GWJ Conference Call Episode 536

Nier Automata Demo, Ultima VII, ASTRONEER, Minecraft Story Mode, Nintendo Switch Thoughts, 2017 Games We're Looking Forward To, Your Emails and More!

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This week Shawn, Cory, Julian and Amanda talk about the fresh Nintendo Switch announcements and some of their most anticipated 2017 games!

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: 

Asking Questions - Echoside - http://echosidetracks.bandcamp.com/ - 29:26

Riding High - Echoside - http://echosidetracks.bandcamp.com/ - 56:14

Comments

Good to hear some NieR love on the podcast. If anyone is intrigued, be sure to check in on that thread.

All you had to do was post that image as the hero for this post. Here I am.

00:01:05 Ultima VII
00:14:59 Diablo III
00:17:48 Minecraft Story Mode
00:21:24 ASTRONEER
00:23:57 Nier Automata
00:25:58 Day of the Tenticle Remastered
00:28:40 Fallen London
00:29:26 Nintendo Switch
00:48:16 Games We're Looking Forward to in 2017
00:56:14 Your Emails

Ugh, yes, my brain was thinking true neutral, but apparently my heart said chaotic neutral.

Certis is dead to me.. never played Ultima 7

omg

Regarding the Party Mode in Batman: my friends and I tried it on New Years. Every time it tried to connect the game crashed.

This is after a multi-gig patch had to download.

Yeah, I'm not nearly as in love with Telltale as you guys.

The game character i would like to have a Freaky Friday experience with is Elizabeth from Bioshock Infinite.

(I originally thought, Commander Shepherd, but then I couldn't picture her sitting at a desk all day performing bookkeeping tasks, and I had to face the fact that I probably would be pretty terrible at all of the running, shooting and/or biotics).

Elizabeth is a solid support character; whether you are low on health or ammo, she has your back. She could easily take on any office job and perform efficiently and I should have no problem standing back and tossing supplies as needed to Booker.

My secondary choices would be either Cortana or Glados; both are quite capable of doing number crunching and I would have no trouble becoming an AI that guides/leads you through your situation; either as a trusted companion or as a snarky, malicious backstabber.

Weird, this episode isn't showing up on my podcast player. Overcast on iOS.

Via The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild thread, the game will look AND sound better on the Switch:

Glycerine wrote:

IGN has an article about differences between the Wii-U and Switch versions:

http://m.ign.com/articles/2017/01/17...

- Both launch on the same day, March 3.
- Both have a frame rate of 30fps.
- Both versions of the game offer the same content.
- On a TV, the Nintendo Switch version of the game renders in 900p while the Wii U version renders in 720p.
- The Nintendo Switch version has higher-quality environmental sounds. As a result, the sound of steps, water, grass, etc. are more realistic and enhance the game’s Open-Air feel.
- The physical copy of the Wii U version will require 3GB of available memory on the Wii U system or an external drive.
- Some icons, such as onscreen buttons, differ between the two versions.
- A Special Edition and Master Edition of the Wii U version are not available.

Also, I posted this loading time comparison video over there:

mrtomaytohead wrote:

Loading times - 13 seconds on Switch, 29 on Wii U. Who knows how that affects things like walking into houses and such, where it does the quick fade to black and such, which never gets talked about because it's usually fast enough that most people do not care. I was going to say I assume this only happens once per session, but I recall seeing a loading screen going in and out of the temples.

Keep in mind, the Wii U load time is based off the E3 demo from last June and the Switch is from the demo shown just the other day.

So Andrich is justified, somewhat, in going with the Switch version.

I imagine Certis would have been sold on Day of the Tentacle if Julian told him the puzzle solving works more like...

Spoiler:

Hamster in the freezer -> hamster in the microwave -> hamster in a mini-sweater.

Regarding the Switch's battery life (sorry, still listening):

My 3DS lasted "only" 4 hours on Saturday playing Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies with nothing but potty breaks to give it a break. So the Switch in constant-use mode lasts as long as any device in constant-use mode that's portable.

Honestly, I think my biggest fear about the Switch's battery is its overall longevity. If it ceases to hold a charge well after a year or so, what are my options for getting the battery replaced? Does it have to be shipped back to Nintendo and wait 3 months for it to return? THE PEOPLE DEMAND ANSWERS! (Not really, but still, its a concern that I've heard NOBODY mention anywhere)

Concerning the email from McChuck as to other "partner" based board and card games, there really are more than you think.

