Age of Booty

This week's show sees the return of a full cast, leaving us with a crew that's not quite sure what to do (I'm apparently on a rhyming fixation right now). We have a "biggum" for you this week as we managed to fail for just over an hour and a half and we don't even remember recording half of it! All you need to know is this: Those of you who fight through until the end will get quite the reward!

In this week's "What You've Been Playing", we discuss games such as Valkyria Chronicles, FLOCK!, Puzzle Quest: Galactrix, Star Ocean 4, Age of Booty, Silent Hill: Origins, Rune Factory, and much more! We follow that up with a little gaming news, focusing on Will Wright's departure from EA and Amazon's new venture into the business of selling XBLA game codes...for the exact ammount (OMG)! We then answer our "Question of the Week" and discuss our thoughts on video game marketing and some of our favorite video game commercials. We end on quite the tangent about movies and probably could have kept talking for even longer, but Rob was not about to miss Lost just to bullshit for another 30 minutes.

• Podcast: DF #52: Go Buy Valkyria Chronicles
  

Hopefully you guys enjoy the show and don't forget to come back next week for even more failure from the guys who fail better than anyone else. Sausage, out!

I waited to get this one, mainly because it seemed too expensive. But I thought why not skip the Whopper(S) and just get it.

• No trophies, I thought I would care, but eh... I don't mind it. A lot of other games have them.
• Simple gameplay, you have a big pointer and you move it with the left stick and order your ship to move with X (PS3) or A (XBOX360)
• I just bought it a couple of days ago, but it seems you only control one ship.
• You capture towns by destroying them, if there's an enemy ship close by you must destroy it first or that team gets the town.
• Towns give you resources, resources are used to upgrade your ship and towns.
•  "Merchant" ships, if destroyed, give you power ups.
• There's online multiplayer, a party system. If you wait a couple of minutes you'll find a game.

 
And that's the gist of the game, I think it is fun, specially when you're looking for a game to play while you are listening to podcasts, or just want to play a game that requires little effort, though a little strategy doesn't hurt. It looks pretty (it displays in 1080p), pirate vibe is well executed. I'd say it's worth the 10 bucks.

So Christmas has come and gone as have yet another year.  This year for me I really didn't care too much about getting things and all that good stuff.  I was much more focused on remembering the reason my family celebrates Christmas....but that is a WHOLE other conversation.  I have what I want in life so I just told my parents to be creative...seeing as now that I'm 18 this is the last year they'll actually get me a lot of stuff anyways.

SO I could tell you what I got.  But why do that when I can show you in the usual Nerdboy fashion :D

PENGUIN!

Pretty big and REALLY soft.  I'm crazy about Penguins so this is a huge win in the gifts category. :D

10/10

Chocolate Penguin

It was really hard to bite into but tasted REALLY good.  Very good chocolate, it's a penguin but was a little TOO hard for my teethes liking.

                                                          6/10

Penguin Flash Drive 4GB

Yeah it's the one from my past blog.  Parents made me wait until Christmas for it.  4GB of storage is a major plus and it works like a charm.  Plus it's a penguin.

10/10

Penguin Tissues

O.o

1/10 (only because there's a penguin on it)

Penguin Mug

Pretty heavy, has a Penguin on one side with snow flakes around it.  Will be good for use with Hot Chocolate :)

8/10

Chuck: Season One Blu-Ray

Chuck is a very amazing show.  One of the few I actually watch these days.  Looks great on Blu-Ray though I've only yet watched the first episode.  Will also be good for watching Chuck while I wait for Season 2 to resume :D

9/10

Hancock Blu-Ray

Loved the movie.  Will Smith.  Looks great on Blu-Ray.  Will Smith. 

9/10

Pursuit of Happyness Blu-Ray

Will Smith.  Amazing Movie.  Looks amazing on Blu-Ray. 

10/10

Dualshock 3 Controller

Second Dualshock 3 which brings me to 3 total controllers.  Win for my friends here.

8/10

Nerds Candy

Love nerds candy.  But it didn't last very long. (About 2 seconds)

8/10

3 Ornament Shaped Coca-Cola's

Taste like Coke, looks like Coke, amazing just like Coke.

9/10

Marshmellow Christmas Candy

Wasn't very good.....

4/10

Laffy-Taffy

I LOVE ME SOME LAFFY-TAFFY!!!!!!!!!

10/10

3 Mechanical Pencils

I needed them for school......plus I got to use one to draw a little when we lost power a few hours ago :D

7/10

Runts Candy Cane

Not a huge Runts fan.  Let my friend have it.

5/10

$50

Needed to get me some more minutes for my phone so that helped out a good bit.

10/10

I also got me a $50 PSN card in which I picked up these games/add ons :D............

