It’s time again. Alec and Kieron, bringing unsexy back. Convening in a North London flat, supported by packets of tea and the speeches of General Patton, they strive to talk about topics of import to the PC nation. From Sims 3, to Left 4 Dead 2, to adventure games, to remixing classics to a worrying amount of time trying to psychoanalyze John Walker and an even more disturbing length of time chewing over matters sexual like four year olds. You can get it from here, see its internet page here or join iTunes here or follow on RSS here. You’ll find a full Episode breakdown below…
00:00: We get the General Patton talk out of the way.
00:15: There is a mysterious gap here. We don’t know what went wrong. Maybe we’ll work out and fix it. Maybe we won’t. Who can tell? (We won’t – Ed)
00:50: The first “In the game” joke as we start trying to talk about The Sims 3. Kieron quickly starts talking about his real first kiss and soup instead. Kieron tries and drags Alec’s recipe for Onion soup.
2:07: No, we actually start talking about the Sims 3. For ages. Yes.
3:20: The first occurrence of John Walker bullying. This is something of a theme.
5:46: Kieron apologises. This doesn’t happen often.
8:03: Stories about French maids.
16:41: Moving off the Sims while touching on the over-use of And In The Game.
17:00: Looking at twitter! And pretty much ignore it.
17:40: Re-make culture and LucasArts adventures kick off. Alec finds them distracting. Kieron doesn’t even bother describing them. Then we’re mean to Roberta Williams.
19:14: Alec pretends to be Jim.
20:18: We move onto Telltale’s episodic games and new adventure games.
21:45: Are the old games actually any good? Also, feeling sorry for John and the regression of the adventure genre.
24:00: How old LucasArts adventures shaped or mirrored our personalities. Or, at least, John’s.
27:04: Spinning into game design as expression generally.
27:33: How would you have re-made Deus Ex, Alec? We talk about re-making Deus Ex and how we’d throw the world in the bin.
29:09: The problem with fandom building mythology out of nothing. Building IPs rather than games.
31:05: What game would you re-make, Alec? Kieron just won’t leave Alec alone. But Alec actually has some awesome ideas. So sez Kieron, writing this. Seguing into games based around aging and also comicky books. Buy Beta Ray Bill.
35:55: Dragon Age. Will Kieron like it because he’s a sociopathic slutmonster?
38:00: We say nice things about the Witcher. Briefly.
38:40: We head into sex in games – and how it works and how it doesn’t. Why does the Witcher annoy and we love the Sims? Lots of sex jokes too.
40:07: “Videogame sex is going always be worse than real sex”. “Sex itself is like PE”. Anecdotes about dragonflies sex drive. Bopping! Man, we’re totally off topic.
42:20: We suddenly realise this isn’t really PC gaming.
42:49: Left 4 Dead 2. Kieron and Alec say ill-advised things, almost certainly, but try to break down what’s reasonable, what isn’t and what’s inevitable.
44:50: Kieron should read the site more thoroughly.
46:00: Er… the BNP and protest votes.
49:40: Games as service.
53:00: “Anything else we can insult on twitter?” A quick-fire answer round. Sarcasm mixed with useful answers, including an anecdote about the danger of saying “pylon” at school.
58:49: In memory of Ross Atherton’s leaving from PC Gamer. A mixture of sappiness and totally scurrilous anecdotes from the office.
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Hmm would i feel ashamed that I was kind of collecting the cards near the end of The Witcher. This makes me into a bad man I know…
Anyway I don’t get this, the games are never as good as i remember them. Because I usually go back to my old games and Yes they are as good as i remember them. Its the modern games that are not as good. And yes i have actually tried this, I played a modern FPS and got bored, I’m still not bored with Deus Ex or NOLF.
Anyway I do think people can’t really handle what adventure games are like in the past because were so used to the rules being right in front of you(sometimes, I know of a few modern games where you go “eh what the hell do I have to bloody do”) so the random game logic that Adventures games have would be not very nice on our brains.
If RPS ever write an article about the DRM encountered in pirated copies of L4D2, the internet will explode.
@Xercies, I loves me a good adventure game, but there were some “solutions” that were just so ridiculous that it upset my logical mind.
Merge Apple with Iron Key, place merged item into Candelabra. This opens the door. I think that adventure games, in order to be successful, need to be less random and a lot more intelligent. Or at the very least, make the gamer feel intelligent. This cannot be accomplished by forcing random items to do random things.
On the subject of the Monkey Island remake:
I’m thrilled they’re remaking the original because I never got to play it, and now can’t find a copy for anything remotely resembling a reasonable price. Granted, a re-issue would be sufficient to meet my needs, but I’m not going to complain about a graphics upgrade.
I can understand the frustration for people that have played the original, though.
P.S. You guys know that King’s Bounty isn’t a HOMM remake, but rather a remake of the original King’s Bounty (which HOMM spun off from) right? The original was one of my obsessions as a kid, so I feel compelled to advocate on its behalf. If you haven’t played the original, you should give it a go. It’s remarkably similar to its modern incarnation.
