Call Of Podcast
| Episode 38 - Easy Mode |
| Written by Cout Elmdor |
| Sunday, 04 July 2010 21:56 |
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Gather your friends and family around the Independence Day barbecue for this fire side chat regarding game difficulty, the importance of a game's title and box art to the plebs, Steam's summer sale, May NPD numbers, and a bunch of games, including Infamous, Deus Ex, Call of Duty, Red Dead Redemption, Rage, and as always, Hide the Salami.
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| Last Updated on Thursday, 23 June 2011 06:33 |
Comments
Just grabbed Civ 4 Complete off Steam for $10 to play on my macbook pro. My MBP is 3 and a half years old but hopefully it will run OK. I haven't played a Civ since 2 so I hope the complexity is still manageable!
I bought the L4D2 4-Pack with some CAGs for even more savings. I tempered my spending though, I still have games I bought from their Christmas sale that I haven't even touched.
You and me both! I have entire series of games that I haven't even begun. I need to be in a LOST type situation, but with my PC in the hatch. I'll even push the button every 108 minutes or w/e.
And Chris, good luck with Civ! I've tried a couple of times (not that hard, admittedly) to get into it, and I'm just flummoxed. I'm going to buy Civ V, though, and I'm going to learn to play it. It looks great.
Woot! More Borderlands and Civ players! You will love Civ IV Chris! let me know if you wanna play MP. Same with Borderlands as I bought ALL the DLC today! 10 bucks!
When you guys talked about game difficulty in the podcast, it brought New Super Mario Bros Wii to my mind. I just popped that game in last night to see if I could get past World 3-4 and 3-5. Man, that game is brutal.
By the time I clear world 3-4, I have 1 life left and expire quickly on World 3-5 which appears to be comprised of moving blocks that rotate. With enough practice, I think I could eventually clear it. The problem is that once you die, on 3-5, there is no way to save your progress so when you restart, you have to pass through 3-4 again.
I'm old and I'm losing my patience with this game. It's Mario so I know there is no reward at the end to justify the frustration for me other than seeing what the developers came up with in later levels. If I were 12 years old and didn't have the money to buy my own games, I would definitely spend more time on it but hell, there are way too many good games out there and I have a decade long back-log.
I have to say that the best part about the new Supr Mario Bros Wii was those movies you can unlock of guys blowing through those ridiculously difficult stages! My wife was (trying) to play it with our 4 yr old, and he said "Come on mommy, let's get these fuckers!" It's very hard to get mad at kids when they use profanity in context, because those guys are fuckers. "If you think these guys are bad, try playing through... oh yeah, don't talk like that!"
I beat it, got all the star coins and unlocked everything without using Luigi... but I have to wonder, I bet my kid would be exposed to less profanity if I spent my time playing more adult titles.
And as for easy mode, it's like breadth vs depth, since you guys have some many games you're trying to get through, it seems like easy mode would be the depth-first-search equivalent... you're just trying to get through the game as quickly as possible. But if you're looking for more breadth, playing through on the more difficult modes would mean you would have to explore more of the game to find a solution.
Well, my first challenge with Civ 4 was creating 10 gig (!) of free space to actually install it. Admittedly, that is with all the expansions included. The second challenge will be finding the time to play it a bit. With me working every Sunday at the moment and Persona 3 Portable in the mail, it's looking dodgy. But the upcoming 3 day weekend should help!
Breadth vs depth is a pretty interesting discussion for games. I've been having a lot of fun with Call of Duty lately, but it's about as shallow as can be. I guess that makes it easy to just hop into for an hour and go. With Infamous I kind of just barrelled through to the end without going too deep because the stuff below the surface was all pretty samey and repetitive. Some games though, you have to go all the way to get anything out of them, like Monster Hunter or X3: Terran Conflict. Sometimes it feels like more of an investment just to sit down with them and try to do anything.
Ideally a game could be deep over time but not require that much attention or time per mission or objective, which I think is why Monster Hunter or Peace Walker succeed at being very hardcore but also accessible enough. The same goes for fighting games or racers, or something like Civ, probably.
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