CAGcast #190: World of Duty

While ME2 is definitely more FUN overall, does anyone else feel that that Mass Effect 1's story was superior to ME2? Saren makes a great villian and the ending is this great climactic battle. The payoff is just awesome and very satisfying. You stopped the reapers and Saren, and proved to the galaxy how important human's can be (remember in ME1 that humans are almost like second-class citizens).

Mass Effect 2's story on the other hand....
Starts out flashy, but then bogs down in the middle as you zip randomly around the the galaxy recruiting team members (and then doing their respective loyalty missions, which involves more random flying around). I have to admit the final assault on the collector base was pretty awesome as it really makes you use the team you recruited. But that final boss was a bit of a let down. Not bad, but it was no Saren fight.

Again, ME2 was more fun: they removed a lot of the more annoying parts of ME1. I just hope they are able to combine the fun of ME2 with the tighter story telling of ME1 when developing Mass Effect 3.


Lastly, I agree that ME3 definitely needs a "last time on Mass Effect..." type story summary at the beginning of the game. When I started up ME2, I imported my save file and had no idea what was going on since it had been like 1-2 years since i last played ME1. I had to run to Wikipedia to remind myself a few details.
 
Great job on handling the Mass Effect talk so it's not spoiled for the rest of us. I wish other podcasts would consider it. Too many gaming journalist figure, "It's been out a month. It's fair game." Some of us won't get to this anytime soon, or even for months, but still intend to play it. I only played the original Mass Effect for the first time last year.
 
[quote name='Twie']Good podcast this week, I also like the 2hr length.[/QUOTE]
We definitely more long Cagcast:) my favorite podcast
 
Great show as always,gentleman.I was disappointed when I heard Tribes browser fell through.Here's hopping for next gen version of Tribes.
 
That sucks about the Heavy Rain spoiler, I'm glad as hell that I didn't see it. The internet seems to love to spoil things.

Kinda off topic I loved Billy Hatcher, it is one of the best GCN games and I hope that Sega will bring out a new Hatcher game.
 
I'm glad people called Wombat on his douchery re Assassin's Creed 2 on PC.

Good show all around.

Hoping to win a starcraft 2 beta!
 
Sucks that HR was spoiled for you Cheapy, its the most emotional game i've ever played, makes ME2 look like a monday morning cartoon, and i'm a huge ME fan (have all the collectors editions, novels and comics)

Great show this week!

enjoy the SC betakey guys, my treat, and good luck in the competition
 
I agree with wombat on the statement of pirates bitch the worst about DRM, he is right, pirates use DRM to "justify" their theft. Go on 4chan and start a thread on piracy, pirates always bitch the worst about DRM. They always say "You see! I told you, that the company just wants to screw the customer, well I'll just pirate it." Like their entited to the game or something. To counter that, they say "well I'll just send my money directly to ex. Infinity Ward and those bastards at activision will never see a dime." Bullshit, they never send that money and you're still stealing money from the publisher, who makes the decision to install DRM. It's the average consumer who actually suffers for DRM because of that. Wombat is right if you hate DRM don't buy the game on the PC and don't pirate it.
 
As much as it sucks to have a game spoiled, the twist in Heavy Rain is cheap and nonsensical to the point where it's almost better to know it up front. Still, I think the game has value in the way it tries (or, depending on your perspective, fails) to compel you to connect with characters that are about as close to psychologically realistic as video games get. Though I certainly wouldn't pay $85 for it, there really isn't very much else like it on the market, and for that reason alone it's worth keeping an eye on.
 
Or just accept that you'll lose sales and people will steal your game/movie/song/book/whatever.

Stardock has done fine with no DRM in their games. In fact, having no DRM probably saves them money because they don't have to waste the resources into trying to develop technology that will be broken anyway.

(The Ubisoft DRM has already been cracked. So any money they wasted on it has already gone down the drain)
 
If you play Mass effect 2 without pre loading a game from mass effect it essentially gives you all the renegade options. You don't choose whether or not the council was killed. Wrex is dead, you killed the council and the Rachni queen. Which is crazy since I predict the rachni are going to help you out in Mass Effect 3.

