Bombin' the A.M. With Scoops and the Wolf: 06/27/2014

I wanted Alex to start singing Radioactive at the beginning. That would have been so bad yet so good!!

Watching Patrick defend DW fills me with joy.

He's ours now. We've got him.

I played Valiant Hearts last night for about an hour.

Looks fantastic. And I'd think of it less as a game and more like an experience with small game-like elements sprinkled in.

You just have to take your time and read the diaries and the historical facts section.

The part that I find jarring I guess is that the game part looks and sounds fantastic and is very charming. But then you remember that this shit was real. You read the depressing historical facts. Its super sad.

And then you go back to the adorable game part. It's a weird feeling. You almost feel like.. "Should I be enjoying this?"

Awesome to see companies doing new things though.

Edit: Also, the PS Now pricing. $7.99 or whatever it was for a 7 Day rental seems appropriate for a $60 game. That's the Blockbuster model. $7.99 for a 7 Day rental for some old random game, or a cheaper indie game, is insane. Sony absolutely needs to find a way to scale this. New releases are X pricing tier (different models for $15 indie games vs $60 full retail games), 6 months after release it drops to Y pricing tier, and then 12 months after release it drops to Z pricing tier and remains there. Should also factor in that you're playing the game in a less-than-ideal manner (streaming lag) from the sounds of it.

Dynasty warriors is not as bad as people say...

Honestly, it's not great, but it also has some interesting ideas, there is SOME strategy in harder difficulties, and there is a pretty big upgrade / weapon / unlock aspect to it. I had never played it before DW6, and I didn't love it, but I found that there was a decent amount of Weapon Combo and Character customisation and such, which scratched a very grindey itch.

Also, it's true that MOST enemies in DW dont fight back, but the commanders do, and also in higher difficulty, you actually need to plan your attacks, for real.

I find that a lot of people just criticize the series from a very superficial viewpoint.

it's not great by any stretch, but it's more than most critics make it out to be.

I've had some fun with those games. Nothing I'd ever spend a lot of money on, but got the Vita game for free with PS+, and got one of the PS2 games really cheap a number of years ago.

Doesn't seem all that different from something like Crimsonland, which Jeff got really excited about. DW and Earth Defense Force feels like similar kinds of games to me, something you jump into to kill a whole bunch of stuff for a while, but aren't playing for any longer stretches of time in a session.

Patrick, as someone who is firmly in the "I don't think I ever want to ever play a fake 8 bit looking game again" camp, it seems completely insane to me that the creators of Shovel Knight would make their enemies (and who knows whatever else) look worse on purpose just because "that's not what the game could have looked like in the 8 bit era." We're in 2014 for crying out loud. Games look incredible. It's one thing if it's just a matter of manpower and budget forcing developers to use this particular art style, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. "What was possible with 8 bit technology" should not be on any developer's mind in the 21st century. It feels like they're actively holding back themselves creatively, and with it, the game. "Only an aesthetic thing" and "attention to detail" are small comfort when that "detail" actually means a lack of detail. Say what you will about their portrayal of women, at least a company like Vanillaware tries to make its games look the best they can instead of this backwards bull****. And sure, not every sidescroller can look like Rayman Legends or Dragon's Crown, but come on.

And then of course the entire thing is exacerbated by the fact that the fake 8-bit era has now officially lasted longer than the real 8-bit era. (if we say that the real one was 1983-1987. Mega Man 9, the first fake one that I could think of, came out in 2008). Going left, right and jumping being great doesn't change the fact that it just feels like a cop-out artistically.

This is why I love Patrick (among a ton of other reasons, mind you). He tries as many types of games as possible, especially ones he has a blind spot on.

Not one mention of the Alex no-beard from Patrick. Shocking.

Also, does it bug anyone else when @patrickklepek uses the phrase "this is too inside baseball" in order to cut a conversation short/not discuss something? He's doing a morning show on a video game enthusiast website about video games, and yet he decides the incredibly interesting topic of GameTrailers being gutted and the face of GTTV maybe staying on/moving on isn't one worth discussing. I don't know about you, but I'm damn interested in seeing what happens to Keighley. Does he stay on? Was he let go? If he stays, is there any resentment that he got to keep his job while lots of other people who perhaps do more work but get less credit got canned?

What I'm trying to say is that I wanted to hear their thoughts on the GT thing. Maybe it's something Patrick will expand on in Worth Reading this week, because we know how important the topic of "the state of games journalism" is to him and others who read this site.

PS now prices make sense if you think about how some people might have a PS4 but not a PS3. In that case it would cost more than 14.99 to play those games because they would also need to buy the console.

The French title of Valiant Hearts ("Unknown Soldiers", as in "here lies...") seems much darker.

