Join hosts Jessie and Aron as they talk about:
One of the more advanced Pokemon mechanics
AND SO MUCH MORE!
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Find your favorite RoboCasters on Twitter:
Jessie | @Sega_Legend
Aron | @arondeppert
Join panelists Jessie, Aron, Michael and Andrew as they talk about:
-Pokemon (again…sorry (not sorry))
-Super Mario 3D World
-Legend of Zelda: Link Between Worlds
-Rule 34 (again…sorry (not sorry again))
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Find our panelists on Twitter:
Jessie | @SEGA_Legend
Aron | @arondeppert
Andrew | @H2OAcidic
Join panelists Jessie, Noel, Carl and Aron as they discuss a load of stuff about Zelda games. As usual, our intrepid podcasters get derailed and end up talking about silly stuff like True Blood and that one sportball game you play with the not-so-ball-shaped ball.
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Find our panelists on Twitter:
Jessie | @SEGA_Legend
Noel | @MadRhonda
Carl | @dessertturtle
Aron | @arondeppert
Musical consideration provided by Robot Science.
If you like the show, leave us a comment and rating on iTunes. Your efforts will help us grow the show!
The power of the candle is a secret to everybody.
The Legend of Zelda series is known for having awesome items, like the Hookshot, Mirror Shield, and Gust Jar, but some of them from the original weren’t SO useful. I mean really? A step ladder? I bet that has Octoroks shaking in their tentacles. I always thought it was weird that the Magic Rod was this amazing weapon but a candle hurt enemies almost as bad. Maybe Hyrule has magic bees that make awesome wax?
Hey! If anyone in the Midwest will be attending the Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo (C2E2) I’ll see you there. If you happen to find a guy with shaggy hair, an NES messenger bag, and a Green Lantern shirt wandering around that’s PROBABLY me. Stop and say “Hi” if you feel like it.
See you next week.
?
If you have been playing The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, or follow Nintendo news at all you have probably heard about the game-breaking bug in Skyward Sword. If a certain series of events is executed in a particular order, and then the game is saved, players will no longer be able to progress their adventure.
Nintendo has announced they will be releasing a special Wii Channel that will allow players to repair their save file if they have fallen victim to this glitch. As of now, it is only available in Japan but it’s pretty safe to assume it will hit North America and Europe as quickly as possible.
[Source]
"Why not set your bow down and take a rest?"
Truth be told I haven’t had the chance to sit down with Skyward Sword yet. I absolutely love Zelda games but for some reason I never play them when they come out. I always like to wait a while and let the hype die down before going through them myself. This one does look amazing though. My only concern is all the Wii Motion Plus-ing. That thing drained my batteries like nothing else with Wii Sports Resort and I’d hate to have to recalibrate it while fighting monsters.
And in case anyone was wondering why I, the editor with a Tanooki symbol on his chest, hasn’t made a comic about Super Mario 3D Land it’s because even though it’s an awesome game the best joke about the game has already been made.
To all the readers in the U.S.A., happy Thanksgiving. To everyone else, see you next week.
November has got to be the biggest month in games this year. This could be caused by mild short-term memory, but man, there are a ton of heavy hitters out there just coming out one week after another. One of these big titles is UbiSoft’s Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. In this installment, the series returns and wraps up the Assassin’s Creed Trilogy.
In case you have a little catching up to do, I suggest you watch this short video, as it certainly helped me.
You start the game as Desmond on some tropical island. The vacation is cut short when you realize you are still in the Animus and unconscious. Once all this sets in, you enter a portal which allows you to relive the later memories of Ezio. As a grizzled old assassin still filled with skill you venture into Constantinople. There, you meet up with Yusef, leader of the Ottoman Assassins. He shows you the ropes in the city and teaches you things you may have forgotten as well as introduces you to new weapons and game mechanics. Ezio is basically following a trail that will hopefully allow him to uncover some past details of Altair. He ultimately finds a door that the Templars wish to unlock. Of course it is missing five keys to open it. Guess who’s job it is to find these keys? No, not Super Mario! That’s right, Ezio.