All of these games can be found at: https://www.boardgamegeek.com/

Some quick examples:

Tichu - great 4 person partner card game where the concept is to bleed all of the cards out of your hand. Played with a standard 4 suit card deck that adds 4 "power" cards to the mix. Easy to learn and unlike Euchre (which I hate...basically, you have a hand or you don't) you can screw with the opposing team while helping your partner score points. My wife and I have introduced at least 30 couples to the game and they all left Euchre forever and play Tichu. We even have a monthly Tichu party at our house with 4 to 6 other couples and rotate tables throughout the night. Great, great game.

Chimera - sometimes you don't have 4 people. If you only have 3 you can play Chimera which is a "Tichu" alike where 2 people play as partners against the 3rd. The interesting thing about this game is who is the Chimera and who are the opponents rotates from hand to hand so everyone gets a chance to play against everyone else during the evening. Fun, interesting decisions fraught with tension. Speaking of which...

Mu and More - plays 3-6 players. There are more games that are played with this interesting deck (60 cards in 5 suits) of cards, but trust me, just stick with Mu. It is one of the best offerings in the trick-taking genre. Players reveal cards to declare their bids: the highest bidder becomes the Chief and the second highest bidder is the Vice. Both the Vice and Chief choose a trump (either number or suit), and then players try to capture tricks to score the most points. The Chief chooses a partner and tries to cover the bid to score bonus points, while the Vice and remaining players seek to stop the Chief from reaching his goal. Really a fun game. Although, it may take a few hands to get the hang of the game, it really is a great entry to the partner trick taking pantheon.

Heck, there are even board games that allow you to play with partners. Most folks have played "Ticket to Ride". Well one of the expansion maps is called "Asia". It includes a map called "Team Asia" (2 maps are included in the expansion. where Four or six players compete as two-player teams, with teammates sitting next to one another at the table. Each player has her own secret hand of cards and tickets, in addition to some cards and tickets being placed in a shared cardholder that either player on the team can access.

When a player draws cards, she must place one card in the cardholder and the other in her hand (unless she takes a face-up locomotive, in which case it must be shared); when a player draws tickets, the first ticket kept must be placed in the cardholder and any additional tickets kept added to her hand. A player can spend her turn to add two tickets from her hand to the cardholder. A team's points are tracked collectively, and the team with the highest score wins.
Since you use the trains from the original TtR or TtR Europe, it is much less expensive than the original games.

There are more, but those are the ones that come immediately to mind.
After some investigation online and I'm sure you will see more.

OK, I've gone on too long, but trust me, there are a lot of team board and card games out there. For me, I play video games when there is only me, but prefer to play card and board games when there are more that want to play...well, except for Nidhogg and other couch co-ops.

Back to Dishonored 2.
Thanks for letting me have the floor for awhile and for being part of this great community.
McGuit

EvilDead wrote:

Weird, this episode isn't showing up on my podcast player. Overcast on iOS.

Same here. Not in my feed. I'm also using Overcast.

Scottish_Leprechaun wrote:

Honestly, I think my biggest fear about the Switch's battery is its overall longevity. If it ceases to hold a charge well after a year or so, what are my options for getting the battery replaced? Does it have to be shipped back to Nintendo and wait 3 months for it to return? THE PEOPLE DEMAND ANSWERS! (Not really, but still, its a concern that I've heard NOBODY mention anywhere)

(puts on his professional hat) As a person who works in the battery industry, if the switch battery is lithium ion (or, more likely, Lithium polymer) then it will give you full life for up to five years, provided you care for it properly. After five years, any lithium ion battery loses about 20% of it's design capacity no matter what you do.

In this context, "proper care" means not storing it at full charge, and not constantly discharging it to zero. Lithium ion based batteries like to be stored somewhere around 70%, and they don't like to be discharged all the way to 0% a lot.

If the battery protection circuitry is designed properly, the battery won't ever get down to the over-discharge state where it starts to lose capacity, unless you fail to charge it for a few months after it turns itself off for having a low battery. (All cells have internal resistances that cause them to self-discharge over time)

Some manufacturers set their "full discharge" state to be higher than others to prevent overdischarge. This means the system turns off while the battery still has useful life to it, but since Lithium Ion batteries don't have the memory issues that nickel based chemistry batteries have, it's ok that you don't discharge fully before charging it back up.

Some really cautious manufacturers won't even let you charge the battery pack to 100% of the cell capacity to prevent the reductions to the cycle life caused by storing a cell at 100% charge.

We have customers that do both of these things, usually when the lifespan of the product is supposed to be measured in years and where long-term reliability is more important than short term performance.

