You're pretty fuckin rad is what you are Larry, roll credits lol. I need some more band shirts to wear around. I use to buy a lot but now I don't and over time the majority of them fell apart and I'm left with only a couple wearable band shirts. A few Iron Maiden ones still in decent shape, an Avenged Sevenfold one, Dropkick Murphys, and a Nightwish one.
"I don't think so Tim" is that a Home Improvement reference lol? If so, I approve 
Back in the discussion where we were talking about how horror doesn't franchise well, we talked more about it from the player's perspective and the subjectiveness of horror and how you become accustomed to horror universes over time and need something fresh. We didn't really talk about the budgets, so it's great to see this Rage Quit go into it.
It's a faceplam for me, thinking about the choice they made to invest so much money in DS3 and expect so much from it. It stinks of them just looking around at their properties and just tossing them all at the AAA wall to sink or swim. That sounds like a stupid business decision, irresponsible management, and people who don't understand gaming. Are higher ups loosing jobs for stuff like this or are they blaming others? People who do things like this can't succeed for long, they need to have people who are business savy but also understand video games and the experience of playing and consuming, and all the different genres. If they keep expecting all their games to sell 6 million copies, they aren't going to be making very many video games. You can't do blockbusters and record breakers in bulk just because you say so, but the publishers have this fantasy that they can just toss money at things and turn anything into a record breaker (they practically need to break entertainment records just to make a profit). People who make these kinds of DS3 decisions have failed at capitalism and leadership, they deserve to crash and burn so others can give it a shot.
Whoa I've never heard of Kylahullut, I'm going to have to go check them out now! As far as Sinergy goes they did some really great songs. If you wanted to check out Sinergy I'm going to go on Youtube to try round up a couple of my favorite songs of theirs so you can get the gist of it. Sinergy is quite melodic and uses keyboard sounds somewhat similar to the early Bodom albums so you may like it. It occasionally resembles that kind of spooky classical vibe that Something Wild had in some of those songs. I hope you like them, if you get the chance to listen to them tell me what you think.
Virtual Future - I love this song, it has both spooky keyboards and triumphant melodies. Their first album, Beware The Heavens probably has the most Something Wild influence. The later albums are still great but they're much more technical and Alexi and Roope really started pumping out a lot of great solos in practically every song in the later albums.
Midnight Madness - This is from the second album, the production is better and it has a lot of punch to it. My favorite part is the riff and solo sequence that starts around 1:40
Passage to the Fourth World - I'm sorry about the low quality but this is the only one I could find, it's a great song though. This is from their final album where they were really tearing things up and at full steam with the melodies, choruses, riffs, and solos.
Suicide By My Side - This is from the final album as well. The solo stuff starts to ramp up at 2:00, and this may be my favorite solo of theirs. I don't know why, it's actually really short but it packs a quick melodic punch in the face. Short and sweet. Somehow it's really powerful.
I spit on your grave - This is from the final album too and it explodes right out of the gate. Great song, it just loud as hell and powers all the way to the end.
That sucks they didn't play anything from those old albums. Sometimes Alexi seems to kind of dislike those old songs he wrote and the riffs he would write, even though most of us think they're beautiful. He's been evolving as a player and writer for a long time now and I've tended to like all his various styles. I love the way he played in those old albums, I love the way he plays in the newer ones, I like how he did things in the band Sinergy as well where he played more like power metal/punk I guess, I don't know how to describe it. Some of my very favorite guitar solos and riffs of his are from Sinergy even.
Something Wild is an incredible album and I like all those songs as well. I really love Hatebreeder and Follow the Reaper too. Towards Dead End is one of my favorite songs, and the song Hatebreeder has one of my favorite Bodom solos. COB is just so much fun to listen to, they're excellent.
Good work putting up Bad Religion and Children of Bodom, those are two bands I absolutely love. Red Light in My Eyes parts 1 and 2 are really amazing. I love the song In The Shadows from that album, the way that song ends is one of my favorites.
I like the sound of going back to alternating weeks with PstC. This comment is two pronged, the first thing I'll mention is a general topic idea for everybody to ponder for future episodes, and the second part will be my actual question for this weeks NWP.
So here the first part. A while ago I brought a topic to Jesse and Mike that they should do an episode that's all about education and gaming, and the educational value of interactive experiences. They said they would like to do an episode with that theme some time this year. It's a loaded topic and I was pretty vague in my pitch, but I think everybody could make what they want of it and take the discussions where they please, and as deep as they please.
I would really like you and Patrick to cover the same topic and explore my core question I initially asked Jesse and Mike to get the topic brewing. I'm not saying you and Patrick should do it this week when you record tonight, but just keep the topic in mind for the future and see what Patrick thinks. I don't want anybody to rush it. I love Jesse and Mike but the topic is big and I think it'd be nice to see NWP get involved as well as the site in general. The topic of "are games art?" has been beat to death and nobody wants to keep revisiting it, so we should move the discussion forward into other areas and explain what games have done for us, and what they may be able to do for others.
