Down the cave wall and attack them from behind; its time for a new edition of EpicBattleCry! This week, we check out the original Left 4 Dead DLC that’s due in September, ponder the news that StarCraft II has been pushed back to 2010, discuss Best Buy‘s new pilot program matching used games prices, and question the Champions Online sight-unseen lifetime subscription.
Then we tear into the main course with a look at the various Activision news that’s been floating this week; including getting spanked by Double Fine in the Brutal Legend countersuit and their partnership deal to get exclusive sections in various retail stores. Next up, we take a look at the new Batman: Arkham Asylum demo and discuss our thoughts on the game’s potential and what this will mean for comic book-based games.
The Battle Cry of the Week goes to Ben Heckendorn for his latest mod-project: Bill Paxton Pinball, Dark Void for chumping out and being pushed back to next year, Crytek for the very real possibility of being uprooted from their homeland if the German violent game ban becomes law, and Activision CEO Bobby Kotick for gleefully becoming one of the most hated figures in gaming.
Remember to sound off below and each week, we’ll pick a new comment to become the next Member Battle Cry! And, for those of you with a cam and a youtube account, record yourself reading your Battle Cry and embed the youtube vid in the comments, you might find yourself appearing on a future skirmish of EpicBattleCry! Stay brutal my friends.
-iPod compatible mp4 download-
Uh, might want to read that sidebar thing around 4:43 guys. StarCrat? Nice one.
I’d like to make my battle cry out to the guys that organize tournaments like Evolution. Evo 2009 was an absolute hoot to watch through the live stream online, and seeing events like it makes me wish that there was actually a channel like ESPN for competitive gaming. Why can’t we glorify pro Street Fighter players like we do professional football players? I can only hope the demographic grows enough so that we can someday create the same hype of the super bowl with a competitive game like StarCraft or Marvel vs Capcom.
I don’t wanna watch other people play video games on ESPN. Most of the people interested in EVO were either there or watching live streams or vids on IGN. There is’nt enough interest in MLG and there probably never will be.
Another great show ^^!! You guys rock!!
I’d like to make my battle cry go on to the Need for Speed series but on a critic point of view.
The series became legendary for the first releases it made, making it one of the best racing series ever, although it has become milked and i have witnessed my favorite racing series getting crappier by every release they make. Most Wanted became the great peek on street racing games and tuning. From then on, the series went 60 MPH to 0 in an eye blink. Too bad.
hey guys,
I just wanted to comment on the fact that everyone complains about innovation n games today. I Heard people complain Halo 3 was the same as Halo 2 and Madden is the same every year But the truth is we buy those games. we go out and buy sequals as oppose to going out and trying a new IP. the most popular games you hear mentioned over and over are Franchise titles (Call of Duty, Halo, ect…) So what im saying is why should publishers go out and try something Crazy, when the formulas their using are working fine. I mean after all we are the ones going out and buying these games.
My battle cry goes out to the game companies that decide to bring DLC out on the disc and not just out on PSN or XBL. This really shows that gaming companies IE Rockstar and Bethesda are catering to a more oldschool audience and they are really diversifying, because lets be honest, not EVERYONE has internet yet. These gaming companies are really expanding their audience and trying to reach more gamers and I give them props for that!
My battle cry goes out to the guys currently developing the new adaptation of Mechwarrior. Although for the life of me I can’t tell who the fuck these guys are, they fucking rock! A recent comment from them said they want to bring back Crimson Skies after they finish Mechwarrior. Hopefully that means Mechwarrior isn’t too far off, and if it is good then I’d be happy to see these nobodies make Crimson Skies 2.
I think what Activision is doing is serious bullcrap… I mean rising the prices! It’s really unfair to PC gamers, because we are not getting Hardended Edition nor Prestige Edition nor Prestige mode in MP… I mean why the hell do we have to pay 10 $ more?
I think that Activision just wants to get rid of the PC as a gaming platform.
Firsly they whine about piracy on Pc, then they rise the prices of the game (that means more people are not going to be able to afford it… I know I won’t because 59.99 $ here means 59.99 Ls(about 120 $) and thats a whole lot of money)!Back to the point! “More people are not going to be able to afford it” that means more piracy… In the end thats another great reason for Activision to blame all their failures on PC community!
