Tom Towers and Phil Fogg break from their monthly podcasting schedule go over the week's news and anything else gaming related in their lives.
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NEWS
3:29 Nintendo Skipping Keynote at E3 2013 (Nintendo too Embarassed)
11:20 EA Shuts Down EA Partners
22:51 XCOM Shooter is Alive and Has a New Name
27:55 HOTD iOS
31:05 Durango Details Coming May 21 (Microsoft to Anger Millions)
35:35 Shinji Mikami's New Game
43:33 Dragon's Crown Controversy
51:59 Thomas Was Alone Might Come to 360
YakuzaKillzONE MINUTE
54:50 Tom Goes There (points out how Killzone is better than Call of Duty)
1:21:21 The Tiny Yakuza Section of Tom's 28 minute Killzone Feature
Final Thoughts (Games we finished this week)
1:23:40 Spec Ops: The Line (Multiplayer Impressions)
1:32:33 Serious Sam 3 (Phil Thanks Tom for Beating the Game for Him)
1:33:45 Bully (Phil Fog's Final Thoughts)
They are only pictures people.
Transcripts
Tom: Nintendo president Satoru Iwata recently announced that Nintendo would not be holding an Ekeynote speech.
Tom: Although they will still be holding precedents in which they will showcase their vast bastion of DS games and Rayman legends.
Tom: Satoru Iwata said they had simply had enough.
Tom: The key to the coin was when Miyamoto forced me to wear a silly Luigi hat while he played around with a Hoover in the background.
Tom: Remember the music presentation?
Tom: People like to blame me for the embarrassing moments that we as a company have been forced to endure at Ebut the truth of the matter is that Miyamoto is to blame.
Tom: As the head of the company, I was happy to take the criticism, but being forced to wear the hat really was too much, much less respondently.
Tom: It is still unclear if Iwata will be even attending Ebut given the hits that he's taken over the years to his self-confidence, it's likely he'll sit this one out, just as Kami has yet to return to Eand it appears that even Reggie may not be in attendance, both him and Kami being long-suffering victims of a nasty cyberbullying campaign carried out by disgruntled gamers.
Tom: Clearly the whole of Nintendo is suffering with major self-confidence issues, even being forced into private Nintendo Direct announcements.
Tom: But hopefully a successful Efloor show presentation will allow them to gain back some of the self-confidence they are missing and once again reassert themselves as a major force in the home console industry.
Tom: Welcome to episode I believe it is.
Tom: Yes?
Phil: That is correct.
Tom: Of the Game under.net podcast.
Tom: Today we will be discussing the likes of Nintendo's announcement, if you can tell from the introduction that they will not be attending Eto EA partners closing down.
Phil: You know, that breaking news that you've just given, I didn't read that anywhere this week.
Phil: So Iwata isn't doing this because he's sick of the embarrassment.
Tom: Yeah, well you see, at Lava Lemming, we managed to get a very exclusive interview with him and he told us that.
Tom: It's in parking marks so you know it's true.
Phil: Very exclusive.
Phil: I'm shocked.
Phil: I mean, this is pretty big.
Phil: I mean, we are now on Twitter.
Phil: You can follow me at Game Under Phil and I've been following like a thousand different gaming journalists this week but none of them had this story so this has to be pretty light breaking.
Tom: I mean, the only thing I think of is, you know, Nintendo has a pretty bad PR track record with most outlets, right?
Tom: So maybe they don't want to publish something this negative just in case it makes the situation even worse.
Phil: So they leak it out through a small operation like us and so, you know, they'll see how this goes and if it goes well, then they'll go with it.
Phil: If they deny it, or if it doesn't go well, then they can deny it.
Tom: Yeah, I mean, it's just laser-lamming and Game Under, so...
Phil: So for our regular listeners, we're still holding to the premise that we're going to be doing this podcast once a month, right?
Phil: Even though this is our third week in a row where we're going to show?
Tom: Correct.
Tom: Well, next week we're almost definitely not doing one as we'll be recording a feature for the uber-monthly version of the show.
Phil: Yes, but we don't want to spoil that for anyone.
Tom: We won't be saying what the subject is.
Tom: I mean, it's just pretty mind-blowing that we have to record a feature on a separate day to the whole podcast.
Phil: I know, I know, but we won't tell anyone yet.
Phil: We promise we're only doing a podcast once a month and then we're going to do these other podcasts when big news break.
Phil: And obviously, there was a couple of big news stories this week, the first of which we alluded to in our intro, which is that Nintendo is saying no more Ekeynote speech.
Phil: In fact, they may or may not be making any presentation at Eother than at their booth and then in offices, you know, closed door meetings behind the scenes.
Phil: What was your first reaction upon hearing this, Tom?
Tom: Well, my first reaction was it just destroyed my theory that we discussed in the previous podcast, right, where they might have been holding back a more major announcement from Ebut at the same time, they wouldn't necessarily need to do that in a keynote speech, right?
Tom: They could simply do that as part of a private presentation or whatnot, and it would be coming out in some way or another privacy be damned.
Tom: So I'm not sure it necessarily affects them all that greatly, given that they have been using their Nintendo Directs much more, right?
Tom: I mean, and actually some pretty big things there.
Phil: Well, even if you look at last year's Ethey had the pre-Ewhich launched the hardware.
Phil: And then you'll remember everyone's response to that was, oh my god, you know, because they said, we want our keynote to be all about the games.
Phil: So everyone was like, oh my god, they've got so many games to announce that they're having the hardware one as a Nintendo Direct.
Phil: Then they had their middle conference, which was doing great until they got to Nintendo land.
Phil: And they said, we're not even going to mention the DS, except when they talked about the DS for minutes.
Phil: We're going to have a separate DS conference the next day.
Phil: And so you can see Nintendo going toward this.
Phil: And I think this is something that Apple started.
Phil: Apple used to have their keynote every year at the Macworld conference.
Phil: Macworld is a magazine, and it was the biggest Apple-focused show.
Phil: And Apple always did a keynote, but then they broke away from that and basically said, well, why should we be sharing a stage here?
Phil: We'll just have our own events that we can choreograph, pay for ourselves.
Tom: I think what you actually mean is we're going to make our own churches in which we will hold eulogies for ourselves.
Phil: Well, not eulogies in Apple's face, certainly.
Tom: Sermons.
Phil: Sermons, right.
Phil: This is quite different.
Phil: And then Microsoft has followed this.
Phil: Microsoft has pulled out from CES this last year, or this year rather.
Phil: Microsoft is famous for doing the keynote there, and they've moved to doing these separate shows.
Phil: So, I mean, best case scenario, this is just a PR company taking over Nintendo's message and saying you can control your message better through these small, segmented, targeted events as opposed to having one big event.
Phil: And particularly at this Ewhere they're going to have an event with a year old piece of hardware and their competition is going to go up there, each of them, with their own hardware announcements.
Phil: So, I mean, Nintendo couldn't really win this Eand they probably think they can get their message out just as effectively to the mainstream by having these direct media encounters behind the scenes.
Tom: And they're probably about running that.
Tom: The only thing is the timing of the announcement after that Nintendo Direct where they showed Pikmin and apart from that basically nothing for the Wii U, right, could not have been worse.
Tom: I mean, announcing it now makes it seem like they're doing this because they don't have anything big coming up at Eright, whether they do or not.
Tom: That's the impression that a lot of people are going to take away from this.
Phil: Yeah, well, I gave the best case scenario, which is this is just PR BS.
Phil: The worst case scenario is that they have no third party support.
Tom: Yeah.
Phil: And if they were going to get up there and do a keynote and basically be like, well, here are our Nintendo published games and they don't have EA coming up there, they don't have Activision coming up there, it would just make it look even worse.
Phil: So, you know, bottom line, I think this kills them in the hardcore.
Phil: I mean, amongst the hardcore gamer, you basically got people who have already bought into the Wii U, right?
Tom: Yeah.
Phil: So they're emotionally invested in it and whatever they do, whatever Nintendo does is fine, right?
Phil: And then you've got the people who haven't yet bought a Wii U, right?
Phil: So I think we put us in that category, where we're not haters, but we're on the fence.
Phil: You know, we're waiting to see.
Phil: And I think that category of buyer, that category of hardcore gamer, is only going to be dissuaded by the lack of a keynote.
Phil: I mean, I don't know.
Phil: Nintendo has done this, of course, before, where they've exited the Tokyo Game Show and then done their own events, and then Nintendo World and then eventually finished, you know, exited those as well.
Phil: But I mean, all in all, this may be the smart move, but I don't...
Phil: As you said, coming on the back of that Nintendo Direct, which was so disappointing, this doesn't look good.
Tom: Yeah, the timing just makes it seem really bad.
Tom: I don't think it affects them too greatly now.
Tom: There's just the initial reaction of, well, does this mean they've got nothing at Eright?
Tom: If they, in fact, do have good third-party support and enough of their own games for the Wii U at Egiven a good presentation either in private or in public, just in small presentations, I think then most people will see it as, well, they're just going to use Nintendo Direct for more major announcements, right?
Tom: And when they feel like announcing something, so they don't have to wait for something like E
Tom: So I don't think we can necessarily say yes, if it's a good idea, if it is a good idea, or if it is them simply basically just admitting they've got nothing until Ehas come around.
Phil: Well, we should probably move on to our next story, but I'd say the last part of this is that you also have to factor in that this is a Japanese company looking at a Western event.
Phil: And they also ousted their North American CEO and basically gave Iwata double duty.
Phil: So Iwata will now be in charge of Nintendo of America as well.
Phil: So you have to think that on some part, this is some sort of, you know, the Japanese coming in and saying, you guys don't know what you're doing.
Phil: We don't need to do this keynote.
Phil: It's a net negative for us.
Phil: We're always made fun of.
Phil: Your CEO sucks.
Phil: We're going to put Iwata in control.
Phil: And you also have to wonder what the impact is on the American staff.
Phil: I mean, Reggie's never really been in control.
Phil: He's just been basically the head of marketing for Nintendo of America.
Phil: But then to have Iwata be made your CEO, when obviously he's not going to be a full-time CEO, I mean, there's going to be an empty office up there in Redmond in Washington with the CEO's name on it.
Tom: Yep.
Phil: You see what I'm saying?