P.S.S. Has the L4D2 boycott manifesto been changed since you read it? The thrust now seems to be “L4D2 shouldn’t be a full, stand alone game release but instead released as expansion of DLC content (free or otherwise) for the original game.” To me, that sounds pretty reasonable as a means of avoiding community division and supporting the original game.
Oh my god, why did Jim walk through the room during the podcast?
Vinraith: Yeah, I did. Or rather, it was another game which had the King’s Bounty Licence stuck on it during development. I just didn’t correct Alec as it would have broken the flow – while I haven’t played the original KB, from what I knew it seemed similar enough to HoMM to not be worth bringing up.
And yeah – the Manifesto has changed recently, as we said upthread. It was definitely over 10K when it had what we talked about – if you check the threads on the forum, it notes that one of the reasons they changed the front page was because the coverage they were getting was tainted by the more extreme demands.
Psychopomp: Yeah, it was fucking spooky. He should have been at work.
KG
@Kieron
The original King’s Bounty was actually more like KB:L than it is like HOMM, so if KB:L started life as something else we have a remarkable case of convergent evolution. The real-time top layer, the random spawns on pre-built islands, progressing through the game by travelling to new land masses, these are all elements of the original game. The combat is, of course, just like HOMM (as in the new one) but what distinguishes King’s Bounty (both of them) is really the RPG wrapping that combat takes place in.
Great podcast, by the way. RPS has one of the only podcasts on the web I actually enjoy listening through.
I know full well King’s Bounty is in theory a remake of King’s Bounty, trust me. But only in name – the KB title was applied after the game had been bought by the publisher. My point – poorly expressed, I guess – was that it was rethinking the appeal of the HoMM-mould game rather than simply sequelising/feature-creeping it.
David Eddings is dead?
But…
But dialogue…
@Alec
“only in name”
That’s hard to fathom, seeing how similar it is to the original. The new one actually FEELS like the old one to me. Are you sure they weren’t trying to make an homage to the original game and later managed to secure the rights to the name? I thought I’d even read that somewhere…
Aye, twas Battle Lord!
@Alec
The first thing that made me think of was bad viking me-
Oh wait
http://www.myspace.com/battlexlord
WOT NO MENTION OF THIEF??? AFTER ALL THE TWITTER LOVE I GAVE YOU??
(Not that I’ve listened to the Podcast yet, mind)
On a serious note: Magician, yeah? I mean, it’s alright, but it’s a kid’s book, isn’t it?
I say this as someone who when younger would *only* read fantasy and sci-fi, so I know of what I speak. And I read Magician a couple of years ago, and it was like, right, but what happened to the bit when you got to Gormenghast at 14 and realised that the Sword of Shannara / Belgariad school of fantasy writing was really only for the pre-pubescent?
I have a feeling this might be starting to get a bit A.I.M.ish. I don’t mean it to be. I did like it.
I should point out that Magician was recommended to me by a friend. Who was 17. I say friend – he was a guy I knew. In my 1st proper WoW guild.
When he quit WoW to concentrate on his A-levels, he gave me his never-equipped Arcanite Reaper, replete with the old 2h +AGI enchant. It was a beautiful gesture.
The character he gave it to has since been deleted in one of my many attempts to go cold turkey, which only goes to show: love not, for all is dust.
I’d like to answer Kieron’s question on the podcast about if people honestly remembered some quote in an interview about Valve promising free content for L4D.
I honestly don’t remember any single quote promising or even having the intent to release free content for L4D specifically. Maybe I read something and maybe I didn’t but I always assumed there would be that content. In fact I was surprised when all the mess started that people kept linking to that one story and not to several different articles and videos when Valve said they would release more content for L4D after launch for free.
But I didn’t get pissed off about L4D2 and I didn’t join any groups or complain about in comment threads either when L4D2 was announced either. I also won’t be at all surprised to see L4D get more content updates either.
I think over the past couple of years with TF2 Valve has created an assumption that all their games (at least multi-player ones) would receive the same treatment. One comment I do remember is a quote from Doug Lombardi along the lines of a game being like an amusement park and once you enter you get to ride all the rides for free when asked why they didn’t charge for DLC.
Maybe Valve is doing business like that to be altruistic but I doubt it. What they have said is that releasing free content updates: strengthens a community, keeps servers up, and keeps their game relevant. Every time there is a new content update all the gaming sites have stories up about an almost two year old game.
This gives the impression that they think a better way of doing business is to get new players to buy into a game that came out a couple of years ago rather than nickel and dime their existing customers for DLC or unlock codes.
If people thought that there would be free content updates for L4D I think this would be why rather than reading it on a website. At least that’s the case for me.
It is very surprising to see Valve come out with a game this quickly considering their past track record. It is also surprising in all this arguing I have yet to seen anyone actually question that release date and not assume it is going to be delayed.
Wow. That sucks that David Eddings is dead. He took my fantasy-epic virginity. Sure, later experiences would reveal them to be a little bland and not much to boast to my friends about, but those books still have a special place in my heart.