What do You think about that?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWEEv9x65yM
im not all to great with talking and my memory card filled up so i got cut off at the end.
see im pissed that i have a great computer, well. for its time it was the best.
i recently picked up star wars knights of the old republic for the computer.
now older games, are suppose to play better on newer hardware right? well i get it, install it and i am playing it at 800×600 because text in anything bigger than that i have to lean forward to read. i have no special things turned on, and i cant get the game to go better than 20 fps, even if i set it to the bare minimum im still getting 20fps at best, with it averaging out at 5-10fps. and here is the thing, i max that game to the highest resolution my monitor supports, max out every setting, its still playing the exact same, no real difference at all, its just hovering around 15fps more often than any of the lower settings.
i ENVY consoles for never having to have to deal with that kind of bullshit.
and so you know, i was pretty much done talking in the video anyway.
btw… it’s not just that Crytek weren’t able to sell their own games in their home country. If this ban passes, producing such games will be considered a criminal act. Thus if Crytek wants to continue developing their games, they have to leave if they do not want to see a prison cell from the inside.
I’d like to sound off on the multitasking megacorporations.. I mean EA at first was bad enough producing and publishing massive amounts of dry and tasteless sequels, but what do u do when a relatively good one,like activision-blizzard, newly founded titan, will produce good games, and try to market them at insane prices? People still want the games, most will buy them, prices go up, so does piracy, small time developers and publishers have no room to compete, developers start moving to consoles… it’s a vicious circle. So I ask u, what now?
I guess we’re better off with cutting out the publisher and the discs and going “steam” all the way, tho i doubt they won’t find a way to keep the prices high even then.
my battle cry of the week goes to all the american gamers that bitch to the price of modernwarfare 2. seriously you think 80 dollars is expencive for a game wile we in Europe pay that price already for decades. i think activision thought..hey we charge 65 euro’s (around 90 usd) for a game in Europe so why don’t we do that also in America i mean cmon it IS the same price right? i think Americans really are cheapskates in games because i heard now for the first time that gamestop (which we don’t have in Holland) sells their used games for ONLY 5 bucks less then the new game. when we buy used games in our country it is like 20 to 30 euro.s cheaper then the new game price and i think that is how it should have been all along. so i say that activision sees the price potential in their game and tries to see what the consumer will do and i dont blame them for doing so.
Starcrat II? whats that?
My Battlecry is about Developers like valve who “want” to give free content on consoles like xbox360 ie L4D, Why can’t they give out a load of codes for a FREE download? and us as consumers should avoid paying for it, If your really must get it, wait a week. when companies see that for the 1st week or so they have had abysmal sales they will panic! at the very least it will send a message, surely us as gamers can wait an extra week or so too get a message across!
My battle cry goes out to the development of Unreal Tournament 3 on the PC, after its original release. Back in the days I was a huge UT fan, but after a while the follow-ups seemed more and more shallow. When UT3 was released, I was really dissapointed: The interface was horrible, and the whole game just screamed “console port!”, and as far as I can remember, it even was markteted more as a “console shooter made by the gears of war team”, than the hardcore PC fragfest it used to be.. and altough I own and like console games, UT just isn’t a game to be played with analog sticks.
However! Since then it really came a long way, with a huge patch (“Titan Pack”) and several high quality map packs (“Community Bonus Pack 3″, versions 1, 2 and 3), which pushed the game back to a completely new level of awesomeness. In short: if you liked the old UT style but didn’t think much of newest iteration of the franchise, check it out once more! Its gotten an amazing support both from publisher and fans, and by now even contains the science-fiction-space-age-technology option to connect to your friend’s private game via IP – holy balls!
Additionally, I’d like to thank Brent for bringing up the gamers’ situation here in germany.. it really sucks monkey balls! Right now, a infrastructure to censor the net is being established, and members of the conservative party already said that foreign websites should no longer be accessible if they promote/sell violent video games. It’s probably not going to happen, but this is how our political leaders think
My battle cry is about the general stupidity and corruption of the gaming industry lately. As mention in skirmish 41 Activision is un-necessarily trying to make themselves stand out in the crowd, while in reality, they are making themselves look like jackasses. (or dumb-asses) No need to mention all of the shit Bobby Kotick has done. As for some of the other company’s, Insomniac is having 4 different pre-order packages for the new ratchet and clank. Eidos is trying to manipulate their review scores. Capcom has downloadable content for a game the day its released, and not only that, some people say that the content on some of Capcom’s games are already on the game and your paying to unlock them. And EA got some bad publicity from their “sins” contest for Dante’s Inferno.