Did anyone catch how it was Liara that had to get your body back from the shadow broker for cerberus so they can revive you? It's hidden pretty deep in one of her conversations that you only have one chance to get to after you finish her little mission. It makes me respect Liara a lot more.
 
You know I kinda liked wombat when I first started listening to the cagcast, but now I cant stand him.. His annoying jokes, dumb laugh, the DRM on Assassins Creed 2, and now him bashing Chime. Screw you wombat just take him off and keep shipwreck. At least he adds to the show instead of taking away from it.
 
[quote name='nobodysleeps']
Did anyone catch how it was Liara that had to get your body back from the shadow broker for cerberus so they can revive you? It's hidden pretty deep in one of her conversations that you only have one chance to get to after you finish her little mission. It makes me respect Liara a lot more.[/QUOTE]

I didnt get that info in the game, but that side story is in the 4 part mass effect comics, I thnk part 3 just came out.
 
Good show, except for the awkward teenage girl talk lol

And the Trade In Value Tracker should be changed to the Trade In Tracker aka TIT.

Also, someone needs to hook Cheapy up with an new CAGCast picture to represent Boatcrash. You guys should have a picture contest.

In my mind it looks something like this with your heads on them:

image.php
 
I actually agree with Cheapy that the PSN blackout was not as bad as the news sites made it out to be. I also think that the RROD is a way worse symptom to experience. Come on, not working online for a day versus not working... I will take the blackout and say, "thank you, may I have another?"
 
Great show guys. Wold of Doody... err Duty sounds like it would be a great game. However, I would only play it if CheapyD and Wombat were playable characters. Wombat's character would have a barely audible ninja fart move and CheapyD would wield a giant poop club.
 
I was one of those spoiled on Heavy Rain and I'm usually a person that believes the destination is more important than the journey but I was leaning towards the other way with this. Shipwreck might have changed my mind though.
 
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Great show. I would really like to see Cheapy get his hands on Heavy Rain at some point and give his thoughts. I thoroughly enjoyed the game and plan on playing it several times again to get different outcomes.
 
I am listening to the show now, but still going to download it so I can listen to it again on my commute. lol
Btw, Shipwreck, does Mrs.Shipwreck play Resident Evil 5 together? I'd love to hear your thought on both of the DLC.

Great show guys, keep it up!
 
I'm glad you guys talked about Deadly Premonition. I'm hoping for more next week after you guys have beaten it(maybe). More people need to know about it. Sure it's terrible in certain aspects, but the story has surprising quality. As Shipwreck said, the developers knew exactly what they were doing, as crazy as it is. If you didn't know beforehand, you'll know the devs are completely competent once you reach the end when there's a certain sequence that contains a certain popular song playing in the background. That scene is a stroke of genius. The cutscenes following that are great as well. It's too bad the boss battles are so dull(excluding the first one which is pretty good).

I actually liken the game to Rule of Rose, another little known game which got bad to mediocre reviews because of gameplay and graphic issues, but has a very intriguing storyline that deals with some very dark subjects. Deadly Premonition deals with violence, hatred, murder(obviously), obsession, and child abuse, among others.

I hope there are more people who can look past the bad and see that there is quality here, it's just in an odd package. Though I certainly know people either won't "get" the humor or won't like it and that would hurt your view. It's clear that the IGN reviewer didn't get it, while the Destructoid reviewer did. I enjoyed every second of Deadly Premonition(minus fighting the wall-crawling enemies... they take so long to kill...) and definitely view it as the best $20 I've ever spent on a game. Again, I just hope this gains some traction and developers realize it's okay to release a game at a lower price that may be of a bit lower quality in certain departments, but still be of quality. If that made any sense. It's sad there are currently only 86 people on the leaderboards. :(

To those who are currently or going to play it( *looks at shipwreck and wombat* ), I HIGHLY recommend you do at least Keith's first sidequest. It will net you an infinite ammo submachine gun that made the rest of the game much easier. Keith's second sidequest will net you the infinite ammo shotgun that makes the wall-crawlers much easier as well. I forget which sidequest gives you the infinite ammo .358, but that's the most powerful gun in the game aside from the RPG. Actually, the sidequests are much more well thought out than most other open-world games. I say that because all of them gives characterization to the people of the town, town history, ect. That's more that can be said about the "kill or destroy that target" or "deliver this" side-missions with no real meaning to the game other than something else to do.