Morningoil: Well, we were really talking about young Fantasy.
KG
The whole L4D2 thing is painful for me to keep reading about because my PC is incapable of playing either, and I have no interest in multiplayer-only games, so I have no vested interest in it at all at the moment.
BUT it seems silly to me, nonetheless, because it seems brilliant and awesome for fans in the possibilities that it opens up. If Valve isn’t stupid – and I assume they’re not, based on you guys’ endless discussion of them – then they won’t just abandon L4D1. Because L4D2 is great MARKETING for it.
The impression I get of L4D is that it DOES have a plot. Which is the only reason why, despite having no interest in playing a game which requires other people to be fully enjoyed, I still plan on buying it whenever I get around to building a new PC. If that’s true… well, what are the people who get hooked on the world they’re introduced to in L4D2 (the people who didn’t play L4D1?) going to do when they want to get more of that plot? They’ll buy L4D1. And vice-versa.
Valve has a world that exists as two simultaneously extant “services” – that’s double the revenue stream. The L4D1 players will have an interest in what’s going on in the simultaneous plotline in L4D2 and the L4D2 cats will have the same interest in what they missed out on in L4D1. The only way to have a complete knowledge of what’s happened to both groups of four will be to buy both games. And therefore, continuing to make both games look like a good investment is, well, a good investment for Valve.
Why would they stop making campaigns for either, until L4D3 comes out? Everytime new content for one comes out, it just makes that game look like a better investment for players of the other.
Please blame all the typos or (hopefully non-existent) errors in logic on the booze.
EDIT: Just for the record, by “plot” I mean a general progression. The “story” goes from one place to another. I don’t know how specific or detailed that journey is, though I get the impression it’s entirely detailed in the progress one takes through a level, as in Portal? Either way, if I play through L4D1 and find myself in one place, then I get some DLC that takes me through some other places, while observing changes in the environment around me and to the four characters I’m invested in… I’ll be really interested in seeing how that same period of time elapsed down south with four other characters. I feel like Valve can make providing extra content worth their while for both games, simultaneously, is all I’m saying.
I listened to that on the bus, and it was incredibly hard to keep a straight face with all the talk about Jim knowing how to work a shaft.
Always the sign of a good podcast. =D
The “boycott L4D2″ group sagely removed all that “some of us are boycotting it because we don’t like the Coach’s shirt!!!” shit and restricted it to the reasonable complaints that aren’t mere matters of taste, which is nice. (and which has probably been mentioned here already, buuut I’m not reading all this).
A lot of the “you’re just spoiled” shit comes from the false dichotomy that Valve could only have (a), done what they presently have for L4D (ie, not much, in the all-important context of what was pledged), or (b) released everything they’ve done for L4D2 for free as an expansion to the original (all at once, even). Maybe a few isolated cases believe in (b), but if you have to scrounge for the bizarro outliers to characterise other people’s arguments, you obviously don’t have much of a leg to stand on yourself. There’s an enormous spectrum inbetween “bugger all” and “sinking so much manpower into an effort that you create something you believe to be (and are pricetagging as) a full sequel.”, and people in the boycott group (like myself, as it happens; mostly out of principle, haha) would’ve appreciated an approach somewhere within that spectrum. God, comprehending that isn’t exactly rocket surgery…
Is that more difficult than brain surgery AND rocket science?
@James T
I understand that you aren’t waiting for a full game, but would like more downloadable content, and I also understand if you feel you have some right to more downloadable content. I wouldn’t understand if you felt Valve doesn’t have the right to make a sequel at the same time.
You bought a game, and additionally maybe some sort of assurance there will be additional content, but most certainly not the assurance there won’t be another game.
That’s what I hate most about this entire debate. The additional content for L4D and L4D2, they’re two separate things, yet a lot of people insist to throw in all on one pile.
Thank you for your kind words, RPS.
R
x
Jeremy: It’s exactly three squillion times more challenging than either!
Trezoristo: Even if you can find someone who disapproves of Valve making a sequel to L4D per se (and I don’t know who they’d be, but they’d be bloody rare), I doubt you’d find even one who’d claim Valve doesn’t have the “right” to make a sequel; you may find they disapprove of the timing of the sequel for a couple of reasons, one of them being that the issues of L4D expansions and L4D2 are linked very strongly — resources invested in one can’t help but take away from the other. (They could theoretically recycle some L4D2 content back into L4D expansions, perhaps, but I doubt it, as that would undermine the selling points of L4D2). Of course, being a multiplayer game, the community is as just as important a resource from the players’ perspective, and that too will be diminished (ie, divided) by this release (Cue some idiot: “But you don’t KNOW that will happen!”; what the hell else is it going to do? Are L4D2 newcomers going to go “Oh man, this is great, I’ve GOT to go play the more primitive original instead!”, thereby staunching the flow of migration? My rocket surgeon senses are tingling!)
I love Terry Pratchett, and I love Lucas Arts adventures. How similar does this makes me to John Walker, and should I be worried?