In-Game Chat

We’ve discussed pricing of video games before. And I’m not talking about the current pricing of newly released titles where you expect the usual sixty bucks. We’re talking about older games and what you feel something is worth. And really, that’s the end of the argument, right there.

What do you feel a game is worth to you?

There’s no rules in that question or that answer. Well, aside from the fact that you have to pay something for it – you can’t say free. Given that, every single answer anyone gives is pretty much the right one…for them. It doesn’t matter the length of the game or the age or how it looks or anything like that at all, unless those factor into your answer and that’s perfectly fine if they do.

This whole point comes up again as we see the Halo series getting a PC release. It doesn’t seem like it’ll come in the form of a collection – pay one price and get it all. No, they look to be serving it piecemeal. But they’ve given no word on what it’ll cost us. Will they all be the same price or go up and down depending on the age of the title? Will they offer it in some bundle where you pay a price now and get all of them as they release? We don’t know. At least not yet.

It feels a bit like an infomercial cliche, but looking back over the Halo series and now getting them on PC…what would you pay for this lovely collection of games?

But wait, there’s more…

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I’m going to talk about a game I haven’t played outside of two different beta sessions. It’s also a game I certainly have no intention of playing anytime soon, as well.

Anthem is having issues. Lots of them. The game cannot catch a break in the gaming press. Every single article posted is another strike against it and it’s hard to find anything good to say about it. And it’s also kind of sad too given the long, and nearly spotless, history of the developers. Yeah, they’ve stumbled, but here it is, round 2, and they’ve stumbled again.

I don’t blame EA, but I could. As we’ve learned from interviews with Amy Hennig, EA pretty much forces the developers they own to run the same engine with everything they do (the Frostbite engine). It was one created for FPS, and Anthem is a 3rd person shooter. So there’s an excuse there. Sort of. Other problems with the game have absolutely nothing to do with the engine and just the overall design choices. Then there’s bugs, loot issues, lack of eng game, and everything else that plagues what games like Anthem are trying to do.

Almost everything that’s broken in the game can be fixed and things that aren’t broken but otherwise just…odd choices, can be changed. We know this. We’ve been through it with Destiny. What’s out there now doesn’t have to be and probably won’t be what’s out there a year from now for Anthem. But EA isn’t known for being patient. If they can hold, I honestly feel that Bioware can right the ship. At least I want them to.

Still, it was good to hear from at least one person enjoying the game despite its faults.

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Have I talked about Spider-Man? Let’s talk a little about Spider-Man. I say this in the show and I’ll say it here as well: the game deserves every bit of praise it’s gotten over the 7 or so months it’s been out. Yes, it’s taken me that long to get around to not only playing it but finishing the main story. However, I have a few nitpicks but they really get on my nerves when developers do this.

There’s a lot of “padding the story” in this game. There’s honestly a lot of that in almost every game, but one of the ways done in Spider-Man really got on my nerves. The secondary stuff is…whatever. It’s an open world game, you’re going to have side tasks and challenges. They annoy me (especially Taskmaster and, now, Screwball), but whatever. No, my biggest gripe for the game is the times when you AREN’T playing as Spider-Man. And, to be clear, the Peter Parker aspects of the game are fine, but any time you aren’t playing as Parker/Spider-Man are just plain annoying. I’ll give a bit of a break for the Miles segments, at least one in particular, because it feels like a bit of character development and you’ve got to go through this event with him and put yourself in his shoes. But the rest of it is just fluff.

Again, I know WHY they do this in games, but man I can’t stand it in some cases. Even now, while working on the DLC stuff, they keep throwing in fluff and it gets to the point I stop playing and come back later. It’s the kind of annoying that actually makes me turn off the game.

Stop doing that. Please.

P.S. Everyone else, please stop timed missions, escort missions, and everything else I personally don’t like.

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We didn’t really stick on one single topic for this episode, which makes finding something to write about here a little bit difficult. We had a lot to catch up on with the week away from last week, but nothing to really give much focus to. Unless you count that whole Steam Store vs. Epic Store situation in the middle there.

But I’ve written about that before and my opinion is easily covered in this episode when brought up. Bottom line, if it helps the developers and doesn’t screw the consumers, I’m all for it. Let me be clear, however, I’m not talking about pre-order exclusives – where buying from a certain retailer gets you a different bonus when the game launches. I’ve only ever seen that as a publisher benefit and it breaks the rule of screwing the consumers so yeah…that’s a load of crap.

Apex Legends. So this is battle royale? It’s my first time stepping into the world of this genre and I’m left wondering….why? The rewards here are purely cosmetic and serve no purpose to give you any kind of advantage on the field. At best your card gets to show others how well you’ve done, but that offers nothing of value once you’re in the arena. You are on the level with everyone else.

