The Game Seers return after a week off and dive into Resident Evil 5 ***BEWARE OF SPOILERS*** – they also talk about the latest patch for the Wii which enables file swapping with SD cards and wonder if it is too little too late, and what Nintendo’s true motives are. All around butterfly good feelings when it comes to the upcoming remake/release of Punch Out! for the Wii. Bioshock 2? Perhaps Biowaste? Time will tell. All this and more awaits in Episode 29!
Mar 11
This week Ryan, Aaron, Jeff and Joe run with the show. Ryan finally gets his hands on a game again (XBox 360/Wii), Jeff loves Madworld (Wii), Aaron is making a glock in Little Big Planet (PS3) and Joe is into Skate 2 (XBox 360). Ryan and Aaron were watching the Watchmen, neither was overly impressed with the flick though – some spoilers here so be careful! The guys also talk movies, skateboarding, fat girls, hacking and bailouts.
Nov 20
It’s a full house this week on Game Seers – Ryan Kenward, Jeff Derrickson, Aaron Thornton, Mike Frangione, Joe Wesoloski, Kyle Baron and SuperDefective’s Ramesh Martyn all weigh in on the new XBox experience. The Game Seers even manage to stay on task and actually talk about games! Games receiving head nods this week are, Animal Crossing: City Folk, Fallout 3, Call of Duty: World at War and several others that are mentioned in passing. We had a lot of fun this week and we hope you’ll have a lot of fun listening!
Oct 30
This week the Game Seers talk about World of Goo, Wario Land: Shake It and Fallout 3. Mike Frangione rejoins the Game Seers from the safety of a closet and Joe says 1 word. Join us once again for this week’s episode!
Oct 25
OK I’ll admit it; I don’t play my Wii very often. To be totally honest, it’s been months. Sad, isn’t it? That there has been so little to draw my attention to Nintendo’s console in the past few months. With the advancements we’ve seen in games recently, it’s been harder and harder to stay interested in Nintendo’s distinctively ”last generation” gaming machine. But recently something has caught my attention and pulled me back in. I’m sure you’ve heard it — the internet’s collective song of praise for a little WiiWare title called ‘World Of Goo‘. You’ve heard it, right? Well I’m adding my voice to the chorus. World of Goo is incredible. The simple game mechanics combined with incredibly creative puzzles and a uniquely beautiful art direction make for a game that’s impossible not to love.
The basic premise of World of Goo is simple; your goal is to get a certain number of goo balls to an exit pipe, while using those same goo balls to build the structure that delivers the balls to the pipe. When you begin a level there will be a base structure to build off of. The standard goo ball can be attached to two nearby points to form a triangle. With enough goo balls you can build almost anything. The game has a very advanced physics engine, so these structures will react realistically to the forces of gravity. The shapes are solid, but by no means rigid. Since they are made of goo, the forms will bend and sway as gravity takes hold. If a single joint in the structure is put under too much pressure, it will eventually crumble. It becomes a literal balancing act between the architectural integrity and weight of your goo structure. All the while you must keep in mind the number of goo balls you have to work with and how many have to be delivered safely to the exit pipe in order to complete the stage.
Throughout the game you’ll be introduced to many different “species” of goo, many of which have special attributes. Some can be taken apart and reassembled. Others can stick to walls or touch dangerous surfaces. Some burn, some explode, some hang limp, some float like balloons. You’ll have to use the specialty of each type of goo to get through the level and achieve your goal. Every type of goo is used in imaginative ways that only get more ingenious as the game progresses. As soon as you think you’ve got it all figured out, the game throws something at you that will force you to use a type of goo in a way you never thought of before. You’ll be using new techniques right up until the last stage.