Tom: You'll be starting in there.
Phil: Yeah, exactly.
Phil: I mean, it's like a school with a principal that is a principal of another school full-time and he comes to see you once a month for three days.
Phil: This doesn't portend well at all in terms of management or morale for Nintendo.
Phil: But what does that care?
Phil: All we care about are the games.
Phil: So if you've got nothing more to say about that, we'll probably move on to the next biggest story.
Phil: Yeah.
Phil: Well, of course, the next biggest story this week was EA.
Phil: They closed some studios earlier this month, and now they've closed even more studios, possibly reducing their staff of by %, an additional %.
Phil: And studios close all the time, I mean, particularly when big games wrap up or games, you know, games don't sell particularly well, they'll wrap up a studio.
Phil: Yeah.
Phil: But I think what was notable about this closure was that they shut down their EA Partners division.
Tom: And would you like to explain this to the listeners, as there's quite a bit of confusion as to what the EA Partners actually are.
Phil: Well, EA Partners was actually a program that was started by basically a venture capitalist type guy.
Phil: And he was basically a talent scout.
Phil: He would go out and find these mid-level companies that couldn't produce or develop or publish or QA or distribute their own games.
Phil: So EA is a publisher developer.
Phil: So they develop some of their own games, like SimCity, for example, or Madden.
Phil: But they're also a publisher.
Phil: So in addition, it's like being an author that has their own publishing house.
Phil: And when you're a publisher, well, what does that mean?
Phil: It means you pay for marketing.
Phil: It means you get distribution deals in place with big box stores like Target and Walmart and Best Buy and things like that.
Phil: But also what EA partners did was provide...
Phil: They have this massive quality assurance or QA testing team that's in place.
Phil: So basically, if me and you made a game, much like us making this podcast, we've got good ideas, we're earnest, we're into it, we're on it.
Phil: It would be kind of like a radio station producer coming in and saying, you've got some rough edges, but you've got a good show here.
Phil: We're going to put you on of our stations around Australia.
Phil: And before you do that, we want some focus groups to listen to your show.
Phil: We're going to give you some production notes.
Phil: We're going to have an intro song written for you and all the rest of it.
Phil: Well, that's what EA partners do.
Tom: And don't forget, we'll have to get rid of Phil Fogg.
Phil: That's never going to happen.
Phil: Now, I know the only reason why I'm on this show is because I'm the guy that knows how to publish the podcast to win, but you're not getting rid of me.
Phil: So what EA did, like for Epic, for example, right?
Phil: So you think, well, Epic's fucking huge.
Phil: Why would they need a publisher?
Phil: Well, because they're only a developer, right?
Phil: So they had, their publishing deal for Gears came through Microsoft.
Tom: Yeah.
Phil: Because Microsoft had the distribution.
Phil: So when they came to make a game like Bullet Storm, they needed EA to package, publish, market and distribute it.
Tom: Of course.
Phil: So other notable games that were distributed in this way were Brutal Legend by Double Fine, The Crisis series by Crytek.
Phil: I mean, can you just imagine being Crytek coming over to North America with this kick-ass game, but no way to distribute it?
Tom: Yeah.
Phil: So Death's Bank, Kingdoms of Malmoral Reckoning, The Left Dead, Rock Band, Shadows of the Dam, Syndicate, Shank.
Phil: You know, so in addition to that, they also seeded studios.
Phil: So when the guys from Infinity Ward left Activision, I think they gave them about $million so they could set up offices and buy equipment and all the rest of it.
Phil: Just on the basis of them having the rights to publish future Respawn games.
Phil: So big deal or not big deal?
Phil: Obviously, I've made it out to be a big deal.
Phil: What do you think?
Tom: Well, if it is that they're basically closing down most of their publishing, then it is an incredibly huge deal.
Tom: The thing is, it could also simply be restructuring and rebranding, right?
Tom: Or do we know there's more to it than that?
Phil: I think that they're doing this...
Phil: You know, they recently fired their CEO.
Phil: They haven't yet assigned a new CEO.
Phil: I think they're doing the dirty work before they put Peter Moore in charge.
Phil: I think this is them basically scaling way the hell back.
Phil: They're not going to be taking any risks.
Phil: They're going to be focusing on their core properties, like Madden, Sims, you know, and that sort of thing.
Phil: And I see this as a major retraction, but I also see it as a sign of the times.
Phil: I mean, a lot of this kind of work now is being done by Steam Greenlight, right?
Phil: Particularly if you look at smaller games, they publish like Shank or Fuse.
Phil: Even to a extent, you know, games like Brutal Legend or Bullet Storm perhaps could have been distributed through Steam.
Tom: If they could get the money to fund in the first place, though.
Phil: Yeah, that's right.
Phil: And that's the other thing that these guys did.
Phil: They did an old school music label style where they'd fund the money so these developers would have some money to spend on development.
Phil: You know, the only other option for these small companies like Grasshopper Manufacture is to sell out to, you know, one of these large publishers.
Tom: I mean, here's the thing.
Tom: You can probably remember which companies these were because I can't...
Tom: I think it was about last year, if you remember, on the VG Press Podcast.
Tom: We had a very long discussion about either, I think, was it THQ or Take-Two or someone that had put themselves up for sale, right?
Tom: And we were simply wondering who was actually going to go in to buy them, right?
Tom: Can you remember?
Phil: Probably THQ because Take-Two is like wildly profitable.
Phil: Yeah, yeah.
Tom: And now they're basically dead.
Tom: I mean, it appears that this sort of publishing is somewhat going out.
Tom: Which is a huge shame because most of the games you've mentioned there I think are too big for green light because they require too much of an initial investment, right?
Tom: So they basically need a publisher with a large amount of money to say, okay, we're going to trust you to make this.
Tom: And as long as we can do QA on it and have some degree of input just to make sure you're doing things properly right, we're going to fund the game and then publish it so that you can make it happen.
Tom: Without this sort of publishing, Brutal Legend isn't going to happen again.
Tom: Double Fine is going to be a small adventure game production company basically.
Phil: Right.
Phil: Or Shadows of the Dam, the Suda Mikami project from, I think it was just two years ago, Grasshopper Manufacturer.
Phil: That game would never have seen the light of day, but for EA partners.
Phil: I mean, unless you think this is irrelevant, you've also got Kingdoms of Emila Reckoning, which came out last year.
Phil: Portal you know, many people's game of the year for last year.
Phil: Well, the retail release of that, you might go, oh, Valve, they're all powerful, they have all the money.
Phil: Valve doesn't have the phone numbers to target.
Phil: They don't have the phone numbers to UPS or FedEx.
Phil: They don't know how to distribute games in the physical realm.
Phil: And so that's why I do think that perhaps, you know, the shrinking of EA partnerships may be a sign of the times.
Phil: You say that Valve can't support the distribution and funding of these larger scale games like Hellgate London.
Phil: Well, you're absolutely right.
Phil: I mean, they couldn't support the physical distribution of Portal or the Orange Box or the Left Dead series.
Phil: Yeah, this is a big deal.
Phil: I mean, the only other company that can step in at this point is someone like Bethesda, who's been spending their Elder Scrolls money by buying up these small studios.
Phil: But then you have small studios that don't want to be bought up.
Phil: They just want to stay independent and then, you know, keep distributing games.
Phil: And they're basically going to have to sign a deal with the devil and go with either Take Two or Activision.
Tom: You're forgetting one other publisher and that is Square Enix.
Tom: If anyone wants to join them.
Phil: Yeah, I don't think that's going to be happening.
Tom: I think the most shocking thing about this news is, assuming that it's not some sort of industry secret that isn't being published for some reason and this is simply restructuring, is the fact that this is not being reported as big news, right?
Tom: This is just like a throwaway news article on most outlets.
Tom: And I mean, why?
Tom: The only possible reason that I can think of is simply the stereotype that EA, as a publisher, just regurgitates Madden, etc.
Tom: right?
Phil: They're just these evil things.
Phil: No, I think you're absolutely right.
Phil: I mean, I went to several community gaming outlets and posted about this.
Phil: I went on my Twitter account, Game Under Phil, and tweeted about it, and no one cared.
Phil: I posted a thread specifically about this topic in one gaming community, and I got one response.
Phil: I got like views, one response.
Phil: And I do think that this is like this EA bias, where it's like, well, fuck EA, who cares?
Phil: It's the worst company in America, fuck them.
Phil: Well, yeah, you might say that, but did you like Shadows of the Dam?
Phil: Did you like Left Dead?
Phil: Did you happen to enjoy Rock Band?
Phil: How about that Hellgate London game?
Phil: Pretty cool, right?
Phil: Or Shank?
Tom: I don't think many people like Hellgate London, though, for the record here.
Phil: Bulletstorm!
Phil: Okay, I knew one lady who did like Hellgate London, so I didn't even know if Flagship's still around.
Phil: But anyway, yeah, I do think, to answer your question, I do think this is part of the EA antipathy, which is leading to this apathy, which I think is an anathema.
Phil: Well, I think it's an anathema.
Phil: Yeah.
Tom: Well, my only other explanation would be that the common gamer doesn't know what EA Partners is, so people might know that they publish games and were involved, you know, they had a great period where they were publishing stuff like Mirror's Dead and Dead Space, right, original games, and accept that, but if you say EA Partners to them, they're not going to think, well, that's their publishing, right?
Tom: So if they see EA Partners is closing down, they're not going to take that as EA is stopping publishing games, third party games, right?
Tom: I mean, Godmode enabled was, had the same reaction on the forum, right?
Tom: Yeah, and I must admit, I didn't know that EA Partners was the term for their publishing outlet, but I was well aware that they've been heavily involved in publishing all those games, and yeah.
Tom: Ignorance probably plays a large part as well.
Phil: Yeah, so what you're saying is that user game mode enabled on their forums is ignorant?
Tom: Yeah, exactly.
Tom: Okay, excellent.
Tom: But not just him and me as well.
Phil: All right, enough said about that.
Phil: Let's go on to, that was the big news of the week, and that's what forced us to have this podcast this week, what we want to get out of the way.
Phil: What else is going on around there?
Tom: Xcom does in fact exist.
Tom: This started off, first of all, with some random video posted on YouTube in which some guy was speaking anonymously about some bullshit.
Tom: I didn't watch it.
