Tech-Gaming Technology, Gaming, and Culture
This week the Tech-Gaming crew blisters fingers with Hard Corp: Uprising, annihilates undead ninjas in Zombie Panic in Wonderland, hits the Ibizan streets in Test Drive Unlimited 2 and ‘sneaks behind to get inside’ Stacking. Our discussion of Splinter Cell: Conviction examines if Sam Fisher has the power to overwhelm James Bond, before we move on to our weekly dose of trivia and responses to reader questions.
Don’t forget to send your questions for our next mailbag, and subscribe to the Tech-Gaming Podcast on iTunes. Leaving a review would be an cool thing to do; and keep us from begging for feedback every show.
First this week. Whose the Wolfman this week?!?!
You guys love retro games don’t you? Bless your tech-hearts.
Great: Deagle as host, his ‘new’ voice, even if he is just turning up the bass on his line, talking about 007.
Not Cool: Where’s Karnov? Was last week just a tease?
Seems like Deagle’s voice gets deeper every week. Is he going through puberty or what?
BTW- Show’s not on itunes yet.
JRPG intro music for the win! I like it whatever it is!
Yes- Deagle as host. This needs to be standard, if if you can’t get Samurage’s name right.
Kama Sutra is now a martial art? Sign me up- I’m studying until I get my blackbelt.
Is it Mach-intarium or Mack-inarium? Just hassling you, SNOLA style.
Great mention of Machinarium.
Free demo this way
http://machinarium.net/demo/
Contra: Hard Corps> Contra and Contra 3.
Why is that happening?
RIP NOLA’s PS3. Status update?
Could be time to get a 360.
SNOLA, I don’t know how you are tolerating Stacking. I feel asleep twice while playing.
I just can’t get behind this game.
Brad Shoemaker watch the hell out. Deagle is gunning for ya.
Wildarms XF bad? Man, NOLA you sure love to troll.
New nickname- SeanTROLLA
Desert can walk AND shoot.
Desert came to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and he’s got a fresh supply of Wrigley’s.
Desert has a 9 slot inventory.
Desert’s played games when you were in diapers.
Between this and the CAGcast, why is everyone plugging the Deagle?
Sage is where it’s at. She doesn’t have to rely on new game to keep things interesting!
Sound like Deagle’s trying to talk Contra while NOLA’s talking Contra: Hard Corps. Neither is budging.
Show needs more Karnov reporting on Cave’s next couple of shooters.
Simple put Deagle is the game friend you’d want. He rarely acts like a know it all fanboy correcting people. He’s just all around around friendly guy, who not negative and generally enthusiastic about games.
Probably because he does most of the work.
I hope the ESA learns a lesson this year, and gets much less E3 press coverage.
The site I write for gets over 14,000 uniques a month. We were all denied press badges this year. Screw the E3 organizers. I don’t need them.
the 12:40 mark is my favorite part of this week’s show.
They Live is a move so bad it’s great. Yeah Deagle!
BTW- I can hear someone IM someone else!
High pressure urination? How the hell do you come up with stuff like that?
I actually spit out my Pepsi.
I was loving the show until SNOLA’s E3 comments. He sounded defeated or something. So E3 should be IGN, 1UP, Giant Bomb, and Joystiq covering the whole damn industry? Every gamers impressions of gamers should come from 20 or so people? WTF?
Have some self-respect. I come to this site because you obviously care about games, and it shows in your reviews and podcasts. There’s not that many sites where I can say that.
My question to you– if you think you are so D-class, then why do it every week? Give it 110% or don’t do it at all.
What site do you write for? Are you staff or a freelancer?
I have heard the same thing over and over- how unfair it is this year. But if people with some authority are denied, you should speak up.
What do you guys play/are playing over the weekend?
Read Dead Redemption here.
I’m not defeated. We haven’t gotten denial letters yet, and I’m fairly certain one or two of us will still be able to make it.
The thing about e3 is that the ESA needs to decide what it wants it to be. If it’s a trade show, they need to focus on vendors and figure out a way to make high profile trade shows relevant again. If it’s a press event, they need to find a venue where more developers can get a message across to a larger audience while limiting privileged information at the same time. But frankly, the steps they are taking makes it feel like they want to turn it into a convention, which isn’t good for anyone.
As for why I do this every week: I do this because I love it, and I love the people I do it with. I do give 110%, but at my core, I’m an analyst and a critic, and I’m not going to wear safety mitts when I have an opinion about something. If I did that, I wouldn’t bring anything to the discussion.
Good show this week, guys.
If NOLA think IGN, Giant Bomb, 1Up or any of the other sites are going to cover Monster Hunter, NIS games, or Harvest Moon like the way you do here, you are fooling yourself.
Maybe you need to get in touch with your readers more.
So far none of the sites or people you mentioned care enough to review Hyperdimension Neptunia.