Unless I’m wrong and missing something? And I very well could be.

Still, saying all of that, I jump right back into it every match. Playing a round again and again and again. I wonder with each time if I’ll do better than the last round, but no…it never seems to get better. At best I can survive a very long time because I never see any enemies. Usually when I do see them, my game is over within seconds.

And then I start the next round.

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Okay, campers, rise and shine, and don’t forget your booties at the following link.

I used to think playing a PC game on any other service besides Steam was annoying. I can’t remember why I felt that way. There was no benefit of using Steam. Sure, it was all there with the rest of my games, but it provided me nothing, really. This was about the time EA came along with Origin. And the Ubisoft with Uplay. Then GoG and so on and so forth.

I felt like it was this big deal having my games scattered across different services.

I grew out of that. I guess. Or just came to the conclusion nothing was ruining my experience of the games I played on whatever service I played it from. It was all still on my PC. That was it. Sure, there’s trophy hunters and what not. People who want to up their “score” on their profile of what they’ve done in games on that service, and maybe to those people I can see the issue.
But I really don’t care where a PC game shows up. I’m going to go where ever it’s offered at the best price or deal or bundle for me.

I pretty much do the same thing on consoles.

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We’re making horrible hole jokes at the following link.

We love it when you call into the show. We like hearing what you’ve been playing and the types of games you enjoy or what system you’re currently spending time with or even if you have questions about games or systems or PC stuff – doesn’t matter. Point it, we love it when you call. So keep that up. Make it a regular thing. Call in, tell us a game your playing and give us a quick review on how you like it. We can’t play everything out there so that’s why we like hearing from other people playing other games.

Speaking of other games, I’ve put some time in with the demo for Anthem and I give a few of my thoughts on it during the show, but something I forgot to mention isn’t so much a complaint with it as it is just something no one else is able to do – the shooting. I remember having this issue before and it’s just something I’ve had to come to terms with. Bungie, with Destiny (and Halo before that), has completely spoiled me on the shooting mechanic in video games. They do it better than ANYTHING else in their game. It’s the reason I would still play it even with nothing else to do – the shooting is just too much fun. Anthem isn’t like that and it was never going to be. It’s just something, again, that I’ll have to come to terms with.

Not everyone can be Bungie. And that’s actually a really great thing. We’ll talk more about that in the next episode.

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We’re not taking Matt’s suggestion of music anytime soon at the following link.

I barely touched any game all week long. And that’s not fun for me. Destiny pretty much provided me with nothing to do. But it was the game I went to a few times during the week. I logged in as I regularly do in order to make some advancements that took no time at all, but that was it. I spent a total of MAYBE 30 minutes in the game. For the whole week. I logged into Assassin’s Creed on Project Stream and made sure I had my hour of play time logged so I could be eligible for the free copy of the game two weeks from now. I spent maybe 5 minutes in the game.

That was it. I didn’t play anything else. It’s currently Sunday as I write this and once I’m done I’ll usually check some other sites and eventually fire up Destiny and that will be my Sunday. All day long all on Destiny. But that’s not going to happen today. I’m going to post this and then go play Spider-Man or Red Dead or Hitman or anything else.

Course, there’s also that saying of announcing your plans…

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We totally landed on the moon at the following link.

First, an apology. There’s a phone call in this episode that went a little off the rails for us, and I didn’t feel it was handled as well as it could have been. It’s my job to do that, and it wasn’t done, so I apologize.

Second, here’s my quick take on the Bungie and Activision split: whatever. I play a TON of Destiny, but when I play it, when I think about it, when I talk about it, when I buy it – I’ve never considered Activision in the mix. My complaints with Destiny, my quibbles, my frustrations, my nitpicks – none of them lay at the feet of Activision. And for that matter, my praises of the games and the reasons I keep coming back – everything I know of this game is on Bungie. So it doesn’t matter to me that they now fully own and self-publish their game. It may speak a lot to the upcoming content, perhaps, but it’s still not gonna tighten up the graphics on level three. That’s a Bungie thing and nothing that Activision was keeping them from doing.

If the team at Bungie is happy to be free of that company, then I’m happy for them, sure, but do I feel like some wave of gaming improvement with Destiny is about to wash over us players? Not a bit. If anything, the machine will just keep going. They’ll make more game, and I’ll happily keep playing it.

The cycle continues.

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We’re starting off our 13th year at the following link.

We’ve been away for two weeks and what did we miss? Apparently, a lot of people wanting to get money from Fortnite cause of dancing. Never an issue with it being in games for years and years since, but Fortnite has seemingly crossed that line.

