Boss Talk Podcast: Episode One

The first episode of our Boss Talk Podcast is now up on Podbean! Click the link below to listen, or use the nifty embedded player in the sidebar.

http://bossvg.podbean.com/

Thanks for your interest. If you like what you hear, tell us. We'll be doing our best to provide an entertaining podcast every Thursday from now on.

Boss Talk: The Podcast

If you saw our last episode of Boss Talk, you would know that it was the last episode of Boss Talk. I'm so funny.

Seriously though, we talked it over and decided to turn Boss Talk into a podcast. There are multiple reasons for this. For one, people have always told us we were much more entertaining when we weren't scripted, which lends our brand of humor well to a podcast format. Also, putting together a podcast is a lot easier than putting together a video-based show. (At least, it seems that way. Come see me again after the first couple of podcasts.) Really, it just made a lot more sense from an organizational standpoint, too.

We realized that we should focus more on our opinions than bringing people news. Where did we get our news? Most of the time Kotaku and Destructoid. Where do most people get their gaming news? Kotaku and Destructoid. It just makes more sense for us to focus on opinions and entertainment. You can't get our opinions on Kotaku, after all.

We're still going to be putting things on YouTube. Foe has some things cooked up that I'm sure will be very liked, but I'll wait for him to announce them when the time is right. As far as I know, we still want to do skits and random things, but if you want Boss Talk, its time to listen to the podcast.

The first episode will be up soon, and I'll announce a schedule whenever we decide upon one. Thanks for all of the support, tell your friends about us!

Jervan

Bioshock Infinite: The First 10

So we've been a little doubtful of the new Bioshock game. I've remained hopeful, and from of the looks of that trailer, my hopes have been rewarded.

I think there were several moments in which my jaw dropped. Some of the level of detail, as well as the action of this game makes me feel like this is going to be one of the strong candidates for a GOTY nomination whenever it comes out. It reminds me of the wonder of the first Bioshock game, just wandering into Rapture, and encountering the insane inmates that litter the halls, only the people in this don't seem to be mutants. They seem to be more normal people.


I think my favorite part is when the guy gets smashed by the wrench. If you watch the trailer, you know which one I mean.

Move Review in > 140 Characters

For the uninitiated, the title is a reference to twitter's 140 character limit. I've been posting tweets (for those paying attention) about my Move Experience. Sadly, the night has drawn to a close, so I'll impart my experience over the last 2 hours.

If you've played a Wii, you've felt the unresponsiveness and laggy cursor problems that plague the system. You've also no doubt experienced the 480p, lo-rez, polygonal graphics of the Wii.

Were you perhaps one of the early adopters of the Wii (like I was?) did you happen to buy Red Steel? Yeah, that game was terrible. The Move, however, has nothing like that, at least right now.

First up is the equipment itself. How easy it to set up? Extremely so. You don't even need to really read the manual. If you've ever set a PS3 controller up, it's the same song and dance. You connect the camera to the PS3 first, then you connect the Move Controller to the USB port as if you were going to charge it. After that you press the PS button that's been standard ever since the console came out.

And you're done. Well, not quite, but I'll delve into that in a minute.

The XMB is extremely easy to navigate. You hold the T button down (the trigger on the underside of the Move controller), then you simply move the wand in the direction you want to navigate. The Move button (in the center of the X O Square, and Triangle) also functions like an X button.

But you don't really care about the menu navigation, do you?

The games all seem to function pretty well. Sports bundle works well, the small details are very accurate, such as the position of your sword.

My only gripe so far is the software available. It's all a lot of tech-demo stuff, and we won't see the real games until Resident Evil 5 and Heavy Rain get patched to utilize the Move controller.

Also filed under that gripe, none of the games I've played so far utilize the $30 navigation controller. It would be great to have used it during Sports Champion, but sadly the feature isn't available. Instead, you have the ability to run with two PSMove controllers, one for the shield and the other for your sword. In other words, this is the tech demo they showed at E3 2009, just gussied up as a sports title. The Archery title works exactly like that as well, it can function well with one Move controller, but I get the feeling the experience would be better with two.

I also picked up Kung-Foo Rider. The game looked outrageously hilarious, so I had to check it out. It definitely lives up to the reputation as you skate around town on a computer chair or other similarly shaped objects. Sadly, as wacky as it is, the game is kind of cut and paste. There is no story other than the basic "You have to run away from the Mafia and navigate the streets of Hong Kong to the van at the end of the level. " Even the dialogue the character says at the beginning of the level is exactly the same across all of the levels.

While Kung Fu rider gets a bit hard, at the same time I don't see that as a negative in the game by any means. The only thing that players might encounter a difficulty with is the command to speed up, which is executed by waggling the controller up and down repeatedly. The command for jump is to swipe the controller upward. Frequently, the jump overrides the speed up, unless you make very small motions to accelerate your chariot.


Verdict? For now, I'd say wait it out, or at least get the Sports Champion Bundle. I'll be posting a full video review sometime next week, perhaps after I get some real games to toy around with the Move with.

(But the Move does feel much better than the Wii, so if you have a Wii and a PS3 you owe it to yourself to upgrade to an HD console.)

The Death of APB

At the behest of Xenodyne, I come bearing opinions.