Given that the Switch is intended to live in a dock that is, presumably, charging it, that's probably what Nintendo did: They deliberately "gimped" their battery life (by not charging the cells fully, and not discharging the cells fully) in order to improve cycle life. This means you only get two hours of usable play, but that two hours will remain two hours for a lot longer than it would be if they gave you, say, four hours at launch and two hours after a few hundred charge/discharge cycles.

To clarify again, 2.5-6 hours is the projected amount of battery life, and will be impacted by factors like screen brightness (which seems to have an adjustment dial right on the thing) and whether wi-fi is on. My 3DS lasted me 4 hours, smack dab in that 2.5-6 hour limit. I see no reason why the Switch is somehow special for having the same average lifespan off the dock.

Re: Telltale. I recently played the Batman game. For a series that uses someone else's IP, they did a lot of rewriting to make it their own distinct version of things. Also, I downloaded and installed the package, but that only actually got me the first episode. There's no "Download all" option in the game, and I can't download in the background. I have to download each one, a single episode at a time. Alt-tabbing out seemed to slow things down, but not stop them. Small favors. Also, I didn't appear to be able to skip the "Next time on!" or "Last time on!" I played one a night over the course of a week, so this was super /SUPER/ annoying.

Basically, I think they're already dropping the ball in plenty of ways.

Re: Freaky Friday. The best case here is someone who can be super amazing at my job, but for whom I can sandbag. Or, perhaps, someone who will construct something they can leave behind. Like... the God from Actraiser is cool, and I could totally sit on his could and have the cherub tell the villagers what to do for a day, but I don't have any crazy monsters in my life that need stabbing.

I'm tempted to go with Roll from MegaMan Legends. She seems like she could get a lot done if she had my credit card and 24-hours. And I'd have to run overwatch for Mega Man, but I feel like I could persuade him to wait for Roll to get back, or at least for me to figure out how the heck Roll's system works.

Re: Switch. I basically agree that the JoyCons seem neat, but I've never been playing a game and gone "Y'know, I wish I could shake this so I could guess what's inside." They're, perhaps, a little over engineered.

Amanda: I found a thing on the Internet today, and I thought you might like it.

http://imgur.com/gallery/vWym2

TheGameguru wrote:

Certis is dead to me.. never played Ultima 7

omg

He's not dead to me, but I agree that this is disturbing. I'm glad that he corrected this oversight. He should do penance by playing III, IV, V, and VI.

I'm sure that the GOG version of Ultima VII deleted the first quest of the game (getting that crazy memory manager to work).

Zudz wrote:

Amanda: I found a thing on the Internet today, and I thought you might like it.

http://imgur.com/gallery/vWym2

Spoiler:

Wow, the little girl's legs went all rubbery like she took a shot from Muhammad Ali.

Hrdina wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

Certis is dead to me.. never played Ultima 7

omg

He's not dead to me, but I agree that this is disturbing. I'm glad that he corrected this oversight. He should do penance by playing III, IV, V, and VI.

Good heavens, what must you all think of me in that case? Not only have I never played an Ultimate game of any kind, I've never played a Baldur's gate nor Bards Tale nor Divinity any RPG from that era.

Do I get a buy for not having owned a gaming PC until 2003?

Also, apropos of nothing, does anyone else think that the Divinity people missed the boat with naming their latest sequel? I mean, Divinity: Original Sin 2?

I would have named it Divinity: Second Sin, and perhaps added a moderately jerky wizard with smoke powers as an NPC (his quest could be to get you to clean a bunch of graffiti from some temple).

B Dog wrote:
EvilDead wrote:

Weird, this episode isn't showing up on my podcast player. Overcast on iOS.

Same here. Not in my feed. I'm also using Overcast.

Likewise. Any idea what the problem might be?

doubtingthomas396 wrote:

Good heavens, what must you all think of me in that case? Not only have I never played an Ultimate game of any kind, I've never played a Baldur's gate nor Bards Tale nor Divinity any RPG from that era.

You know we love you because what other people think of your gaming tastes is not at the top of your list of worries.

That said, of all the games you've listed the only ones I've really played are (some of the) Ultima games. I played a few minutes of a Bard's Tale game once. My wife really likes Divine Divinity, and seems more than a little disappointed in me for not getting into it.

doubtingthomas396 wrote:

Also, apropos of nothing, does anyone else think that the Divinity people missed the boat with naming their latest sequel? I mean, Divinity: Original Sin 2?

I would have named it Divinity: Second Sin, and perhaps added a moderately jerky wizard with smoke powers as an NPC (his quest could be to get you to clean a bunch of graffiti from some temple).

As Elvis Costello wrote, there's no such thing as an original sin.

BdaLimey wrote:
B Dog wrote:
EvilDead wrote:

Weird, this episode isn't showing up on my podcast player. Overcast on iOS.

