This podcast is plagued with audio issues, unfortunately, as it returns from a week’s hiatus to check out the new games and controversies, as well as Gaming Flashback for one of the greatest superhero games of all time, Batman: Arkham Asylum.
The news this week includes:
Let us know what you think.
This week includes a Gaming Flashback about the sticky puzzle game World of Goo, which was one of the first games released without DLC — which is one of the main themes running through this podcast: videogame obsolescence. The guys also discuss James Gunn’s work on Lollipop Chainsaw and speedrun cheating.
The news for the week includes:
All this and Listener Feedback.
Now that Blizzard feels their engine is solid, it’s time to move on to creating content for the full game. Jay Wilson, Diablo 3‘s lead designer, says the game engine is in an advance stage of completion and much of the art team has moved onto Act 2. Don’t read into that, he said game engine.
Blizzard is obviously not hurting for money, given the success of World of Warcraft and they’ve always taken their time with projects to make them solid products. Blizzard’s name is on the line and they’re brand consists of three major franchises: Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo. When you produce so few games you’re expected to do them perfectly.
How do they do it? As Wilson says, “If we haven’t rebuilt something five times it really doesn’t deserve to be shipped. That’s pretty much our policy.” (eurogamer) While a game engine is the foundation for a great game experience, the content is king. Blizzard is deep in the mire of content production so, although the engine might be solid, the final product is probably still far from complete.
End result, expect a high quality product once again from Blizzard.
This weeks gaming podcast we stroll down memory lane with Gauntlet, ponder Microsoft’s role as a PC game publisher, hit up some news:
We’ll also take a look at the history of the joystick and pimp our new gaming podcast forums. You can also checkout our new World of Warcraft guild, Fallen Souls.
