblivious for a few seconds before being wiped out in a controlled explosion.

On one mission my trainee assassin and I finished a mission and at the same time alerted what seemed like thirty pike men to our presence. Surrounded, I was hesitant to call more assassin's incase they were killed so I dropped a couple of my newly crafted bombs. Suddenly I was drawn into a fight with one or two guards and lost sight of the rest of the scrum. When I'd finished my mini battle I looked up to see my trainee standing in a sea of dead pikemen. The bombs I'd dropped were poison bombs and had wiped out a small army chemical warfare style.

To get the poison bombs you need to go into lethal bombs and choose Datura Powder as the active ingredient.

I may also post this in the AC:Rev thread.

For Cory and Julian, here is a demonstration of the mollusk launcher (aka octopus gun):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSLzV...

As Elysium said, it was a pre-order bonus, but will surely be available as DLC at some point.

Also worth noting is that there is a button (F on the PC version) dedicated to punching people in the groin. Even better, if you press the button when sprinting towards someone, you will execute one of about 6 or 7 different attacks, some of which include dropkick, DDT (old pro wrestling move), leap frog, skateboarding, and my personal favorite: the faceplant followed by a smiling pose as seen here.

More of the sprinting attacks can be seen in this video (the mo-cap suit is something you unlock later in the game):

I disagree with the notion that older games (like Morrowwind) are being backwards or artificial or whatever when they locked players out of certain content based on in-game choices that are made.

Rather, I think that more modern games (like Skyrim) are being lazy when they allow everyone to do everything regardless of what they do in game. If it is a question of accessing content, whyy can't developers make excellent storylines based on joining the thieves guild and thus pissing off the warrior guild (for example?) A story arc that is initiated because you joined an opposing alliance has a tonne of potential and is far more logically consistent than letting the player be everything to everyone.

Yeah, this doesn't look dead or arcade... http://www.microsoft.com/games/flight/. Good job on ass talking.

Awesome.

They shut down the 25-year strong ACES team to develop a new flight program which is targeted not at the hardcore sim community, but at novice folks who want to hop in a plane and watch the scenery. That's totally awesome, if that's what you want. For some of us, though, we want to practice complex instrument procedures and deal with air traffic control. I want to be able to fly over my house in rural MA and in and out of my local airport in a perfect model of the plane I used to fly, using actual weather from METARs. I fully admit that's nearly a disease.

My MSFT's own admission, their focusing on making Flight universally accessible, easy to get into, and loaded with gameplay, challenges, and social experiences. Most of the interviews have talked about structured gameplay and a challenge/mission based game. That's great, and I'm sure it will be very pretty, and I am very sure I will buy it. I'm also quite sure it won't be anything like the heavily modded, 4 monitor networked cockpit simulation experience FS and X-Plane have evolved into.

Like I said, thats awesome, it's just not a real simulator, it's a game. I don't say that pedantically, as mostly I just play games. Flight Sim is really the only place I get hard core on stuff like this.

I just want Nokia to revive the N-Gage, I bet it'll be great with this new "ass talking" thing.

Rabbit, you're spot on. I think I still will prefer a heavily modded FSX, but I'll check it out.

Ass talking? Really? Is GWJ tolerating that?

PyromanFO wrote:

I just want Nokia to revive the N-Gage, I bet it'll be great with this new "ass talking" thing.

There's a mental image I won't shake today.

You know, rabbit, you're a class act. An articulate and reasonable response to a not very polite post. Hats off to you, sir.

Rabbit, Fair enough but from how you sounded on the podcast I thought they killed it. I love FSX instrument flying, in fact that's what I like about that game. I'm going to also pick up XP10 but I hope they have put more work into the instruments.

If Flight turns out to be a watered down "gamepad" sim that would suck. As long as it lets me use Trackir and my HOTAS setup, I'm down.

If I want hardcore I'll boot up A-10 and try to start the engines or ROF(best flightsim in years) and attempt to shoot something.

I believe some DLC is as big as an expansion and some old school expansions as big as a full game. I'm currently playing through the Borderlands DLC and Zombie Island of Dr Ned and Secret Armory feel like expansions as they have many hours of gameplay each. Brood Wars fits the old expansion the size of a full game bill.

In regards to the email from Cassius, if you want some motivation to go back and replay games you've already beaten, there are a few of us expressing a desire to do so as a part of the 12 month pile tracking thread for next year. Join us in the discussion here.

Yay, Saints Row the Third! Bout time somebody on the podcast decided to have some fun

TheKrazIIvan wrote:

If Flight turns out to be a watered down "gamepad" sim that would suck. As long as it lets me use Trackir and my HOTAS setup, I'm down.

