Episode 289: Princess Podcast

In this episode of Gaming Podcast, Jonah states he got to see Wreck It Ralph, while Paul still can’t find a black Wii U. This week’s Gaming Flashback is the 2002 Gamecube launch title Super Mario Sunshine.

This week’s news includes:

  • The Lund Report: Black Friday 2012 NPD
  • Nintendo Power’s last issue released
  • Blizzard acquiredProject Blackstone‘ domain November 26th
  • Rumor: Next gen Xbox coming Holiday 2013
  • Dead Island: Riptide banned in Germany

All this and Reader Feedback, and the Question of the Week is, “Did you read many issues of Nintendo Power?”

0 thoughts on “Episode 289: Princess Podcast”

  1. @ Black Friday 2012
    I was pretty disappointed in how “Black Friday” was handled in Romania. Plenty of retailers increased the price a week before, so that they could do a 40% slash to get the price back to the old value.

    @Nintendo Power’s last issue released
    It also depends how many people want it. Here’s an example: our major cable provider decided to not renew the contract it had with Discovery Channel. Why? Because just 0.9% of the people watched it.
    How many people read “Nintendo Power”?

    @Blizzard acquired ‘Project Blackstone‘ domain
    It could be a preventive buy, I guess. Still, not really hyped about it, Blizzard lost me since always-online DRM; last game I played from them was Warcraft III and Frozen Throne.

    @Dead Island: Riptide banned in Germany
    Funny though, there are plenty of games (not just Gears of War) where players blow other human-like character to bits, and those are still available in Germany.
    But hey, what do I know, perhaps the baddies in those games bleed green goo …

    @QOTW: No.

  2. Not interested to comment on any of the news articles, I just came to ask: “Guess who has two thumbs and got the Wii U before Paul did?”. I did.

    @QOTW: Never

  3. Just found out about this podcast and was amused that there was a topic discussed, I just held a speech on in school. Censoring, banning etc. in Germany.

    The USK is all right, they just rate the games like any other institue that rates games. The problem is the BPjM (the young protection thing you translated). They decide what gets banned and lands on the index etc. They’re not only after games, but after media in general. They just recently banned Steel Panther’s 1 year old album “Balls Out” for no reason given. Wrote them a mail (respectful, of course) and got no answer whatsoever. So did the German Metal Hammer-magazine. Same answer.

    They ban whatever they want to. Sometimes there’s no system behind it. Dishonored came out here completely uncensored, this means I, as Corvo, can decapitate enemies and throw their heads around. Kinda humiliating to the corpse, isn’t it?

    If anyone is interested in how cuts on games look like, I recommend http://www.schnittberichte.com
    especially the Bulletstorm one.

    QOTW: Never.

  4. @QOTW:
    Yeah… Nintendo World yes, Nintendo Power NO.

    Nintendo World had the “Approved By Nintendo” seal, so, i bought them for a couple of years…

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McFarlane Toys Makes Guitar Hero Action FiguresMcFarlane Toys Makes Guitar Hero Action Figures

Activision has decided to take Guitar Hero to the next level: Action Figures. This is a great move for the company, striking the iron while it’s hot! The Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises are growing in intensity while big blockbuster titles like GTA IV are waning in sales and profit.

Pretty soon you and your children can purchase action figures in the liking of Guitar Hero, would you consider this or is it just a gimmick?

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Represented in the first line of action figures are four of the Guitar Hero game’s most popular characters:

JOHNNY NAPALM
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“We have very recently begun creating toys based on video games,” says McFarlane Toys CEO Todd McFarlane. “With Activision, we get to work on arguably one of the biggest video game franchises out there, and capitalize on the wide-ranging demographic that encompasses this game.”

Each figure has 15-18 moving parts. Additionally, a unique guitar is included with each character that is removable and interchangeable with the other figures. Each figure also comes with a sculpted Guitar Hero logo base.

McFarlane Toys’ 6-inch action figures retail for $10-$15.

Visit www.SPAWN.com for updates and the all the latest and to-the-minute news.

About McFarlane Toys
Grammy-and Emmy-winning producer/director Todd McFarlane, creator of Spawn and the founder of  SPAWN.com, is the force behind McFarlane Toys, one of America’s top action figure manufacturers. With an eclectic array of movie, TV and music licensing tie-ins – as well as the officially licensed teams of the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL, McFarlane Toys has become a leader and redefined the standards within the action figure industry. For complete information on this pop-culture powerhouse, visit SPAWN.com.

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Episode 643: Bits and PiecesEpisode 643: Bits and Pieces

The previous two podcasts got corrupted on upload, and now I have to reedit them completely. Be patient.

This week’s there’s a bunch of minor news items, covering things like Sony’s lawsuit, S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2 and the Ukraine invasion, Minecraft frogs, various remasters, and the gang talk briefly about the newly released Tunic.

The main news items include:

Let us know what you think.

Users Pwn MetaCritic Review SubmissionsUsers Pwn MetaCritic Review Submissions

Although we’ve found Metacritic a userful resource for game reviews, many folks have gone on a user submission rampage to discredit games that haven’t even launched yet. Their first attack was on LittleBigPlanet followed by Resistance 2, now their hitting Gears of War 2.

While Gears of War 2 has a Metacritic score of 94/100 the user’s have reviewed it to be a 3.5 out of 10, with a bright red box around the user review due to its low nature we’re sure. Although users are free to give their own honest representation of the game from their perspective, Gears of War 2, as of the review dates, hasn’t been released yet – these reviews are bogus.

This style of attack was popularized in Spore, when Amazon got nailed with poor reviews of the game because Spore’s “Draconic” DRM made people angry. However, it’s more reasonable for people to voice their opinion on a known issue with a game; Gears of War 2 review spamming is just mean.

We use Metacritic as guidance when we do our gaming podcast to understand what games are rated in the industry, but we don’t use user reviews as our main guide. There are plenty of folks out there that may utilize these reviews in more seriousness because they may feel journalists reviews are tainted by advertisers or “the man” and want the common gamers opinion.

The common gamer cannot possibility be reviewing Gears of War 2 before the title has arrived. This is bogus. Metacritic has this to say:

“My advice for our faithful users is to focus your attention on the Metascore for this game and not the thousands of user votes, most of which have been submitted before said users have played the game. This is a gaming community, and if people want to stuff the ballot box, there’s not much I can do at this point. When we upgrade the registration requirements for participation on the site in the near future, this type of thing won’t happen. We’ll post the full legitimate user reviews upon the game’s release. As always, thanks for using the site.” (1up)

So, to those looking for holiday gaming gifts, keep this in mind while you start hunting down games you’ll want to buy.