So true. When I listened to Giant Bomb they made fun of ZHP, those fat bastards.
I doubt any of them will be able to get over Dpace Marines title.
Next weeks show- SNOLA apologizes. I’m seeing a trend here!
Well fight your way in IF you get denied, so of us really like the podcast and your style.
I’m sure people like Deagles NIS love, and Sages PC picks.
I just hope you guys and Siliconera go. You’re my goto sites.
So deagle is our very own vesion of chuck norris?
ESA can blow me. Our whole site got denied. Instead they want us to pay as general admission.
Yeah, that noise freaked me out. Whose was IM’ing who?
Sam Fisher>007 any day of the week. Any actor.
For the record, Play’s Dave Halverson one wrote an an E3 write-up (2008?) without actually attending the show.
Patrick Klepek called Stacking one of the best games of the current generation. I want to play the game he was controlling. The one on PSN was a boring, tiring, average puzzle title.
I listened again, and it seemed you wanted to give Joystiq and Giant Bomb a free pass just because they are full time employees, not based on the quality (or lack thereof) of their output.
All this well do is make the big sites bigger and eventually wear down the importance of small and medium sized sites. The richer get richer and the poor get poorer kind of mentality. How are upstarts supposed to thrive in this kind of Wal-Mart environment?
I’ll be laughing when Hip Hop Gamers posse fills your seats at the pressers.
Oh shit! A Deagle and Chuck Norris showdown! EPIC.
I think Chuck might strangle Deagle with his controller cord when he’s busy drawing his strategy on graph paper.
Mohawk updates please? Are you going to keep it?
And pics or it didn’t happen!
Well, they are both OLD.
Easy, Deagle, easy. It was a joke.
Yep, great podcast until SNOLA’s E3 comments. He made it sound like five sites cover the entire industry. Like DEagle said, there’s a lot of gaps there. The big guys barely cover Atlus and NIS’s stuff, let alone have them on podcasts.
Obviously, someone doesn’t understand their own audience.
Covering the games that other site’s basically ignore is what you do best.
Yep, I just couldn’t get into the game. It was a big yawn, and I like puzzle games.
I don’t really care if you guys go to E3 or not, but I do agree that the big sites don’t cover enough niche games.
They are a business, and a business seeks the maximum number of page views to get the most advertising money. So, they aren’t going to devote a lot of time with Atlus stuff, when EA’s games are going to get the hits.
Great show, but I’m beginning to think SNOLA’s comments are made just to rile people up and stir up the right amount of controversy.
I can’t blame you guys, it makes for a good show and an interesting read.
Deadspace2 I hope! And more conviction.
He is a reviewing machine. Who else can review 15 games in a month?
I expect more controversy from Sage and Deagle besides pee jokes.
The E3 thing is pretty sad. A lot of press that want (and should be going) are getting excluded by the ESA. I expect a backlash.
Where was TideGear this show?
Pretty good show this week. Sad, tho.
I got a kick out of Deagle’s excitement over Jet Li.
No bass tweaking, just a sore throat and a new mic.
e3 isn’t the right environment to cover or present those types of games anymore. For example, one of the smaller publishers we deal with (I’m not going to name names here) didn’t have a booth or an office last year. Instead, they had a representative standing at someone else’s booth (I believe it was Tecmo-Koei) and although they did have new titles to announce for the coming year, they mostly just sent e-mails with press releases, and asked interested press to set up meetings at a later date.
Likewise, another publisher only had half of an office, but could only afford about 15 minutes per outlet to briefly explain that they were releasing 6 games in 2010-11, half of which they couldn’t talk about because they didn’t want them overshadowed.
The way these smaller publishers get the word out is through smaller, more intimate meetings throughout the year. That way, they aren’t competing with Gears of Halo Duty 6 or the announcement of the PSP3DS3. We’ve been invited to several of these events this past year, and have reviewed every one of the games that each of those publishers have released in 2010. Our interaction with them during e3, however, was not nearly as beneficial to either party.
If you’re looking for coverage of Atlus and NIS games, check Siliconera regularly. You’ll get a lot more information about a small publisher during an off month than you will during a trade show.
Fair, nuff. Now that smaller pub must have been either Natsume, Atlus, or NIS.
Opening: Kirby’s Adventure
Closing: Chrono Trigger
Both from Orchestral Game Concert Vol. 5
I took it to a local repair shop by my apartment. It’s gonna run me about $90, but I’ll get my system back, not someone else’s refurb, so I won’t lose any of my data. I should have it back by the end of the week.
I didn’t recognize Kirby at all!
SNOLA is back in badness
I can’t wait for that PSP3DS3. I might pick up two of them.
Good show, except for the racist title. Lycanthropes deserve rights too!
Why is CAG giving away Rockin Android games, but there’s no contest on Adams homebase?
I heard that too. Not cool Karnov!
How am I tired to work!