Tom: So, after I commented on that, I saw like a screen cap of it.
Tom: And so, there was some dates and code in the tags of the video, but it was linked to Xcom, so everyone thought, okay, this is the Xcom shoot-up that is around, that is in fact still alive.
Tom: And K Marin has now in fact gone public on this and announced that, yes, it is still in existence.
Tom: It's called the Bureau Xcom Be Classified and it's going to be a third-person tactical squad-based shooter.
Tom: Now, originally, you could also play from a first-person perspective.
Tom: It's now third-person only, but still with a high focus on tactics.
Tom: And the plot involves William Carter, a lone wolf FBI agent.
Tom: Carter is dealing with extraterrestrial threats during the JFK years.
Tom: Carter may not like working with us, but the Bureau will require him to be a combat quarterback, quarterback as K Rex put it.
Tom: So, I, for one, am very pleased this exists, which I know is probably a controversial viewpoint, but I remember the original screenshots and they looked awesome to me.
Tom: I mean, it was an interesting setting for a shooter that you don't see every day, and personally I couldn't care less if it is shitting all over Xcom.
Tom: As its own universe, it looked pretty interesting to me.
Phil: Well, this is take two basically playing Roulette.
Phil: They're putting one on red and one on black.
Phil: Now, this game was announced before the popular Xcom RTS, which we game, which won, for example, Giant Bombs game at the year last year.
Phil: So they announced the FPS.
Phil: They saw how much people were responding to it.
Phil: And then, of course...
Tom: By which you mean how much everyone hated the idea.
Tom: Well, people...
Phil: Yeah, you're absolutely right, actually.
Phil: And then miraculously, Firaxis went ahead and released the reboot of this long dormant franchise as an effective RTS.
Phil: And then the FPS, all the websites were brought down for it, all the domains were brought back, and it looked like they basically said, OK, well, we weren't expecting the RTS to do so well, so let's just forget the shitty first-person shooter.
Phil: But now it looks like Take-Two is saying basically, well, I mean, let's see what we can do here.
Phil: Let's see if we can expand the Xcom IP into something beyond the RTS.
Phil: From all accounts, those that did play the early demos of the Xcom shooter liked it.
Tom: Yep.
Phil: And I think turning it into a third-person tactical, you know, light tactical, squad-based shooter, like a Spec Ops The Line kind of game, is a smart way to take it.
Phil: Because what you're doing is you can't compete on the FPS front anymore, right?
Phil: That's done.
Phil: It's over your Call of Duty or your not.
Tom: Yep.
Phil: So I think taking it into the third person, which is fairly easy to do technically, is a very smart move by take two.
Phil: And if they can pick up some of the people who like the RTS and put out a decent third person shooter, and I am so cynical as to think that perhaps what they're thinking is they're going to produce the third person shooter in year A, the RTS in year B, the third person shooter sequel in year C.
Phil: You see what I'm saying?
Phil: And then turn this into a major franchise.
Phil: And you know what?
Phil: If they can do that, more power to it.
Tom: And it would be a new major franchise as well.
Tom: So you'd be getting your money's worth out of it for a while if they can keep up the quality of the Xcom RTS.
Tom: And the other thing that has greatly improved is their marketing.
Tom: And this isn't obvious to anyone even at the time that it was released.
Tom: They've come out now.
Tom: They didn't just announce it out of the blue.
Tom: They had this bullshit viral marketing, right?
Tom: So they're not just announcing it.
Tom: So everyone's going to say, well, we hated it.
Tom: What the fuck are you doing?
Tom: If they announce, if they do this viral stuff, people are then going to be intrigued by it.
Tom: So then actually announcing it is going to make it a less of a blow.
Tom: And when they've now announced it, they've immediately focused on pointing out, going to great extent to point out that it is still going to be very tactical.
Tom: When, from what I can remember on the first announcement, they didn't do that.
Tom: The main thing that they were going on about was that it would be very much in the Xcom universe and were kind of avoiding commenting on the tactics beyond simply saying that it would be tactical, right?
Phil: Well, right.
Phil: But I expect this to be like tactical.
Tom: I don't expect it to be like an RTS.
Tom: I'm just saying they're emphasizing the tactics that are going to be involved, whether it's going to be particularly tactical or not.
Phil: Yeah.
Phil: It will be interesting to see how this measures up against that.
Phil: What was the Australian game, the one Destroy All Aliens?
Tom: Yeah.
Phil: It was a third-person shooter set in the same time period with agents and the Bureau.
Phil: Not the Bureau.
Phil: That's a donkey.
Phil: The Bureau.
Phil: The Bureau.
Phil: So, I see lately you've been really...
Phil: House of the Dead is coming to iOS.
Tom: Yes, it is, indeed.
Tom: Not House of the Dead.
Tom: You've got to say Overkill, because House of the Dead and Overkill...
Tom: Overkill...
Tom: .
Tom: are two rather different aesthetics, shall we say.
Phil: Very much so.
Phil: I mean, the first three House of the Deads are very much a broken English, you know, suffer like G did kind of offense, and then Overkill is very much...
Phil: How would you describe it?
Tom: I would call it balls to the wall action, though you might want to add in some more vulgarity in that sense.
Phil: Yeah.
Phil: Yeah, it's more pulpy, basically ripped from the movie posters of the s.
Phil: We have to say...
Tom: It depends on the posters.
Tom: I mean, they've got a range.
Tom: Some of them are from the s, some of them are from the s, some of them are from the s, some even could pass as s movie posters.
Tom: I think the key point simply is it's based entirely on exploitation films, even though some do go for the s film aesthetics such as the Edward Films, right?
Tom: It's not so much his horror films or rather his science fiction films such as Deep Space Nine.
Tom: It's his prostitutes going around killing people films or his pornographic films that they're going after.
Phil: What I like about this iOS version though is it's sure to maintain the games Witty and Swearfield Banter.
Phil: I mean, between the two main characters, that's going to be kept intact.
Phil: And they're going to be able to use the light gun style shooting, like you'll just be able to touch the screen.
Phil: They're not going to be using any sort of virtual joystick or anything like that, right?
Tom: Yeah.
Tom: Have you played many games, shooting games, we have to tap on the screen to shoot them?
Phil: No.
Tom: Because, to me, this interface is not going to work that well, because your fingers are going to be in the way of the action most of the time.
Phil: Well, you'll be lucky.
Phil: I'm glad you read this story, because you'll be happy to know that the light gun style shooting will in fact be not implemented as I suggested with touch screen shooting, but there will be a virtual joystick.
Phil: So there will be an on screen controller.
Tom: Just to completely contradict ourselves then.
Phil: Yes.
Phil: Well, I was setting you up, and then, furthermore, I'm glad you read this story.
Tom: I, of course, had the logical reply which led them to do this in the first place.
Phil: I'm glad you read this story, because also the game's witty and swear-filled banter between the two characters has also been removed.
Tom: Well, see, here's the thing.
Tom: See, I assumed that you could read the story, given that you chose to post it here.
Tom: So, I've just got a question here.
Tom: What is the point of making House of the Dead overkill if the swearing has been removed?
Tom: And the lightning star shooting.
Phil: Yeah.
Phil: I don't want to air Derrity Laudentry online, but I was not the one that included this story that you did not read.
Tom: Oh, wait.
Tom: No, yes, I did.
Phil: On to other major news this week.
Phil: The Durango...
Tom: Move along quickly...
Phil: .
Phil: has been announced, or will be announced, on the st of May.
Phil: So, in less than a month, we'll find out about the new Xbox, according to Major Nelson.
Phil: And rumors are running right.
Phil: Do you want to talk about any of these rumors at all?
Tom: Which rumors?
Tom: The ones that won't have Always Online?
Phil: Well, what about the latest spin on that rumor?
Phil: That it will...
Phil: Always Online is going to be from publisher to publisher.
Phil: So, basically, you can decide whether or not you're going to do it.
Phil: Much like Microsoft's policy of region locking on the existing
Phil: Basically, they left it up to the publishers, which basically resulted in no region locking other than when Microsoft wanted to limit Japanese gamers from buying certain games.
Tom: If that is the case, I really don't see the point of including it.
Tom: There's only two publishers thus far that have done this elsewhere, and that would be EA and Blizzard with SimCity Diablo right?
Phil: Yeah, and Ubisoft.
Tom: Yeah, oh yeah.
Phil: On the PC, yeah.
Tom: So, I mean, I don't see EA wanting to implement this on that many console games.
Tom: I suppose they do often want you to get an EA account and Ubisoft, right?
Tom: A UbiPlay account or whatever it's called, right?
Tom: So maybe they're actually under pressure by EA and Ubisoft to actually include Always Online.
Phil: Yeah, I think this is a pay-on to the publishers and basically just a bullet point in their marketing is saying, hey, you think piracy is an issue, if you think piracy is an issue, we always let you turn this on.
Phil: And what this enables EA to do then is if piracy does become an issue with the next Xbox console, is say, okay, well, let's turn it on for Madden.
Phil: Let's turn it on for the game.
Phil: Let's turn it on for FIFA.
Phil: Let's turn it on for the games that are going to get pirated the most.
Phil: And keeping in mind, yeah, EA still does all the server-side stuff for their multiplayer.
Phil: I mean, they're still stuck in that stone age where they don't let Microsoft do their own server management.
Tom: Which is why we're not playing FIFA still.
Phil: Yeah, so I think that that's probably true.
Phil: That's probably how it's all going to shake down.
Phil: I mean, at this point, I don't know if these leaks that Microsoft's putting out are to the effect that when they have their actual show on the st of May, all they need to do is come out and say, and always online is not required at all times.
Phil: And then they win E
Phil: I mean, they've lowered expectations at this point that they basically just need to come out, show that they have something that capably works and can run games, and they win E
Tom: Well, that's the other thing, because there have been a few other rumors about the power of the console basically saying that it's going to be closer to the Wii U than the PSright?
Phil: Right.
Tom: So having the opportunity to say we're not going to be always online, dot, dot, dot, and we're going to be a Wii U, or the other way around, rather.
Tom: So we might be the power of the Wii U, but at least we don't have always online would probably be a pretty good strategy.
Phil: I don't even want to wade into the territory of technical specifications for these new systems.
Phil: Other than the Wii U, we know what that is.
