In this episode we discuss why we've skipped a fortnight, and I get very excited and interrupt Lewie a lot. VGChartz are mainly responsible.
Show notes (Highlight to view):
00:00 Opening
00:36 Welcome
00:45 The Lost Episode
03:12 Contests! [Link]
05:00 I talk about a shame tarp, here. That's a weird reference. [Link]
07:19 Are Harmonix a little insensitive?
08:31 New Rock Band song - Stephen Colbert
[Note: This song is now available on PSN but was not at the time of recording]
11:32 Left 4 Dead demo announced by Gabe Newell - but when?
14:45 Is the New Xbox Experience going to be relaunching the console?
15:45 No. No it isn't. We spend a bit too much time debating why it isn't.
21:32 But when is it coming out?
22:32 Resistance 2 beta [Link]
25:31 Anti-Spore. After recording, it turns out that this was a massive Rick Roll. [Link]
26:23 Fracture demo coming soon
28:50 So there was a Half-Life Episode 4? [Link]
34:18 Tons of bargains this week!
Bargains of the week:
Assassin's Creed, 360 - £7.99
The Darkness, 360 - £4.99
Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, DS - £17.93
41:50 Playing Rock Band with my family
43:34 Lewie's mummy on Defence Grid: The Awakening
45:32 Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball
47:25 Castle Crashers, poo, and a little clan discussion
50:39 We should have had more 2D games
51:49 BAKUSHOW - the game that would be very boring to play with us
55:53 Contest details
58:55 Something happened here with the audio, not sure what. I should say "We'd done the barrel rolls, but we needed to wait for him to do one degree of flatspin, but he thought we still had to do barrel rolls."
59:46 Rainslick contest
1:01:05 Close
1:01:15 Minute of Silence
Link dump:
SavyGamer Contests
Vault 77: One Man, and a Crate of Puppets
GamerDNA (my page on 360voice)
Battlefield Heroes
SOCOM Confrontation
SupCom
Resistance 2 beta
Anti-Spore (sorry for the above - couldn't resist! :P)
Half-Life Episode 4 Thread
Total Runtime: 1:02:15
Total Filesize: 59MB
Contest info:
For the SOCOM beta, send an email to willeth -at- gmail -dot- com with the subject SOCOM CONTEST and your story.
For the swag, send an email to lewiep -at- savygamer -dot- co -dot- uk with the subject SWAG CONTEST and your justification.
For the Precipice special edition, send an email to willeth -at- gmail -dot- com with the subject PRECIPICE CONTEST and your comic as an attachment.
Got feedback on the show? Post a comment, or email us:
LewieP - lewiep@savygamer.co.uk
Will - willeth@gmail.com
The SavyGamer Podcast, Episode 4
CoD 4 Variety Map Pack, 360 - 400MSP
The Variety Map Pack for Call of Duty 4 is half price until Monday at 8am GMT. These are the maps that are included in the Game of the Year (goatee) edition.
It's been knocked down from 800 points (~£5.32) to 400 points (~£2.66).
All Sterling values in this post are compared to Tesco.com points pricing. If you get your points elsewhere then the equivalent cost will be higher. No word yet on whether this discount is also available on PSN.
Xbox 360 Price Drop
Looks like Woolies is going to be dropping the price of their Xbox 360 consoles.
£129.99 for the Arcade
£169.99 for the Premium (60gb)
£229.99 for the Elite
Here's a photo, supposedly from a Woolies employee. This would be in line with their recent price drops, if you remember they dropped the Wii to £159.99.
Now, I can't guarantee this will work, but if you want to try and trick the system and reserve yourself a console, so you can be sure to have one, this might help.
If you order one over the phone (0844 811 7111) they will hold it for you, so you can just turn up and pay and collect it on a set day. They will hold onto items for some time (if I remember correctly, a week), so if you order one now, they will give you a date for when you can collect it. Then, you can wait for the price drop, and just turn up and ask for it at the lower price when the price drop does happen. If the price drop doesn't happen any time soon (since I can't say when this will happen), no matter, you can just cancel the order, and not have to pay a penny.
