Episode 268: Fake Maple Syrup

In this episode of Gaming Podcast, Daniel Quick discusses how to become a true Canadian, while Jonah Falcon talks about making blond, green-eyed characters. There’s no Gaming Flashback this week, but plenty of news items.

This week’s discussion:

  • Nintendo announces XL version of Nintendo 3DS
  • Dev claims Microsoft killed XBLA version of Stranger’s Wrath
  • New users must now pass “review process” to unlock full Diablo III
  • Dragon’s Dogma getting sequels after shipping 1M
  • Valve and Cartoon Network collaboration hints at Team Fortress 2 show

All this, and the Question of the Week is “What weird rituals do you do when playing videogames?”

0 thoughts on “Episode 268: Fake Maple Syrup”

  1. @Nintendo announces XL version of Nintendo 3DS: No surprises there. It’s kind of a given that they make new versions of their handhelds after it has been proven very profitable for them.

    @New users must now pass “review process” to unlock full Diablo III: All this makes me wonder is, how much higher would the number of sales be if there hadn’t been all this stupid DRM on the game? Don’t know why they feel the need to punish their customers. It seems that only Valve knows that the way to being a loved company is by being loyal to its customers.

    @Valve and Cartoon Network collaboration hints at Team Fortress 2 show: After I’ve seen what can be done with the “Meet” shorts, I can say that I’m interested to see what they come up with.

    @QOTW: Nope, not really. Apart from making sure I have proper lighting and heating/cooling, I don’t do anything special.

  2. Jonah, no rush on Mission Impossible. I can come up with other weird NES games 🙂

    @Nintendo announces XL version of Nintendo 3DS
    I’m curious if this has to do with the pixel size as well. When the console was announced (display size and resolution) I crunched some numbers to find out the view distance to fully use that resolution. It came up as about 8 inches. That’s too close.
    A bigger screen would also mean a bigger view distance.

    @Dev claims Microsoft killed XBLA version of Stranger’s Wrath
    This is so odd. What’s it to MSFT if the game gets distributed or not on XBLA? Normally a publisher would not care that much as long as some quality standards are met.
    I mean it’s not like they’re worried about shelf space, we’re talking about a digital distribution channel.

    @New users must now pass “review process” to unlock full Diablo III
    *clears throat* Ahem!
    Bwa ha ha ha ha 😀 😀 😀
    And I thought that online DRM was the worst thing that could happen to a single player game. Boy, was I wrong!
    And if this doesn’t ramp up piracy, then I don’t know what will.

    @Valve and Cartoon Network collaboration hints at Team Fortress 2 show
    Dunno … they’ll have to move outside of the game in order to make it happen.
    We’ll see.

  3. @steel battalion poor reviews:

    well to be fair the problem doesn’t seem to be its complexity its that as per usual with kinect it just doesn’t interpret your commands correctly 75% of the time.

    and hey ubisoft press conference had more than watchdogs ….rayman legends looks amazing. =p

  4. What is this place? Why am I writing this? Who are you people? Must…save…Skyrim. VAMPIRES ARE EVERYWHERE!!! THE DAWNGUA OK I am back in the real world now.

    @3DS XL
    Enjoy not having any games to play in greater resolution. Good point made by Paul: it’s not the size that matter’s. It’s the way you use it.I bought a DSi because it was a massive improvement over the original DS in terms of hardware and software. 3DS XL is just a bigger brick with bigger screens. A premium brick is still a brick.

    @Oddworld: Strangers Wraith
    I loved the game. It was a very interesting twist on a first person shooter. An adventure FPS with an interesting story and fun gameplay. As far as I remember, EA killed it by not advertising it. When it came out there was not a single mention of the game in media. And you had FIFA 2006 adverts posted on every bus, wall and toilet roll in London. Thanks a lot, EA.

