Originally Posted by Big Ev Great show guys, just a quick comment on Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2. MUA2 was not developed by Raven, but Vicarious Visions. Vicarious did the Wii port of the first Ultimate Alliance game, and then were tasked do MUA2. I don't know what happened in the hand off between developers, but MUA2 doesn't seem to be as engaging and fun as the original MUA. Once again, great show, and I'm looking forward to the next CAGcast.

Yes, we mentioned the developer switch, my half assed assumption is that VV has zero reverence for Marvel and it's history. But that's just a thoery.

Originally Posted by Wombat Yes, we mentioned the developer switch, my half assed assumption is that VV has zero reverence for Marvel and it's history. But that's just a thoery.

Sorry I missed the mention of the developer switch, my bad. I should learn to pay better attention, or maybe I should listen to the podcast somewhere else than work

Awesome show fellas, It's been about 5 months since I got a chance to listen. I like many was victim to the economic situation and once my 9-5 went to hell my regular podcast listening went along with it. But hard work paid off, I'm working steady again and hearing a CAGcast gave me a nice feeling of being back to normal. I forgot how much the conversation turns to shit (shit being the topic not the adjective).

I'm kind of intrigued by this Demon Soul's game now though. Ive been seeing the name but hadn't seen much marketing. (If L4D2 has a $25 Million budget Demon Soul's must be like 50 cents). When I went to the game site and watched the trailer it actually seems like they are playing up the difficulty of the game. Almost challenging you to see if you can handle it. I guess the real question is "Is the difficulty caused by cheap tricks, bad gameplay, and glitches or is it intentionally challenging to force more strategy and thought?" Then again, they could have just gotten back all the reviews and test data and realized that if they didn't try to make the difficulty a sell point it would (and may still) be its biggest downfall. All the talk has me curious though...

I know we don't have to compliment Shipwreck anymore, but he is really growing on me as a third CAGcast member. He seems to have gotten the feel of the show and is much more natural and entertaining than in the past. Hopefully he will be a semi-permanent member of the crew.

You guys are talking on how shitty the PS3 Eye is? At least that thing can scan the cards. I got Viva Pinata Trouble in Paradise and tried for an hour to scan one of those cards with the 360 vision camera for an hour to get a ing 5 point achievement and still did not get it. Tried with the flashlight and everything.... the vision camera, piece of shit that is....

Originally Posted by Davestation You guys are talking on how shitty the PS3 Eye is? At least that thing can scan the cards. I got Viva Pinata Trouble in Paradise and tried for an hour to scan one of those cards with the 360 vision camera for an hour to get a ing 5 point achievement and still did not get it. Tried with the flashlight and everything.... the vision camera, piece of shit that is....

I think it is fair to say, that both cameras suck equally.

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Just wanted to say I laughed when Wombat referred to the possibility that Capcom might be the worst publisher. Are we forgetting the company that is charging $120 for a plastic skateboard game and wants to INCREASE the normal game price?

Great show! I really like the new Star Wars Clone Wars cartoon and movie. I was really hoping the game would be good but wow the demo was terrible.

Cheapy, did you end up picking up The Williams Collection?

Ship and Wombat (and anybody else), do you have a preferred camera view when you play?

/tk

Greetings Cheap Ass Gamer!

This is Chris Carter, Editor-In-Chief of Gamer Limit, and reviewer of Demon's Souls. I want to assure you that I did complete the game before I reviewed it, because it apparently came up in the podcast.

Atlus sent me an advanced copy quite a few weeks ago, and despite all the rabble that people have been making over the game's difficulty, it's actually not that hard once you get the hang of it. In fact, I was only level 76 when I finished the game, compared to a whopping maximum of 712 levels (which require New Game++).

For instance, that playthrough only took me 22 hours in total, and I didn't die once on the last 8 boss fights. The Sticky Compound Long Bow/White Bow do wonders to the AI ;D

I'm on my third playthrough now with the retail version of the game (which I bought on launch day, and is different from my now online defunct press copy), starting as a Royal. Using my knowledge from previous sessions, I was able to beat the entire first level with one death, and trek through a good portion of level 4 immediately after Phalanx with very little statistical upgrades.