Phil: Other than the PSwe know what that is.
Phil: But for the I don't want to quite throw them off the ledge just yet.
Tom: We don't know yet.
Phil: We don't know.
Phil: So we do know that people have been talking, like at GDC, developers were really hyping up the PlayStation and they were less effusive about Microsoft's new offering.
Phil: So we don't know yet.
Phil: And ultimately, it doesn't matter.
Phil: Basically, the only reason why it matters is what's going to be the lead platform for developers to develop on, right?
Phil: Because we know the PlayStation suffered this generation because it was not the lead platform.
Phil: See Oblivion as one of many examples.
Phil: But speaking of another Bethesda published game, Bethesda of course now owns the ass of Mikami, the creator of Resident Evil and
Phil: Or is it and ?
Tom: I think the main thing is that he made
Phil: Yeah, he made
Phil: He made God Hand.
Phil: What has he done since then?
Tom: Was it Inafune with Shadows of the Damned and Suda or was that Mikami?
Tom: I can't remember.
Phil: Oh, no, no, it wasn't Inafune.
Phil: Mikami did Shadows of the Damned as well.
Phil: So anyway, he announced his latest game.
Tom: The Evil Within?
Phil: The Evil Within.
Phil: What can you tell us about this?
Tom: Well, the first thing I'm going to tell you is that the trailer for it is terrible.
Tom: It's this awful live action trailer where basically someone is very painstakingly winding together barbed wire.
Tom: Now, as interesting as that might sound, you'd think that they would have some sort of interesting montage going on in the background, right?
Tom: Well, they attempt to by flashing you with random horror characters in the light, right?
Tom: But it's just so incredibly generic.
Tom: It looks like at best some sort of student film project where they're demonstrating special effects or rather makeup and prosthetics and the ability to put together a demonstration of something.
Tom: It doesn't feel like what you would put together as a demonstration.
Tom: It's someone putting together a demonstration of a demonstration, so to speak.
Tom: And I don't know.
Tom: Maybe it was simply because I was expecting it to be a proper trailer, but I thought it was just absolutely horrible.
Tom: It was so generic.
Tom: It had nothing of the feel of a Mikami game.
Tom: If you look at the screenshots that have come out, it was basically nothing like it.
Tom: It was just an absolutely horrible, horrible trailer.
Tom: But the actual game, the screenshots look basically like Resident Evil with a detective instead of a policeman getting involved in the action, right?
Tom: And apart from that, it goes through the bullet list of details.
Phil: Well, before you do that, though, I can't see this going anywhere well.
Phil: Mikami was given his own studio by Bethesda, right?
Phil: So, he's a Japanese guy working in Japan, far from Maryland where Bethesda is based.
Phil: And they're basically giving you money to just come up with games, right?
Phil: So, Japan is as far from Maryland as, say, we are, right?
Tom: Yeah.
Phil: From Maryland.
Phil: And so, if they came to us and said, you know, Tom, Phil, we want you guys to make us a game.
Phil: We want to check in with you from time to time.
Phil: Here's $million, start up a studio.
Phil: Can you imagine the level of chaos and irresponsibility that would be going on?
Tom: So, you don't have faith in Mikami to pull this off.
Phil: Add to that, they speak a different language, right?
Phil: So, like, when we bullshit the guys in Maryland, they're going to kind of know.
Tom: But wait a minute.
Tom: So, are we spending the $million on putting together a studio in Maryland or in Australia?
Phil: Australia.
Tom: Yeah.
Tom: So, we're just getting the money from Maryland.
Phil: Right.
Phil: We're getting the money.
Phil: We have to Skype in and email them every week and tell them what's going on.
Tom: Yeah.
Tom: See, that doesn't sound too ridiculous to me.
Tom: If he is a good leader of a group and got to put together a group and he's given carte blanche, because the issue would come in through the distance being if Bethesda wanted to have a lot of control of how the studio is put together, right?
Tom: Because if he is in the place that the studio is being put together and has control over it, I don't see that as necessarily being a huge issue.
Tom: You would have a lot more experience in doing this sort of thing, so you could perhaps tell me why it would be.
Phil: It's not going to work because, I mean, if you look at a game like Shadows of the Damned where Mikami was so hands-off, right?
Phil: Basically, there's no responsibility.
Phil: You've got cultural differences, you've got language differences.
Phil: I see him phoning this in.
Phil: I see him letting young underlings with less talent than he.
Phil: Of course, most people on this planet have less talent than he.
Phil: You know, take the reins.
Phil: Having played Shadows of the Damned, it just felt phoned in from every perspective with Suda doing the heavy lifting.
Phil: Basically, him coming in as the flamboyant overlord from time to time, saying, oh, move this to the left, move that to the right.
Phil: He says stuff like, oh, there aren't any horror games.
Phil: No one's making survival horror games anymore.
Phil: There's plenty of horror games that are coming out on Steam and PSN.
Phil: I think Mikami's out of touch.
Phil: I don't think he has the technical ability anymore.
Phil: I think he's kind of like Kojima, where the best he can be is a creative director.
Phil: I think the distance between those who are giving him the money and himself is so distant.
Phil: They're going to be giving him so much leverage because he's a creative, quote, genius.
Phil: I do think he's a creative genius, but it's kind of like giving Andy Warhol $million and telling him, I want you to paint the best pictures you can paint.
Phil: What's Andy Warhol going to do with that $million?
Tom: Spend it on making an --hour film with someone sleeping, by which I mean on drugs while he films himself sleeping.
Tom: But so your issue then is rather than with the idea, rather than the idea of what Bethesda is doing, is the fact that they're doing it with Mikami, right?
Tom: Just to clarify.
Phil: I think that anytime you're giving money to someone in another country who speaks a different language and they have the upper hand because they're the creative genius and you're just the bag man, you're just the guy handing them the money, it's a big mistake.
Tom: But what if his creative genius is also a genius of groups of people, of putting together and controlling groups of people?
Phil: Well, he hasn't shown evidence of that.
Tom: This is what I'm saying.
Tom: In theory, could this not work if it's not with Mikami, let's say?
Phil: Yes.
Phil: If it were, say, Cliff Pleszynski.
Phil: Someone who has shown an ability to put together a talented group of people who can listen to a creative input and then turn out a commercial and, to some extent, creative property, yes.
Phil: But if you look at Mikami's track history, you just have to look at his Shadow to the Dam with EA partners, where he basically phoned it in and took the money.
Phil: That's not a good sign.
Phil: And you've got to take the most recent evidence as being indicative of where he's heading.
Tom: Yeah, well, I don't think we really need to go through the bullet points.
Tom: Let's end this story on though.
Tom: I think what we've basically gathered from that is that Mikami should give Cliff Blisinski $million to make Beaver Within.
Phil: Yes, and yeah, I agree.
Phil: But onto two more very important bullet points.
Tom: Now, the next one is Dragon's Crown.
Tom: And if you remember, some Kotaku writer, I'm just going to open the link so I can actually get which one it was.
Tom: It kind of just helps us apart.
Phil: Jason Shryer.
Tom: Yep, Jason Shryer.
Tom: Basically posted a long, impassioned or rather outraged rant about the size of the sorceress' breast in Dragon's Crown, right?
Phil: Right.
Phil: Now, Dragon's Crown is a game that is made by the same people who brought you Eternal Poison, Grim Grimoire and Muramasa, for example.
Tom: And Odin Sphere.
Phil: Right.
Phil: Oh, Odin Sphere, yeah.
Phil: This is the Vanillaware folks.
Phil: And I'm looking at my copies of these games and she seems to be on the front cover of Grim Grimoire, except they're doing a panty shot or a pantaloon shot.
Phil: There's not a lot to be seen there.
Phil: But basically, this is a character that has a large ample breast, right?
Phil: And she's not wearing a lot of clothes.
Phil: And Jason Schreier basically said that the art direction of this game must have been done by a -year-old.
Phil: Right?
Phil: And then do you know what the response was to that?
Tom: The response was, the artist involved then, was this on Twitter?
Tom: Presumably on Twitter.
Tom: Sent him the picture that he'd done for him.
Tom: Of basically how he assumed Jason Schreier would like the outside to be, which was some presumably fully naked though, one could only tell from the pictures that they were at least semi-naked, muscular men with just incredibly awesome beards.
Tom: Right?
Phil: Right.
Phil: Right.
Phil: They weren't exactly chow and inky guys.
Phil: I mean, I didn't actually pick up on it the first time I saw it.
Tom: They were quite muscly.
Tom: They had the muscles of chow and inky.
Tom: The best way to describe it would be chow and inky are bodybuilders, right?
Tom: So they're muscly, but they don't actually have any strength.
Tom: Now, these people with the beards are powerlifters, so they're muscly, but they've also got a good amount of fat and a good amount of weight to them, so they actually have some strength to go with their muscles.
Phil: Well, I'm glad you researched this.
Phil: So basically, he sent...
Tom: It's basic anatomy.
Phil: Jason Schreier said that these large breasted women must have been drawn by a juvenile, and so the Japanese guy who was the art director responded by saying, well, if you don't like large breasted women, maybe you won't enjoy this, and he sent back pictures of men himself.
Phil: How was this interpreted by the Twitter audience?
Phil: Right?
Tom: General agreement with Jason Schreier and that the picture was homophobic?
Phil: Yes.
Phil: Which I don't buy at all, and not only homophobic, of course, but also that by saying that Jason Schreier is, quote, gay, or saying that if you don't like pictures of women, here is a picture of men.
Phil: So from there you go, okay, he's saying that you're gay, therefore you're saying he's gay, therefore that is bad, therefore you are bad, because I've done these three leaps of intellectual construct, that some poor asshole in Japan doesn't even know the underlying story behind, right?
Phil: Unbelievable.
Phil: Unbelievable.
Phil: You know, the fact that he sent him a picture of guys doesn't necessarily mean he's calling Jason Schreier gay, right?
Tom: Yeah.
Tom: I mean, it's a stretch to immediately assume that that is the meaning behind the picture, right?
Tom: And even if he was calling him gay, there's not necessarily any negative connotation with it either.
Tom: And I don't, yeah, on the one hand, I can easily see how this could be interpreted that way.
Tom: The thing is, even if you interpret it that way, there's no clear intent that this is the case.