The game has incredible style. The art direction is somewhere between Dr. Seuss and Tim Burton. Every chapter has an overarching visual theme, and every stage is unique enough that you will never feel like you’re in the same place twice. There are times where you will be amazed that you are playing a WiiWare game. It would be nice to see these graphics in HD, but in all honesty, you will not notice unless you make a point to. There are certain levels in the game that are stunningly beautiful, not just in a graphical sense, but as a genuine piece of art. The visuals are crisp, clean, and colorful, and it works perfectly with this type of game.
The music in World of Goo is just as impressive. There are a lot of different styles represented here. Some tracks remind me of epic movie scores, while others seem to take another page out of the Tim Burton library. The main theme is very reminiscent of Beatlejuice. Certain areas, the windmill stage for example, work incredibly well as a combination of music and visual art. It really is amazing. Sometimes you have to take a second to soak it all in. Like the levels themselves, there is so much variety in the music. You will never get sick of these themes.
Though this game is mostly about puzzle solving, there are bits and pieces of a story that ties the whole thing together. These little details are delivered through signs located around the stages. They consist mostly of the observations and insights of the unnamed sign painter, and they often add a touch of humor to the game. They’ve even snuck a few geeky jokes in there that are sure to get a chuckle for those in the know. They have no reservations about breaking the 4th wall either. On one occasion the sign painter even pokes fun at the fact that the game doesn’t run in HD. On another sign he mentions how life seems to be nothing more than a big physics demo. It all helps add to the charm of the world, making the game build up it’s own personality that sets it apart from the competition.
Worlf of Goo will take you between four to six hours to complete on your first attempt, but that’s not to say you couldn’t sink many more hours into the title. After you finish the main game, you can go back and try to finish the special “OCD” challenge in each level. These include collecting a certain number of goos in a given level or finishing in under a certain amount of time. These challenges will certainly have you scratching your head, and maybe even pulling out your hair on occasion. They’re extremely difficult, and will keep you busy for a very long time. At the end of the game there is also a special area unlocked where you can go and try to build the tallest possible tower of goo. You can see the top scores of other individuals around the world and try to beat their records. You use the extra goo you rescued from the entirety of the game here, which gives you more incentive to go back and try to finish every stage as efficiently as possible. It’s amazing what you can build when you have several hundred goo balls at your disposal. It is a shame though that there is almost no information given about the record holders around the world. The only thing you know about these individuals is their country of origin. This kind of takes some of the thrill out of going for the world record, knowing that no one will ever know it was you. This is most likely a result of Nintendo’s limited online functionality, so it‘s hard to hold this against the game. In the end it’s still a welcome addition.
All of this adds up to an amazing package that’s a steal at only $15. World Of Goo is not only the best WiiWare game to date, it’s one of the best Wii games period. Its simple, addictive gameplay design may be hard to describe, but by the time you finish the first stage, you‘ll realize what all the fuss was about. You owe it to yourself to play this game, even if it means hooking up your Wii for the first time in months. Just do it — you’ll be happy you did.
Oct 22
In this weeks episode of Game Seers – the guys all talk about Dead Space, a whole lot of dead space. As well as “the man” (Nintendo) – and their practices of late. Lots of other random things happen as well, see this page (http://www.thegamingseers.com/archives/170) to see a bunch of things we talked about.
Oct 15
This week in the Game Seers, Jeff and Ryan hate on De Blob. Aaron talks in depth about his experience playing Call of Duty: World at War. Lastly a teaser on Dead Space – more to come next week.
Oct 12
So first I’ll tell you how I got into the beta. For the last few months I have been playing a lot of Call of Duty 4 online with Mark Bozon. He knew me from the Wii message boards and one day I just joined his game. After a while I became part of the team. Now we play almost ever night, and I’ve joined his amazing clan. I think by now we consider each other mutual friends. I have to say, it’s been really amazing playing with him and his fellow industry insiders.
But anyway, Mark has been trying to get beta codes for his fellow clan members every time he met up with the guys from Treyarch. Me being the new guy, the low man on the list, I didn’t hold out much hope for getting one myself.