Crash Commando:

When this and Fat Princess first debued I was, to say the least, PUMPED.  I mean these two games looked AWESOME!  Crash Commando does not dissapoint.  So far I've gotten a Commando level on all the single player missions and played a couple Online Matches.  I'm absolutely loving this game and can see me playing it for quite some time to come :D

9/10

MGS/LBP Level Pack:

ZOMG the Paintanator is freaking amazing!  Also the levels are pretty sweet too!  This level pack is well worth it and makes me super excited for future level packs :D

10/10

LBP Animals Costume Pack:

One of the reasons I didn't get the MGS Costume pack was because, even though I absolutely LOVE MGS, I am pretty against paying money for costumes.  But there's a PENGUIN in this pack :D and it was also pretty cheap so I had too :P

8/10 (only because the penguin costume is epic)

Penny Arcade: On the Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness Ep. 1:

I've played about an hour or so of this.  Loving it so far.  Though there is something about it, not quite sure what, that keeps me from being able to say that the game is absolutely amazing.  So for now, until I reach a point in the game where it gets better, it's only just pretty sweet.

7.5/10

Age of Booty (w/ 5 Free Map Packs)

When I first saw this game I was like meh.  When it came out I was like meh.  When I played the demo I was like ZOMG I NEED MORE!  SO I bought it and love it.  Haven't played too much of it but I'm really excited to get into the Map Creator :D

8.5/10

Linger In Shadows:

Ummmmm I'm still really confused as to what the heck was going on......

?/10

Well okay there you have it.  That's what I got for Christmas and how each gift ranks in my book.  How did your Christmas go???  And just a little heads up, incase you didn't catch on, I'm pretty freaking crazy about Penguins :P

You people are all members of Giantbomb. That means you ALREADY KNOW what the good games are, and which gaming aesthetics are going to itch your trigger fingers.

So, here's a completely different list of things you should go and check out, but that probably wont feature prominently on anyone's top ten of 2008 list.

 

AGE OF BOOTY

There have been a lot of awesome XBLA games released this year, but Age Of Booty was particularly enjoyable. The simple emphasis of co-operation and communication really does add a lot of depth and tactical awareness to what would otherwise be considered a simplistic experience. I liked it enough to write my first (and only) review, so you should go chCHCHhcheck that out. Age Of Booty is, I feel, massively under-rated. It looks great, its fun to play, and you get to shout as much Pirate nonsense as you can shake a cutlass at. Buy it or WALK THE PLANK!!

 

 TOM CLANCY'S: ENDWAR

I don’t usually go for RTS games because I find I simply cannot react fast enough to multiple events taking place on the virtual battlefield. This isn’t helped by my inability to play PC games, and the selection of RTS games on 360 are somewhat lacking. Yes, I can beat you at Battle For Middle Earth 2 - but I won't enjoy it, which sort of defies the point. Endwar was a breath of fresh air - the voice controls work stunningly well, and it makes zipping around the battlefield fast and effective. Instead of having that gloomy "fog of war" you are limited to a more personal 3rd-person-esque perspective of your troops. The game empathises with your limited squads particularly well, and you may find yourself risking the lives of dozens just to protect a single unit of Gunships that worked so hard to defend Bravo point. Franticly yammering commands into the mouthpiece adds a wonderful sense of involvement, tension and, aside from everything else, makes you feel like a total badass. This game is a lot of fun, and while I would only really suggest the online is used - I still think its a shame that Endwar got smothered by the wealth of other titles released over the last month. It deserves a lot of praise.

 

BURNOUT PARADISE

I don’t own a copy of Burnout Paradise. Like an idiot I decided that I should walk for half an hour to play it at my mates house every day. For a month. Like everyone else out there - I freakin’ loved it. Its easy to forget Burnout what with it being released so early in the year (January 22nd?!) but it really is a great game - and the continued high quality of the Dev Support is stunning and makes me wish I had bought the game myself to take full advantage of it. (Just so you know, I'm totally cool with being a hypocrite). Burnout gets all the basic racing elements right - the cars all feel individual without making the game unbalanced, there is a great sense of speed, and the city is lush and full of life. The multiplayer is particularly robust, with a flawless transition from off to online. The gorgeous crash sequences are, in the words of Ryan Davis - "Pornographic". How can you NOT go for that?!


Those three games are all awesome. They all deserve some of your time. If you are scanning the completely predictable GOTY awards and find yourself stuck for good titles to play, maybe you should experiment with one of these.

If I had to pick a “game of the year” it would be GTA4 by the way...

 If you have spoken to me on the IRC or have been keeping track of my blogs then you will know why. If you haven’t then you probably have no idea who I am and you shouldn’t care about my opinion anyway.























Thanks For Reading
Love Sweep

"We talk about the awesomeness of Dead Space. How cool would a Persona game be on PSP. Saints Row 2 shenanigans with Hendersonman and Kush. And Hendersonman bitches about Fable 2 and its lack of DLC that he paid for, and how the game was overhyped by reviews. And Kush talks about Far Cry 2. And then we hit up some news before Nintendo makes Gus go bye bye."
...I really didn't talk much this week, but you should still check it out.

Download Podcast below...

• DF #32: Surprise Vagina

Here it is leave comments. Any ideas for a top 10? P.S. it is long....

Here it is....leave comments and questions...