Gaming Podcasts

Nope.

I forgot about Walking Dead and Gone Home.

Nope!

"They're gonna plug some of the holes"

The highlight in maybe the most boring Bombcast ever. The SimCity talk nearly put me to sleep.

I don't know if this is going to be updated often, but a couple of guys are taking an in depth, and sometimes inaccurate look at Dark Souls: http://duckfeed.tv/blog/announcing-bonfireside-chat

The newest Idle Thumbs subs in Steve Gaynor for Sean Vanaman. And there was much rejoicing.

I'm maybe a quarter of the way through the podcast, but it might've been the most predictable thing ever when Chris Remo dramatically talked about how icky he felt when forced to go through all the steps to load a gun in the game Receiver.

A thought occurred to me during the Shawn Elliot ep that it's possible the Idle Book Club is responsible for some of the change in tone to Idle Thumbs. I don't listen to the IBC so that may be way off, but it seems like more than a coincidence that they've slipped more and more book references in when they're being particularly pretentious, and I'm assuming that the book club is basically like that the entire time.

Idle Thumbs has always had some serious analysis but it was never anything they really had to push for - it came naturally and peppered with a lot of goofy humour and the recognition that they may well be talking complete shit or reading way too much into something. Now only Jake retains that attitude.

Am I way off base with the book club?

All that talk about Receiver was asinine. I love how Remo kept going on and on about how he just discovered that guns are SUPER COMPLICATED in real life. Now, I'm not gonna say guns don't have their complexity and I'm definitely not going to suggest that video games portray guns realistically, but modeling this by having some random button cause you to eject all of your ammo is pretty dumb. Does that button have purpose? Will you ever use that? Believe it or not, you aren't reflecting how really complicated guns are because even Barney Fife isn't going to accidentally press a button that causes all of his bullets to fall out of the gun.

To be fair, the Colt 1911 that's modelled in Receiver does have a 'magazine release' button.

Whether that level of simulation makes for a good game (or even a good podcast discussion) is less clear...

Any gun with a magazine has a button to release it so you can remove an empty magazine and put in a full one. It's not really something you would accidentally press while in the act of shooting a gun, of course.

So has anyone gone to http://thephaedrusgroup.biz/wizard? It forwards to a youtube channel and there are goofy videos there.

I didn't hate the talk that much, but it was one of this situations where I'm arguing with a podcast. Receiver is like "really firing a gun" in the way QWOP is like "really running".

Jesus shit, I forgot why I stopped listening to Rebel FM. Oh yeah, that's right, Arthur Gies is one of the least interesting, most boorish twits in podcasting.

I say this while having forgotten just how hateable Andrew Fitch is, though. My love for Karen Chu couldn't keep me listening to the Geekbox.

I stopped caring about anything Arthur said after he refused to play Shadow Complex because of Orson Scott Card's involvement.

Gies got me to un-subscribe when he spent 10 minutes moaning about the frame rate in an alpha he only had access to through his flatmate Gallegos. It quickly became clear he had no idea what the terms alpha, beta and release meant.

Fitch got me with just a body of weeaboo-work.

I actually had no idea that Shadow Complex had anything to do with Card's canon until recently, and while I can't say whether knowing that would have kept me from picking it up, it honestly would have given me cause to pause. I have some simmering moral issues with supporting anything Orson Scott Card is involved with myself (which is admittedly easy for me since I don't read much fantasy fiction).

I thought the proclamation by Patrick on last week's Bombcast that one shouldn't bother playing the new Fire Emblem 3DS game unless he/she accepted permadeath (i.e. not using the Casual Mode option that revives KO'd characters after battle) was kind of shitty. Here's a guy playing his first Fire Emblem game proclaiming that folks shouldn't even bother playing unless they're willing to either accept characters permanently dying or retrying battles over and over to keep everyone alive. Like he couldn't conceive that someone might not have the time, let alone the inclination, to either retry the same battles over and over or be gimped significantly by permanent character death. HARDCORE!

I had the opposite reaction, I found it to be a pleasant surprise from the usual stance of these guys on game difficulty (I don't think any of them have actually given the Souls games a fair shake, for instance).

While it's admittedly been a number of years since I've played a Fire Emblem game, I have to say I agree with Patrick. Since the games are designed with permadeath in mind the whole idea is that you DON'T have to keep playing levels over and over. The games are balanced around you losing a bunch of characters, you don't get "gimped". At least in the last one I played no permadeath would have made the game trivial, since the player would snowball and the later half of the game would be incredibly dull. Sure, sometimes you replay a level when things really go bad, but in general I think Fire Emblem works great as designed. Caveat that they are not games for perfectionist type gamers, of course.

I don't see how more options/choices is ever a bad thing when it comes to difficulty and settings in games. If that is how a person wants to play it, let them. Patrick is only hurting the sales of a game he enjoys by telling people not to play if they don't accept the default permadeath.