I like what Playstation Now seems to be shaping up to be, even if the exact prices are a bit high at the moment. It seems like it's almost bringing back the rental model in a way, which is great considering how many people no longer have access to that in the physical space.

And it does those rentals in a way that the developers/publishers actually have a hand in, and make money from, unlike the physical/Gamefly model where they get jack shit!

Now, I don't imagine a lot of developers would be willing to make their story-driven games available for people to play and finish for only $8 as soon as they release, but after that first month or so, when most games fall off the charts completely, It might be a good idea. Particularly for longer games that most people with regular playing habits wouldn't finish in a week.

I am intruiged.

WHERE DID THE BOTTOM PART OF ALEX'S FACE GO?!?!?

WHAT IS THIS WHY DID HE SHAVE, HE LOOKS LIKE SNIDER NOW!

My understanding of PSNow is that the primary purpose is reverse compatability and that they're still troubleshooting and seeing what prices work? Thats why its still a Beta?

Interesting talk on PS Now. I don't think it will catch on until it reaches that perceived value in consumers minds. PS Plus has done that. The games they let you play for their yearly asking price remind me of going to an old video outlet and renting a random SNES cart for the weekend. That feeling plus the ability to play online games and get random discounts above the regular sale price makes me feel like I get something with PS Plus that totally supports the cost of admission.

I also find it odd that Bloodborne did not get paid more attention than it did. This developer has proved it's mastery of game design more than once. I think the focus on the multiplayer games where the game design lies more around having fun with your buddies than the actual experience that the single player game can provide. I do understand that this is just an evolution of the industry. Just because we're focused on Tyler Perry's "whatever" or the next Michael Bay film, does not mean I can not watch a Clock Work Orange or Schindler's List.

Lastly, I am very interested in the single player campaign in Hearthstone. Blizzard can make some good single player content. Having a story while you learn the intricacies of the game would keep me interested.

Just when I think I can have a bit more respect for @PatrickKlepek, he goes and buys a Dynasty Warriors game...

AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH ALEX SHAVED NOOOOOOOOO

I tried watching this live but the site just kept saying that it was live, but no actual button to click to go watch it.

My old prophecy came true. Great show fellas'

@patrickklepek you need to stop! Quit biting Dave's schtick of being, and I quote, "obsessed with people who are obsessed." I enjoyed the stuff about Eve and Monster Hunter that you did in the past but Dynasty Warriors really isn't worth a bunch of hands-on research. If you want to understand Dynasty Warriors fervor go back a couple of weeks on the Bombcast and listen to the email from the dude who made a valid argument for why people appreciate those games.

I don't even have any major problems against that series. Heck I've played DW 3-5 at some length, a Samurai Warriors game, the first Gundam edition, and both Pirate Warriors. I've played quite a bit of those games and even I can recognize that they're not for most people and they're hardly for me anymore. I just think there are better uses of your time than the forseeable tedium that you're almost guaranteed to experience. Come out to the coast, have a few laughs and forget this Musou business.

Is that really a schtick? Always thought he was actually interested in people with deep devotions in wildly different games.

@christoffer: I guess you're right. My phrasing could've been better. Basically Patrick Kills Me.

I'd like to thank Patrick for pointing out something that I noticed and want to expound upon: a lot of the people who delight in the Giant Bomb Sportsman Quick Looks are often the same ones decrying how shabbily they treat Dynasty Warriors AND vice-versa.

It's two riffs on the SAME THING: they don't know how to play the game and THAT'S what's funny. There's a certain segment of the audience that only gets mad when it's something THEY care about, and can't understand why others are mad when it's something they don't.

See also: endless iteration on Call of Duty being derided, but OH MY GOD THEY CHANGED THIS TINY THING ON A GAME I CARE ABOUT AND RUIIIIIIIIIIIIINED IT!!!

@mezmero: That's fine ;)

edit: well not btw

CREEPY DAVE-ALEX.

It literally always bothers me when the Bombcrew use that phrase for that purpose. Sadly, Jeff and Ryan had a weird stint of doing that for a while and it seemed to have rubbed off on Patrick.

I'm kind of sick of people talking about what the "purely digital world" is, and that it would be good, without it ever having existed. Sure, there's an ideal scenario (for publishers and creators) where retail is gone and digital stores can COMPLETELY make up what things cost digitally without the push and pull of retail stores dictating anything. I frankly think that would suck.

That will never happen and should never happen. I look at that "ideal" scenario and think about all the people that would be losing their jobs and then I look at how few employees work at a place like Facebook or Google and see a few people killing a lot of opportunity for a lot of regular people.

We need to better define what this digital future is going to be like and what people are actually going to be doing when it comes.

"Only an aesthetic thing", only in video games will you get "criticism" like that.