GWJ Conference Call Episode 499

The Order 1886, Dreadnought, Kerbal Space Progress, Rocket League Hoops, 8 Bit Armies, Hearthstone, Lexicon, Vive Impressions, Lots of Your Emails and More!

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As we roll toward our 500th episode, Shawn, Allen, Amanda and Elysium 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.

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Show credits

Music credits: 

Tropicks - Broke for Free - http://brokeforfree.com/ - 47:20

Comments

In which Elysium throws an audible needle into the haystack that is the podcast. So mean.

Also in realm of Die by the Sword is Kingdom Come: Deliverance, though its less 'arcade-ey' and I'm not sure if limbs are flying left and right. Leans more towards Mount & Blade in the combat and it's first person. The more I talk about it, the less im convincing myself its like Die by the Sword. But the footage I've seen looks neat.

Here's to the 500th! Hoping to find a way to listen in to the live stream, but it'll be Mothers day here by then, may be tricky.

00:02:58 Lexicon
00:06:21 HTC Vive
00:17:30 Dreadnought
00:25:36 Kerbal Space Program
00:28:54 Rocket League: Hoops
00:32:50 The Order: 1886
00:39:33 8 Bit Armies
00:41:12 Hearthstone
00:45:14 Offworld Trading Company
00:47:20 Your Emails

To Elysium's grasping for details: White Wolf, publisher and owner of Vampire the Masquerade, was bought by CCP, maker of EVE Online, a few years ago. CCP tried making an MMO for ages, and had a few fly through videos, but nothing substantial ever came off it. Late last year they sold White Wolf and all related everything to Paradox, who haven't announced anything further with the property since.

Great show, can't wait for the 500th

I edit and produce a lot of podcasts, and stuff like "If he's really listening he'll do something right here" keeps me up at night and has made me sit through the duration of every episode I put out.

Michael wrote:

I edit and produce a lot of podcasts, and stuff like "If he's really listening he'll do something right here" keeps me up at night and has made me sit through the duration of every episode I put out.

Mwahahaha.

Like I said on the show, it's a credit to our process. Jonathan trusts me to let him know if "unusual" (meaning non-break) edits are needed, which is pretty rare, and I in turn trust he handles the basics like a pro. It works 98% of the time! We absolutely don't edit for content or ask our producer to. If we can't run it clean that's on us.

Great podcast again guys. Looking forwards to the next 500 !
My SoulCaliber story.. so similar to Amanda's living arrangements, our first house from college, too many people coming and going, and every weekend was Dreamcast SoulCaliber time.
Myself and my gamer friends would spend hours working out and practicing the combos for our fave fighters (mine were Ivy who had some devastating long distance attacks and Astaroth who could 1 hit half an energy bar).
We'd practice and practice, and be so tightly matched between the core gaming group.
But then on weekends, the girls would get involved.
Having hardly played a game since they were kids on their Nintendos, they'd periodically and consistently kick the crap out of the core gaming guys by hitting the same button again and again (the shin kick !!).
"THAT'S NOT FAIR ! STOP KICKING MY ANKLE !"
Good times.

A game I'd love a sequel to is Burnout 3. Just take THAT EXACT formula.. racetrack, boost, takedowns. Don't add anything, don't make it open world, just that please.
I'd buy a new console to play that.

My Soul Calibur story is that I'm roughly 5 years older than all you folks who were playing Soul Calibur at college, so we were instead playing Tekken 2.

To this day, I can still pull off a 10 move combo with Yoshimitsu. On a dance pad.

It also led to an ingenious invention of a hands-free smoking device made from a wire coat-hanger and the metal foil tray that a meat pie came in. It held a lit joint at face level, with the metal tray underneath it to catch the ash, allowing us to carry out out noble student duty of getting wasted without having to put the controller down.

My Soul Calibur Stories

1) It was before the Dreamcast, but I my college we had a video arcade in the student union.

It was near an NFL Blitz machine, which I dabbled with while waiting for my turn to come up, because the Spul Calibur machine was always packed. One day, while waiting my turn, I started doing color commentary in the voice of the NFL Blitz announcer (I have a knack for accents and voices. You should hear my Cave Johnson).

At one point, someone using Sophitia executed one of her throws (I forget which, but they were all... Suggestive) and I made a filthy joke in the Announcer voice, at which everyone around the machine started laughing so hard that the players couldn't finish the match before time ran out.

2) One week the maintenance crew forgot to lock the Soul Calibur machine after collecting the tokens, so everyone was flicking the small levers to get free credits. I used to get up early so I could get to the arcade before anyone else and beat the single player campaigns of most of the characters.

During that time I played primarily Yoshimitzu against people, but I wasn't very good. So I thought anyway.

One day I happened upon a Soul Calibur machine in an off-campus arcade. I started playing single player and was completely dominating the thing, more so than I did on campus. I speculated that the machine on campus was learning from a lot of high level players, whereas this one didn't seem to get much use.

Anyway, someone dropped a coin and challenged me. I picked Yoshimitzu instinctively, and proceeded to mop the floor with the challenger in two short rounds. I realized that I was probably a better player than I thought, it was just that I was punching above my weight on campus. Who knew?

Still listening but:

If you had the keys to the Nintendo car, what would you do with it?

Most gamers would drive it into the ground. And keep driving. Right until they burned up in the molten core of the Earth.