I understand that point of view. What I don't understand is proclaiming that someone would be wrong for wanting to play using the Casual Mode option. I would be the type that would keep trying battles over and over to make sure I didn't lose people, more because I wouldn't want to miss out on the character specific stories than to keep more powerful characters in my party, so the Casual Mode would almost surely be the way I'd play the game. During the podcast he didn't even seem to acknowledge that one would keep going after losing a character, but instead said that one should just be ready to replay battles to keep characters. Which again, is totally fine. Admonishing a bunch of people that might not want to play that way is what irritated me.

Because your game design often doesn't work with the options you include. See for example Dishonoured if you turn off objective markers. It's not designed to work without them.

But again, I don't see that as a bad thing at all. It is all optional! It might be incredibly ill-advised to play Dishonored or Fire Emblem in these ways, but everyone plays games differently and including additional options for other people doesn't affect your own playthrough.

Telling people they aren't playing a game correctly is silly, purely because if a person is having fun and enjoying themselves then who gives a fuck.

Uh, what? Some Dishonored objectives DO NOT WORK without objective markers. Believe me, I tried. How does that tie into your "but you can make it an option!" line? No, you can't, some things have to be designed around, you simply can't throw a massive list of options at me in place of good design.

Fuck off. It's not "some" objectives, it's one (dumping Curnow's unconscious body in the garbage bin). In my playthrough, I didn't even have a problem with this since I saved him without having to knock him out.

That isn't what we're talking about and you know it.

Sorry, what's the cutoff before something is a problem? Three?

I recall having an issue with a later objective which is when I enabled them permanently, and really the game isn't designed around playing without objectives. After all, what kind of idiot would go on a mission without having consulted a map? What kind of body guard doesn't know the layout of his own palace? etc.

What?

I recommend trying Receiver. The modeling of the mechanics of loading and firing a gun are really solid, and once you're familiar with the controls it's surprisingly satisfying and fluid. If you've actually fired a gun, and have an appreciation for the tactile details of what that experience is like you might like the game. Just a thought.

I'd love to see a noir game that just lifts the gun mechanics directly from Receiver.

Edit: Fuck Arthur Gies. Unless he's reading, in which case, fuck you.

Nah he's the type that only reads NeoGAF where all intelligent discussion flows.

Anyone else getting annoyed with the dramatic readings of Cory Banks's little autobiographical essays on the Gamers With Jobs podcasts? The first one was okay and served as a bit of something different, but they've gotten old pretty quickly.

Should we worry that (according to last week's Idle Thumbs podcast) GAF shares our opinion on Sean Vanaman?

I'm a little surprised that you're just now becoming irritated with Cory Banks. He was the reason I quit listening to GWJ years ago.

Why, specifically? He usually doesn't seem any more annoying than any other podcast host.

It's been so long since I listened that all I can remember is that the guy annoyed the shit out of me and that I wasn't alone in that sentiment. This was back at Qt3 before the mass exodus that resulted in this lovely community coming together.

Even a crap forum is right twice a day...

Your question prompted me to go back and look at the old Qt3 Gaming Podcast thread. I stumbled upon Eric Majkut's straw man arguments about how we all took things too seriously and hated podcast hosts for not agreeing with us. It was very enjoyable reading the responses from Bahimiron and others.

Also, I apparently hated Cory Banks because he was a contrarian asshole.

Do you have a link? I remember not liking GWJ for a while, but the real last straw was when one of them was playing Saints Row 2 and talking about how good it was and the others were laughing at him and making fun of him. When he said that they should try it, they talked shit about it until he finally just shut up and never mentioned it again.

Edit: Found it. Reliving memories. I miss zengonzo. BobJustBob is right when he declares anyone who doesn't like Crackdown to be insane.

Edit edit: Chris Remo participated in that discussion. I did not remember that.

I stopped listening when STALKER got all of about one sentence of discussion.

What I was looking at starts here. If the page numbers screws stuff up, look for posts starting on February 25, 2010.

Yeah, I could see this. One thing I don't like about their podcast is that they occasionally get antagonistic towards each other and tease, belittle, and roll their eyes at each other. I've quit listening to podcasts in the past because of that kind of thing. Not only is it not entertaining to an outsider (especially if you share an opinion with the target) but it shuts down potentially interesting discussion. I'd put it up there on the list of podcasting sins alongside interrupting and talking over each other (I'm looking at you, Idle Thumbs).

To be fair to Idle Thumbs, both Chris Remo and Sean Vanaman have so much knowledge and insight to share that it's no wonder they end up talking over each other a lot. I mean, when you've got profound shit to say, it's hard to keep it in, even if letting it out means interrupting each other and creating a nigh indecipherable stew of noise.