The night before last, I noticed Mark was on playing the beta, which was not yet open to the public. I sent him a message saying I was jealous, and bit later he replied, “working on more codes”. About an hour or so later, just as I was about to log-off, I got a message from a name I didn’t recognize, when I opened it up, there it was, a beta code to the (not yet public) Call of Duty: World at War multiplayer beta. Holy crap!
Apparently Mark was playing with some of the fellas from Treyarch and he mentioned that he wished he could get more of his boys in. To his surprise, the guy from Treyarch said something along the lines of, “You have a guy waiting? Here, I’ll send him a code.” Because I was the only other member of the CoD4 clan online at the time, he sent the code to me. Is that awesome or what! I later figured out that the fella that sent mr the code was Josh “JD” Olin, the Community Manager at Treyarch, who also puts up the posts on the CoD:WaW IGN blog. Very cool guy.
When I first got on, I think there were around 40 people online at the time. One of the guys I was talking to from Treyarch later said there were probably less than 100 in the beta total. Most of them either family or friends of the developers, or the developers themselves. When I finally logged of a few hours later, 11 people remained online, every person in the world that was playing the beta was in a single game of Free for All. 8 people. So yeah, I have to say I was very very lucky, and extremely grateful as well.
Now that that’s out of the way, lets get on to my thoughts on the actual game. I am going to break it down in to individual points to make it easier for us all. And just so you know, it’s not all pretty. Let’s start with…
Controls
The controls are identical to those in Call of Duty 4. I played CoD4 immediately before the beta, and I had absolutely no trouble transitioning. I just upped the sensitivity to ‘high’ and I felt completely at home.
Game Modes
The beta currently has 5 modes, Team Deathmatch, Pick Up Team Deathmatch(no teams), Free for All, Capture the Flag, and War. All the returning game modes work exactly like they did in CoD4. The two new modes, Capture the Flag and War are the most interesting.
War is similar to a linear version of Domination, mixed with a little bit of team Deathmatch. Each team tries to capture a section of the map, when a point is captured, you move onto the next, while preventing the other team from taking back the previous point. When all 5 points are captured, that team wins. But there is a twist, as your team gets kills, you pick up “momentum” indicated by (large) icons in the lower right. The more momentum you have, the faster you capture points. Also, unlike Headquarters in CoD4, the opposing team does not instantly take the meter down to zero when everyone is removed from the point, they actually have to ‘un-cap’ however much of the meter has been captured by the opposition before they can actually begin to capture the point themselves.
This mode is fun, but can be over surprisingly quickly. Grenade spam is still rampant. One thing that I dislike about this mode is that there is a TON of icons on screen, all very large. there are five icons along the top indicating who has control over each point, and another very large icon indicating your teams momentum in the bottom right corner. It’s a bit much. If you have an HDTV, better turn on the burn-in reduction.
Capture the Flag is the standard affair, with each team trying to grab the flag from the opposing camp, and return it to their own. If both your flag, and the enemies is returned to your base, you score. It is a welcome edition.
But there are some problems with this mode. It is often hard to tell what is going on. It’s difficult to tell when your flag is safe, or where it is even located. You get clear “defend” and “capture” icons, but nothing showing where your flag is located if an enemy has captured it. On top of this, there is little indication, and no voice over when your flag is captured or when it has been returned to your home base. Worst of all, there is absolutely no indication when the opposing team has scored. Sometimes you just look down and see the score has changed without knowing when or how. It’s very frustrating.
Maps
There are currently only 3 maps open in the beta. A small beach-side village, one that looks like some sort of Japanese style temple, and a war-torn train yard. For me, the maps are one of the biggest disappointments. They seem very typical WWII. And by that I mean BROWN. They are muddy, gritty, dark, and confusing. I am not exaggerating when I say that every single part of the train yard map is brown. The Japanese temple level does have some spurts of color; some green grass and pink cherry blossoms, but not enough to set it apart. This level also has a lot of statues and human sized pillars that you will constantly be seeing out or the corner of your eye as enemies, which can be very annoying. The beach side village map area is a night-time level, which makes it extremely hard to distinguish figures walking in the shadows. These maps don’t seem to be as well thought out as those in the previous game, which really shows when playing some of the team based game modes. In CoD4, there were always designated defensive, offensive, cover points, and areas that encouraged you to push forward during team games. That is not as well done here. At least, not in the three maps we have in the beta.