Same here. Not in my feed. I'm also using Overcast.

Likewise. Any idea what the problem might be?

I figured it would pop up by today but nope. Latest episode it is showing is from the 10th. Limey, are you using Overcast as well?

EvilDead wrote:

Weird, this episode isn't showing up on my podcast player. Overcast on iOS.

B Dog wrote:
EvilDead wrote:

Weird, this episode isn't showing up on my podcast player. Overcast on iOS.

Same here. Not in my feed. I'm also using Overcast.

BdaLimey wrote:
B Dog wrote:
EvilDead wrote:

Weird, this episode isn't showing up on my podcast player. Overcast on iOS.

Same here. Not in my feed. I'm also using Overcast.

Likewise. Any idea what the problem might be?

I've reached out to the OvercastFM Twitter account. Seems to be limited to the Overcast app.

UpToIsomorphism... from last weeks podcast thread wrote:

Maybe the Switch will be $299 US and $399 CA, so everyone is right!

I'm calling a win for Ol' Upto on that one!

And Minecraft Story Mode is excellent, one of the best TT games. It was criminally under appreciated here, but had a fun Saturday-morning cartoon style story with some real stakes and character growth.

Dream a Little Dream Body Swap (2 Coreys + Jason Robards FTW)

The Scene: A three day weekend with a with a long honey-do list that has been put off for ages.

The Player: Me, who just wants to chill, see some cool things, and hang out.

The Role: Torbjorn (Overwatch)

Hells yes. A couple seconds of hammering a turret, throw out some armor for my buds, then chillax! Job done. Me turret does all the work. Plus, the sight lines as you run out of your base aren't too shabby, regardless of your personal tastes, amirite?

Spoiler:

Roadhog not included ~cold sweat shivers~

Start the day with a light breakfast of Greek yogurt and olives with the ocean breeze blowing through my beard in Ilios, enjoy the gardens in Oasis, Get a bite of lunch at the cafe in Hollywood, enrich my mind at the museum in Numbani, quaff some steins of doppelbock alongside a plate of Wiener Schnitzel in Eichenwalde, party at the Fiesta in Dorado, and finish things of with some late night sushi in Lijiang. Wash, rinse, repeat.

On the other side, Torb is, in the eloquent bardic words of Sir Tom Jones, "the lead and how to swing it."

Spoiler:

IMAGE(http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0001/891/MI0001891196.jpg?partner=allrovi.com)

Torb, looking at the series of odd jobs and home repairs, says, "I have big plans for you, let's get started. Again and again. My masterpiece."

Honey-do List? Crushed.

Spoiler:

Yes, I actually own that Tom Jones CD

doubtingthomas396 wrote:
Scottish_Leprechaun wrote:

Honestly, I think my biggest fear about the Switch's battery is its overall longevity. If it ceases to hold a charge well after a year or so, what are my options for getting the battery replaced? Does it have to be shipped back to Nintendo and wait 3 months for it to return? THE PEOPLE DEMAND ANSWERS! (Not really, but still, its a concern that I've heard NOBODY mention anywhere)

(puts on his professional hat) BATTERIES

(also puts on professional hat) I have legit questions I'd like to ask you about batteries, at length and certainly not in this thread. I'll hit you up in Curse sometime!

McGuit wrote:

Lots of great info

Thanks for this!

B Dog wrote:
EvilDead wrote:

Weird, this episode isn't showing up on my podcast player. Overcast on iOS.

Same here. Not in my feed. I'm also using Overcast.

I'm having the same issue with Sticher Radio.

MrB0ssMan wrote:
B Dog wrote:
EvilDead wrote:

Weird, this episode isn't showing up on my podcast player. Overcast on iOS.

Same here. Not in my feed. I'm also using Overcast.

I'm having the same issue with Sticher Radio.

Just checking my list of podcasts this is also the only show, out of 10, where show descriptions don't show up under the episode number. I think it has always been that way on Overcast. I wonder if there is a syntax issue that is now affecting the new release. Hopefully they respond to Certis's tweet soon.

EvilDead wrote:
MrB0ssMan wrote:
B Dog wrote:
EvilDead wrote:

Weird, this episode isn't showing up on my podcast player. Overcast on iOS.

Same here. Not in my feed. I'm also using Overcast.

I'm having the same issue with Sticher Radio.

Just checking my list of podcasts this is also the only show, out of 10, where show descriptions don't show up under the episode number. I think it has always been that way on Overcast. I wonder if there is a syntax issue that is now affecting the new release. Hopefully they respond to Certis's tweet soon.

Huh. Never noticed that before, but you're right.