Thanks to Engadget for the heads up. Stay tuned for SavyGamer for more on this as it becomes available.
Multiwinia + Darwinia, PC - £13.28
If you pre-purchase Multiwinia on steam, you get the fantastic Darwinia for free. Comes to £13.28 by my maths.
If you haven't already got/played Darwinia, I highly recommend it. It's a wonderful, unique, beautiful game. Very indie, but at the same time, very polished, and it has a great sense of humour (be sure to download the PDF of the manual too).
Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker, DS - £9.43
Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker, DS - £9.43 delivered
Apply code "reward5" for 5% off
Gears of War 2, Xbox 360 - £28.43
Gears of War 2, Xbox 360 - £28.43 delivered
Apply code "reward5" for 5% off
Thanks to John for the tip.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky, PC - Review
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky, PC - £15.89 delivered
Apply code "reward5" for 5% off
Review by Rook
Making your way through the driving rain, the remnants of the abandoned town of Limansk stretches out ahead. Somewhere over the other side is the reactor core, the heart of the zone. Shuttered windows, and nailed up doors leave only the streets which look oh so very open. With the warning of an ambush ahead fresh in mind I find myself pressing up against the few ruined cars that have long since been abandoned. A cursory sweep with binoculars doesn't give anything away, but a moment later lightning baths the fronts of the buildings and in a window, for a brief second, a black silhouette is outlined in cold white light. Raising the scope of the silenced rifle, the figure remains a shadow in a patch of gloom, but it's enough. Raising the sights just a little to factor in the bullet drop, the trigger is pulled and the inevitable happens: "This is XRay Engine crash reporting client. To help the development process, please Submit Bug or save report and email it manually".
And it's gone. All the atmosphere, all the tension is converted into petty annoyance. I should be enjoying this game, but it feels as though someone is having fun with a bizarre metagame. Instead of probing for anomalies, your hunting for crash bugs. Which scripted event will trigger it next? The game's story (very much a rehash of the first game) is quickly replaced by trips to the forums, the discovery of an [Unofficial Fix] thread a greater prize than any artefact. Minor bugs abound, the Directx10 graphics corrupt in the rain, the AI occasionally decides not to initialise on loading, the quick save feature doesn't work etc. But these are simply part and parcel of a game, the slight quirks are almost more annoying. It's not that the AI can throw grenades further than Olympians could dream, it's not that they do this with pinpoint accuracy, without being able to see . It's that they do all this without any possible knowledge of where you are.
Getting away from all that, Clear Sky manages to deliver on so much of what was promised with the original Stalker, it's a living breathing world. The fire fights remain amongst the best that any game offers, brutal and unrelenting. Standing out in the open is a sure fire way of needing to hit the reload key, but hunker down in cover and soon you'll be pinned down and surrounded. The faction wars add in friendly squads, and the storyline is often best left forgotten as you join in their patrols. Small skirmishes soon give way to fully fledged battles for territory. Grenades, tracers and screams fill the air, and then as quickly as it starts it dies out again, and the scavenging can begin. The scripted events can be more hit and miss, having played through 8/10ths of the game without limits, it feels odd to be pinned down by a single sniper that can't be killed despite repeated headshots. At other times it's pitch perfect. Making your way through the distorted swirls of radiation pockets and gravity anomalies you swear you can almost see something move ahead. It's not long before the nervous friendly AI notice the same thing and then open fire predator style. By the time you make it to your destination, the rest of the squad lie torn apart, dotted along the route.
As a game it manages to be both beautiful and ugly at the same time. Much like the real 'zone', it's a world you'd hate to visit, but could stare endlessly at pictures of long since forgotten play parks, the abandoned flats and houses slowly being reclaimed by nature, or just the ever changing (and rarely clear) sky. Catch a zone at the wrong time of day then a simple zombie duck hunt turns into another gaming session abandoned until daylight returns both in the real world and in the game world. The voice acting, whilst not brilliant is amiable enough, the minimalist sound track adding just enough to keep things going with the real stars being the guttural sounds, the footsteps, the creaking, or the moans that leave you feeling not quite as alone as you'd like to be.