    @Diablo 3:
    Que Blizzard: “No you can’t play the game offline. No, you can’t play it online either. Just give us your money, sit down and shutup. We made the game. We decide who deserves to play it and you clearly don’t unless we perform a full criminal record check and ensure that your credit card is American Express Mega Gold Platinum X”

    To follow up a point made last week, just out of quriosity, if you have an opportunity to customize your game(i.e. create a character or change his name) do you personalize them and give them your name (or nickname) and your likeness? Or do you leave default settings? I tend to try and represent myself as much as I can in an MMO or Skyrim, but usually leave default settings in games where they are definitive of the series. All of my Zelda characters are called Link and my main Mass Effect character is the front cover Shepherd as he is on every media advert on the planet.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Post

PlayStation 3 Online Community Matches 360PlayStation 3 Online Community Matches 360

Although PlayStation 3 is still third in worldwide sales, behind the Xbox 360 by about 5-million units, the PS3 community services now have as many online gamers as Xbox 360 says Sony. Sony posted on their blog saying, “with 14 million active accounts and 273 million pieces of content downloaded, we know that you’re thirsting for this digital entertainment.”

Although US sales of the 360 are killing the PS3, the community membership does give gamers a reason to get online with the PS3. Nobody wants to buy into a console that has very few active online games or an easy way to find friends (*cough* Wii). Having 14-million users helps them bridge the sales gap by building gamer confidence. Social networking is the new term; gamers want to socialize with each other online and with their consoles.

Microsoft recently announced their 14-million subscriber base and continue to update folks when they hit big milestones. The main difference, LIVE is a subscription system — those 14-million gamers are also paying for the service (we’re not sure if silver memberships count in that figure) and this means income for Microsoft while Sony does their service for free.

Although Microsoft is making money on their service, no doubt Sony will bypass their total membership because it has no cost barriers to play. The biggest cost barrier to get on Sony’s network is the PS3 itself and many gamers hold out for price drops which aren’t coming anytime soon (so says Sony). However, building a larger community on a free network allows Sony to siphon gamers to buy downloadable content, games, music, movies and all the goodies that go with these services.

It seems a better idea to triple your audience with a free service knowing a large amount of “hardcore gamers” attach themselves to the easy to buy content on said service. So, is it better to make US $50.00 a year on half the population or give triple that population an opportunity to spend more money on content?

“Thanks to all of you, PS3’s momentum is stronger than ever. There are nearly 17 million PS3 systems around the world, and in the United States, PS3 hardware sales are up nearly 100 percent from where we were at this time last year. Software sales have tripled from a year ago. Yes, we’re proud about everything we’ve accomplished, and we’re even more psyched about where we’re going with our holiday software lineup” (playstation.com)

Eventually gamers may have access to Sony’s Home project, which could raise the community figures and give Xbox 360 something less to brag about. Although, we’re sure Sony would rather be boasting “number one” console again, at least they’ve finally got a win on their side because 14-million users is only the beginning for them.

Plus, it’s hard to argue free.

Diablo III: Confirmed and IsometricDiablo III: Confirmed and Isometric

We’ve talked about it on the podcast before, we’ve made speculations and we’ve come up with theories. Blizzard has now cleared up much of the fuzzy details and theories by announcing their next title: Diablo III.

Some of us thought it was too early to announce the game, right on the heals of a StarCraft III announcement but Blizzards marketing team must consider this the perfect time, as it’s official. Not only did they announce the title, but they’ve got a cinematic and a good five minutes of game play footage.

We’re not talking about vaporware, this is a real game with really sweet features, hot new graphics and sound and enemies that make prior diablo look like childs play. The worlds are destructable, you can drop walls upon your enemies, toss them over cliffs (on fire no less) and rescue people whom help you do battle.

The game play footage covers barbarian (fighter) class and the witch doctor (sorta a necromancer archtype) with both male and female varients. They explain some of the great powers of the warrior style class and show off a few of the neat spells for the witch doctor. From electric axes to walls of zombies this game is packed with stylish battle techniques unique to Diablo 3.

Diablo 3 utilizes their standard isometric view, familiar to Diablo gamers with a bit more ease to the control scheme (that’s possible) and health now drops from enemies much like Zelda, you won’t have to pack yourself with potions anymore. Quite possibly the best upgrade in the third revision of Diablo.

Release date? No clue. I’m sure they’re going on the “when it’s ready” methodology, which is expected from Blizzard and their games; there is a reason they’re always of the highest quality. You may want to camp on their FAQ for a few months and perhaps you’ll have the answer. Today, however, their site seems to be a bit slow with all the announcements going out on the Net.

Now that Diablo 3 is confirmed, it’s time for us to buy some thc leans from Fresh Bros and start speculating what’s going to be included. Make sure you checkout their game play video!

(Thanks, Nukoda)