Another great show, perhaps making Shipwreck a full member of the CAGcast would be good. He brings a lot to the table.

Pinball is the one Wii game that I played that I thought would be better in hi-def. .....although I would miss the flipper-button in each hand and waggle to tilt controls.

I loved the bit about photographing hippos having sex in Afrika.

Or when Wombat cracks a lame joke and Cheapy just shoots it down. The banter is always entertaining and makes the show worth a listen even when there isn't any really relevant video game info to be conveyed.

Also, I don't know if its just me, but all this talk about Demon Souls kind of piqued my interest in the game. Wasn't even on my radar before...

man, by the time i get around to writing responses to the cagcast, i have trouble remembering what i wanted to say. this time, i had a post-it pad with me, so i jotted something down.

you guys were talking about the playing the waiting game for capcom games in order to benefit as a consumer, but there's a problem there. if not for early adopters, there would be no alternative editions, updates, etc... nobody bought bionic commando, so we're not hearing anything about an updated version of that. plenty of people bought re5, and even pissed money away on the most unnecessary add-on around. now, it's getting an updated release. it's certainly not the first time they've done this with RE, but it's always possible because people buy the game. capcom achieve profits, then they look for ways to further profit, and the fact that they further profit by improving on the product is quite alright with me.

as for the SF4 issue, i have some pretty surprising feelings about this. i have been pushing for years for fighting game updates to be the downloadable patches that they really are. i have chastised japanese gaming companies for ignoring the system put into place by pc games so many years ago and i have accused them of being dirty backward money-grubbing bastards who refuse to embrace the most important technology of our time.

despite all this, i find super street fighter 4 to be entirely defensible as a standalone release. if there were simply balance updates and tweaks, i would be singing a different song. there are 8 new characters. 8! that's massive. that changes everything about the way the game is played. when we bought sf4, we were already lucky enough to be getting the second version with 6 additional characters over the arcade version. now, we're getting 8 new fighters. even if we were to be offered the balance updates for our standard sf4 copies, things would probably be thrown askew because some of the buffs and nerfs will most assuredly be in place in response to the new 8. they need to patch sf4 as a separate entity to maintain balance in that version.

character rosters have never been about quantity. it's always been about quality. the original world warriors title had 8 characters and that was fantastic. if they were to release a new fighting game starring only these new 8, it would be defensible as its own title. i feel that most people are failing to recognize just how much of a new product this update to sf4 really could be. this is not like going from sf2: champion edition to turbo hyper fighting. i am happy that we will be getting super at a reduced price, and i hope it brings more people into the game despite all the at-first-seemingly justified complaints. also, remember that if we hadn't bought sf4 at 60 bucks, we wouldn't even be hearing about a super street fighter 4 for 40 or 50.

(i'm not going to go into it really, but a disc-based release is also more convenient for a game that has console tournaments year-round.)

entirely unrelated: check out the full image of the girl from magna carta 2. the artist has no concept of the human body. look at that right leg.
http://zockerseele.com/wp-content/im...na_cartaII.jpg

Originally Posted by thakingrocka you guys were talking about the playing the waiting game for capcom games in order to benefit as a consumer, but there's a problem there. if not for early adopters, there would be no alternative editions, updates, etc... nobody bought bionic commando, so we're not hearing anything about an updated version of that. plenty of people bought re5, and even pissed money away on the most unnecessary add-on around. now, it's getting an updated release. it's certainly not the first time they've done this with RE, but it's always possible because people buy the game. capcom achieve profits, then they look for ways to further profit, and the fact that they further profit by improving on the product is quite alright with me.

The reason this absolutely sucks is because sometimes there is exclusive content for the rerelease. Not making that available to download for the people that bought it up early and made the new release possible is inexcusable.

I guess it's time for me to leave feedback. Good show in general.