In the end, I have the feeling that Clear Sky will depend more on the player than anything else. It's a game that won't tell you when you've made a mistake, but just leave you with that sinking feeling halfway through a zone when you realise you really should have bought the more expensive suit of armour, or that might be another, less dangerous way around. It often offers just enough of a hint of what you should be doing, but similarly leaves enough doubt that the less intrepid might miss the cues. Yes, artefacts are hard and dangerous to find, but you're a stalker, it's worth the risk. Yes, bad things happen in the zone, but you're a stalker, you're prepared for them. Yes, scraping together a living in the zone is tough, but you're a stalker, it's what you do.
In the end saying that Stalker epitomises everything in PC gaming is as much of a low blow as it is a compliment. As a game though, it very much takes the highs with the lows. On the one hand it offers something so unique and so hardcore that it'll never appear in this form on a console. On the other, you are paying to beta test a game that may never be finished. GSC Game World could have won a lot of praise by following the path of CD-Project and re-releasing the original game patched up to how they intended. In the end they cashed out with another unfinished product.
Rating – Pineapple (http://xkcd.com/388/)
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky, PC - £15.89 delivered
Apply code "reward5" for 5% off
PES 2009, PS3 - £28.43
Pro Evolution Soccer 2009, PS3 - £28.43 delivered
Apply code "reward5" for 5% off
Sonic Chronicles - The Dark Brotherhood, DS - £17.03
Sonic Chronicles - The Dark Brotherhood, DS - £17.03 delivered
Apply code "reward5" for 5% off
Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga, Xbox 360 - £16.99
Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga, Xbox 360 - £16.99 delivered
Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit, Xbox 360 - £23.99
Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit, Xbox 360 - £23.99 delivered
Zack & Wiki: Quest For Barbaros' Treasure, Wii - £16.99
Zack & Wiki: Quest For Barbaros' Treasure, Wii - £16.99 delivered
Yakuza, PS2 - £5
Yakuza, PS2 - £5 delivered
Perfect timing for anyone interested in the sequel, that's on the way.
SavyGamer Contests!
These were originally announced in the podcast for last week, but as it snarled itself up and I can't get it together in a timely fashion I'm going to post these here instead.
We have two competitions going this week. One of them is to win a bunch of stuff from Lewie's PAX swag bag! To win, simply fire off an email to him (lewiep -at- savygamer -dot- co -dot- uk) with the subject SWAG CONTEST justifying why you deserve it. Be creative and make us laugh! We'll judge these over the next week or so and announce the winner on Episode 5 of the podcast, available a week on Friday.
The second is for a SOCOM: Confrontation Beta code. The beta lasts until the 5th of October and if you haven't got in on it yet then this could be a rare chance for you. This one also requires a little bit of effort - SOCOM is being bundled with the official PS3 Bluetooth headset. I want you to describe something that happened to you in an online game, either positive or negative, revolving around the use of (or lack of) a headset. Bonus points are given for creativity. Send your entry to my email address (willeth -at- gmail -dot- com) with the subject SOCOM BETA CONTEST. As the beta only lasts until the 5th, I'll decide this one very soon, so get your entries in before Sunday at noon GMT. I'll email the winner their code by Sunday evening and they'll also get a shout-out on the show.
On Friday's episode of the podcast, Episode 4, we'll be giving away a Collector's Edition of the Penny Arcade game - On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode 1. As well as the game (which runs on PC, Mac, and Linux) and a printed manual with the prequel comic within, it contains a keyring, a custom Startling Developments D20, and a Precipice T-shirt. Make sure you listen to Episode 4 on Friday to find out how to enter.
Sorry to anyone who was looking forward to our PAX impressions, but hopefully this week's show will make up for it. See you on Friday!
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