Jonathan plays SkullPogo!
Hemisphere’s breaks Sam’s brain!
Alex enjoys Dragon’s Dogma!
Sam and Alex recon Ghosts!
Max Payne is dark!
E3 Predictions get ridiculous!
See you next week!
They’re back, ladies and gentlemen. Jonathan the Holmberg. Alex the Producer. Sam the Moose. Reunited for the first time in what seems like eons. Bringing the video game podcast thunder like only they can. Your palms will sweat. Your heart will quicken. Your eardrums will joyously pound with the rapturous truth that YES… this IS The Way of the Game. And it is good.
Jonathan starts the show by immediately plunging the dagger into Sam’s heart by pointing out that he is the first victim of Episode 108, in which we predicted what will be THE TOP GAME of 2012. Longtime listeners will be glad to know we brought back both the “Explicit Hammer” and the “Quack” from dormancy.
Alex hustles together some quick news:
Starfox & Metroid Crossover?
Sony announces Bullet Run
Judge recommends ban on imports of new Xbox 360s.
Sam talks a little about the game that is sucking Rhode Island’s life blood dry for months, Kingdoms of Amalur(aramadingdong). Alex is probably, at this very second, tweaking his guns in Ghost Recon: Future Soldier or wishing he was. Jonathan remarks that his time for playing games will probably suffer due to his hunt for a house.
Then Alex introduces a new game: Video Game Unemployment Office. Because video game characters need jobs too.
That’s it for this week. Stay tuned for our E3 pre-show next week!
Ghost Recon: Future Soldier is a bit like learning to juggle. You’ve seen people juggle, you understand that it’s all just a matter of timing and muscle memory, but when you actually try to get the balls going, all you wind up doing is dropping them. It’s aggravating, it’s frustrating, but you keep trying because dammit, wouldn’t it be awesome to know how to juggle?
It’s the same way for me in Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. I have gadgets that allow me to see through walls. With that information, my teammates and I should be able to effectively kill/maim/capture whatever thingamabob happens to be the objective. Yet, no matter how well I think I have planted my sensor, what I’ve overlooked is that the whole time, there’s some jerk right behind me with a suppressed pistol aimed at my head. Or, more commonly, a guy 100 yards away who managed to get a lucky headshot with his LMG. Despite that, I keep coming back for more. I tell myself that with just a little more practice, with a little more thought, I’ll rock the house.
GRFS is a smart man’s Call of Duty. It’s a game of stealth and ambush. However, it’s also a game of intelligence.
In the campaign, you and three other Ghosts will go from one international hellhole to another tracking down an arms shipment. I haven’t beaten the campaign mode yet, but it’s easily on par with other Ghost Recons. However, it’s not like it’s going to wow you with excellent characters or dramatic plot twists. Your Ghosts aren’t Gears; they don’t reveal a lot about themselves during the mission. While you’re in the field, the Ghosts are methodical killers focused on their work. You get a little of their personality during cutscenes, but even then, they don’t extend far beyond their mission personas.
Future soldiers have gadgets. Optical camouflage can make you nearly invisible. Visors can give you X-ray vision. Grenades can point out enemies rather than detonate. Drones can give soldiers a bird’s eye view of a battlefield. Much of the gameplay in GRFS is focused on finding and ambushing the enemy.
In addition to the see-the-enemy, mark-the-enemy gameplay seen in Battlefield 3, Splinter Cell: Conviction and other games, there’s a new mechanic in GRFS that synchronizes your team’s shots. Many times in the campaign, you’ll want to stay as silent as possible to avoid triggering an alarm. As the group leader, you can highlight enemies in your HUD. Your teammates (human or AI) can then line up those marked enemies, and at the leader’s command, the entire team can fire simultaneously. If no enemies see or hear the takedown, then the Ghosts can continue without a problem.
If there’s one frustrating part of the campaign mode, it’s when you’re in diamond formation. When the Ghosts need to escort a VIP out of a hot zone, they’ll form up in a diamond, facing out, and shoot their way out. That’s when the game turns into an on-rails shooter. The lead man will be stuck with a pistol as he drags the VIP out while everyone else has their own targets to shoot. If you’re playing campaign co-op, you might hate these parts of the game. If one guy in your team doesn’t take out his targets, he’ll be killed, and that’s game over with the option to reload the last checkpoint. However, these diamond formation moments are few and far between, and they look genuinely awesome.
