Welcome to the last gaming podcast of 2008! This week we’re flashing back to Nobunaga’s Ambition, a classic turn based Japanese strategy game. We’ll take a look back at the history of FASA and hit up some gaming news, including:
This weeks soap box segement, we ask if the video game release cycle is too fast or too slow.
This week sees the return of Paul Nowak from his holiday vacation. There’s plenty of news items and some reader feedback, but also the return of Gaming History as the crew checks out the failed portable console, the Game.com.
The news for this week includes:
Finally, the Question of the Week is simple: “What did you do on your holiday break?”
Last week’s episode was a bust, and there was a strange glitch in this one that caused the audio on Jonah’s side to completely cut out. However, it’s been recovered, and this episode deals with the direct-to-Blu-Ray animated film Batman Ninja.
This week’s news includes:
Let us know what you think.
This week we’re taking a stroll down memory lane of Deus Ex, hitting up some information about Warren Spector and crashing through some good game news including:
New Guitar Hero Game a “best of” compilation.Of course, we forgot our Question of the Week, so let’s ask it now: How many bad/buggy patches and content updates would you accept before you give up on the developer? Ton’s of great comments this week, hopefully you’ll remember to answer the question we forgot to ask in the show.
Also, check out the show if you’ve got a PS2 and want two volumes of Popcap’s casual games, as we’re looking to give them away.
Derrick, that’s Shogun: Total War (it was the first Total War game in its series so the graphics aren’t that good compared to the recent Total War games). I liked that game too.
If you liked Nobunaga’s Ambition you might like Genghis Khan 2, also made by KOEI (http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/505/Genghis+Khan+II+-+Clan+of+the+Gray+Wolf.html)
What’s your take in Valve’s concept of episodic releases? They explained that with that kind of structure they can easily take advantage of new technologies as they come up, and not have to hold back using new technologies until the next reiteration of their game.
The problems with long release cycles, taking it to the extreme, with Duke Nukem Forever (I think) the reason why it was so delayed was by the time they reached mid-development, their game, the graphics, the engine look so obsolete, so they bought a new engine, and by the time they reached back to mid-development, the then new engine they bought gets outdated, and the cycle repeats.
Something like this happened with Blizzard with their Warcraft Adventures (it was never released).
I think episodic structures work well for some games (Sam and Max), and long development cycles for others. So long as I get a game I can enjoy I don’t really care that much
Here’s what *I* think about it, underdog: They take way too friggin’ long. They keep changing the engine, when all you need to do is create levels.
Look at Telltale Games – now they do episodic content right.
@jonahfalcon: yeah I know, the wait is killing me for episode 3.
but from a developer’s viewpoint, improving the engine continually will do good in the long run since it’ll not only help with that game their making at the moment, but they can use it for their future games as well.
keeping the engine up-to-date with new technologies is always good. I’ve worked with commercial engines that, while popular, they start showing their age in that we couldn’t incorporate features we had in mind because of its limitations that could have been fixed with newer libraries