I bet it'll use Kinect! Yay!
I love GoW but I have no need to play yet another one. Even if this game keeps up the solid mechanics and level design the series is known for, to me it just seems like filler. The kind of filler you could see coming from a nautical mile away. I hope Microsoft's E3 press conference has more to offer than this. This is just business as usual.
This is the first time I've served up a PB&Jason, and it was delicious. You rock Jason! It's great Chessa, Nick, and yourself are going to cover the Zelda concert, I've always wanted to go to one of those but I've usually had to resort to youtube videos. I'll love to see all the coverage and stories you guys have on it.
I started keeping up with E3 news and coverage just before the beginning of this generation, so around 2004 and 2005. It was a really exciting time to start paying attention to the conference because the Wii reveal was pretty exciting. The beginning of this generation was generally very exciting and I was optimistic about the kind of games that would be possible. Now it's been 6 years since E3 05', a new Nintendo is on the way, we have seen a lot of great games this generation, and for me that excitement is building for the next gen. Even though we have seen a few great games at E3 in recent history, the last few years have been downers for me. That excitement and freshness is long gone with this generation. Every E3 brings something I'd expect, and I want to be surprised. I want Nintendo to woo me with the Wii U, I want the Valve team to show me the next Half Life, I want to see Doom 4, and more than anything I want to see new IPs that I can speculate on and be a little kid about again.
Over the years, even though the games coming out have been high quality, I just got tired of each E3 being a platform to show me the release date of the next Assassin's Creed, Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy, Gears of War, or Fable. It feels like I haven't been able to get excited for a new IP in quite a while. A new console generation isn't as great as a creative new IP, but new consoles are still pretty exciting and I'll have my eyes all over Nintendo's press conference.
As far as the overcrowding issues go, I've never been so I wouldn't know, but from the way you explained it I can see how messy it must be. Waiting hours in line to use one thing is a waste of time. The conference only lasts a few days, and if you waste the majority of an entire show-floor-day waiting in line for one thing it's just silly. I personally would want to see as many things as I could. I'm a Halo fanboy but even I wouldn't waste an entire day waiting to play a little Halo 4 demo. If it was my job to cover it that would be a different story because it would be like a requirement, but as a fan I could think of much more productive ways to use up a day rather than waiting in line for one thing.
I'm in. The remastered visuals should be nice, and I'm happy Resurrection of Evil comes with it. I tended to enjoy RoE more than Doom 3. RoE is a full game in its own right. It's an expansion pack but it's every bit as lengthy as Doom 3 if I remember correctly, and with the addition of the gravity gun and some other mechanical changes from Doom 3 I think RoE was a superior game.
This should be pretty decent as a remaster, but the thing I'm most excited about is that I bet this is part of bigger scheme. They might be trying to get Doom into people's minds again so they can build excitement for Doom 4 or get new fans into the series. 343 had the same strategy with their remaster of Halo CE. Maybe there will be some news about Doom 4 before long.
I understand what you mean Jesse, and I'd be happy with that I guess. I would certainly pay the extra money to get physical stuff and collector's items for games that are really special to me like a Halo for example. If the standard edition box and disc got replaced and the new "standard edition" of games became the raw digital form I wouldn't mind. As long as I could easily and conveniently still buy a physical special copy of the game like we can today. They could cut costs and make their games a little cheaper by making the digital one the standard edition, and they could still satisfy the people who will pay the extra money for physical stuff like you and me would do.
The cheaper costs of putting the digital standard edition out there would help the companies save money, hopefully allow them to get away from the rigid $60 price standard, and I think that kind of low cost and convenience would be able to get games to a lot of people and make people open their wallets more often.
People go nuts for STEAM sales, and the convenience of STEAM, why wouldn't they do the same for consoles? The whole digital side could possibly work pretty well, but if they also allow us to buy the special editions and pay extra for the physical copies that would be the best. That's a pretty okay future I guess, it's much better than just being "all-digital" or "all-physical". Finding middle ground and balance would work for me.
That's the first time I've heard from John Gholson and I thought he was a great guest, I hope he can make it back sometime and be a guest on more episodes. Thanks for answering my question too John! Battleship tanking doesn't surprise anybody probably, but it just begs the question, "Why did they do it?" What's next, Connect Four The Movie with a teen vampire twist? Battleship the board game doesn't even have characters, story, or a universe. There's no context at all in that sense. It's just a grid, some ships, probability, and trying to sink another person's ship. I hear a lot of people say that Hollywood is out of ideas, and Rob was commenting on that perception in a previous episode on how Hollywood likes to follow whatever is popular. With all that said about "Hollywood's creativity being gone" or "Hollywood just following trends" I was completely confused when Battleship showed up. Reason being is because it doesn't necessarily follow any trends from a business perspective, and it's not very interesting creatively. So both creatively and business-wise this movie seems fucking dumb from it's inception. The ever-reliable Wikipedia says that the budget for the movie was just over 200 million dollars. Why did they make this?