I do have to disagree with difficulty effecting review scores though. Let's put it this way, according to Rockstar, less than 5% of the people who bought GTAIV actually beat it. Some missions get incredibly hard. Should GTAIV take the review hit just because the missions are too difficult? Now if the game was legitimately broken thus the difficulty (like many early PSX and Sega CD Working Designs translations), I could see taking the hit on the review scores. Instead what I heard is Demon Souls is a very hardcore Roguelike (see Shiren the Wanderer) and the high difficulty tied to making a mistake versus game being broken. Thus I can understand it NOT getting knocked for it's difficulty despite being hard. It may be hard, but it's fair.

Originally Posted by Wombat Yes, we mentioned the developer switch, my half assed assumption is that VV has zero reverence for Marvel and it's history. But that's just a thoery.

Actually Vicarious Visions has been one of the developers for the series since it was X-Man Legends, just not the lead developer. I'm just guessing, but I think they did a lot of the grunt work. In a lot of ways it reminds me of a master leaving a project to an apprentice and he does an OK but not great job. Or for comic geeks, like when Stan Lee left Marvel Comics in the hands of Roy Thomas.

Originally Posted by as50193 Just wanted to say I laughed when Wombat referred to the possibility that Capcom might be the worst publisher. Are we forgetting the company that is charging $120 for a plastic skateboard game and wants to INCREASE the normal game price?

The Evil League of Evil Publishers?
1. EA
2. Activision
3. Capcom

Great show guys. I like having Ship on the show. He knows his shit and just doesn't talk about the big name titles. Thanks for the heads up about that pinball game. I'm going to check it out.

I think the Demon Souls scores are going to be skewed because the only people reviewing that game are the hardcore RPG guys who actually have the patience to finish it. Of course it's going to be getting 90s and 100s. They're the only people on the planet who are going love the game. Me personally, the game sounds like the equivalent of repeatedly stapling my dick to a table so I'm going to pass for now. I'll maybe check it out down the road when it gets cheaper or I'll give it a rent. I'm not sure why people would play a game that makes them want to murder people. When you get that feeling and it's only the first level and you probably got many more hours to go, is it even worth it? I guess it's great marketing though, because without that difficulty level I doubt as many people would be talking about the game.

I think you actually need to finish a game to review it. You can't just play a third or half of the game and write up a review. The second part of the game might suck, the gameplay might become boring, a level might be completely broken, the ending might be terrible, etc. For example, Dead Space. Everyone loves that game. If I would have only played the first few chapters, I would have rated it very highly too. When I actually played through the entire game, the targeting a certain body part gimmick got old fast and you find yourself in the same situations over and over again. The story completely sucked and the ending was awful. That's just my personal opinion, but I think you can understand what I'm getting at. I don't think you can just do a review playing half of the game because you're not giving the reader an impression of the full experience.

Originally Posted by Blackout I think the Demon Souls scores are going to be skewed because the only people reviewing that game are the hardcore RPG guys who actually have the patience to finish it. Of course it's going to be getting 90s and 100s. They're the only people on the planet who are going love the game. Me personally, the game sounds like the equivalent of repeatedly stapling my dick to a table so I'm going to pass for now. I'll maybe check it out down the road when it gets cheaper or I'll give it a rent. I'm not sure why people would play a game that makes them want to murder people. When you get that feeling and it's only the first level and you probably got many more hours to go, is it even worth it? I guess it's great marketing though, because without that difficulty level I doubt as many people would be talking about the game.

I think you need to read a few of the reviews again, because the main reason Demon's Souls is scoring so high is because of the fact that it presents you with a challenge in a fair manner. When you fail, you actually feel like it's your own fault, and not the game's design.

Also, even if the game wasn't particularly hard right off the bat (after a few hours, it's not that hard), it would still receive high scores, and a good word of mouth, simply because it's a great game, and a refreshing change of pace amidst a sea of mindless button mashers.

In fact, I'm actually more surprised by the people who say it's "impossible", because after you give the game a chance, it's quite easy. Most of the people who've given up treat the game like a hack n' slash, and ignore dodge rolls; heck, I even met a few people who didn't dodge roll in God of War, and just mashed square and triangle.