My guess actually is that beyond the simplest implementation, they won't. HOTAS, maybe, but my assumption from everythign I've heard/seen about Flight is that it will truly be playable -- and enjoyable -- without any joystick or yoke at all. To me, that means gamepad, which means far less nobs to tune, as it were, and likely a lot less reliance on inputs from a HOTAS and whatnot.

Track IR has been great about getting their stuff patched in all over the place, but again, I doubt this will be a priority out of the gate.

I am sure I will play and enjoy flight when it finally comes out (my guess is we get a release date sometime next summer, assuming it's not cancelled). My prediction is also that it releases on Xbox as well, if not instead of PC.

My copy of Skyrim hasn't arrived yet, but I definitely preferred Morrowind to Oblivion as well. I did like having to make my choices regarding factions and allegiances more, simply because the world felt more cohesive, as people everywhere would react to me based on my standing in my house and guild, so as a mage one would get derision from fighter's and so on. It made it really feel like other characters reacted to who you'd become, rather than just your position in the guild. It feels incongruous, as arch-wizard of the Mage's guild, to be approached on the street by someone with a Thieve's guild advertisement like some nobody.

But that wasn't the reason I loved it so. It was the setting. Where Oblivion's Cyrodiil felt like a generic, English, high-fantasy setting, Morrowind's, well, Morrowind, felt like a unique location, with an interesting culture. The Dunmer felt like the native Americans in the early days of the Old West, and the contrasting ways in which the different races regarded and reacted to each other made for a world that felt far more lively.

Another sponsor! Better update the GWJ car.

The description of Saints Row 3 sold me on it. Granted, I have to wait until after christmas just in case my secret Stanta decides to pick it up for me.

Hey, my question got picked by the show, thanks a lot! Glad to hear we got some e-sports fans in the show as well!

On another topic, I´m waiting until next year to get Skyrim. Since I don´t have any gamer friends to talk about it with, I´ll just wait for the hype to go away and the patches to come so I can experience it as it´s best. I do, however, am afraid to get burned out by it. I played Fallout 3 + all dlc twice already clocking in about 110 hours, and could not play past the 3 hour mark in Fallout New Vegas.

I do, however, think @certis' approach to the new Assassins Creed is a good one, I may just rush through the main quest of Skyrim to see how is it like and later come back to the sidequests if I feel like it.

Nice show as always, keep up the good work.

On the issue of nerd shame, I think the venerable Mr. Lewis has the definitive final word on the subject.

"To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."

Growing up isn't what you have to worry about. It's growing old. And I ain't talking how many birthdays you've had.

It ain't how many birthdays you've had - it's how many you are committed to living henceforth. We don't stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing. It sounds like a smarmy, over sweet Hallmark saying, but it is perfectly true, and is scientifically grounded.

I do, on the other hand, still have to fight to be treated like an adult at work.

A little late here, currently sitting in the Continental President's Club at Dulles (where else would I be). Nothing terribly spoilerific this time round.

00.01.08 Games we're playing
00.01.38 Rabbit plays the X-Plane 10 launch demo
00.03.58 Certis talks The Old Republic
00.14.50 Cory plays wait in the airport a long time (also Spelltower on the iPad)
00.16.54 Skyrim (bear spoilers!)
00.17.31 Assassins Creed Revelations revelations
00.19.53 Saints Row III
00.26.00 Julian on Tribes
00.28.19 Cracking the DnD Redbox
00.32.04 Your emails (warning: shirts may or may not be removed)

edited for decency

wordsmythe wrote:

I do, on the other hand, still have to fight to be treated like an adult at work.

It's your baby face. Have you considered growing a mustache?

kincher skolfax wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:

I do, on the other hand, still have to fight to be treated like an adult at work.

It's your baby face. Have you considered growing a mustache?

That or a beard.

rabbit wrote:

I am sure I will play and enjoy flight when it finally comes out (my guess is we get a release date sometime next summer, assuming it's not cancelled). My prediction is also that it releases on Xbox as well, if not instead of PC.

Well, it's pretty safe to say it's not cancelled:
http://www.microsoft.com/games/fligh...

Awesome! Application submitted.

Rabbit, about the red box, I've been playing with my son (6 y/o) reading Destiny Quest, letting him choose the options the books gives, and playing together the loot/combat/adventure game.

It is a cheap and very interesting way of playing something like the adventure in the red box, and with a touch of an MMORPG

I think this was mentioned before, not sure.

Edit:ops, forgot the link http://www.destiny-quest.com/ you can find that in amazon