Certis, that sort of nerd love story is the bestest.

Will comment further when I've finished listening.

EDIT:

Firstly, in regards to the first "playing games with others" e-mail, already tried to force feed that memory down people's throats. Halo: Combat Evolved was also a great way for my brother and I to bond after he graduated College and before I left for it.

But before then, there was one year that I visited him up at TCNJ for a weekend. I think I was a sophomore in high school and he was a senior in College. A lot happened that weekend, including playing D&D for the first time and seeing films like The Cell and New Jack City. This was also when I was introduced to Soul Calibur.

I met his three core friends previously. One of them had a Sega Saturn so he could import the Saturn version of X-Men vs. Street Fighter and similar titles that were just not as good on the Playstation. During a couple visits where they crashed at my parents' house, they would invite me to play. In this group of not-so-hardcore fighting game players, I had a knack for adapting and learning the game rather quickly, to the point that I was a force to be reckoned with. So my brother had me sit down with his lady friend that dominated everyone as Ivy. I chose Lizard Man because he is a Man that is also a Lizard. The match is set to three victories.

Even though she goes easy on me, I still lose brutally the first round. I do better the second, getting used to the new play style and totally different approach from Street Fighter, but still die. Third round I manage to win, so now it's 2-1. Next round, just before I claim victory, I tell her she can stop taking it easy. "I'm not taking it easy!" she exclaimed. I lost the fifth round, but everyone was impressed that I gave her such a run for her money on my first time against her best character.

Then I went to College and found out that I'm not some fighting game prodigy after all and have all but given up on the genre.

As for Nintendo, eeeehhhhh..... I'll just say that 1) it's amusing that one person says "God, Nintendo never has anything good!" and then shortly after someone is saying "Man, I miss these platforming games that Nintendo specializes in but no one else is making anymore".

2) Mostly in response to Allen, but if you're not really into Nintendo's games or don't follow them too closely, then it probably looks like Nintendo is smug and is just throwing ideas at the wall. However, it is worth pointing out that there is a major shift in design philosophy away from Wii. With the Wii, they were focusing on making games as accessible to everyone as possible, including eliminating the natural barrier generated by skill. Super Mario Strikers and Mario Kart Wii were inferior to their GameCube counterparts in a lot of ways due to relying too heavily on randomization and ensuring that even crappy players had a chance of winning. Across their entire library, their efforts to try and take these core games and make them appeal to a wider audience met with failure. That audience only cared about Wii Sports and Wii Fit.

So now we jump into the WiiU, where accessibility is still a priority, but suddenly Mario Kart 8 is the best in the series, as is Super Smash Bros. (though I'm sure that one is up for debate from the dedicated crowd), and then you have new entries like Splatoon while reviving core franchises like Pikmin, Star Fox, and a third party like Bayonetta. Then there's games like Wonderful 101, Hyrule Warriors, and the upcoming TMS#FE.

The thing is, while each of these games has a dedicated core market, it's like Shawn says. It's not the same market that results in games like, oh, say, The Order: 1886.

Microsoft and Sony are chasing a very dominant market right now, the sort that keeps Call of Duty going, another entry you guys are bashing right in this episode. Shawn did a good job of noting that they're doing something different, but I still feel like there's a lack of understanding, particularly in that there's this idea of "failure" because they're not at the top anymore. Microsoft Xbox loses money per console and it's a joke. Xbox 360 and PS3 lose money per console and it's normalized. Xbox One and PS4 lose money per console and it's accepted that it's just part of the business, accessories and subscriptions are where the money is at. Nintendo loses money on consoles the first time in their life and it is doomsday for them? Is it really not common knowledge at this point just how big their war chest is? How much cash they have saved up and how long they can keep going without making any profit? Is it really disaster that they're not making the most profit even if they are in the black right now?

Perhaps I've been repeating myself in the wrong threads, and I hate to give the impression that I'm the sort to make excuses for them (I do think Star Fox Zero was a stubborn mistake, for example, and am not sold on splitting Fire Emblem Fates into three separate purchases for the whole experience). But I think the truth is that Nintendo either makes games that are in your sphere of interest or they don't, and if they don't, then why do you care?

Not afraid to say that I misted up listening to Shawn and Karla's origin story. Thank you for sharing that, Certis. <3

Jarpy wrote:

Not afraid to say that I misted up listening to Shawn and Karla's origin story. Thank you for sharing that, Certis. <3

That was adorable as all get out, but it was Amanda's Minecraft story that ruined me. Amazing shares from the both of you.

pinkdino99 wrote:

A game I'd love a sequel to is Burnout 3. Just take THAT EXACT formula.. racetrack, boost, takedowns. Don't add anything, don't make it open world, just that please.
I'd buy a new console to play that.

It's not exactly what you're looking for, but the founders of the Burnout franchise founded a new studio a while ago and are about to release Dangerous Golf here in about a month. It has a lot of the spirit of a burnout game in it, so it might end up scratching that itch for you.

The Game King talking about Dreadnought - "You go in a direction ... I hope you like that direction, because that's the direction you're going for a while..."

I almost had to pull off the road.

I have been searching for a spiritual successor/sequel for God Hand for years. It's never going to happen. Cloverleaf's swan song just wasn't popular enough to have any kind of following, but it remains one of the best games I've ever played.