The thing that got the topic brewing was the initial question I had, it was something like:
Have you ever played games that challenged you cognitively, emotionally, intellectually, or engaged you in any way that school, the government, family, and/or society failed to, or didn't do as effectively? If so, explore and explain some of your various experiences.
My original question was more charged so I cleaned it up, I originally called society hypocritical, our school system archaic, and the government broken. I still believe that, but you don't have to put any of that in there if you don't want lol. Pretty much all of us have been gaming for many years and we have a lot of context and experience. So what have games given us, what have we learned over all these years and thousands of hours sunk into this hobby/passion? Some people in our society still hold up the old stereotypes, some don't want to see adults playing them, some try to legislate for censorship, some think games are a waste of time and you learn nothing from them. Are they right? I don't believe so. When gamers dispute these people often the only thing you ever see is angry gamers in a forum calling the detractors old fogeys and we pray that they all die off so we can inherit the Earth and play games without judgement and opposition.
But why? Let's finally start exploring why it matters, what have we learned from games, and what is their potential for teaching others and being an acceptable additional learning apparatus at teacher's disposal?
Now here's the second part, and my actual question for this weeks show, it's about the marketing of games.
Do you think short 30 second to 1 minute television/internet advertisements do a poor job of representing the games they're trying to sell you? If so, is there anything you would do differently then the marketers whose jobs it is to try and take only 30 seconds of your time to sell you a game that took years to make and will likely be a game experienced over several hours?
What got me thinking about the idea was the Tomb Raider commercial where she's doing pull ups, working out, and some comical inspirational workout music is playing. Also, the Crysis 3 commercial where he shoots down a copter with one hand, and acts like a hot shot while ZZ Top plays in the background. These kinds of advertisements continue to try and sell games with comedy and undermine any message the designers are presenting. Tomb Raider is a brutal story of personal evolution, survival, and violence. Crysis is a story of the apocalypse and fighting all powerful corrupt human corporations, and there's aliens on the side, and a horrid plague that liquifies people.
I don't want to just single out short adverts though, because in general it's incredibly difficult to market games and I've heard some people say it's even impossible and silly to try and encapsulate video games into previews, trailers, and even demos. I've heard that demos hurt game sales, that previews are sometimes useless or misleading like with Aliens CM. Marketers are just trying to do their jobs, so would any of us do something different if our boss came to us and said, "Here's this 10 hour adventure game, or this 60 hour RPG, go sell it to people in 30 seconds or you're fired." Would we do anything differently than what's being done? Would we sell Tomb Raider with comedy to try and win hearts and appear non threatening and non challenging?
Would you be able to sell a Mass Effect, tell tales The Walking Dead, Final Fantasy 13, Spec Ops The Line, or any other game in a 30 second video ad any differently? Is game marketing often just stupid by necessity? Nature of the beast and the format you're using to advertise it?
I loved exploring the planets. I didn't like the controls of the Mako, but I still always liked exploring. It wasn't the core idea of the groundside Mako exploration that was flawed, it was just the execution and the feel of it that I bet people didn't like. The idea itself is excellent. Some of my favorite moments from the Mass Effect series were doing the Mako stuff and seeing the art. There's a planet where you find this ancient Prothean sphere and you put a trinket into it and it tells you a story or something. It's a trinket that the Consort may or may not give you at the beginning of the game on the Citadel if you do things for her. You have no idea if it's important or not until way later in the game when you use it to interact with this ancient sphere and that blew my mind.
Then there's this planet called Klendagon or something that was struck with a gigantic round from mass accelerator Reaper killer weapon millions of years ago. It was the largest weapon ever devised and it blasted straight through the Reaper, went across the solar system, and tore across the surface of Klendagon leaving a giant rift. Holy crap that's awesome history and hidden narrative for you to find. I love exploring the planets and hearing about their atmosphere content, orbital cycles, surface temperature, and then going down to the surface to find cool stuff and look up in the sky to see new things. There's always neat artwork and cool skyboxes to see.
I've always liked Killswitch a lot, my favorite album has been the one that My Curse was on. I learned that song on guitar and a few other ones. I love the sound of their guitars and the way they play together melding the clean sounds and heavily distorted sounds. It's super heavy but beautiful and melodic. I love the song My Last Serenade that had the old singer, and I liked the singer that was on My Last Curse as well. They've always been pretty great no matter the singer. Seeing the old singer come back is probably a fresh change for them, they seem like they're having fun.
The As I lay Dying song was my favorite. I've always loved those guys, probably even more than Killswitch. I love their guitars and drums even more. I'm going to listen to the Wolfchant song now because I bet its power metal, the band name and artwork totally says power metal to me lol, and I love my power metal so I'm going to listen to it. I just got into watching Game of Thrones and I'm loving it, so I'm in the mood for some power metal and some high fantasy.
Fatal Frame 2 came out on Playstation 2, Xbox, and a Wii remake was released in Europe, Austrailia, and Japan. FEAR came out on PC, Xbox 360, and Playstation 3. On console the expansions were sold separately called FEAR Files. You can get FEAR on Steam with both expansions so that's slicker. The game and both expansions came out between 2005 and 2007 so the system requirements won't be quite as high. It may just work out for your D620