This isn’t true for all of the company’s but it seems that every other day there is some outlandish statements said by a executive, a court battle being fought, or a scheme to make money being discovered. Its not good for the industry and its embarrassing to the gaming community that we have to deal with this.
My Battle cry of the week is also about Modern warfare 2 and the actions of activision in particular. Not only did they raise the price for the game (55 euros for the pc version) but they also announced that pc wouldnt be getting any of the special editions for the game, not even the hardened one.
There are many games that are exclusive to consoles but hardly any that are only designed for Pc’s, and it seems that as time goes by the less pc games we get and the more developers etc concentrate on the console market and forget the vast amount of people that are only Pc-gamers.
Many other games are like MD2, having the “good stuff” only for the console versions and forgetting about the die hard pc players, also considering the fact that CoD achieved it’s popularity mainly through its’s pc games it strikes me as an odd thing to just shaft the ones that like playing their Fps games on pc rather than ps3 or xbox.
So could this “new trend” be the way it’s going to be in the future? Games being made only for the Consoles and pc forgotten completely? I myself like playing both pc and console games, and like many others i think that for example most fps games function better when played with a mouse and a keyboard rather than with a gaming pad. I’m really hoping that developers keep making games for the pc as well and not focusing solely on the console front
Is it just me or did Activation became extremely greedy and blowing up their ego after the merge with Blizzard. Every thing they do to get our money really looks like the ways of the Blizzard.
+1
I am really pissed with the exclusivity of Modern Warfare 2 Prestige Edition only for consoles. I would bought the normal/cheapest MW2 edition but, come on at less not start excluding PC gamers.
Ok in pc exist more piracy, but this isnt an excuse. PC game is cheaper than 360/PS3 and collector edition for PC would be cheaper too. You can sell it at same price lots of people will buy it. You only piss buyers with these policy, why always are we the victim?
Yes i buy pc games, I exist!
Another annoying thing is the present/future FPS actions looking to be played with pads, making games more camper, slow…worst. With pc you always could jump a low wall, no you must go and press button X, auto-aim, maps…
This is a desevolution for FPS in PC.
PS: Sorry for my bad english im not an englishman xD
Hi my battle cry of the week goes to all the people out there who listen to music rather than the game audio itself. I think this method of “enjoying” games becomes more and more prominent as even gamedisigners place modules into their games so people do not have to listen to the ingame sound but to their own music – like in PAIN and such games of the PSN. The problem I see here is that even if people “enjoy” the game some kind of “more” when listening to their music while playing, it kind of steals the purpose of BGMs to create a certain feeling to the game. I see this especially on WoW where I know very much gamers who deactivated the ingame sound for at least 2 years and complain about the fact that the game does not give you the right gameplayfeeling – while listening to death metal …
I came to the idea to adress this problem because i resently started playing old final fantasy games and i realy have to say – games would never have been the games we remember without their own distinct BGMs and soundtracks.
So: Players: LISTEN to what the game tells you or do not PLAY the game if you hate the audio.
And: Gamecreators: Give us more masterpieces of gamemusic like the ones of final fantasy; golden sun; blazblue; zelda; mario (especialy the ssbb music player rocks) and so on – you know what I mean. Games ARE better to get into if the whole thing “around” matches good, too. (but a bad example about how NOT to do it is the samurai warriors series)
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By the way a question to the battle cry team:
How do you like the idea to make the “getting the community into the podcast” a little bit “better” by making some kind of skype / TS round (and no youtube contest) where you listen to some themes people of the community like to adress and talk a bit with them “face to face” about the problems of gaming today “in the show” (or even make a new weekly podcast called something like “EpicBattleAssembly”).
My battle cry goes out to Activision…I don’t even need to to tell you why as you already know. Thank you for giving pirates a REAllY good reason to steal your games. For that, Kotick gets my love.
Support the Activision boycott…sorry Blizzard…:(
My Battle Cry goes out to the Youtubers, bloggers, and so called journalists who talk all the time about how games should be. How they should have Citizen Kane moments, how they should make us gamers cry and how the should be finally reach to the level of quality to be considered art but…… never do anything about it.
All talk, no action.