Tom: So even if you were to think that, wouldn't you give the person involved the benefit of the doubt and assume it wasn't, given the tone chic tone of the picture and everything, right?
Tom: Even if he was saying he was gay, given that it's not, he's not sent me a picture of a bunch of guys having sex, right?
Tom: So it doesn't seem like there's any mouth in the picture beyond furiously spawning to someone calling you a sexist dickhead and a juvenile, right?
Phil: First of all, would I give him the benefit of the doubt?
Phil: Given that English is not his native language, absolutely.
Phil: Anyone who doesn't speak English as their native language hereby has permission to cop me abuse on Twitter, right?
Phil: And I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt.
Phil: And also, he just sent him a picture.
Phil: Oh, you don't like pictures of women?
Phil: Well, here's some pictures of men, right?
Phil: He didn't send pictures of men, you know, I don't want to get too graphic here, but yeah, as you said, he didn't have pictures of men engaging in, you know, sex, right?
Phil: And saying, I bet you enjoy this more, right?
Tom: Well, it was clearly a homoerotic picture though, but once again...
Phil: Well, not for me it wasn't, maybe for you.
Tom: Yes, yes it was.
Phil: Is that an insult?
Tom: No.
Tom: That's a fact.
Tom: I'm not denied that I found it very erotic.
Tom: I'm happy to admit that.
Phil: I thought it looked like a pile of garden gnomes thrown on top of each other.
Phil: It was not, it didn't move my...
Tom: No, that's the thing.
Tom: I mean it doesn't necessarily need to.
Tom: It's homoerotic in the sense that if you have a picture of three topless women in that sort of position, right?
Tom: Stroking their chins.
Tom: Yeah.
Tom: That's going to be considered to be homoerotic, right?
Phil: Well, erotic.
Tom: Yeah.
Tom: Well, that's the whole point.
Tom: If we're going to be sexist about it, we're going to say it's erotic because the assumption is that men are going to find erotic, but women aren't going to find a bunch of men doing the same thing, homoerotic.
Phil: But also guys are allowed to take their shirt off at the beach and women aren't, generally speaking.
Tom: But you wouldn't normally have a bunch of men oiled up, stroking each other's beards, lying or standing close together on the beach, right?
Tom: Or maybe you would these days, I don't know.
Phil: I haven't been to the beach there recently.
Tom: Even if it is homoerotic, I still won't see how you can positively conceive that it is anything but a humorous tongue in sheep reply to someone seriously calling you sexist and juvenile, right?
Phil: Exactly, exactly.
Phil: And man, if you had listened to the GameSpot podcast this week, oh my god, I don't want to hear another podcast about gender identity, please.
Tom: And can I just say, her breasts are by far the least ridiculous thing in the game.
Tom: Have you seen the Knight character?
Phil: Yes.
Tom: Yeah.
Tom: He is bigger than a fucking space marine from StarCraft, right?
Tom: As a space marine, you accept that they were in somewhat pokey armor.
Tom: This guy's armor is plated to fit around his muscles, for god's sake.
Tom: He is by far more ridiculous, and on the Odin Sphere box, right?
Tom: Odin Sphere, most of the characters are much more chibi, right?
Tom: So they've got small breasts, they're more childlike.
Tom: But on the back, there's this enemy that is a humongous bodybuilder.
Tom: So if we're going to get a thing running through all this game, it's not big breasts as women, but men with humongous muscles.
Phil: And that's not determined to be overtly sexual or anything else.
Tom: But if you want to complain about something with this artist and vanilla wearing, you can complain about that, and don't complain about that, unless you just think it looks fucking stupid, which by the way it does.
Phil: And can we just, I mean, as a gaming press, we're talking about it because we're ridiculing it.
Phil: I don't want to hear it anymore.
Phil: I don't want to hear it.
Phil: I don't want to hear that Laura Croft massage and stuff, and then when the game comes out, it's like, oh, this game is so awesome.
Phil: Well, what happened to all the massage and stuff?
Phil: But it doesn't matter, it's so awesome.
Phil: We were wrong.
Phil: Before we move on to the Killzone one minute, we made a bit of a news this week.
Tom: Yes, we did indeed, or rather you did.
Tom: I have no credit for this.
Phil: If you go to gameunder.net and scroll down a little bit, you'll see that I was talking on Twitter to the creator of Thomas Was Alone.
Phil: Have you had a chance to play this game yet?
Tom: I've installed it and downloaded it and checked that the PScontroller would work with it.
Phil: Oh, yeah, it's fully compatible with the controller.
Phil: Thomas Was Alone is a puzzle platformer in the vein of The Lost Vikings.
Phil: And this came out this week for PlayStation and Vita.
Phil: It's cross-play enabled.
Phil: I had played the PC version, which was available versus Steam, and I first learned about this game through the Good Game TV show that airs down here in Australia.
Phil: And it is absolutely charming.
Phil: It's won Baptist for its voice acting and all the rest of it.
Phil: Basically, it's a platformer where these different squares, rectangles, triangles all have to navigate through this world, and they each have different skills.
Phil: And like in Lost Vikings, you have to switch between the three of them to get through a level.
Phil: So basically, I noticed that on the IGN UK podcast, he said that the version was not a possibility, and he confirmed that over Twitter.
Phil: He basically said, yeah, I mean, we're up for that.
Phil: Nothing's planned, but nothing's impossible.
Tom: So it wasn't an accidental double negative.
Phil: No, exactly.
Phil: Amazing.
Phil: And this is amazing actually, because what it means is, even though he's cooperating with Sony now, it means that Sony paid for it, right?
Phil: Because if they had paid for an exclusivity, you know how it is, he wouldn't even mention it, because he doesn't want owners to go, oh, well, I guess I won't be buying a Vita to play this game, right?
Phil: So that was kind of cool, and you can see that exchange up at gameunder.net.
Tom: I want to congratulate you on the excellent journalistic work.
Phil: Ah, yes, the best journalism that can be done in under characters.
Tom: Yeah, well, it qualifies as better journalism than % of games journalism.
Tom: So we've been around a few weeks, and we're already at the forefront of games journalism, blazing trails.
Phil: I've only been on Twitter for like four days, and I only have seven followers, so I do need some followers, so if you're listening out there, please do have sympathy on me and follow me at Game Under Phil.
Phil: So why don't you lead off our Yakuza.
Phil: You have a way of pronouncing this.
Phil: Yakuza kills one minute.
Tom: And this is probably going to last for longer than a minute, as this is basically our mini feature for the podcast, and it's inspired by me finishing the original Killzone.
Tom: As far as I can tell from your comments on it, you're not a fan.
Phil: Of the original Killzone?
Phil: Yeah.
Phil: I wanted to be a fan.
Phil: I've tried it.
Phil: I've started it at least twice, perhaps three times.
Tom: Yeah.
Phil: And I just get up to a certain level where I can't play the game anymore.
Phil: I think it's visually beautiful to this day.
Phil: I did try it anew as recently as a year ago.
Phil: So, yeah, I'm not a hater, but I couldn't finish it.
Tom: Before we get into my impression, I've got to ask you, did you ever get up to Rico?
Phil: I don't know, honestly.
Tom: You remember Rico from the second one, right?
Phil: Well, he wasn't very helpful, for sure.
Phil: Yeah.
Tom: And he just went around being a dick, right?
Tom: Spoiler alert, killed Rannik at the end when he didn't need to.
Tom: And the whole time he was just going around swearing at people, right?
Tom: And just generally being an asshole.
Phil: He wasn't a professional soldier.
Tom: Yeah.
Tom: And would you say he was a likeable character?
Phil: No.
Tom: No.
Phil: I would say that I wanted to have him...
Phil: I wanted to speed his early demise as soon as possible.
Tom: Whenever he died, I celebrated.
Tom: The best moment was the Rannik boss battle or just the part leading into it, right?
Tom: Where you're on the balcony and you're killing people with rockets, yeah?
Phil: Yes, yep, yep.
Tom: At one stage, he ran between two of them or something, and he got caught into fire and burnt very, very painful to death and was screaming the whole time extreme agony.
Tom: And it was just awesome the whole time.
Tom: But in Killzone, okay, the whole game being from the previous generation is much more cartoony, right?
Tom: So his brand of racism and general arsehole-ness is just incredibly entertaining and he's like this comical person that follows you around being a lovable dick.
Tom: He's sort of endearing.
Tom: And I mean, you are accompanied by a Helgaard character, right?
Tom: So Rico, who is completely racist against Helgaard, has a great dynamic where he's just constantly complaining about this guy, constantly threatening to kill him.
Tom: I think the best line he had was, and I previously had this saved in my notes before he deleted it, so I have to paraphrase this, was, you're goddamn lucky you got some bite of shit in your head, or I fucking shove it at you.
Tom: And then someone interrupted him.
Tom: So he's going along, spouting this sort of thing the whole time, but because they've got another character there as a foil for him, and the three of them are kind of defusing his arsehole-ness, it works much better than in so he's actually entertaining.
Tom: So I'd just like to say, I can now see why they actually included Rico in and
Tom: But on to more important matters.
Tom: Now, the last couple of things I'm going to say about Killzone is that it does a couple of things much better than in
Tom: It has a lot more variety.
Tom: So you go through a range of different environments, and just when they start to become too samey, it moves you on to a new one.
Tom: And a really cool thing it does is it's got these four different playable characters, right?
Tom: And not only do they all have unique skills and weapons, they also have unique pathways through the levels to varying degrees.
Tom: So I thought that was a very interesting thing they did there, which made it, which helped us stand out from a lot of first person shooters.
Phil: Now, are you saying that there was difference in terms of the environments?
Phil: Did they have like a lava world, a jungle world, an ice world?
Phil: How were the levels different?
Tom: Well, it starts off in the urban factory environment, right?
Phil: Right, okay.
Tom: Then it moves in, you go from the urban factory environment into somewhat the countryside and beaches, and it's got some of the two, so there's a nice contrast.
Tom: Then from there you move into swamps, full on swamps, like you're going through water.
Tom: From the swamps you move into a jungle, moving through thick green plants and plant-like.
Tom: Then from there I think you get into ice areas, and then finally the climax is in a spaceship.
Phil: Oh, so no lava land.