It'sa Me! Ezio!
I enjoyed the gameplay for the most part. One of the new additions to the game is the hook-blade. With the hook-blade, you can leap across roof tops, and it extends to give you a little extra reach to grab the sides of buildings. It also allows you to zip-line down cables for some great assassination chances. The hook-blade is also good for grabbing enemies and pulling them closer to you for combo attacks. The other thing they added is bomb crafting. Throughout the game you will find all sorts of ingredients to build three types of bombs: Lethal, Tactical, and Diversion. When crafting a bomb, you decide the type of casing. The casings usually determine when the explosion occurs. There are the kind that explode on contact, ones that have a timer, ones that have to tripped, and of course ones that stick to people. Then you put the corresponding type of gun powder in the bomb. The gun powder determines the radius as to which the bomb explodes. Lastly, you put in the good stuff. For the Lethal ones, this can be shrapnel or poisonous gas. The Tactical ones often give off a flash bang type effect, caltrops to slow targets, smoke, or my favorite, lamb’s blood. Lamb’s blood you say? How is this effective? Well I am glad you asked. Imagine taking a bomb and filling it with lamb’s blood, then tossing it at one of those wacky Mario hating PETA members. Upon exploding it would cover the kook in bright red blood. How does this help in the game? Well the premise is that after the explosion, being covered in blood, your first instinct is that you are badly wounded thus very confused. As for the diversion bombs, they are the obvious noise makers and such. One interesting bomb is the one that explodes with fake money. That one is a real winner for causing a commotion.
Someone set us up the bomb.
While we are talking about bombs, I find it strange that Assassins are by nature supposed to be quiet and sneaky. Well, aren’t bombs loud? Not just angry mother loud, but LOUD! It seems like lurking around in the shadows and zoning in on your prey, lobbing a bomb would be the opposite of what you’d want to do. Granted, bombs are probably more situational, but heck man, I am a dude. Dudes like to sit on the couch with their shirts off and blow stuff up. By golly, that’s what I’m gonna do then. Oh, and thanks for giving me a gun! Do you know how many people I’ve shot in the face on a rooftop? No matter how many I kill, no one says “Hey, what’s that loud banging noise up there? Should we check it out?” Nope. Ignorance is bliss I guess, and it works for me. While it takes away from the whole “stealthy assassin” mythos, it adds to the “I’m a frakkin badass ready to blow stuff up” mythos.
Special Delivery!
Let’s get back to the game itself. While it is very possible to just follow the main quest, I advise against it. Sure, you get to experience more of the story, but you are missing the real MEAT to the game. The real fun is lurking about on rooftops looking for Templars to kill. There are also areas of Constantinople that are under Templar control. These areas are where you would want to sneak in and find the lead Templar and execute him. After that, you climb their center tower and light a signal flare, causing them to leave. Suddenly you now have an Assassin Den. From here you can craft bombs and get access to recruiting new assassins. This is my favorite part particularly. Once you are able to, you will be able recruit people into your fold. Doing so may be as simple as saving them from guards, or perhaps they challenge you to foot race. Now that you have all these assassins recruited, what do you do with them? Well, exploit them of course. After you have so many, you get a little meter under your health which is for giving the “Assassin Signal.” This Signal allows you to target someone and just call one of your assassins to kill someone. Often times they just come out of nowhere, kill the target and they’re off. Do be careful though, If there are too many guards around they will have to fight and sometimes they get killed. I know, I’ve sent many assassins unknowingly to their deaths. Don’t feel too bad about it, you can just get more right? There are other things to do with them, which is really neat. In your Assassin Den, you can order your recruits to different parts of the Mediterranean to do all sorts of quests. These range in difficulty and often times need more than one to finish a tougher mission. Doing these missions as well as calling them to kill targets gives them experience points. Leveling up gives them skill points which you use to increase their combat abilities and armor. Very handy later on for sure. Once they rank up to Master Assassin, you can put them in charge of an Assassin Den.