There are several modes to choose from in multiplayer. The one everyone seemed to be playing before release was Conflict mode, which was included in the beta. You’re dumped in a map with a ton of terrain and given a variety of objectives to meet. Meeting objectives results in points, and the team with the highest number of points by the end of the game wins.
The map design is excellent. There is never a moment when you’ll be far from cover. The maps may not be as huge as Battlefield’s, but there’s plenty of ground to cover and plenty of hiding places. In fact, there may be TOO many places to hide. Even the tightest chokepoint seems to have at least four approaches. Locking down an area requires a lot of coordination with your teammates.
Ghost Recon: Future Soldier’s primary strength can also be its biggest weakness. The big selling point of the game is that you have a bunch of gadgets that help you find and kill the enemy. However, those gadgets are limited in number, and once you’ve used them, it’s tough to get more without dying and respawning. The level of cooperation needed to effectively accomplish your mission and use the intelligence assets available is formidable. You need to have a team with the right tools, a good idea of what to do, and the ability to do it under battle conditions. Without that network, the game devolves into a third-person Call of Duty; death comes quick, flanking occurs often and victory usually goes to the first person to pull the trigger.
The better you do and the smarter you play, the more XP you’ll earn. You’ll level up in three classes (soldier, engineer and scout) according to how you played each of them in a round. When you do, you’ll be awarded two attachment credits in that class, one for your Ghost version and one for your Bodark version (the Russian Ghosts). With those attachment credits, you can go into the game’s gunsmith mode and buy something new.
This might be the most addictive part of the game. It takes a while to unlock a new weapon for your class, but with the attachment credits, you can personalize whatever weapon you own to be more to your style. Want to increase the rate of fire on your shotgun? Buy a new match trigger for it. Want a red dot sight or a suppressor? In other games, you have to work with a weapon for a while to earn it. In Ghost Recon, all you have to do is level up once to earn a credit for it, and bam, it’s yours.
There’s a lot I haven’t tried yet. Ghost Recon’s Siege mode is supposed to be a lot like Counterstrike, where there are no respawns and an attacking side and a defending side. Guerilla mode is supposed to have a lot in common with Horde mode in Gears, only with kill streaks. I’ll get more into these things for the review.
For right now, Ghost Recon is my go-to game. It may be frustrating as hell. My wife may hate the words that come out of my mouth when, despite my best efforts, I am repeatedly and violently ventilated. It doesn’t matter. The chaotic gameplay CAN be tamed. It’s all a matter of keeping those balls in the air.
This week, Sam is off somewhere, and Jonathan’s brother-in-law, Michael, is in the house and on the mic.
In our short news segment, we discuss the an ever-growing list of delays: Bioshock Infinite, Tomb Raider, the South Park RPG, potentially more. Also, GameStop has entered the fake money exchange business as they’ve begun carrying Steam Wallet cards. Finally, we also chat about Diablo 3 and the trouble it’s having, despite none of us playing it.
Michael talks about playing classic NES games on a site called Nintendo8. I have no idea how long that site will last, but it’s interesting while it’s there. He’s also got some thoughts on Skyrim and the recently announced Elder Scrolls Online, as well.
Jonathan’s played Asura’s Wrath, and wishes it were anything other than a video game, claiming it out El Shaddai’s El Shaddai. He’s also got a couple hours into Xenoblades Chronicles. That’s not enough time to decide if it’s the JRPG that’ll save all JRPGs, but it’s definitely the most interesting JRPG he’s played in a while.
Alex, as we all know, was out of town last week, and in his journeys, he discovered that his inner child is nine years old. He’s also incredibly high on NBA 2K12, finding it to be significantly better than 2K11, and a compelling take on the basketball genre. He’s also playing Warlock: Master of the Arcane, a turn-based strategy game on Steam, which is great except it’s missing multiplayer.
That’s about it for this episode. Next week, Sam’s going to get a face full of shame! You won’t want to miss it.
Hello, peeps! Alex is somewhere in Ohio this week, so it’s just Jonathan and Sam on the mics for this episode. In honor of the news guy’s absence, we discuss news.
First though, Sam discusses Kingdom’s of Amalur, which he’s found to be intriguing, if a bit frustrating, and Mass Effect 3, which has succeeded in bringing out Hulk Sam. Jonathan picked Skyrim back up for an incredibly awkward honeymoon, and has also been playing Word Stack on his phone, wherein you take words and stack them.