Speaking of Fortnite, that game was a beast in 2018 when broken down in numbers. We do that in this episode and it’s just overwhelming how often it shows up in the top spot or close to it.

Even with all the numbers and press the game is getting, it still triggers nothing in me. I’ve heard other people talk about it, I’ve seen it, it’s a huge presence at conventions I attend, but still…nothing. It triggers not a single response in me to have any desire to play it. And that’s fine. I’m not saying it should or that it should have that same effect on everyone else. Not at all – when you find a game you love to play by all means play it and don’t worry what others say or think about it (side glance to Destiny), but for me, there’s nothing.

New Year New You and all of that, but I still won’t be playing that game in 2019.

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We feel like something is missing at the following link.

We always like to wrap up the year here with what we call our Christmas episode but it’s really just an episode that contains video game Christmas themed music. That’s pretty much the extent of it. So that’s what we’re doing here. Along with trying to find out if you can copyright a dance move.

We’d like to take this time to remind you that there is no show next weekend due to the holidays and we’d also like to thank you as well for your continued support of our little show. It means more than the world to all of us that you take the time to listen and keep listening week after week.

There is no show without you. It would not exist to begin with were it not for you and it will continue on for as long as we can, so long as we have you there with us.

As always, thank you so much for listening and have a very Merry Christmas.

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We’re talking about Hitman at the following link.

I’ve done a rant before about award shows where video games are concerned.

I like them. Especially where they are currently in how they’re done. But it could always be better. I’ve made the connection before that the large numbers of people watching are mostly doing it for the new reveals of games. So more of those and on a bigger scale of game brings in more viewership and that brings in more ad revenue. This is why in a near 3 hour show there’s only about 30 minutes of actually giving out awards. I’d love to see the numbers of a regular awards presentation with NO new games revealed.

That’s probably called the BAFTA’s.

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We’ve got this one in the bag at the following link.

I want to say oh, how the mighty have fallen, but I don’t know that it really applies when talking about Bethesda and what they have with Fallout 76.

It feels like an outlier. Something in an alternate timeline, like the Elseworlds series from DC. Sort of a…what if, scenario. They experimented and it didn’t really work. I mean, it’s early, but I think it’s safe to say whatever they have done here did not work at all. And it isn’t helping matters with the whole canvas bag fiasco, either.

But still, I think they can and will wright the ship. Hell, they could easily get the heat off of them and drop more info on Elder Scrolls 6. Sure, there will be squinty eyes that question the motive, but they’ll have WAY more talk about what’s going on there than with Fallout 76.

The other way will be when they announce another Fallout game and get back to form. It would help as well to admit the experiment was a mistake, but I doubt they’ll ever do that.

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We’re taking a week off after the following link.

Your move, E3.

When Nintendo dropped out of E3, they really didn’t. They dropped out of doing the press conference stuff we all love to watch PRIOR to the actual E3. It was a big deal, but no skin off E3’s back since Nintendo would still be on the show floor. And still paying a premium for that floor space (it’s a big space). However, it was still a move that made people wonder and think just how important is the whole E3 thing.

A few years after and the dominoes started falling. Activision, Disney, and a number of other companies were skipping the yearly event. This meant less money was coming into the ESA who put on E3 each year. Then EA backed out. They’d still do a press conference but they’d be absent on the show floor. Again, conferences are NOT a part of E3. So this was more money not coming into the ESA.

And now we have Sony. All of the other companies were big deals when they backed out, but not in comparison to the big 3 of Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony. The ESA will be fine and E3 will be fine…for now. How this will actually affect anything at all is hard to tell. We’ll have a better idea when Sony decides to tell us just what they plan on doing – not for E3, but how they plan to communicate with the public about new hardware and software.

We’ll also have a better idea of what to expect from E3’s to come if other companies decide to follow Sony’s lead, again, whatever that may be if anything.

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We’re trying to read the captions at the following link.

Is there a wrong way to play a game? Sure, using some way of gaining advantage in a multiplayer game is wrong and cheating. No doubt. But what about single player? Is there a wrong way to play a game when only you are the one involved?

I don’t think there is. I’ve read plenty of comments where using a trainer on PC for infinite…whatever is something that takes away the experience, but what experience is that? I’m currently using the gold glitch in Red Dead Redemption 2 and am walking around the wild west with close to a hundred thousand dollars in my pocket. And nothing about that has taken the fun away from me in playing this game.

I’ve used trainers on PC before – Witcher series comes to mind – because I didn’t want to deal with my inventory or some other obnoxious limitation set upon the player early in the game.

Again, we’re only talking about the single player aspect of a game. In that sense, play it your way. You spent the money on the game, play it however you like to give you the satisfaction you want from it.

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