I'm a little disappointed about APB closing down shop, but it seemed inevitable. The last hope of the game hinged upon getting another developer to buy it, and who wants to buy a game that sold less than 100,000 copies on release day? Maybe if the game was balanced and didn't need a lot of work on top of normal maintenance, RTW could have found a buyer.

There were so many things wrong with the game when I played it. I decided to ignore the issues and focus on the positives. Playing APB with Joe, Foe, and Krinkor was some of the most fun I have ever had in an online game. However, it was at the same time one of the most frustrating online experiences I have ever had. Some of the pluses can still be seen in our APB review, which is still our most viewed video on YouTube. I think we were one of the only reviews that gave the game positive marks and didn't just nitpick every little thing. That doesn't count all of the legitimate problems people had with the game, it just seemed like once people saw the main flaws, they decided to bitch as hard as possible about little things. I'm fairly sure I remember reading a review that complained about the game having too much customization.

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make here is that the fundamental concept of the game was awesome, and it had a ton of potential. Unfortunately, the execution of the idea was terrible. There weren't enough unlockable items, in my opinion. I'd have loved to see more variation in guns, especially. Also, upgrades were basically the same for everyone. Why take 30% less fall damage when you could take 5% less damage from players? It was like some of the items and upgrades were added without playtesting. One good example of this is the grenade launcher. I remember Joe being super excited to get one, but when he finally did, it was a piece of garbage with a long reload time, barely any ammunition, and took 3 shots to kill someone. Not like you ever saw one, since people who wanted to win would just pick the Sub-machine gun or the AK-47. These unbalanced guns were ridiculous. I distinctly remember sniping someone at max distance with my sniper rifle when he pulled out his AK and killed me. From max sniper range. I understand that RTW increased bullet spread and fixed a lot of things wrong with the guns, but it was too little, too late.

That doesn't even begin to cover things that the game completely failed at. The requirements were one of the main issues that hindered sales, I think. My computer is decent, and I still froze or crashed every day or so. Joe could barely run the game. I they had some sort of graphics optimization, they probably would have sold a few more copies. Lag on the servers was terrible as well. There were also glitches like crazy.

I distinctly remember one time where three of us were matched against six guys, a couple of them had better guns than us. We held out until the last part of the mission where we needed to deliver suitcases to a point on the other side of the bay. Joe and I loaded a car up with the loot and drove off. We were pursued, but only on foot. It seemed like we had gotten away when all of a sudden, the car we were in decided to flip over onto its back randomly, in the middle of even ground. Completely even ground. We got killed and the spot was camped until we lost. We came back and tried to recreate the event, but never did. It was a stupid bug that made us lose a mission for no reason.

There were so many things wrong with the game. I remember Joe saying something like "I'll come back when the game is out of beta" when he quit. I stopped playing later the same day, since I was tired of the same old issues. I wanted to go back though, and I had been thinking about it still. You'd think that with all of the problems, I'd have learned my lesson and uninstalled the first week. I just saw the game for its potential, not its reality. If RTW could have ironed out all of the issues, they would have made one of the greatest action MMOs of all time. Instead, we're saying goodbye to APB this week.

I hope all of the laid off developers can find work. Good luck.

APB is DOA

Ok, so I'm kind of stealing that title from Game Informer's Phillip Kollar. But you know what, it's true. After only 3 Months, APB is officially shutting down it's servers as of tomorrow 9/17/2010.

The community officer for APB had this to say,

"APB has been a fantastic journey, but unfortunately that journey has come to a premature end. Today we are sad to announce that despite everyone's best efforts to keep the service running; APB is coming to a close. It's been a pleasure working on APB and with all its players. Together we were building an absolutely amazing game, and for that, we thank you. You guys are awesome!"

This was expected ever since the company went into administration just last month. Personally, the game left a foul taste in my mouth after having to hunt around for multiple beta keys during the "Key to the City" event. Joe and Jervan liked it a lot, but I didn't share their enthusiasm. They burned themselves out on it after about 2-4 weeks, but they have been talking about maybe trying it after Realtime Worlds possibly tweaked a few things. Well, I'm sorry to them that they will never get to see any changes. Perhaps they can post later with their feelings of it (if Joe can get ahold of a computer, for he's headed to Disney Land as I type) closing.

Bosstalk 24!

Not many posts lately, but trust us, we're working on delivering better content! The proof is in the pudding with our newest video!



Links to all of our news stories:
Memorial fund for Company of Heroes Dev killed in car crash: http://tinyurl.com/38kknfl
Microsoft's Japanese mascot: http://tinyurl.com/3xyqrlw
Katamari Damacy designer left Bandai-Namco: http://tinyurl.com/2a578jr
Kaz Hirai (PS Boss) say PSPGO -had- an audience: http://tinyurl.com/283ngqw
Metroid: Other M Review: It's bad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zSXSAXKn4o
15 Year Anniversary of PSX: http://tinyurl.com/377n6ma
Farmville creator evil: http://tinyurl.com/37vdrp4
XBL gamer banned for living in fort gay: http://tinyurl.com/32gue85
Japan finally getting FFXIII: http://tinyurl.com/2wqxtqr
Gearbox+duke = Win!: http://tinyurl.com/37q5h4g
Last Guardian Confirmed for TGS: http://tinyurl.com/2bscmmd

Bosstalk 23!

Hope everyone enjoys! Working on fixing the audio.