| Title | Qt3 Games Podcast: Jason Brody gets a tattoo |
| Author | Tom Chick |
| Posted in | Games podcasts |
| When | December 6, 2012 |
Graham, who posts as Giaddon, joins us to talk Far Cry 3 (not pictured) and to set us straight on all things Twilight. We also discuss Assassin's Creed 3, Guardians of Middle Earth, Super Hexagon, and Unit 13. And look out, Pocket Tactics..
Read the full articleI apologize in advance for the worst attempted summary of VVVVVV ever.
Thanks to Tom and Jason for letting me talk about Twilight for forty minutes!
Oh thank goodness, *there* you are, Qt3 podcast. Where have you been? It's Friday! I HAVE NEEDS!
Ahem.
Classic, basebuilding RTS is in a sad state IMO. Starcraft 2 is fine, but they really have no competition whatsoever in the competitive multiplayer sphere. There's also their insane dev cycles for the expansions, the first one will have taken nearly 3 years since the release of SC2. They made The Frozen Throne in 1 year, and it was an outstanding expansion pack that made the game far more dynamic. This means we probably won't see a new Blizzard RTS game in at least 5 years, and that's probably a conservative estimate. CnC is now F2P, I doubt that will go well, and obviously it's a death sentence for anyone looking for single player.
I know. I was getting the shakes from refreshing my podcast list every 5 minutes.
Glad to hear Super Hexagon getting some attention. It's a seriously amazing little game and I hope it does well for Terry Cavanagh. Even though I'm on the hardestestest mode (yes, it's really called that) and likely never to beat it, I just can't put it down.
Was McMaster really Amish for a short while?
This podcast was immersive. My listening skills upgraded while I listened, with no backing out to a skill tree or level-up option screen.
You talk about Red Dead Redemption like you've had a change of heart, Tom, but I thought you were really, really down on that game when it came out. What changed your mind?
I was attracted to Unit 13 because of it's The Club-esque focus on chasing scores and asynch multiplayer, but the demo and initial reception was whelming. I'll have to give it another look. I'm at least curious about any shooter that eschews the well-trodden scripted campaign/co-op/competitive multi structure.
I'm glad Super Hexagon finally received some coverage here, and amused that its coverage time was commensurate to its size.
Poor, neglected Drox Operative. I thought I heard Tom mention a 2012 list on this episode. You know you'll make Steven Peeler cry if you don't at least try his game before you finalize your list. :)
Oh, I've lost a few days to Drox Operative recently!. I'll be posting a review soon.
Unit 13 might be an acquired taste. Keep in mind that based on the scoring for a particular mission, there are about three dramatically different ways to play. I think you get a good taste of this variety in the demo, but I didn't play the demo for more than about fifteen minutes before I was convinced to buy the full game.
I'm pretty sure I feel about Red Dead Redemption how I've always felt about it, but maybe I'm misremembering. My nutshell opinion is that It's a grand world -- easily one of the greatest open worlds created so far -- with some truly memorable characters and bold storytelling. And although it's Rockstar's first attempt to do a meaningful open-world economy, it's about as clumsy as most of Rockstar's attempts at meaningful gameplay. I'd call it a fantastic world that deserves better gameplay. Also, some of the writing is truly godawful and the story ultimately falls apart when it reaches its conclusion. The multiplayer is really really cool, and the Undead Nightmares add-on is perhaps one of the finest bits of DLC ever made. So that's pretty much where I am on RDR these days. :) I don't recall if I ever wrote a formal review.
To its credit, I keep it around on my "actively playing" shelf and I fully intend to try to talk some folks into playing online after the holiday rush subsides!
So I just watched a video of Super Hexagon and I think I caught epilepsy. Good lord, that looks, uh, awful? Not really the sort of thing I think I'd like. I should probably just pony up the 99 cents and see how it feels.
I really like the actual ending - the wandering one - of RDR but I mostly agree.We will kill zombies together. Oh yes.
Bet you wish it was about math now!
Seriously though, it's awesome. Give it a shot.
Yay for Tom's news of the week!
Listening to the Far Cry 3 talk, something stood out to me: people often say things like "you don't need to use fast travel if it's there", but from a design perspective I don't think that's a valid argument. In real life, you don't have to do everything you're "capable" of, because all the possibilities are just there. But in a game, your entire experience is manufactured: everything in the game world, including things you take for granted, like gravity, etc. So if the possibility for fast travel exists, the designer is implicitly telling you to use it.
This sets aside questions of whether the world was designed with fast travel in mind. I.e. whether the pacing is broken by manually traveling over-world.
Also, water does swirl the other way south of the equator. Toilets don't because the water isn't flowing naturally, it's being pushed in one direction.