Headlines:
- Microsoft drops the 360’s price to $99 (with a two-year contract).
- A different way to consider ME3’s ending.
- It’s a dream team of RPG greats, for an iOS game.
- Video games are actively preventing violence in Africa.
- Star Wars: The Old Republic loses 400,000 subscribers.
- Ubisoft enlists gamers in marketing effort with a promise of more marketing.
- Raptr sets up a reward program for doing what you’d do anyway.
Next week, one of the hosts has to eat crow early! I know I’m looking forward to it.
A bit of a short show this week, but there’s a lot going on in it, I promise. We’ve got a topic this week that has caught the interest of Alex Wawro, a writer for PC World and former WotG E3 insider, and John Davison, vice president of CBS Interactive.
Rather than inundate our guests with our usual game-related ramblings, we ask what they’ve been playing, by way of introduction. Alex has been playing Tell Tale Games’ new episodic title, The Walking Dead, and it’s amazing. John has been trying to understand League of Legends, and it’s not so amazing.
We then move on to the topic which brought these august gentlemen to the show: if the next home consoles restrict the used market in some way, will this ultimately harm small independent media outlets like The Way of the Game? Will we be less able to experience the breadth of games that listeners and readers demand, or will we be better situated to meet the needs of gamers who are also playing fewer games?
We want to extend a huge thank you to John and Alex. They provided truly unique insights that can only come from people involved in the “mainstream” media.
Next week, there will be no Alexes on the show, and Sam has rage in his heart. It ought to be fun!
New week, new podcast. Let’s do this!
Headlines!
- Game Informer debuts a new game on their podcast. It sounds suspiciously similar to a WotG classic.
- Alex has one less reason to buy a PS3 now.
- The Liesure Suit Larry remake/reboot/upgrade/whatever has been successfully Kickstarted.
- Adam Sessler has left G4. One host is happy, one is disappointed, one has never heard of the man.
Games!
- Sam has one game this week, and plays coy ‘til the end, so here’s a spoiler: it’s Mass Effect 3.
- Alex gives us the lowdown on the Ghost Recon Future Soldier beta, and gripes about tutorials in Warhammer: Battle March.
- Jonathan breaks down why he didn’t enjoy Syndicate, why he really enjoyed BlazBlue Continuum Shift Extend, and why he’s looking forward to trying recipes from Gourmet Gaming.
Finally, we have a brief topic inspired by the announcement of the Arkham City Game of the Year edition. Are GotY editions good or bad? Are they simply enticing collections for people who weren’t interested the first time around, or are they a slap in the face to every early adopter?
Let us know what you think below! Next week, the future of the podcast!
Your deck has agents, sites, and actions. Agents score points in a region commensurate with their power if left to their own devices for a certain amount of time. Sites do the same, but remain in a region. Their power can diminish depending on the strength of enemy sites placed in the same territory. Actions have a variety of powers, including the power to place memories back into your or your opponent’s hand, taking them out of the game altogether or even scoring points in regions directly.
The great constant in this game is time. A timer is constantly ticking away during the game, and everything you do takes a certain amount of time. Putting an agent or a site into play takes “half a day” (the game alternates between day and night icons and apparently considers each “a day.”) You only get cards in the middle of a “day.” Conflicts between agents take half a day as well.
So much like a true assassin, there’s a lot of timing involved here. If a big bad guy comes into play on your opponent’s side, and you know that it takes half a day for him to do anything, you might want to spring one of your agents on him at the last possible second in order to keep him out of the control of your opponent for the maximum amount of time.
At the end of a battle, you’re awarded a certain amount of currency with which you can buy more cards. You’re awarded more for winning, though, so you have a vested interest in making a winning deck of memories.
The Holmberg: Recollections’ timing mechanic is its most interesting feature, and its biggest downfall. Yes, there are interesting opportunities for stopping a big play right at the last second, but there’s also a whole lot of waiting around. Full days take at least a minute to cycle through, and when I sat down to time the rounds, I found that they get longer as the game passes.
I find this problematic for two reasons. One, at the start of the game your cash flow is extremely slow; it takes half a day to earn one florin. If you don’t have cheap cards right at the start, you’ll be stuck waiting, doing nothing.
