Dariencast Episode Five: Pirates of the Burning Podcast
I’m not going to beat around the bush; the new podcast’s out. And it kicks ass. Yours, specifically. You can dig it right here, and you can sign up your off-brand Taiwanese mp3 player to the syndication feed here to get the things automagically because this isn’t the goddamn seventeenth century and we don’t have to download our freakin’ files by hand anymore and don’t you forget it!
Comments may be posted in the comments. As you do. That’s right: you have my permission. How magnanimous can I be?
Duly dug. And the Frygars didn’t toast me this time!
They should make a silly, bright, cheery Castlevania game. As long as there’s a good game underneath the bright, cheery, silliness.
Comment by Nyperold | 19 July 2008
I had another thought on the topic of funny games: The thing about movies and TV episodes and such is that you don’t have to watch the same bit of comedy again unless you watch the movie again, unless, of course, the comedy bit is, say, a running gag.
But now let’s insert that same bit of comedy into a video game, and say that your character dies or otherwise fails soon after the bit. Now you have to hear it again, at least until you get to the point where the game considers that saved game to be past that bit for the rest of the game.
I guess they could put the less enduringly funny bits on some random NPC that you don’t have to talk to, so you can avoid him once you know his joke.
Now, I remember hearing one of you saying that the heroes in the Japanese version of EBA were male cheerleaders. But then, I listen to these things a lot, so I don’t have so much time to forget. :)
Hmm. I don’t know to whom to recommend The World Ends With You, that action RPG for the DS. On the one hand, it’s by SquareEnix, and has an antisocial 15-year-old boy as the main character, but on the other hand, the gameplay’s really interesting, the story’s pretty good, the setting’s really pretty cheery except for the two underpasses and A-East, and the music’s… well, it’s subject to taste, though the Pause menu music, while amusing the first time, gets annoyingly repetitive really fast, so I’m not sure who would enjoy that. You don’t have to go into any sewers (as far as I’m aware; there are three big question marks on the manual’s map) or keys, and I have yet to run into a rodentoid enemy. There’s no ice as a surface, just as an attack, so that’s good. You’ll have to play a minigame that’s pretty different from the main game, but you don’t have to win, so that’s a plus, or at least not as much of a minus. So yeah. Make of that what you will.
Comment by Nyperold | 20 July 2008
Huh.
It’s not easy to tell from Gamespot’s review whether or not the game is any good — I’d say this has a lot to do with Gamespot’s review being pretty bad, though, and isn’t necessarily a sign of trouble as far as the game is concerned. A few warning signs pop out at me, though:
"Plenty of heartfelt emotion from its teenage protagonists" is not a good thing, even though this dude seems to think it is.
Also, I hear the game’s soundtrack " is made up of an eclectic mix of J-Pop, hip-hop, and rock songs that get into your head and refuse to leave." It would be keen if at least the J-Pop would leave.
That said, it sounds like the sort of game that I’ll probably get sooner or later just so I don’t have to wonder if it’s good or not anymore. I like the idea about adding urgency to the combat; it worked very well for the Mario & Luigi series and the Baten Kaitos series — it’s pretty much what made those games engaging. So probably it’s worth picking up just to see a new take on the same concept.
Comment by Darien | 20 July 2008
Actually, the combat sort of reminds me of Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories (I don’t know about the other games in the series), in that… well CoM was a little more like a beat-’em-up with your deck determining actions, while this uses pins that have powers that you activate by doing different things with your stylus (and supposedly, there are some where you use the microphone, instead, but I’ve not encountered them), and which drain with use within a battle, and once they’re completely drained, you have to wait to use them again. Hopefully, you have other pins ready for action, or you’ll just have to dodge attacks while you wait.
Comment by Nyperold | 27 July 2008
Oh! There is one more thing I should warn you about, if it’s not too late already: Partway through the game, there is a mini-game that has little to do with the main game, and you do have to play it to advance. You do NOT have to win it. I don’t really know what happens if you do. Maybe you get better loot out of the deal, maybe not. Either way, I haven’t encountered it again as a requirement, or any other such mini-game. Unless you count the Pig Noise, but that’s like almost any other battle, except you don’t get attacked; you just have to defeat the pig before it leaves the screen.
I haven’t beaten the main game yet, though, so who knows.
Comment by Nyperold | 31 July 2008