Another great discussion guys! I have a question. Where did the intro theme song for the podcasts come from? I love listening to the short 23 seconds or so of the guitar riffs because it's atmospheric, triggers memories, and makes me feel like I'm playing Cabela's Dangerous Hunts lol. I've had the original 2003 Xbox version of Dangerous Hunts all these years and my friend and I still play it as if it hasn't aged a day. Thank shit that it's included in the games that are backwards compatible for 360. Some of the level designs and mechanics are timeless in that game. It never gets old taking hail Mary sniper shots across an entire level, using the bullet camera to watch your shot sail through trees, over water and hills, slowly arc and loose steam in its trajectory, and eventually plow straight into a moose several hundred yards away. Just about the most satisfaction I've ever had killing enemies with a sniper in an FPS, every bit as good as exploding people's heads in Gears of War.
This wasn't only an incredible holiday season for games, but it was a great year for games. Winter saw Dead Space 2, spring saw Portal 2 and Crysis 2, summer saw Catherine, and when Gears 3 started the fall/holiday season all shit hit the fan and plenty of great games followed in the ensuing couple months. At the moment there's literally hundreds of dollars worth of great games out there that are worth picking up for full price, I just can't and so over the year I've had to spend painful amounts of time prioritizing and figuring out what I want the most. There's so many of these games that are posting absurd sales numbers and looking plainly at the math it lets me know the industry is doing just fine, people are still playing games, and our art form isn't going anywhere but up, which is what we need at this point in hardware and game design evolution.
I'm looking to Nintendo to come out swinging with the Wii U. They need to renew my faith that they can make great consoles. With the Wii they thought outside the box and I commend them for it, but they also though so far outside the box that they left everybody behind and nobody wanted to follow. I love Nintendo but I didn't adopt the Wii because mechanically I didn't want to play it, it was as simple and unforgiving as that. I want to play Mario, Zelda, and Metroid like I grew up playing but I feel like I got punched in the nuts when they told me I had to either play with motion controls or not play my favorite games at all. I sided against them. Therefore I've missed out on all this generation's 1st party Nintendo titles.
It's a fact that Nintendo employs great designers, and they make some of the greatest games on the market, but what I want them to do is make a console that's worthy of the experiences of the games they're making, capable of letting those games evolve and grow. The Wii needs to die in its current form. The knowledge, lessons learned, successes, and failures all need to be extracted from it and used to build something greater. Godspeed to Nintendo's R&D department and engineers. Make this work, and prove you're as great as you assume you are. Prove you're as great as I know you are. I haven't spent a dime on a Nintendo product since the GC version of Twilight Princess in 2006, but when this new console cycle starts for them, I want to be able to spend on them again.
The guys over at Nintendo, especially guys like Reggie involved with much of the PR, don't get paid to tell us they're struggling or in need of new life. It's their job to tell us they're just fine and still making dreams come true. I believe that under that positive PR guise though there are some brilliant, honest, self-aware people who aren't fools and know they have a lot of work to do and have plenty of bridges to build in order to get people raving for their hardware again.
I have a casual question for the group but I'm not sure if it qualifies for something that should be part of a larger podcast entry or just a simple question that we could talk about here in this one thread. The question is:
Is there a particular year that you regard as your favorite year in gaming?
My own favorite year in gaming has always been 2007, it was like the orgasm of my gaming life and literally every year that has passed since then has felt like aftershock or aftermath. A lot of amazing titles came out that year that I'm nostalgic for like The Orange Box (Portal, HL2 episodes, Team Fortress 2), Bioshock, Halo 3, Assassin's Creed, and Mass Effect among others. Not only were the games great that year, but everything was so fresh. Most of the great sequels I look forward to these days had their beginning in 2007. Unforgettable, inspiring, innovative, quality gaming experiences were had that year, and in bulk no less.
One of the reasons I wasn't sure if it was best as a simple question or a topic to include in a podcast is because I could imagine you all taking time in a future podcast to describe a favorite year in gaming and why it was important to you. Maybe not as a whole podcast but at least as part of one. From the two podcasts that I've listened to, you guys do a great job of discussing current news, game experiences, trends, and giving your commentary on them which is awesome. However when the dry months come around, there's less news, and less games, you guys should shake up the content and do podcasts where you talk gaming from angles other than news. Like take up themes such as a favorite gaming year, nostalgia stories, what made you gamers, why you care about games, where you see gaming going in near or distant future hardware cycles, etc. I think themes like that are more personal and would allow people to get to not only know you better, but might also encourage listeners to share their own experiences.
You could also discuss gaming from a more artistic angle, or about the specific aspects of design. Like asking each other if game play king, how does good and bad animation affect the believability of a game world, is great art design more important to you than high resolution, does length of a video game matter, can a video game make you cry? Talk about examples of games you've played that fit the discussion or illustrate your points. I think it would be great to listen to those kinds of gaming discussions on top of all the other great stuff you guys already talk about.
P.S. Thanks for the shout-out and compliments on air Mike. I'm pretty humble but when I heard my name near the end of the session I couldn't help but give a fist pump in celebration lol. You guys have been having great discussions and it's been fun commenting on the topics. It's fascinating being here at the young humble stages of a growing fun gaming community/journalism site.
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