This week on Jumping the Shark the whole gang is back in action as we wax patriotic about American game design versus that of the rest of the world. In the what we’re playing part of the show Danielle talks Ocarina of Time 3DS and Trenched, Brandon picks over Hunted and talks about his experiences with the iPad version of the indy RPG Avadon: The Black Fortress, and I talk about Ticket to Ride for the iPad and a little more Dungeon Siege III. Enjoy and we hope you all had a wonderful 4th of July!
I missed this week’s Jumping the Shark in order to play a little Witcher 2 preview build (post coming soon), but somehow the gang manages to carry on without me. (Perish the thought.) This week, courtesy of some more legwork from Brandon (who also edited), brings you an interview with Mark Yetter from Timegate Studios, makers of Section 8: Prejudice. From there the gang goes on to chat about Mount & Blade: With Fire and Sword, Portal 2, Zelda, and Mario. Enjoy!
Most weeks everything on Jumping the Shark goes pretty much according to plan. Then there are weeks like this one where almost nothing goes to plan. This week we were supposed to have some of the folks behind Section 8 on the show and I was supposed to be taking a week off (it was my son’s birthday). Unfortunately, some last minute issues came up that prevented the interview from happening. Then Danielle couldn’t make it, nor could a couple of our usual reserves. So I suited up only to spend 20 minutes trying to figure out why I couldn’t hear Bill and Brandon on the Skype chat. (For some reason my Skype audio out was rerouted through my PlayOn server. Very odd.) It was awesome.
Fortunately, we got the audio issue taken care of and settled in for what became a nice little “riff” show in which we just talked about what we’ve been playing. The end result, a damn fun show to be a part of. To be honest, as much as I like talking to folks who make games, it’s hard to relax recording those episodes. Here we get to just sit back and do what we do, which includes digging further into Portal 2, Brandon’s disappointment with Conduit 2, a peek into Bill’s heroic exploits in Mount & Blade: With Fire and Sword, and we talk up the Playstation Network mess. Good times all around!
Last week we brought you a couple guests from High Voltage, this week we bring you PhantomEFX’s Nate Sherrets, one of the game designers on BattleSlots. This game is one to watch if you’re a fan of games like Puzzle Quest. It’s a surprisingly effective marriage of that game’s RPG tropes (story, character building, amassing of wealth and loot, etc.) with a casino-style slot machine mechanic. If you hate slots, well, that’s a tougher sell, but otherwise it’s well worth grabbing the demo. I just wish they had an iPad version. Someday. And if Battleslots doesn’t interest you? Well, you should tune in anyway because Nate’s a trip. Definitely someone we should bring back every so often just to talk games.
This week we also talk a bunch of Portal 2, Hunters: Episode One, more Call of Heroes (XBLA), and Danielle returns from vacation to confess her new addiction to playing Pro-guitar in Rock Band 3. (Note: Starting with this week, I’m putting the player embed after the break since it takes a couple of seconds to load.)
This week’s Jumping the Shark features the illustrious return of Tom Chick, who joins us to talk about team-building in games, with a particular emphasis on the Pokemon series. We also dig deep into Crysis 2 and Sims Medieval and talk up the 3DS, The Arrival (Mass Effect 2 DLC), and Dragon Age 2.
If you’ve listened to the show already you heard Tom tee off quite a bit on the show’s theme music this week. Generally I don’t listen to Tom about anything because the man is crazy. Literally. He hears voices and does impressionist painting using the sauce found in cans of Spaghettios. (Kidding, of course. Who doesn’t love Tom?) But it got me curious all the same, so I’d like to get your thoughts on the music we use for the show.
Our current theme music, which we paid for the right to use from the royalty-free music site Neosounds.com, has been with us since the beginning and while we like it (as do several listeners we’ve heard from), we have heard from a couple folks who don’t. Of course, that may just be Tom spoofing fake email addresses. He’d do it. I know he would. Nonetheless, if you’ve got thoughts to share leave a comment. If there’s a lot of hate that doesn’t mean we’re going to change -you can’t please everybody and changing would cost somebody some dough- but certainly we’d think about it. Personally, I think the music fits our show; it’s a little rough around the edges, but catchy, and it’s got whimsy.
Just like us, amiright?
Still, it’s not my dream music for JtS, which I envision as cross between the famous Jaws orchestration, only with the mood and silliness of a whacky sitcom. If you’re home composer and can come up with something in that vain, let’s talk. I can pay you the same way Bill pays us: With snark and peanuts.
Oh, and for the curious, here’s the baseline info on the track we currently use:
Title: Excited Dogs
Composer: Ilya Kaplan and Stan Fomin