Anyway, good show guys.
 
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Great show as always. Wombat is a douche sometimes but that's why we love the guy right? Didn't know anything about Deadly Premonitions till he brought it up and now I'm going to reserve judgment on the game until I've played it.
 
Great show, guys. That sucks about the Heavy Rain spoilers. Too bad you can't stop assholes from being assholes. I would say that it's still worth playing even if you know who the killer is. In any case, though, it's certainly not worth $85.
 
great cagcast this week. I really want to play Deadly Premonition, but I need to save for PAX this year.
I enjoyed the Mass Effect 2 spoiler talk mainly because no other podcast I lesson to hasn't done it at all. I'm with you guys on ME2, it's the best 360 I've played to date, & it's going to be really hard to top this one.
Also cheapy, did you know Fallout 3 is coming to games on demand? Your dream of turning on your xbox and pressing a button to play it is coming true.

Keep it up guys,

PS. find a better site for live shows.
 
i was intrigued by the show name and i think its fitting.

Also i lold at the ps3 network being down.

also lol @ cheapys first thought to the buy one get 50 percent off your entire order " If you wanted to buy a baby stroller "
 
I forgot how much I used to love Tribes. I was totally late to the party, like by several years, lol, but I played the crap out of it with my friends. I always sucked at it, but it was so much fun.
 
Great show guys. Once again, Wombat has proven himself as a big douche. Cheapy, you're one unlucky guy. Good thing you pulled out your ban hammer all over that stupid fucker. As for Shipwreck, he has improved a lot since he joined the CAGcast. The menage-a-trois really works for the CAGcast. :rofl:

That one day PS3 "blackout" was not a nightmare... A disappointment? Maybe... It's funny how Kotaku can blow things out of proportion.

Oh yeah, do we have to wait until June for the Cheapy awards? :lol:
 
I wish podcasts would stop doing spoilers on games. I think they leave out too much from the "normal" show and are just thinking about what they are gonna say for the spoilers IMO. The cagcast still gave a good show so props for that
 
Great show guys. I've been listening to some the old "Vagina Clown" episodes and I'd like to say that the show has improved and yet remained consistent. Thanks for putting out a regular quality show. I'm really happy you guys talked about Deadly Premonition. Hilarious.
 
I'm not a Wombat hater by any means, but man did I find him annoying as hell on this show. It's like he had sand in his vagina or something. His attitude did get better towards the end though. Other than that it was a good show.
 
Good spoiler discussion. Cheapy, John Davison't complaint (spoiler free here) was that the story of the game was very believable and really sucked you in to the universe. Then the end comes and the boss is very much a tacked on contra-like, generic boss. He also was very critical of the whole reveal of what was being done with "the Lost" by the baddies at the end. And I have to say that I agree with him. ME2 is top notch, but as Wombat says it's about the journey, not about getting to the end.
 
When you talk about market share, I'd say Nintendo took the majority of Sony's market share, not Microsoft. Microsoft isn't in first place, Nintendo is. Nintendo has almost 50% of the home console market, while PS3/360 are basically around 28-22%.
 
I feel more compelled to get back to Mass Effect 2 now that there's 30 minutes of this CAGcast I can't listen to haha... someday, after all it took me over 2 years to beat the first one.
 
Great show, I really liked the ME2 talk. Too bad you guys all ended the game pretty similarly. After hearing others talk about how they finished their run throughs I realized that I missed quite a bit even though I finished everything.
 