Tom: No lava land, but it did have the ice world.
Phil: Well, Halo had most of those except for the jungle.
Phil: It had more of a Nordic forest, but it has all the rest of those.
Tom: Yeah.
Phil: Now, I've got to say, given the limitations of the PlayStation 's hardware, I mean retrospectively speaking, of course, I mean were those pretty linear, like down a tube kind of?
Tom: The whole thing is completely a corridor shooter.
Tom: Yeah.
Tom: Well, there are some open set pieces, but they generally, because of the regenerating health style of gameplay, basically consists of you hiding behind a rock or something and shooting people, then hiding behind a rock and shooting people.
Tom: So it still sort of feels like you're moving through a corridor where you're basically moving from rock to rock, right?
Tom: But I mean, that's the style of first person shooters, most first person shooters at the time.
Phil: It's not a particularly original one.
Tom: No, no, no, no.
Phil: No, no, I'm just saying, you know, for the time, if we were to go back to play it now, how would we find it kind of thing?
Phil: Yeah.
Phil: And of course, I had played and loved the second one.
Phil: But I forget, is there a canon explanation for the regenerating health?
Tom: No.
Tom: There's no explanation whatsoever.
Tom: And here's the thing, I think don't play this as your first Killzone.
Tom: I think it is an incredibly fascinating, if you find the whole production of the Killzone series and the world of Killzone interesting, which I do, and I'll go into that in a section as, which is the main focus of the feature, play this after you play Killzone and okay?
Tom: Because it's fascinating going back to it.
Tom: It's got a lot of motifs from both and like it's got weapons that you don't have in that you have in and vice versa.
Tom: It's got environments from both of them.
Tom: It's kind of like a mixture of Killzone and with both of them not done to the same degree of polish and intensity, right?
Tom: And it lays the groundwork for the setting and everything.
Tom: Not that well, but when you go back and play it, it's interesting.
Tom: And the most interesting thing is, you know, I'm sure you noticed in the press, there's a running joke that the HellGast are, sorry, the ISA are the actual antagonist and evil characters in the game, right?
Tom: Because they're the invading force, et cetera, et cetera.
Tom: But it's a running joke because everyone assumes this is completely accidental because it's basically on the surface a brain-dead shooter, right?
Phil: Right, the humor is embedded in the fact that those who are creating it are not doing this knowingly.
Tom: Yeah, but it's completely unintentional.
Phil: Which in itself is kind of racist, because they're basically assuming that Guerrilla Games are these dumb Eastern Europeans who don't know what they're doing, right?
Tom: They're Dutch, by the way, for anyone out there wondering.
Phil: I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Tom: Not quite Eastern Europe, not quite.
Tom: But yeah, but the thing is, okay, now so the whole time I've been thinking, okay, if this was an American game, that's going to be the case, because the only way that you're going to do that, because the ISA is America, and its allies, right?
Phil: Right, right, right.
Tom: So the only way you're going to get that is if it's some bizarre spec ops thing, right?
Tom: Where someone said, do whatever the fuck you want.
Tom: That's not what Killzone is.
Tom: Killzone is Sony's gone to them and said, make us a big budget first person shooter that is marketable and going to sell, okay?
Tom: But the Dutch love subversion, so they've taken this and said, okay, we're going to do this.
Tom: Well, at the same time, knowing full well that Americans are fucking idiots.
Tom: So if we...
Phil: Japanese man, I mean the Japanese are the ones paying them.
Phil: Yeah.
Tom: The Japanese people are paying us and Americans are fucking idiots.
Tom: So it's still going to be marketable in America because they're just going to assume that us saying America are these imperial dickheads is because we're ignorant retards, right?
Phil: Right.
Phil: Right.
Tom: And the best part is, the most hilarious thing is, they literally say it in the game.
Tom: You come up against General Adams, who is an ISA guy, but he's a traitor, so he's been helping the HellGuard because he says, he's aware that the ISA are imperialistic dickheads going in, fucking everything up for the HellGuard, and it was their fault that they even became the HellGuard in the first place, right?
Tom: So there's literally a monologue at the end where General Adams says this whole fucking thing that he threw out the whole Killzone series.
Tom: So it wouldn't have had anywhere near the same impact if you hadn't played and before this and thought, been wondering, you know, this is surely an intentional and awesome thing, right?
Tom: That makes this series much more interesting than it would be.
Tom: So that is just awesome when you kind of, vindication.
Phil: Okay, so for all you out there who aren't listening because this is about Killzone, let me break it down for you.
Phil: This developer in the Netherlands is taking money from Japan.
Phil: The Japanese don't care what they're doing.
Phil: And so the Japanese, the Netherlanders are basically saying, okay, fine, we're going to make this subversive game as commentary about the military industrial complex, right?
Phil: I think it's fitting.
Phil: I think it's right.
Phil: I mean, because like you said, the Dutch are so subversive.
Tom: Yeah.
Tom: And they do their subversion in such an over the top way.
Tom: So, for example, Robocop and Total Recall, right?
Tom: Even though they're American films, they're directed by Paul Verhoeven.
Tom: And they very much have got a huge Dutch influence in them.
Phil: It's a perfect match.
Phil: Paul Verhoeven in Robocop for example, is an absolute exact match for what you're saying.
Phil: Because he was a guy taking this Hollywood money and producing this, you know, really...
Phil: It's actually the same message when you think about it.
Phil: He was satirizing popular American culture, but he was also having a go at the industrial military complex, right?
Phil: Which is basically Boeing and McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed Martin and all these other companies, you know, making these military devices.
Phil: So, yeah, I think you're actually on to something there.
Tom: Yeah.
Tom: So this is basically Spec Ops Mkbut before there was Spec Ops.
Tom: And obviously not with the same degree of sassily and with different...
Tom: commenting on different things, but...
Phil: So does that fill out your kills one...
Tom: No, I'm not in fact...
Phil: Okay, well, let's...
Phil: I'm gonna lean back in my easy chair and let me know when you're done and I'll chime in with the Yakuza part of this one minute Yakuza Kills Line segment.
Tom: Well, this is basically one minute for us when we're talking about these two games.
Phil: It's true.
Tom: Okay, so basically the only other two things is, first of all, back to your point about it being a very beautiful game.
Tom: Now, one of the things that it was hugely praised for at the time was how far ahead of other games it was visually.
Tom: And in many areas it is, right?
Tom: So, for example, as I was saying in my initial impressions of it, that the character models are very much like first generation, very poor quality and PScharacter models, right?
Phil: They're very chunky.
Tom: Yeah, and so people blame the ambition of trying to do this on the unbelievable technical flaws in the game, the multitudes of glitches and the absolutely hideous draw distances and so many visual glitches and the terrible texture loading, right?
Tom: They blame that on the ambition, right?
Phil: Well, I got to call you on that.
Phil: I mean, that's what people say, but I don't remember it being particularly, I don't remember it being particularly glitchy at all.
Tom: It is, absolutely.
Tom: Not major things.
Tom: There's not major glitches.
Tom: There's minor things like, for example, the ladder glitch, there's grenade glitches, there's also clipping detection glitches.
Tom: The clipping detection things are minor, but there are an incredible amount of visual glitches.
Tom: There's so many texture loading problems, huge amounts of stuff like that.
Tom: It's not all the time, but you run into it very, very often.
Tom: And if you're just playing the beginning, and this is the other thing, okay, it is so much worse in certain areas.
Tom: Some areas look great, others look like utter crap.
Tom: They look like, they're absolutely terrible in every single way.
Tom: So if you didn't get too far, you may not have actually run in to too many of the visual problems because there are some areas that look absolutely worse than the others.
Tom: But where I was going with this was that rather than a lot of this being because of it being a problem with their ambition, right?
Tom: So they put all their effort into doing something that the PSwasn't capable of.
Tom: Okay, it's true, they do a couple of things that you don't see elsewhere much on the PSbut as a whole, I didn't think it was technically that far ahead of most PSgames.
Tom: And I think much more believable than that was the fact that this was, if you remember at the time, rushed out to beat Halo to release, right?
Phil: Right, idiotically.
Tom: Yeah, so to me, and it feels, because there's some areas that look great, and they're portioned out into small snippets of areas, even within the one level.
Tom: So you go through, say, to minutes, then you get a loading screen, okay?
Tom: So there's no reason they feasibly couldn't have the same level of quality through every single level, because you've got a loading screen between them.
Tom: You're not moving through absolutely humongous levels where this might have been a problem.
Tom: And often you go through minutes, and the whole thing looks good.
Tom: Then the next minutes snippet, you get the crappiest looking PSgame you've come across.
Tom: It looks like the best thing, given that it's a similar aesthetic, that Warhammer K PSgame, if you've ever played that.
Phil: No, I didn't.
Tom: Because some areas just look like utter crap, and some actually look polished.
Tom: So to me, the main factor for this is clearly the fact that they had to rush this out the door.
Tom: The one last thing I would say is there was clear ambition in what they were doing with this, and when they had the opportunity to, they actually achieved it.
Tom: Like the character models, yes, there's clear problems with texture loading % of the time, but when it actually loads, they achieved their ambition, and it actually looks really awesome.
Tom: So I think it is kind of sad playing it that you see Sony decided that we just want this out before Halo, and so kind of killed it off and destroyed their ambition.
Tom: And this is the other reason, this is the pattern subversion that I have to say, I think the Killzone series deserves a lot more credit than it gets, because it is basically fobbed off as being a generic first person shooter, wannabe, designed just to hopefully kill off Halo with none of the character, right?
Tom: And also none of the quality, because...
Phil: No, I'd say that's absolutely right.
Phil: It's completely unfair, but I think if you were to take the regular person's perspective of Killzone, they were tagged with that Halo killer tag fairly early on.
Phil: And obviously...
Phil: I mean, it's not a Halo killer, it's its own thing, but because it is a platform exclusive game, it's going to get all of the hate that...
Phil: Otherwise, we're not...
Phil: Had this game been released on PC as well, where the PC version would have been obviously noticeably better than the PlayStation version, it probably would be in that Crysis type of level of game.
Tom: Probably a bit below that.
Phil: Maybe Far Cry then?
Phil: In the Far Cry territory, right?
Tom: Yeah.
Tom: I'd say possibly below that, because here's the thing, okay?