Aside from recruiting assassins and sending them on missions, there are other things in Constantinople to do. Ezio must have a hobby in city growth and development. As you roam around you will find abandoned buildings which you can purchase to re-open a Blacksmith, a Tailor, or a Bank for the most part. The more of these the city has the more money the city makes, and ultimately the more money you make. Somehow a portion of what the city makes goes to the bank, which you can withdraw and use at the Tailor or Blacksmith as well as Black Market dealers which sell expensive bombs and bomb parts. Blacksmiths can craft you better weapons and armor as well as upgrade your current equipment. Tailors can change the color of your clothes, make you larger pouches, and make parachutes. They apparently make a large enough pouch so that Ezio can hide a large two-handed axe in it. This baffles me. How can anyone leap from rooftop to rooftop with a huge freaking battle axe hidden in their trousers, much less being stealthy while doing it?
There's an axe in my pocket.
The gameplay itself is mostly solid. At times the game seems kind of slow with all the lurking about and climbing. When you’re actually in the moment, you hardly notice. Sometimes the controls don’t quite understand what you want to do. I hate to make comparisons, but being that I’ve been playing a lot of games that require climbing on everything, I feel compared to Uncharted, Assassin’s Creed’s climb/jumping responsiveness on the control is a bit off. You get used to it after a while, but at times it seems a little limited. Constantinople is HUGE and you can pretty much go whereever you want, but as far as cities go, it just doesn’t reach out and grab you. Overall, the visuals are good, it’s just that the city has no real POP to it. It lives and breaths like you’d expect from an Assassin’s Creed game, just looks boring. The soundtrack is nice as well. It has that great sound from the era and picks up in all the right places. The voice acting is also fairly decent, except for the fact that much of the time it seems like the lip syncing isn’t working. It’s not TOO hard to look at, but you will notice. Also, every time Ezio speaks, I believe he is the most interesting man and I sit in waiting for him to give someone a Dos Equis. Stay thirsty my friend.
The Multiplayer returns and is better than ever. Many more characters to play as this time around as well as a story that unfolds as you play. While the multiplayer is really fun to play, I think the overall enjoyment comes with who you are playing against. A good group of people are those that try not to be obvious. You see a group of people walking by and notice one guy in that group sort of lean towards you. You brace yourself for the kill, but he wasn’t the killer. Each corner you turn you have this anticipation of finding your prey or hopefully not becoming someone’s prey. Strategy and a keen eye will make the game more fun. Then you get the idiot squad, which is just people running around the entire time killing each other. I will say that sometimes that can be fun, but its far less rewarding than playing how its meant to be played.
[review title=”Assassin’s Creed: Revelations” pros=”Great graphics. Bomb crafting! Assassinations look great as ever! Recruiting assassins is fun. Multiplayer is a blast.” cons=”Bad lip synching. Constantinople seems boring. The climbing/jumping controls don’t feel as fluid as other games with similar styles.” verdict=”Assassin’s Creed: Revelations is a great addition to the series, but I have to think that it has bad timing. With the release of Uncharted 3 and Skyrim just before this title’s release, many gamers already have a lot on their plate. Coming soon a New Zelda game enters the fray. Sure, Assassin’s Creed fans will no doubt be looking into this, but as for other gamers, they might wait until its on sale. I’d say if this game were released in January, it might have a better chance. If you aren’t interested in those other three games though and are a big Assassin’s Creed fan, this game will make you very happy. ” score=90]
Ask any Nintendo console owner what the ONE game is they can’t live without, and they’ll probably say something with the name “Mario” in the title. Ask that same person what TWO games they can’t live without and they’ll say “Mario” and “Zelda”. Zelda has been a flagship franchise for Nintendo for 25 years, and while some would accuse the series of being overly formulaic, others (like me) would say that said formula is nearly perfect and there’s no reason to change it. Well, change it they did with the latest addition to The Legend of Zelda series, whose post-colon title is Skyward Sword. Ten hours in, and I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of this game, which promises to be the biggest and most engrossing Zelda title to-date. Even though I haven’t made a lot of progress with the game’s storyline, let’s use our sailcloths dive in and see how Link is faring so far. Continue Reading
Right around E3 of 2010 Nintendo wowed the world with talk of a handheld, 3D capable gaming system that wouldn’t require the use of a cumbersome ocular aid. From that point in time, crazy rumors and speculation such as “ZOMFG IT’LL BE LIKE HOLOGRAMS RIGHT?!” littered just about every social media feed and forum that pertained to gaming. Most gamers seemed to feel that the 3DS would truly change the face of handheld gaming, but the console went through a pretty rough launch and had disappointing sales figures. This has a lot of people worried about the success of the upcoming Wii U, but there are five little things Nintendo can keep in mind when the time comes.