Think back to the variety of maps in CoD4, are there any that weren’t instantly recognizable and easily distinguished? Every one has it’s own feel and unique color pallet. Something WaW is strongly lacking. This becomes a bigger issue when you consider the…
Character Designs
The character designs are good, but not practically implemented in multiplyer. You just can’t see the muddy brown and green enemies in the muddy brown and green(and dark) environments. If an enemy is crouched down next to some debris or in a corner, he can be easily overlooked, even if you are looking right at him.
What do you do if you’re out of ammo and you see an enemy coming towards you? Ask Dr.Grant, he knows the trick.
One of the biggest problems I have found while playing team based games in WaW is that it is very hard to distinguish friend from foe. There are, I think, 4 different groups, American, Russian, Japanese, and German forces, and they all are wearing either muddy brown, or muddy green uniforms. In CoD4 the different groups were instantly recognizable. Not so here. A friend of mine has mentioned that he has a hard time telling characters apart in CoD4 playing on his SDTV. For him, playing WaW would be next to impossible.
Weaponry
The guns in CoD: WaW are surprisingly less archaic feeling than you might expect. There are a lot more single shot guns in this game, but that is to be expected, and I actually don’t mind it at all. That is, unless there is some idiot with a modded controller running around. One thing I do prefer over CoD4 is the new “aperture sight” which replaces the red dot. It gives a better field of view, very thin crosshairs, and a tiny black dot in the middle. I LOVE it. I don’t know if anything like this actually existed in the 1940s, but it is something that the game really needed.
Unlocking upgrades is now implemented slightly different. Every gun has it’s own set. If I remember correctly, some weapons unlock certain items in their first slot that others do in their second. Some have items unique to that particular gun. For example, the Thompson sub-machine gun has a barrel clip that gives you many times the amount of bullets in a single clip. Very useful if you don’t like to reload, or if you just want to run around gangster style with your Tommy gun. Some of the rifles have a bayonet attachment that greatly extends your melee attack, which can come in very handy in close quarters.
One thing that I am disappointed with is the pistols. They just don’t feel right. They shoot fine and all, but it doesn’t look right when you fire, like you’re holding it too close to your face, and there is almost no animation when you bring it up. You’re just instantly looking down the sights. The reload animations don’t seem on par with those from CoD4 either. The same can be said for all the weapons. Although it could just be the different style of weaponry. They’re good, better than most games, but in CoD4 is just felt so authentic. Sometimes that feeling is not present with the guns in WaW.
The weapons don’t seem to look as good as they did in 4 either. This might be because it is a different era of weaponry, but it just seems they are all a little too gritty. Doesn’t anyone know to keep their firearm clean? Along those same lines, the players hands don’t seem to be rendered quite as well either, they look a little artificial. And again, they could have turned the grit-o-meter down a few notches on that one. The guns don’t seem to move totally naturally when moving or reloading either.
All the weapons sound excellent, as do the sounds that come from their interaction with human bodies and with the environment. Unfortunately hey removed the super-satisfying ‘ping’ sound effect when you get a headshot. That will be greatly missed.