My thoughts on Mass Effect 2. I would call it a Role Playing Game because, for me, it pulled me into the role of Shepard like I haven't experienced in a long, long time. Because of this I feel that my game is my world, I haven't been able to go back and work on a second play through. That is both for the first Mass Effect and the sequel. I don't feel right changing my world, I want to live with the choices I made throughout the games and I want to see exactly what happens when the trilogy concludes with the next game.

Maybe after I finish the third game I'll start over from the beginning and work all the way through three of the games again.

Great show, loved the ME2 talk. I'm interested to hear what you guys have to say about the Activision and the former Infinity Ward guys that has already come out since the show was recorded.
 
The Mass Effect 2 spoiler section was pretty dissappointing. "Who is your favorite character?" As interesting as this kind of stuff is, I want to know what decisions you guys made at the end of the game. You mentioned one or two items, but I was very curious to hear how your endgame experiences were... and you gave up very little.

*edit*
And on the topic of "role playing games"... I think you missed a big element of what makes an RPG, and that is defining your character for yourself. Over the course of the game you make decisions, and dialogue choices, that mold how YOU play the game. The Mass Effect franchise is one of the best examples of this I have ever experienced, to the point where I do not want to play it again until Mass Effect 3 comes out. As it stands, it is "my" story and I do not want to see any other Sheperd than mine. Maybe after I finish ME3, I will start a new save and play all 3 again to create a different story (but I'm not counting on it).
 
[quote name='NutManIV']I don't really agree with the way the guy kinda went after Wombat over the whole Ubisoft DRM thing, but I do think that Wombat was totally wrong in defending it.

Fact is, any discussion like "Well you probably have a good internet connection anyway" is pointless. Why? Because no matter what this will only ever affect people who paid money for the game. That's why it's so stupid! The only people who risk having their experience hindered or ruined are people who PAY for it![/QUOTE]
You are using it to save... you are not forced to play online. I'm sure you could save even with a 56k connection.

Not @Nutman, random note towards pirates: Pirate all you want. Just stop with the justifications. I missed the good ol' days when I hated pirates in quiet and they were quiet to. Now it seems they are flooding forums and blogs trying to justify their existence often times saying, "Pirating helps the industry!" (Seriously, I've seen that WAY too many times).

Just be a dirty thieving pirate by yourself, stop telling people why it's ok. Same with stoners, just do it stop talking about it or trying to justify it. That is all I ask.

[quote name='Bretts31344']The problem with the Ubisoft DRM isn't just having an internet connection, but having a 100% solid internet connection. Wireless is especially prone to interruptions and many routers time out and need to be reset sometimes. The game kicks you back to your last checkpoint if it has trouble connecting. What the heck? What happens if the Ubisoft servers are down, and especially when Ubisoft shuts them down completely (you know it will happen eventually, look at how soon EA servers get dropped). The kiss of death is the $60 price point too. If every game on the PC releases at that, piracy will reach a new high.[/QUOTE]
Can you give me your input on how Diablo 3 plays/works? Since you like to make statements on things you have no clue about.

Ubisoft said that you would not have to load from your previous save. There will be a save EXACTLY where you left off (if a disconnect occurs) and if it does not, then you only would go back a couple minutes.

ALSO - if for some odd reason Ubisoft HAS to shut off their servers. They said they would patch in saving (like it normally works) because they have the ability to do so. They also mention that if this does not go over well, then they can always patch it in before that. Some of you people are blowing this crap way out of proportion. Like those saying they will steal a game because they have to have the disc in the tray... *read my previous point*

[quote name='TRIXmonkey']This still sucks for all the legit users, being connected online to play a single player game isn't very convenient sometimes.[/QUOTE]

Yea, I can see it now. Poor Aunt Sally May tries to get on her Windows 95 Laptop to play some Assassins Creed 2 only to find she cannot, because she does not have the internet... and she does not have a gaming laptop, but that doesn't matter - SCREW UBISOFT!
 
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You don't spend upwards of a thousand dollars to play games that are less functional than the ones on a three-hundred-dollar console. I wouldn't want single player 360 games dependent on whether or not I could connect to Xbox Live.
 
