Do you think games are too expensive? Are they priced too low? Should reviewers factor a game’s cost into their evaluation of the game? These are the questions that drove this week’s Jumping the Shark to the brink of civil war with Brandon and Danielle arguing that determining overall value is a fair factor in evaluating a game, while Bill and I contend that the reviewer should stick to evaluating the game itself, regardless of its price. Along the way we also talked about Avadon, inFAMOUS 2, HTML 5 gaming and the fact that Disney’s Animal Kingdom is measurably hotter than any of their other parks. It’s a fun week for JtS. Be sure to step into the comment thread and weigh in!
This week Jumping the Shark is short one Brandon (who’s off searching for the Lost Ark of the Covenant), but we pick up a Tom Chick, who braves the heat to chat with us about game remakes: When are they a good thing? When do they waste of everyone’s time? What would we like to see remade in the future? First, however, we talk up the cavalcade of games we’ve been playing over the past week. First up, a good long bit on Bastion, which all of us (sans Bill) have made a point to check out. Tom marvels at just how bad Call of Juarez: The Cartel and Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3 are, Danielle goes rogue(like) talking about Dungeons of Dredmor, and Bill talks a smattering of NCAA ’12, Panzer Corps, and just a little bit of his Sengoku preview build. Oh yeah, and I give Mass Effect 2 some props for the one part of the game they absolutely nailed. Tom doesn’t buy it, but then, what does he know? Join us for another week of laughter, tears, and just a hint of brash exuberance.
I returned to the editing chair this week and made the time to do a legit multi-track edit, so you should hear a cleaner, clearer show than last week when we had some audio foibles. That said, if you hear what sounds like some crunching bags of ice in the background… well, one of us lacks air conditioning and you gotta do what you gotta do in this heat. I did my best to clean it out, but you’ll hear it from time to time. Speaking of returning to the editing chair, this will be my last edit for a couple of weeks as I’m heading out on vacation as of Friday (I’ll still be on next week’s show). Not sure if Brandon’s covering the next two weeks or if Dani’s pitching in, but I leave you in their capable hands. Just remember they work from the Skype conference feed, so the audio may be a bit rougher for a couple weeks. Hopefully Skype cooperates and there’s none of last week’s troubles.
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!