Grenades
There are now more grenade options as well. You can choose from either a frag grenade, an anti-tank grenade, or a Molotov cocktail as your primary grenade. The first 2 work as you’d expect them to. The frag having a little larger blast radius. The anti-tank doing more damage. Both blowing off arms and legs with extreme satisfaction. The Molotov cocktail on the other hand, is extremely weak. You will rarely get a kill with it, unless an enemy is already severely damaged, or you literally break the bottle on them. It is very frustrating when it goes off at their feet and barely hurts them. it causes no splash damage, and an enemy is only damaged from the explosion, not the flames. They could literally be laying in flames, without being hurt. It takes a couple seconds to actually pull it out and light it, you can then hold it as long as you want, which I do like, but it also takes longer to throw it that a normal grenade for some reason, making it even harder to hit a moving target, further reducing your chance at a kill. In my opinion, standard grenades should do a ton of damage at close range, while a Molotov cocktail should do less damage over a much wider radius. Instead they do less damage over less area, and are harder to manage, making them almost useless when compared to the other grenades. I have to admit though, when you do get that rare kill with a Molotov cocktail, it is pretty awesome.
In terms of sound, the grenades sound very muted for some reason. They sound like they are in the distance, even when they are close by. There is also no longer a distinct ‘grenade landing close by‘ sound. Without it I seem to overlook the grenade indicator much more often. This might be a problem for some players.
With your special grenade you can choose from either smoke, Tabun gas, or a signal flare. Smoke works just as it did in CoD4. Tabun gas replaces the stun grenade, but are actually more effective towards and enemy (or you). It gives off a small cloud of gas that completely disorients a player, warping their vision, hindering their movement, and making it almost impossible to do anything. It lasts a few seconds, so anyone that runs into it will feel the effect. The down side is that you can also feel those effects. You can no longer throw one through a doorway and run in after it. There was one occasion where I threw one into a 5×10 room where I knew an enemy was located, when I ran in it was so disorienting I literally could not find the enemy, I couldn’t even tell which way I was looking. I ended up getting shot from behind. These are used better at a distance, throwing them in a hallway or doorway to slow an enemy down, while you take up point at a safe distance.
The signal flare is meant to replace the flash grenade, but works somewhat differently. Instead of an effect on a players screen, it is done with real time lighting. So if you’re standing close and look right at it, the overwhelming bloom totally hinders your vision. Like the gas bomb, this effects anyone, enemies or friends. The only problem is, it is only effective if you are looking right at it, and very close. Take a few steps to the side, or run through it and you should still be able to see enough to take care of an enemy. More realistic, but I don’t see this being very useful in most situations. Still a cool idea though. If you want you can always use them as an actual signal as well, though that alone doesn’t make them more useful than other grenades.
Tanks
As some of you already know there are vehicles in this game. More specifically, there are tanks. The railroad level has 2. They are very fun to use, but can be annoying if your the one being shot at. They will get you easy kills, but not a lot of them. This makes it so they do not dominate the battle field, which is a good thing. Each time you fire the cannon, you have to wait several seconds for it to cool down, and you have to be relatively accurate with the gun to get a kill. Some also have a turret you can operate, but this fully exposes your character. Skilled players will be able to get more kills on foot, so they aren’t always the best option. Though most people will opt to get in one if the option is there. Blowing both an enemies legs off is to awesome to resist getting into one of these beasts. If you run an opponent over, there is a very satisfying crunch as well. Tanks take a lot of damage and can not be jacked. Bazookas work well for taking them out, but it takes several shots. You may not get a lot of kills in a tank, but they do make it easy to get several kills without dieing, a good thing if you’re trying to get…
Artillery Strikes/Attack Dogs
One of the coolest additions to this game. Instead of an air strike, you now gen an artillery strike. Essentially the same idea, but much more effective. Shells will rain death on your enemies. It last longer than an air strike, and will always hit it’s target if placed correctly, no more bouncing off buildings like the air strikes from CoD4. You can actually see the shells being fired from the distance and come lobbing over and exploding. It’s an amazing effect. You can’t help but look to the skies when it’s happening. Not always the safest thing to do in the middle of a war zone. The kill cams are even cooler, it looks like something out of Pearl Harbor(the movie). One small problem is that the icon for the strike only appears as the guns are firing, about 10 seconds or so before they actually hit. It’s easy to get confused; you may not know if a strike is friendly, and you may find yourself trying to run through an enemy strike thinking it’s one of your teammates, or waiting for a strike to subside, not knowing if it’s one of your own.