I'm kind of shocked at the way that you guys handled the discussion on the PS3 internal clock error discussion. You really made light of the situation; instead of talking more about the real issue, you chose to play a game about which site had which strapline attached to their posts. In light of full disclosure, I'm a Wii / PS3 owner with no 360 in the house. I also have a gaming capable PC, but I don't play anything that can be played on my consoles on PC.

Let's frame the discussion in two lights. In one light, I found it completely ironic that this would happen to the mighty, sturdy PS3. Aterall, PS3 is the console that "only does everything" according to Sony. (except calculate leap years correctly). But who can be perfect.

My real complaint here is that the issue sue happened on a Sunday night. I'm a 30 something with a 9 month old that doesn't have a lot of time to game during the week or on weekends. Pretty much the only large blocks of time that I have to play games are on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights after my son is put to bed. While the issue is hardly a nightmare, it was very disappointing to me that when I sat down to try to put in few hours toward Assassin's Creed 2, I found that I couldn't even play it because of th clock issue. That sucked. Talk about DRM! This is bull crap.

Great show, take care guys.

Jeff in Plano, IL
 
Cheapy, "nightmare" was pretty appropriate while we were in the thick of the PS3 error thing, at the time *no one* knew what was wrong, and it looked like some sort of bug had just killed every single older PS3 model. People were envisioning worst case scenarios of mail-in fix discs, or having to send in their consoles. At the time, until they figured out the cause, *no one* knew it was only going to last 24 hours. So yeah, finding out you may own a $500-600 brick is pretty damn scary.

I don't agree with Wombat's compromise of "if you want to send the message that you don't like the DRM, don't buy the game, and don't pirate it. If you want worse DRM, don't buy it, and then pirate it." It doesn't work that way, I don't think any publisher is going to suss out the true intention of what you're doing, especially if you need to explain it and it still isn't obvious. If no one buys the game, AND no one torrents it, the publisher interprets that as zero interest and won't release another in that series. if no one buys, and everyone torrents, then obviously there's a ton of interest, but either the price point is way too high, or they're doing something else no one agrees with, and the solution is to change strategies. (To what, it really depends on how the publisher interprets those tea leaves...)

I think there are two better ways to go about this:

1. Preorder the game online, then cancel the preorder, and forward it to the publisher, telling them why you cancelled. I just did this with Yakuza 3 (for the omitted content)

2. In the case of AC2, buy the game somewhere with a good return policy, open it, and then return it saying it's unplayable because it keeps kicking you to the main menu because the DRM doesn't like your wifi connection. They can't legally resell those and must return them to the manufacturer. That sends a much clearer message.


DRM explained for console-exclusive gamers: Imagine you have an Xbox 360, and it red rings. Your friend is kind enough to loan you a 360 to finish playing through Halo ODST. You load it up, only to find out you can't play the game you purchased because it's registered to the dead 360. You call up Microsoft and explain the situation, and after taking down the new serial number of the console and putting you on hold for 2 hours, you can play the game. When your 360 comes back, you have to repeat the process.

Now, imagine that you could avoid the situation if you had just rented ODST instead of outright bought it on day 1. Which is the more appealing option? (For that matter, how is renting at all different from piracy? Those are still lost sales.)

Oh, and Wombat, if you made it to the bottom of this post, congratulations, you win a free sealed copy of Halo 3: ODST! I accidentally bought two and the second one is sitting on my shelf collecting dust. :) Shoot me a PM to claim your prize.
 
[quote name='dabates']Great show guys. I may have missed it but did you announce winners of the wish list contest?[/QUOTE]
Actually, I was wondering that too. Was it a one day only contest?
 
Wow Cheapy you've managed to hold that Tribes flag for quite some time now...sorry you won't get your dream of a new one. World of Duty...made me lol. Great stuff guys.
 
I forget who it was thinking about picking up a PC for actual gaming, but Cheapy you should so you actually have legitimate stuff to say about them. Then you'd actually have deals to post as well (PC Gaming gets huge discounts, primarily through Steam I'd say).
 
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