Bombin' the A.M. With Scoops and the Wolf: 09/15/2014

Murder City Devils

The golfcast...

Some harsh digs there, Alex, but Smokin' Jay ain't even mad.

DESERT GOLFING QUICK LOOK PLEASE. THANK YOU.

I can see both sides of the Destiny argument. These devs who expressed disappointment at all the mediocre reviews probably DO have cool stuff planned for later, but later is not RIGHT NOW, and the game that is being sold right now isn't very good. And even if @alex and @patrickklepek have well wishes regarding a game going from 3 stars to 5 stars, in this Metacritic-y bullshit world we live in, there are no mea culpas.

I like Polygon (and to a lesser extent, Kotaku and Joystiq's) approach to game reviewing, in that they tend to make note of large changes in a game (servers not working, big patches that fix problems, etc), but Metacritic (which we KNOW for a fact companies use to decide bonuses and whatnot) just takes the first review posted and does not change anything even if the review posted does.

Tl;dr A week is long enough to review a game that is out, especially since Bungie says Destiny is not an MMO. If it's not an MMO, then it doesn't get MMO exceptions to reviews.

Aww yiss. Ready for dem podcats.

Re: Alex's point about Destiny being repetitious - I'm not certain that's the problem per se. After all, every MMO is fundamentally based around repetition. However, the best MMOs are the ones that disguise the sense of repetition from the player most effectively, which Destiny definitely does not do.

Take WoW for example. In that game, there is always "something else" to do. If I get bored questing, I can go craft. If I get bored crafting, I can battle monsters. If I get bored doing that, there is almost always some daily/weekly/monthly festival going on. Individually, all of these systems are still repetitious; when I'm crafting, I'm still performing the same tasks over and over toward some incremental goal. However, they still feel fundamentally different or involve different types of gameplay.

Compare that to Destiny. There is no crafting. There are no festivals. There are no alternate activities like Sparrow racing. There are only four zones (vanilla WoW launched with 40+). There are daily/weekly events, but those are just harder versions of already available content. What's left is the shooting, which, although solid, is really not enough to carry the game long term. If I get bored with shooting, all I have to move onto is . . . more shooting.

Like the new format.

Good show guys.

Re: Alex's point about Destiny being repetitious - I'm not certain that's the problem per se. After all, every MMO (and Destiny is an MMO, regardless of what type of game Bungie set out to make) is fundamentally based around repetition. However, the best MMOs are the ones that disguise the sense of repetition from the player most effectively, which Destiny definitely does not do.

Take WoW for example. In that game, there is always "something else" to do. If I get bored questing, I can go craft. If I get bored crafting, I can battle monsters. If I get bored doing that, there is almost always some daily/weekly/monthly festival going on. Individually, all of these systems are still repetitious; when I'm crafting, I'm still performing the same tasks over and over toward some incremental goal. However, they still feel fundamentally different or involve different types of gameplay.

Compare that to Destiny. There is no crafting. There are no festivals. There are no alternate activities like Sparrow racing. There are only four zones (vanilla WoW launched with 40+). There are daily/weekly events, but those are just harder versions of already available content. What's left is the shooting, which, although solid, is really not enough to carry the game long term. If I get bored with shooting, all I have to move onto is . . . more shooting.

All this talk of Notch selling out made me fiddle around with Photoshop for much longer than I'd like to admit in order to make this.

God Bless you Alex, for laying down truths re: "doing it for the hits."

I for one have been super-interested in Destiny for example, and watched just about all the content I could for it (I didn't watch the whole four hour streams that Jeff and Brad did, but I watched a good chunk of 'em), even after buying the game. To some extent, hearing what Jeff and co. have thought about Destiny has helped me articulate my own feelings about Destiny (namely that it feels pretty awfully hollow).

@lawgamer: I think you nail it. Well, what concerns me about Destiny anyways.

I'm still planning to see for myself when it comes to PC or when I finally buy a new console. Very curious to see how different, better, worse, living or dead it is 12-18 months from now.

I also don't feel the public's response has been as harsh as the press. Which is often promising.

@lawgamer: and there are no monthly fees

On Notch, oh please, people who get all sanctimonious about other people doing x y or z, and then go on to do x y and z, and then everyone apologizes about them doing it because of the psychological costs. Please. PLEASE! All those people that Notch was criticizing, he cast aspersions on them without understanding their motives. Come on. Ridiculous.

More power to him for making 2.5 billion..BILLION dollars. Good for him. But don't make him sound like a sad hero. He just sold out like anyone else. He had his reasons. So does everyone else. Get over it. We should applaud success, not demean it. Demeaning success is for morons.

@patrickklepek: "I've reached out to some folks in the Smash Brothers community"

Ian Malcom: "You will remember to wash your hands before you eat anything?"

Preach it Alex. Coming over from Comic Vine the constant rage against ratings on reviews is almost a regular PSA reminder over there. Keep chill. It's just an opinion, and you are not obliged to agree with it. If you have your own thoughts, express them in a respectful and informative manner.

On the matter of removing the scores entirely, I like it when sites use a Good/Bad/Summary format because it allows the reviewer to convey what they did like, what they didn't like, and also give an objective description of the Game/Comic/Movie/Book because then they get to give their insights but also present the nature of the game in a way that readers can determine if they want to check it for themselves.

One of the only things I value at Kotaku is their review system, a "Should you play it: YES, NO or NOT YET."