Two, you only draw when a new day begins, so when you’re out of cards, you’re stuck waiting again. Even better, the turns are longer, and the computer often has cards that wipe out all of your agents, so you stand a good chance of yet again doing nothing. There’s nothing fun or strategic about waiting.
Those annihilation cards also remove from the game any sense of accomplishment. I didn’t outplay my opponent; I was just lucky they didn’t pull the right cards. Everything takes so long to resolve that you have no choice but to lay your cards out immediately, which plays right into the hands of a discard/counter setup. I’ve seen no way to counter an action card, leaving you entirely at their mercy.
I’ll admit I’ve not tried multiplayer, but the only thing that makes the game bearable is the “fast-forward” button, which can’t work in multiplayer, so no thank you.
Finally, a word about the story: it’s incomprehensible. Do these card battles represent actual battles or subtler political clashes? The story can’t seem to decide. Worse, it’s told in three-paragraph chunks that try to sound significant, but ultimately convey nothing.
The Producer: You will get no argument from me about the meaningless story in the single-player campaign. It seems like a convenient way to introduce key characters from the Ezio saga and/or themed decks, but ultimately it isn’t worth reading.
Regarding cash flow at the start of the game, there are many cards that boost your income across all the doctrines. You can not only win with an all-agent deck or an all-site deck, it’s also possible to put an economic beatdown on your opponent.
Yes, the waiting between moves can be aggravating. I recently had a match against an opponent that seemed to be nothing but denial cards. He had sites with which to earn points, and all my agents were eliminated from play via action cards. It felt like an agonizingly slow death, but even so, the match probably lasted less than 10 minutes.
The luck factor, however, is the same with any other CCG. The idea is for your deck to have a better system than your opponent. The more cards you have, the more you can tweak and improve the way it plays.
Recollections is unique, intricate, and free. It’s definitely worth a try.
The Holmberg: You can win with all-sites or all-agents, but have you accomplished anything?
Based solely off the cards I’ve been able to buy playing for free, I’ve seen too few cards with interesting abilities allowing for very little in the way of compelling combos. Magic may be luck-driven, but there’s skill in matching up and executing your various abilities. No such system seems present in Recollections, and if I’ve got to drop cash on premium boosters in order to see the interesting cards, the game’s not free anymore.
Recollections is slow, poorly balanced, and ultimately frustrating. It’s not worth your time.
Gonna keep the show notes light this week, so we don’t delay the podcast any more than necessary.
Our short news is actually short this week as we discuss a lawsuit directed at Ubisoft regarding infringement of the Animus idea.
Games were light this this week, so much so that we talk about non-game stuff for a bit. Sam’s into the new Doctor Who, Alex has found anime and manga for his iPod, and Jonathan’s exploring further ways to play board games online with Game Table Online. In actual games, Sam’s got his hands on Magna Carta 2, Alex has started up Castlevania: Lords of Shadow fresh again, and Jonathan has played the demo of Fez and an iOS word game called Dabble.
Wrapping up the show, we have a headline-inspired topic. A study finds that a significant chunk of the recent games industry downturn can be attributed to weak sales from Nintendo. Is our hobby reliant on Nintendo for survival, or can Sony and Microsoft fill in the gaps should Nintendo go south?
We cover a ton of news this week! It’s almost like we’re returning to the days of yore.
First, though, games, and even Sam has something to contribute this week. Sam put Shadows of the Damned in, and almost immediately wanted to take it back. Alex and Jonathan may have convinced him to give it a second try, though. Jonathan’s played more Mario Party 9, and also finally given Assassin’s Creed Recollections a try. One’s more of the same, and one he doesn’t enjoy at all. And Alex had an interesting Easter experience in Gears of War 3, and a great time with multiplayer Splinter Cell.
Headlines!
- Homeland Security wants to hack your Xbox!
- GTA V might launch in October!
- The PS3 might hit $200!
- Activision Blizzard might have to settle a lawsuit!
- Gamers are looking forward to Halo 4!
- Resident Evil 6 Platinum Edition is really expensive!
Finally, we wrap up the show with a topic discussion. That’s right, folks! Games, headlines, and a topic all within an hour! It’s a ChristmasEaster Miracle! What’s better for social network gaming? Asynchronous or synchronous gameplay? And can you really have a game that only includes one or the other anymore?