Tom: Now, I'm probably a lot harsher on the gameplay than you are.
Tom: I think you actually probably enjoyed the gameplay of Killzone more than I did.
Tom: I thought it had really major pacing problems.
Tom: But here's the thing.
Tom: I think they've got huge ambition in what they attempt to do with the gameplay.
Tom: I think they receive absolutely no credit for it, okay?
Tom: So with the first one, yes, they were wanting to, as I said in my impression, somewhat copy-hazardly agree.
Tom: And while they also wanted to do their own thing, it went beyond being a simple corridor shooter at the time because of the way it used these multiple characters with branching pathways and it had the characters having their own unique things.
Tom: So they were trying to pull off something that was actually ambitious and were actually somewhat successful in it.
Tom: If you played as a different character, you had a completely different experience and you had to play the game very differently, right?
Tom: So if I was to play as Rico who has this ridiculously overpowered automatic machine gun, you plow through the level playing it as if you were Doom almost.
Tom: But if you play as Luger who has a really good semi-sword of sniper rifle which is, because the aiming is controlled just as a normal weapon, you basically play it as a sniper.
Tom: If you play through it as Hacker, you get often a large amount of access.
Tom: You've got, sorry, if you play through it as Hacker, his unique weapon to begin with is the Hoga assault rifle which is the intermediate sort of rifle which is good all around.
Tom: And if you play through it as Luger, you've got the powerful but terribly inaccurate ISA assault rifle.
Tom: So you've got to basically play it where you are concentrating on doing as much damage in a short period as possible, whereas in Luger, you can play it as a traditional corridor shooter where you just shoot people then hide, right?
Tom: So they've actually got a system where it takes a corridor shooter structure that makes it interesting by giving you four further options to play through, right?
Tom: In Killzone even in the single player campaign, they set out to make an experience that was aesthetically its own thing and different to any other first person shooter.
Tom: And while it did this through borrowing very heavily from a vast amount of source material, doing that, it came up with this really clever, subversive, unique thing, right?
Phil: Well, Killzone was such a short campaign mode that it really didn't matter in terms of pacing.
Tom: Yeah, well to me it did.
Tom: It really dragged the points to me.
Tom: Because I think the reason is it didn't reach high enough...
Phil: Crescendos, right.
Phil: Yeah, it was probably because you were so anxious to get into the multiplayer that you were like, come on, come on, finish this up, I want to move on.
Tom: Possibly, possibly.
Tom: Well, but all of those things could be forgiven for...
Tom: They literally did do...
Tom: They achieved Sony's ambition of making Halo killer.
Tom: That Killzone Online, I'm telling you, is every bit as good as Halo was online.
Tom: But then with Killzone and with the knowledge that all their subversive stuff was % deliberate, I'm going to give them a huge amount of leeway.
Tom: And also now that I've actually played more Call of Duty clones than I had at the time, when I played Killzone it pissed me off so much that they decided to forget their awesome, so unique weapon systems that had their own film and go into the copying Call of Duty path, right?
Tom: The thing is, they actually succeeded in being a Call of Duty clone so much better than so many other first-person shooters.
Tom: Now that I've actually played more of them that are copying mechanics from Call of Duty, even Speckoffs does it, and Call of Duty actually nailed it.
Tom: They did it so that it took Call of Duty's core focus on set pieces, extremely fast-pacing.
Phil: You mean Killzone nailed it?
Tom: Yeah, it nailed it.
Tom: Nailed copying, Call of Duty, fast-fire set pieces, constant crescendos in pacing of the campaign, and the ease with which you can kill people in the fast movement.
Tom: And I have to say, I actually enjoy it more than Call of Duty, because as I was saying in my Black Ops impressions a while ago, and the article I did for Laser Lemmy, it's completely deceptive on Call of Duty and is so crafted towards multiplayer.
Tom: So it makes it appear that you're running around quickly and killing enemies very quickly, which works much better for multiplayer than it does for the campaign.
Tom: So to me, I think Killzone took what Call of Duty was doing in its campaign and does it far better.
Tom: I'll let that sink in for a minute.
Tom: So once I've got over the massive disappointment that the multiplayer was, because no one is going to copy Call of Duty and do something as well of it because it is done to perfection.
Tom: No one should even consider doing that.
Tom: You cannot beat it.
Tom: Killzone is the last...
Phil: Let me just say this.
Tom: Yeah, sorry.
Tom: I've destroyed the whole structure.
Phil: Right now, if for you to say that Killzone is a better Call of Duty than Call of Duty, particularly on the multiplayer...
Phil: No, no, no.
Tom: I said on the single player.
Tom: Not in the multiplayer.
Tom: I've just been saying it was a terrible decision to copy Call of Duty on the multiplayer.
Tom: Killzone did its awesome equally good on my multiplayer to Halo by doing something different to Halo
Tom: Yeah.
Tom: So now that I've got this appointment over Killzone I actually have so much more respect for it because it basically did what Call of Duty has done better than it while parodying it at the same time.
Tom: I just cannot comprehend how there's so many reviews of Killzone that say, yeah, it's copying Call of Duty's campaign, but it's shit.
Tom: No, it does the set pieces better than Call of Duty.
Phil: As well you can imagine because they're a company that's focused particularly on one individual product that they can release every three to four years as opposed to Call of Duty, which has to come out every year or for the alternate studios every two years.
Phil: All right, I just want to give you an opportunity to defend yourself because you would sound like a total Sony fanboy.
Tom: Yeah.
Phil: Well, a Sony fanboy if you were to say that the campaign mode of Killzone is better than...
Phil: If the multiplayer mode of Killzone is better than Call of Duty, that would be out of hand...
Tom: .
Tom: on the PlayStation
Phil: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but, you know...
Tom: I don't see that associated with Microsoft, really.
Tom: And if you look on LaserLaming, by the way, we are clearly Sony fanboys because Chris released an article pointing out a few interesting things about the Microsoft console release, which preceded my Nintendo article, so it would appear that quite clearly we are Sony fanboys.
Tom: So, actually, you're right.
Phil: It would indeed, but it wouldn't...
Phil: But in terms of correction, I'm not actually correct because what you're saying is the single-player mode of Call of Duty I was correcting myself.
Phil: is better than Call of Duty, and it doesn't take much to be better than the single-player mode of Call of Duty these days.
Tom: No, I'm saying it's better than any Call of Duty.
Tom: This is better than the first Call of Duty and Call of Duty
Tom: Yeah, I'm going there.
Phil: I'd probably put Call of Duty above Killzone
Tom: Well, Call of Duty is incomparably superior to Killzone
Tom: I can say Call of Duty because Call of Duty is exactly the same as Call of Duty, by the way.
Tom: I'm sorry to know that.
Tom: Yeah, they're both incredibly above Killzone
Tom: This is what I'm saying.
Tom: I was shocked by the campaign of Killzone because I was not expecting them to do it so well.
Tom: Let's end just very quickly on Spec Ops, okay?
Tom: Because I want to end this on a positive note.
Tom: Wait!
Phil: We've got to finish the Yakuza Killzone Minute with the Yakuza News.
Tom: I thought you did.
Tom: It'd be going on for so long.
Tom: I'd forgotten.
Tom: No, we haven't...
Phil: We're in the Yakuza Killzone Minute, so there is some Yakuza News to answer.
Tom: See, just change...
Tom: This is just showing I'm an even bigger Killzone fanboy than a Yakuza one, that I just went on for like a second round of Killzone and then forgot that we were also meant to talk about Yakuza.
Phil: You're ignoring the most important part of the Yakuza Killzone Minute, and that's the Yakuza part.
Phil: Okay.
Phil: So Sega has been petitioned this week by change.org, and they've been asked to release Yakuza in the West.
Phil: There's been no evidence so far that Yakuza is going to be released in the West, and so far, there's been a petition that's been put out to ask Sega to release this game, and it's reached signatures.
Tom: Have you been part of this campaign?
Phil: Absolutely.
Phil: I mean, you know, I was a big proponent of the Yakuza letter writing component, where I convinced Sega single-handedly to release Yakuza in the West with subtitles.
Phil: Sega didn't have to dub it.
Phil: And right now, we've reached signatures.
Phil: And we just encourage people to go to change.org or just Google change.org Yakuza and sign the petition.
Phil: I mean, the old joke in gaming podcasts was, you know, online petitions, they can change the world.
Phil: Well, yeah, but actually, if you look at it, I mean, you look at old, what was the last story and Pandora's Tower and all the rest of it?
Phil: I mean, what basically these petitions can do is influence third party publishers like ArcSys to bring over games that perhaps Sega or Nintendo doesn't want to release themselves.
Phil: So basically, by signing these petitions, you're saying, I will buy this game if it's released.
Phil: Yeah.
Phil: If this doesn't work, I don't see, unless a third party company like ArcSys brings over Yakuza
Phil: I don't see Sega bringing it over, quite frankly, at this point.
Tom: I'm hopeful and it has worked for the Yakuza series before, as you know only too well.
Phil: Yeah.
Tom: There is talk, at least.
Phil: I know you've got some game impressions as well this week.
Tom: I did want to talk about Spec Ops last time, because you are still very disinhartened by my bashing of the game, right?
Tom: Although I did clear it up a little on the last podcast.
Tom: A little?
Phil: You can go back and download...
Phil: What was that?
Phil: Spec Ops ?
Phil: That was our first episode, actually.
Phil: Yep.
Phil: And about an hour and minutes into it, we do a Spec Ops spoiler cast, in which Tom spends minutes shooting on the PC port of the game.
Tom: Yeah.
Tom: You know what?
Tom: I'm just going to take this opportunity to say, I have to correct myself there, because I said there weren't any glitches that would affect my enjoyment of the story, right?
Tom: I've forgotten one of the most obnoxious glitches was that the cutscenes would start and there would be no sound.
Tom: So I would have to then, after the cutscene, go to YouTube to watch the fucking cutscene with sound.
Phil: Let me just remind you that we still don't have a donate button on our website.
Phil: So complaining about your lame computer, which apparently is the only one in the world that won't play in excellence, pickups the line port.
Tom: Lame port.
Tom: Steels is the only one that would play the port.
Tom: I know of another PC that had exactly the same problems, and might I add, had even more glitches than I did.