1. For the love of all things good and holy, ADVERTISE.
I don’t know about your city, but here in Chicago games get advertised everywhere. For example, when Portal 2 was being hyped up there were entire buses covered inside and out with a giant ad. Games get advertised on billboards, subway platforms, taxi cab toppers — everywhere. Yet in my nearly five years in this city I have never once seen a large-scale ad for any sort of Nintendo product.
A 3D image without the aid of glasses sounded magical, and unheard of. For some inexplicable reason, Nintendo thought the best way to show this feature off to people would be with 2D images. Imagine if flying cars were suddenly going to be mass produced, but car manufacturers said “Go ahead and drive this regular car, but imagine it’s fyyiinnnggggg! OoooOoOoOoo!” That would be a ridiculous way to market such a product, right? With 3D movies being so insanely popular these days, a pre-movie ad would’ve done the trick. Sure, it would have been expensive, but so is a huge stack of homeless 3DSs and a 32% price slash this close to launch.
It’s an unconventional approach, but putting the interactive units in stores BEFORE launch so people could see exactly what the 3DS was capable of would have been a huge help as well. If people were able to get their hands on an actual Wii U tablet controller and see a Nintendo system running true HD graphics for the first time — before launch, and with enough time they could plan for the purchase — then Nintendo would probably have an instant success on their hands. Whoever came up with the concept of Nintendo’s most recent and upcoming consoles sure thought outside of the box, it’s just a shame that the marketers have yet to do the same thing.
Oh wow, look. It's a rolling billboard that will be seen by millions and millions of people each day.
2. Play to your strengths — first party titles!
People like to clamor for more third party support on Nintendo consoles, but the company took that idea to an extreme with the launch of the 3DS. None of their flagship IPs like Mario or Zelda were seen, and this ultimately crippled their ability to hit the ground running with this console.
Zelda was so close to the 3DS’s launch window, that it should’ve just been a launch title. In a parallel and more perfect world, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D would have been the focal point of Nintendo’s pre-launch ad blitz. Imagine the aforementioned 3D ads, featuring the title screen for Zelda. It fades to black, and white letters shimmer into view reading “Ditch those goofy glasses and experience Zelda in 3D, only on the Nintendo 3DS.” BAM! There you go…this thing could’ve been printing money just like the Wii did.
At E3 this year, all kinds of wonderful and established third party franchises like Batman: Arkham City were said to be making their way to Nintendo’s new home console. This is all fine and dandy, but if they ignore the fact that people buy Nintendo systems to play first party games then Iwata’s money pool is likely to spend yet another year being empty.
Simple math.
3. While clever, “3DS” isn’t the best choice of names. Does “Wii U” make any more sense?
Nintendo has conditioned us to think that each handheld they release will have several incarnations. We had GameBoy Advance, GameBoy Advance SP (even this got upgraded screens), and the GameBoy Advance Micro. The DS got the same treatment with the DS, the DS Lite, DSi, and the DSi XL. By sticking a “3” in front of the already established “DS” brand, people that don’t follow video game news pretty regularly could easily think it is just another, slightly different version of the system they already have.