Good discussion on digital downloads too. I don't have a problem with digital stuff as long as A) We have the infrastructure and tech to make it as fast, cheap, and convenient as possible. And B) As Julian mentioned, somebody needs to find a solution for archivists.
Having everything digital, in clouds, or whatever, and the benefits of having tech solutions like that (there are certainly many benefits, if the entire solution works well) don't outweigh the negative of making archiving impossible. If they can find a solution for still allowing collectors and archivists to do what they do, it should all be fine. Ideally I wish you could always have the options to buy physical media. Digital content should ditch the rigid pricing structure and price things lower to account for all the money they're not spending on printing discs and what not. But there should always be an option to buy physical media. I would absolutely pay extra money if I could buy a collectors edition of a future Halo or Half Life game in a tin case and everything with all the fan-fare and fixins.
I just want the choices. If I want a collectors edition in a tin case of Halo I should be able to get it like I've always done. If I don't care about the extra stuff and I just want the raw game in a digital form, I should be able to do that too. I'm the consumer, give me what I want. I have demand, you should make supply. I will pay money for what I want, and if you have what I want I will give you money, it's simple lol! Well it's not that simple at all, but I wish it was. I agree with Rob I think the next console gen will dip its toes in each pool (digital/physical) and they will wait to see which one ends up being preferred in the end by consumers.
Ever since the Halo series started releasing tin-case collectors editions I've bought every single one I can get my hands on and I've eaten up every little piece of fiction they have. If "the future" prevents me from getting my tin case, extra artwork, fiction, and fan fare, I'm going to bust a nut. I will go back in time and kill John Connor if that happens. Or is it the other way around? Do I need to stop Skynet? Who knows. Something would have to die, that's for fucking sure.
Ah, so the no brainer has obliviously been noticed by devs before lol.
I will continue bestowing J-Bone upon you, but Jammers is pretty good too, maybe even Doc-J. Makes me think more of a basketball superstar though, like if you played for the Harlem Globetrotters or American Gladiators I think Jammers or Doc-J would be a no brainer. Did they ever make an American Gladiators video game? That seems like a no brainer too.
(update) I mean seriously, imagine an American Gladiator game or even a Ninja Warrior game with some Mirror's Edge parkour or Condemned 2 hand to hand combat. No brainer.
Preach it J-Bone! The Rant is a pretty cool new editorial, I like it. I turned my head to the side when I saw this news a few days ago or whenever it showed up.
At first I was A) Confused because the majority of reviews, like yours, railed the game. I was also confused because I didn't even know that Dead Island had DLC and enough content to make for a GOTY.
After that confusion passed I was actually B) Pissed, because I'm one of those people still waiting for a Skyrim Complete edition (and Skyrim is actually going to need one to bring all the patches and the two planned expansion packs together). So while I'm trying to stay zen and wait patiently for Bethesda to finish all their on-going patching, release their expansion packs this year, and get an Ultimate/Complete edition going, I end up seeing a crap game like Dead Island get the treatment first lol. Dead Island was a crap game, and it only came out like 2 months before Skyrim.
Games like Skyrim technically can use the GOTY title because they earned it from many outlets, but I still don't like that title. I didn't have a problem when earlier ES games did it (I own both the Morrowind and Oblivion GOTY editions), but I hate that title anymore. Even if the games deserve it I think they should just use different phrases. I finally realized I don't like the GOTY concept anymore once I saw Fallout New Vegas come out with the Ultimate Edition. Ultimate or Complete edition is so much more accurate and honest.
These days anybody can slap a GOTY title on there and toot their own horn and play their game up, and it's so annoying. It's like an elitist co-worker walking around calling himself Employee of the Year for no reason, even if there is no official Employee of the Year competition set up.
I don't want the Skyrim "GOTY" because it's "GOTY". I want that version of the game because it's "complete" (most accurate term) or "ultimate" (also accurate, but more dramatic). I want the full game, all the patches, all the expansion packs, in a cool newly designed case, and possibly at a lower price. It's the greatest deal ever, but the titles and names need to change. It's just annoying now.
Good point Julian. Do you think a similar misfortune could happen to the Elder Scrolls Online MMO? Not necessarily the bankruptcy and company-wide layoff aspect of it, but as far as the fact that ES Online has been an MMO in development for a looong time just like Amalur was. Kind of a different topic, but it seemed related somehow when you mentioned that Amulur was an MMO at first and was in development for a long time until it switched over to its current single player design.
Elder Scrolls Online, like Amalur, has been an MMO in dev for a long time but Elder Scrolls is actually continuing on with the MMO design. Is there any foreshadowing there of some bad future ES Online misfortunes? I assume Amalur abandoned the MMO design to try and appeal to a bigger audience or cash in on that open world RPG fanbase. ES Online is just continuing to do what it's doing and I can't imagine how much money has been poured into it or if it will appeal to enough people.
Yay for the AAA model, right? 3 million just to break even? All the years of work they put into it, and after all those copies sold (it sold a lot of copies as you said) and at the end of the day all they have to show for it is some douche governor saying, "That game failed", the state owns the IP, and 379 people are without jobs.