Phil: And their PC was more powerful.
Phil: Was it bought from the same op shop?
Phil: Alright.
Phil: So what did you find out about the multiplayer?
Tom: Yeah, okay.
Tom: So the multiplayer, now here's the thing.
Tom: This was, is not, you're not playing through the missions from the game in co-op, because obviously that wouldn't work due to the choices in the game play, right?
Phil: Right, right, of course.
Tom: So what they did was they made four short co-op levels.
Tom: Now, playing through these, I can't help but wonder why they didn't use set pieces like you can experience in these levels more often.
Tom: There's a lot of moments where at times they could have changed up the facing a little if they had just one of these levels.
Tom: They're basically the core game play of the original where you hide behind cover, shoot the people down and then move forward, strategically moving from cover to cover, right?
Phil: Right.
Tom: It's a game territory.
Tom: Now in the main story, they don't sort of direct you in any direction.
Tom: It's more sort of open, right?
Tom: So you can kind of choose how to go through the areas yourself, yeah?
Phil: Yeah.
Phil: That's how the game was basically structured.
Tom: Well, in these, it's much more funneling.
Tom: So the paths are narrower, so you can't move more laterally.
Tom: You're basically always forced to move directly forwards.
Tom: Now this very simple change makes the fire fights so much more intense.
Tom: And I'm not saying they should have done this the whole time, but I think it would have been very beneficial to the pacing and made it more interesting if they just had a couple of areas where you were kind of funneled through an area.
Tom: So just sort of switch things up, right?
Phil: Right, right.
Tom: Yeah, because even though it was a short game, there were times where I felt, okay, the fire fights are a little same.
Tom: And they did change things up with certain set pieces, like the one where I was complaining about the guy shooting the people flanking you, right?
Tom: But I think...
Phil: Most of the fire fights were in the medium range.
Tom: Yeah.
Phil: And then they would change it up with somewhere...
Tom: With the short ones.
Phil: You'd want to be using your short gun and, yeah, be in the middle...
Phil: Short and immediate range.
Tom: But I think the thing that makes this work so well, but would have made...
Tom: Given an excellent extra dimension to the skill play, is you're not forced to use either your close range, medium or long.
Tom: It depends on who you need to kill at the time.
Tom: So you've got to be constantly switching through them, right?
Tom: So there's freedom with what weapons you're using.
Tom: So it's kind of the design philosophy difference between Deus Ex and Bioshock, where in Bioshock, your choices are based entirely on what equipment you use, right, and what the enemies are doing, whereas in Deus Ex, it's decided basically entirely on your environment, right?
Tom: Albeit they achieve this effect by affecting the environment.
Tom: But I basically think that would have been well-utilized in the single player.
Tom: Now, in the co-op, it's a lot of fun.
Tom: The thing is, because you're playing with another person who is not brain dumb, unless you happen to choose to play with someone that is like that...
Phil: That happened to me this week.
Tom: You have to play on hard, or it is just a piss day.
Tom: You can just use your MPand just sprint through the level, shooting everything.
Tom: You can sprint through the level hitting people with melee, and just sprint to the end of the level, right?
Tom: It's just too fucking easy.
Tom: Now, the problem is hard is still quite a challenge.
Tom: Not being as incredibly hard, it's intense.
Tom: You've got to have what's about you, right?
Tom: The problem is the net code is really poor.
Tom: Now, I say this with the disclaimer that I'm in Australia, and the person I was playing is in New Zealand.
Tom: So, neither country is famous for their high speed internet, right?
Phil: No.
Phil: And again, we're talking about Spec Ops The Line here, which is you're playing on the PC, which is renowned for its story, but the gameplay is less than stellar, particularly if you're playing it in multiplayer online.
Tom: But the thing is, it's actually not.
Tom: If you were playing online with an excellent connection, with someone who is good at the game and is interested in an arcade experience where you basically just try to get from the beginning of the level to the end, it is actually excellent.
Tom: It's incredibly simple.
Tom: Yeah.
Tom: Well, as I was saying, if you had been paying attention, as I was saying, it is a very simple premise that is very enjoyable, but is let down by the netcode, because if you're playing on hard, because it is such a great balance between challenge and satisfaction, if you don't have your wits about you, you're screwed.
Tom: If you don't have your connection, almost perfect, you're screwed.
Phil: Yeah, but that's pretty common.
Phil: And then you also add the caveat that if you're not playing with someone who, you know, kind of knows what they're doing, you're kind of screwed.
Tom: Well, you need to find someone of a similar skill level.
Phil: Yeah.
Tom: But if you do, it's excellent.
Tom: Now, the problem with the online is it seems far worse than just what we would experience with normal Australian to New Zealand connections.
Tom: We've never played a game together.
Tom: We've played quite a few that has problems anywhere near this band.
Tom: So even if we've got a reasonable connection, we'll be sticking to cover and maybe we'll be jumping out of cover.
Tom: We'll be shooting people.
Tom: At least % of our bullets won't be registering, right?
Tom: And worst of all, though this is only present when we're playing on a much worse connection, we'll be teleporting around the fucking level.
Tom: So we'll be walking along, then suddenly appear paces behind us.
Tom: Then suddenly appear paces in front, right between different enemies who are then going to just kill us on the spot.
Tom: So if we get a bad connection, it is effectively unplayable.
Tom: And the problem is, because normally it's so easy with two people, if you get a good connection on it where you've got the minor problem, it's really boring.
Tom: But if you manage to play this in a...
Tom: in perfect conditions, I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised and impressed.
Tom: It was very good.
Tom: So all credit...
Tom: all credit to them on that.
Phil: I've got to ask, I mean, like, you did not have a very pleasant experience with this game on the PC, in terms of its PC port.
Phil: So why did you endeavor to explore the multiplayer?
Tom: Well, actually, we wanted something to play, and we've both been playing through the game at the same time, so we thought, why not?
Phil: Okay, well, that's what you've been playing.
Phil: This week, I finished up Bully, The Walking Dead and Serious Sam
Phil: Just some final thoughts on those.
Phil: Serious Sam the ending was ridiculous, and as I said in the last podcast, basically they introduced the jetpacks, which could have been used as a replacement for the tomb levels to spice things up a little bit.
Phil: So nothing much more to say there, other than I thought it was a great game.
Phil: I'd give it an out of
Phil: Bully, I finished up, and it's difficult to really judge the game.
Tom: Wait, hang on.
Tom: I've got a question for you, by the way.
Tom: Did you end up going to YouTube and watching the final cutscene of Serious Sam?
Phil: Of Serious Sam?
Phil: No, I did not.
Tom: Because I'm % sure there was one, but I'm still waiting for confirmation from you.
Phil: Right.
Phil: I know basically for our listeners, Tom helped me finish Serious Sam online because the last boss is so ridiculous.
Phil: And then during the final stages of the game, the cutscene was interrupted due to a technical glitch.
Phil: So I didn't get to see the final cutscene.
Phil: Bully, it's difficult to really judge it through the lenses of
Phil: Overall, I'd probably say it was lesser than The Warriors in terms of Rockstar's spin-off series from the Grand Theft Auto game.
Phil: And ultimately my memories of this game will be that it was one that was too simple and without challenge.
Phil: There was only about twice in the game where I had to do any challenge twice.
Phil: And also the character development of the game was fairly meek with the main character really only expressing himself at the end of each of the five chapters.
Phil: Which basically boiled down to the bully is bullying people because he wishes to win back the control that has been taken from him.
Phil: In essence that he is being put into a boarding school out of his control and therefore he is trying to win control over the elements in his life in which he can.
Phil: So pretty shallow.
Phil: I can see why people like it.
Phil: But again, I probably would have liked it a lot more had I played it when I bought it at launch as opposed to now in
Phil: And The Walking Dead is something...
Tom: Can I just ask, do you think you would have enjoyed it more if you had played the next-gen Inverted Commons version?
Phil: No.
Phil: If this was the same game with the same themes and the same level of challenge, I don't think I would have enjoyed it any more or less.
Phil: This game basically needed much more engagement, and the story and the characters were very two-dimensional.
Phil: So it wasn't engaging in forms of its gameplay nor its character development.
Phil: All the same, it was a very polished game, and I gave it extra points for the creative setting, that being set in a high school, and also for the provocative nature of the content within those constraints.
Phil: So I'd probably give this one an out of as well.
Phil: So that's pretty positive, then.
Phil: Overall, yes.
Phil: I mean, you take five games off the shelf, this game is going to probably beat all of them in terms of its quality of development.
Phil: And then I also played The Walking Dead, which we'll talk more about in the next episode.
Phil: Having said that, I have no idea where we're going next, except for perhaps the outro.
Phil: I'd really encourage people to go to gameunder.net.
Phil: We update it about three or four times or sometimes even five times a week in terms of stories that we're breaking or stuff that's happening on Twitter.
Phil: You can also listen to us on stitcherradio.com.
Phil: This is something that's happened just this week, which is a great free app and an easy way to listen to us on your iPad or any sort of tablet or iPhone or Android device, so that's Stitcher Radio.
Phil: Also, we're on iTunes now, which we went on in the last episode, believe it or not.
Phil: So if you can find us on iTunes, good luck to you.
Phil: Go ahead and give us a...
Phil: Yeah, if you go to iTunes, it's absolutely ridiculous.
Phil: If you put in the actual words Game Under Podcast, you will not find us, which is ludicrous.
Phil: So basically, just go to our site and click on the link that says Listen to iTunes, if that's how you download stuff.
Phil: Other than that...
Tom: I think they're pissed off about my Steve Jobs comments.
Tom: And the eulogy one isn't going to help either, because if they were doing eulogies, it would have been for Steve Jobs as well.
Phil: So I'm Phil Fogg.
Tom: You're Tom Towers.
Phil: And this has been another episode of Game under...
Phil: .net podcast..net podcast thing.
Phil: There you go.
Tom: Yeah, and once again, seriously, follow him on Twitter, as you can see.
Tom: He's getting the inside scoop that you can't find anywhere else.
Phil: Oh, yeah, I forgot to promote that too.
Phil: Game Under Phil. Follow me at Game Under Phil.
Tom: Well, you did say Twitter.
Phil: At Twitter. Twitter at Game Under Phil. This probably explains why I don't have any followers.