The name “Wii U” could work, and it could leave consumers scratching their heads. It sort of sounds like a college one would go to learn about all things relating to the Wii. With the rampant success the Wii had it could’ve been a very smart thing to carry the Wii brand forward into their next console line, and it could be just the shot in the foot Nintendo doesn’t need right now.
4. Flaunt what’s under the hood!
At least until the PSVita launches, the 3DS is the most powerful handheld gaming system on the market. However, Nintendo is taking their tried-and-not-so-true-anymore approach of talking about all the fabulous games that will be playable on the system instead of what the hardware is capable of doing. With such an incredibly lackluster launch line-up a different approach should’ve been taken that focused on the specs a “hardcore gamer” would love to hear.
During the big Wii U reveal at E3 this year, a lot of people were confused. The presentation left a lot of watchers wondering if the Wii U was just an add-on to the existing Wii console, because they focused primarily on the controller. In fact, the console was not even shown during their press conference. If there is any hope of re-capturing the hardcore audience Nintendo lost in the flood of waggle-centric mini-game collections that besmirched the Wii library, then they need to talk about the console itself and how it’s specs compare to the competitors.
5. Embrace this little thing we like to call “the internet”.
For some reason, Nintendo seems reluctant to get up to speed in terms of internet connectivity. While its two major competitors were offering online multiplayer, achievements, downloadable content, friends lists, and more Nintendo was clunking along with a handful of games that supported online multiplayer, and only about half of those games did it well.
The 3DS took an itty bitty step in the right direction with the Friend List feature. Now instead of having a Friend Code for every online game you play, there is just one friend code for each 3DS system. Registering someone let’s you see what game they’re playing….and that’s it.
With the Wii U looming just over the horizon, Nintendo has a chance to finally do more than dip its little pinky toe in the pool of internet connectivity. They need to give us the features from Xbox Live and Playstation Network, and then some. While they’re at it, a system update for the 3DS wouldn’t hurt either. Features such as the ability to send pictures to registered friends like you can do with the Wii would be incredibly well received. This would be especially useful considering 3D pictures that are only viewable on the 3DS. Also, a simple text or voice messaging system would be helpful. If you see one of your friends is playing Super Street Fighter, you could send them a quick message to challenge them to a match. The possibilities are endless, and the online infrastructure is there, just begging to be used on both the Wii U and the 3DS.
These five things aren’t the only things that could’ve helped make the 3DS the success it deserves to be. It truly is an innovative product that could’ve benefited from a lot more support on Nintendo’s end, and hopefully that level of support will be seen during the Wii U’s launch in 2012. We are in the midst of worldwide economic turmoil, so maybe it just wasn’t the best year to launch a new system. Hopefully the big N hasn’t totally fallen asleep at the wheel and will learn from their mistakes and doesn’t rely on their brand alone when launching the Wii U next year.
How would you handle things if you were head of Nintendo’s marketing campaign? Leave us your thoughts in the comments below or by visiting the forum!
It’s been a few weeks since E3. The booths are gone, the after-party inebriation has long worn off, our friends have claimed their share of our swag, and G4 is back to being 95% ‘Campus PD’. Now it’s time to look back at what I really learned at E3.
Kinect is an amazing, incredible peripheral…with shitty, shitty games.
The Kinect dropped at last year’s E3 to much awe-filled cheering. It had a couple of solid launch titles in Dance Central and Kinectimals, and after a year of development I was sure that I’d be here telling you the Kinect games announced this year would blow my mind.
Instead, they just blew.
Look, I’m no hater. I have a Kinect, and I love it. I’ve just about rendered my arms useless by playing so much Child of Eden this week. But the two Kinect titles hyped the most this year seem to be kind of…well…kind of terrible.
