Episode 320: Like This Like That

The posting of Monday’s podcast has been delayed a day, sorry about that. This week is fairly long, and the Gaming History gets into the venerable Sega Dreamcast, which still has some developers making new games for it.

Otherwise, this week’s news items include:

  • Assassin’s Creed series will have end, assures Ubisoft
  • EverQuest Next gameplay revealed, accepting beta registration
  • Blizzard confirms Project Titan overhaul, “unlikely to be subscription-based”
  • EA claims freedom of speech in NCAA lawsuit appeal, court rejects it
  • Region-based factions will be in The Crew

This week’s Question of the Week: “What makes you decide to preorder a game or console?”

0 thoughts on “Episode 320: Like This Like That”

  1. @To assassinate the series

    I dropped the series at Assasin’s Creed 2; shortly before Brotherhood came out. I want to pick it up again and catch up to number 4 but the prospect of playing 3 games to do so is daunting. I can see why people want an end to the series. In fact, there seems to be a rising interest in the resurrection of Prince of Persia franchise. I miss the platforming action. Being able to climb everything is technologically impressive. But it can never beat the platforming on an environment blatantly constructed for your climbing abilities.

    @Is Everquest the “ahem” Next big thing since Warcraft?

    I hate the title. To me it sounds very stupid. There definitely should be a word after the “Next” bit. Getting back to the topic, I hear people say the new Everquest could be a Warcraft killer. But I don’t think there ever will be a Warcraft Killer. Warcraft was a one of case. It was a right game at the right time at the right place. In 2006 I became obsessed with MMOs. The concept of playing alongside thousands of people was captivating. Not having a credit card, I tried to find a free to play MMO. But they were few and far between. Most were crap. People played Warcraft because there was not much alterative.WOW was good. And it had a lot of people. Which made it even more popular. Now there are way to many choices. People flock from one MMO to another. A game that has full servers on relase becomes a desolate wasteland shortly after. So, as I said, there will be no WOW killer. There will never be anything like WOW ever again. MMOs will exists in cycles. They will have a lot of players on release. And will steadily decline after. Just like any other MMO today.

    @A game about America made by British and French. This cannot possibly go wrong….

    So which coast is London? I bet they will place us under the Immigrants division. And charge us
    same numerical prices but in pounds. I will admit, the idea sounds intriguing but it might spook the foreigners. If you don’t know the US geography, it will be just like playing Skyrim.
    Unknown locations. Dangerous roads. And locals that tell you to get out of their country. And the development mix is awesome. If there is anything that the British hate more than Americans it is the French…

    @QOTW

    After the Duke Nukem Forever fiasco, my pre-order policy changed significantly. I only pre-order a game if I know it’s good. I pre-ordered Halo 4. I pre-ordered Battlefield 3.I will most likely pre-order GTA 5. The advantage of getting them on release is that the Internet won’t spoil you the fun bits. I often pre-order games with a strong multiplayer component, because that is when they are the most fun. I never pre-ordered a console before, because back then it was a considerably large investment for a student. I was going to pre-order a PS4, but I am continuously swaying towards the Xbox. I think I will just end up waiting till January and see how both consoles do. Most next gen games that I want to play won’t be released till 2014 anyway.

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This week’s Question of the Week: “What is your favorite videogame commercial or trailer?”

Gaming Flashback: MystGaming Flashback: Myst

Myst was published by Brøderbund Software, developed by Cyan Worlds and created by two brothers that did the design and directed the game (it was, much like a movie).

The original game was released on the Macintosh (in 1993) and then later ported to Microsoft Windows and Sega Saturn, PlayStation, Jaguar CD, AmigaOS, CD-i, 3DO, PlayStation Portable, and Nintendo DS.

Myst puts the player in the role of the Stranger, who uses an enchanted book to travel to the island of Myst. There, the player uses other special books written by an artisan and explorer named Atrus to travel to several worlds known as “Ages”. Clues found in each of these Ages help reveal the back-story of the game’s characters. The game has several endings, depending on the course of action the player takes.” (wikipedia)

The game was a success, no doubt, and was considered the best selling PC game of all time until TheSims dethroned it. Besides mind blowing graphics, at the time, Myst helped move the game and PC industry along by selling CDROM’s. The game required a CDROM, which was rare at the time, and I recall them bundling Myst with some CDROMS or hyping it as “you need a CDROM so you can play Myst.” On more than one occasion when a person game to me asking what they should get to show off their new (costly) CDROM I would say “you need to try Myst.”

The gameplay of Myst consists of a first-person journey through an interactive world. The player moves the character by clicking on locations shown in the main display; the scene then crossfades into another frame, and the player can continue to explore. Players can interact with specific objects on some screens by clicking or dragging them(wikipedia)

Franchise sales: 12-million copies (first Myst game alone in the franchise, 6-million), pretty impressive eh?

You don’t have to be a huge Myst fan to know how it changed the industry, grew the medium of CD-based games and entertained millions. A real gamers thinking game!

To hear our full impression of Myst, checkout the TD Gaming Podcast Episode 77.

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Valve Software has taken their latest successful franchise title Team Fortress 2 and followed it up with a website or “blog” which can keep their fans “in the loop.” Teamfortress.com will, no doubt, be the launch pad for much hype, community offerings and up-to-date news about the TF2 game and any updates.

“Now that we’ve settled into regular releases of content, we’ve found ourselves wanting a better way to talk directly to the TF2 community about the state of the game and some of the reasoning behind the choices we’re making. Our hope is that this blog will accomplish that, and give everyone some better insight into our development process as well.” (teamfortress.com)

Now, there is a great chance Valve will use their new launch pad to talk about upcoming games and lead you to demo’s and downloads to the TF2 title; they already link to the valve store to purchase the game. But, blogs bring in users searching for fresh content about the game and give official word to kill any bad rumors.

Call it marketing, call it journalism or developers notes, there is nothing wrong with having one more resource which represents the voice of Valves TF2 development team. Congradulations guys!