Attack Dogs are much more effective than the helicopters from CoD4. On average you get 6-8 kills, and they really make the game hell for your opponents. Two chomps from a dog will kill an enemy, and they are fast enough to make them difficult to kill. They’ll jump through windows, over fences, run up ramps to sniper’s nests, I’ve even had one jump from one platform to another in order to rip my face off. They will sometimes attack 2 or 3 at a time, in that case, you will be dead soon. Just having dogs on the field will have you constantly spinning around trying to make sure they don’t get the jump on you from behind, literally. The dogs will stay on the battle field until they are all killed (you get +2 points for killing a dog), which can be a long time. Like the artillery strikes, this can sometimes be a problem if you have dogs waiting, because you can’t call them in until all the others are gone. And same as the artillery strikes, sometimes it’s hard to tell whether or not a dog is friendly. Every army has a different breed of dog, but until you figure out what those are, you better not try to pat a dog on the head if you see him running around the battle field.
One issue that does arise here, is that these are now almost too efficient. If you get an artillery strike early in a match, and that turns into dogs, you will almost certainly get enough kills to get another artillery strike, leading to more dogs. It just keeps going. That means the first 5 kills in a match are of huge importance. This seems like a problem in Free for All in particular. There were times where I was losing by a substantial amount, only to have my attack dogs come and totally turn the tide and finish the match with me on top. Great for me, but very bad for the rest of the group, considering I did very little to get most of those kills. It is not unusual to have a pack of dogs waiting while there are still some of your dogs on the field from earlier, it happens that quickly.
Perks
All the old favorites return, but there are some welcome editions. Flak Jacket will reduce grenade damage. Gas mask, Shades, and Fireproof will shield you from the effects of gas, flares, and firebombs respectively. There is now a perk that causes the fuse to reset on a thrown back grenade called Toss Back. This one will help your arms stay attached much longer. one of the coolest new perks is called Second Chance, which lets you pick up allies that are dieing in Last Stand, and return them with full health. The last perk you unlock in the game is the Flamethrower. I haven’t been able to try this out yet obviously (the beta is capped at level 11 for now), but from what I’ve heard from those who have, it’s very deadly at close range, but you need to expose yourself pretty openly to use it effectively. So it’s not going to completely dominate the battle field. The x3 Frag has been changed to x2. This should help to keep down the grenade spamming, which was a major problem in CoD4, especially in modes like headquarters. There is also a perk called bouncing Betty x2 which I assume gives you 2 jumping mines. This one will certainly send those limbs flying. I’m excited to try these new perks out, but I’ll have to wait til they up the level cap, or until the game is released next month.
Well, I think that pretty much covers everything. Overall I think this game is better than expected, and better than most other online games of this sort, but it can’t touch what Infinity Ward has done with Call of Duty 4 in terms of overall quality and presentation. But I can tell from the multiplayer that the single player will certainly deliver. If anyone has any questions, post them in the comment section and I will try the best I can to answer them.
Oct 08
In lieu of no real releases this week the Game Seers resort to talking about Silent Hill, De Blob, Duke Nukem 3D, Little Big Planet, the new DS and most importantly their choice hot babes. A special video release of this episode will be featured on the website – thegameseers.com
Sep 03
After putting out the request looking for a new co-host we received replies from a few very qualified individuals. It was too difficult to pick just one so we decided to bring in 2 new hosts – without further delay I would like to announce our new hosts, Kyle Baron and Jeff Derrickson – who I am confident will be excellent additions! In the upcoming episodes our listeners can expect more in depth conversations about a wider range of games and a more diverse opinion pool. Additionally you can expect the occasional guest to drop in and share as well. We’re still committed first and foremost to your entertainment! Episode VIII will be released next week – please stay tuned. Also the forums are online so come join us!
Ryan