@lawgamer: While for me I think there is just enough variety of things to do I totally see and agree with much of what you, and a large and vocal group of gamers are saying and do hope that Bungie does some work to keep the players satisfied because I really enjoy the core shooting of this game, more then I have in a shooter in a very ling time. I was always a fan of Bungies shooters but the Halo games, while great, started to feel fundamentally the same to me. I know there was the big CoD revolution that sort of changed shooters again (ie LS/RS shooters) and that did some cool things for the shooting mechanics, but I never enjoyed the pace and "squishiness" of that game, I like something a little bit more methodical, and the pop of a bullet-sponge shield is just the most satisfying thing to me. I feel like this is a really solid mix of both, with a good touch of verticality and space-wizardry which is wayyyy up my alley.

Anyway, yeah, I really like Destiny exactly as it is but totally get why people wanted/expected more, or at least different. I really hope Bungie takes all the criticism and does some work to iron out at least some of the issues people are talking about. Also sparrow races, ohhh man that sounds like so much fun. I kind of want to organize one regardless of what Bungie does.

folks

Alex taking it to the objectivists.

Thank you Alex.

im enjoying destiny it is very much like mmo but with good combat and matchmaking for dungeons so i plan on sticking with it. and bungie are already adding new raids and mission content coming in the next couple weeks so im happy.

I always enjoy the show, but something about this one was particularly engaging. Alex killing it with the real talk.

BEAR DOWN!

Thanks for answering my question about cutscenes vs in-game talking exposition! I went into it preferring cutscenes, but I'm not really sure anymore. I think the talky kind are way more annoying the second time around since you can't skip them. Long cutscenes can be unbearable, but I don't mind at all to have some here and there. I guess they both suck in the same way when it comes to powers. It's often frustrating to see a character mess up in a cutscene, but I remember very clearly being so angry that all the bees in the world couldn't kill the mad artist in Bioshock through his iron bars.

I once carried a turret with me throughout the entire prison mission of Half-Life 2. It helped out a lot, but when I placed it in the final room where we were trying to free a scientist, the turret would shoot him immediately upon release, stopping the game from progressing. I laughed, but there was a lot of unskippable talking to listen to again when I reloaded.

The talk about reviews made me pretty happy. I don't think you need to write off objectivity, though. I know some people mean "objectivity" in the sense of "the reviewer should be a robot", but I usually think of it as just backing up your opinions. It's interesting to just read what someone thinks of something once they've played it(and maybe, sometimes, in certain articles, how it relates to something they experienced in their childhood), but what's really interesting is reading what someone thinks of something when they back it up with several articles, talking about the plot, lots of examples from the game and comparisons to similar/previous games in the series. A review isn't ideal for that, mostly out of avoiding spoilers, but I love the long articles people like Shamus Young write about how pissed off they are at the new Thief for doing this and this.

Why does this podcast not have an email address?

Even Alt F1 has one and that's just for premium members. Do they need Brad as a technical adviser?

@steelknight2000: Because they tale their questions live. That's the whole point of a live show, interacting live with your audience.

Alex got pretty mad about that Destiny coverage question. Pretty funny.

I don't blame Notch one bit. In his shoes, I wouldn't even be planning to make any new games, I'd just be spending Microsoft's money on a beach somewhere living like a king. Time will tell if MS makes their money back in the timeframe they have in mind, but I have my doubts.

Destiny does get better after a while, but it does depend on having friends on PSN or Live who play it. It's a rental if you don't have people on your friends list who are playing it, and who are likely to keep playing it.

Bungie's marketing was awfully suspect, though. If they had made PT, the pre-release hype would've been, "The Survival Horror Epic from the Creators of Halo!"

I felt so bad. I really was being sarcastic. Some of my favourite coverage is when the guys talk about games they are underwhelmed by and explain why. It helps round out the personalities on GB. It would be boring if they only showed things they loved and praised everything.

Alex was cool about it though. He is a solid duder.

there was plenty of coverage done i felt with the quick looks unfinished from before and the servers are up yet...how much video do you need? its an FPS shooter basically

It's pronounced "dah-re", not "dare", Alex.

I wouldn't say Notch is selling Minecraft with humility and deep introspection on things he has said in the past. Apart from weariness, all I can see is mild indifference.

"I'm not used to feeling happy." -Alex Navarro

Goddamnit Alex you ruined Vinny's joke.

Holy Hell, that first three minutes was just gibberish to me. Is that how I sound when uncool people hear me talking about video games???

In regards to Notch, it seems that Ted Dibiase was right: everybody's got a price.

@cooljammer00 said:

All this talk of Notch selling out made me fiddle around with Photoshop for much longer than I'd like to admit in order to make this.

Thank you. It is a beautifully juvenile representation of exactly what happened between Notch and Microsoft.

@spraynardtatum: oh I don't actually believe that. I just wanted to make a goof. If I was serious, I wouldn't have dyed half of Notch's hat blonde

Lol It is still great.

Anyone bitching about content on GB should fuck off.

On the topic of reviews I trust the GB crew 100% with reviews. cause I know their tastes, so if one of them likes/dislikes a game I can translate their review to my taste. So I negative review by one of them might still tell me enough about the game to know that I want to buy it. If they disagree with me thats fine. If jeff gave an EDF game a 2 star review I would know that means I'll love it.

All about the hits, baby.

Minecraft in every Windows 9 copy.