If they spend their time learning how make games then making those very games themselves (which if you didn’t know is hard work) instead of ranting then maybe, just maybe, new innovative, inspirational, artistic games will appear more often.
But like I said, all talk, no action.
geez guys every week you talk about wow and I’m starting to get the feeling you guys have a secret forbidden love for the game. WOW FTW.
yeah i know there is lots of wow news but there are so many other sites dedicated to just WoW news there are better and more specific
Is it just me or was Daniel Kayser a little too critical almost rude against Brent Adams in this episode? Maybe i’m just overreacting but oh well. keep on rolling with the episode guys.
my battle cry goes out to old games that should have sequels. firstly, bully (canis canndem edit) is my second faviout game of all time, its brilliant and sold like hot cakes, why dont rockstar realise this and make one of there regular titles like gta. also, most of the games that do get to have sequels are usally the the most popular games, gta, cod, fifa and pes, zelda and the list goes on. so come on rockstar, shor, im hyped for red dead redemption but that new spy game they mentioned at E3 sounds like a pile of wet mung, WERES BUULY 2! in every forum about it all i see is, weres bully 2, when is bully 2 out, is the new bully gunna be on ps3. so why dont game developers listen the there fans about the games they want.
[...] post by Viking Brent [...]
I want to send a whiny battlecry to all developers who seems to think that pointless costumes are a neat addon for a game. Seriously – does anyone give a flying fuck about costumes? At least add something useful to DLC’s and “collector’s editions”. It seems to me that developers somehow got it in their heads that costumes is something gamers are clamoring for. Snap out of it, dammit. Seriously.
And while I’m at it – how is it even remotely *possible* for a Japanese developer to NOT know that a shite-load of gamers want the original japanese voice overs and not some poorly acted localized crap. Sure – some turn out good (Final Fantasy 12 is a spectacular example of GOOD localization) but most of the time it’s just utter shite. Watching an interview with one of the guys behind Demon’s Soul he seemed genuinely surprised that people outside Asia would want the original voices. Way to not keep up with your audience.
my battle cry goes out to activision about the making Robert Kotick resign. This man acts like an arrogant ass, believing that he is responsible for all that the company does and believes he is the god of the gaming industry. KoDICK does not deserve to work within gaming and causes nothing but bad press for activision when the release of Modern Warfare 2 and Guitar Hero 5 is now just counting down the weeks. But I have nothing against Blizzard. Blizzard kicks ass
My battle cry goes out to all the poor saps that bought a lifetime subscription for Hellgate London and all the future poor saps that are going to buy the lifetime for Champions. I feel buyers remorse for simply buying Hellgate, I can only imagine what the people who subscribed for it or even bought the lifetime feel. This doesn’t mean Champions wont go down in a ball of flame and take your subscriptions with them but it doesn’t mean it wont. Just look at all the MMOs that have been closing their doors for good lately.
hi everyone,
my battlecry of the week goes to my homeland germany. i´m so sick of the censorship thats going on in my country. because 1 of 80.000.000 germans go nuts and start shooting people a whole industrie should be shut down? seriously?
dont get me wrong, there is nothing bad about trying to protect children from getting in contact with inappropriate media, but i´m 28 years old. in germany the same laws that try to protect the children patronize you as an adult!
i wonder what they will take us next, after the videogames industrie got banned and the killing goes (mysteriously) on… movies? internet? perhaps the right of free speech… that madness must be stopped! AND, because in a democratic country like germany your vote is worth shit, i could just hope that the gaming industrie is strong enough to prevent that ban from happening… with money… cause thats how politics work…
my battle cry goes out to digital downloads for full games, such as the new xbox live games on demand system. It is a good idea but I do have one complaint. microsoft should not just limit the ways to buy to just redeem codes and credit cards. They should give more payment options to people who don’t have credit cards and have to use microsoft points. Otherwise the system is good and hope to see more great titles with the great games there now
My battle cry goes out to this video. Starcraft 2 postponed is nothing new, remember how long we had to wait for diablo 2. I think its laziness on there part I’m not into starcraft but with diablo 3 also coming out next year is highly doubtful as well. What I’m a little worried about is that they might implement a pay to play on battle.net. Then I wont buy Diablo 3, I’ll just simply stray away.
Best buy and Gamestop price match competition is not going to change anything. I think people are going to rent more if anything.
MMO’s have to stop with the blizzard subscription model. You want your MMO to be successful lower your montly fee to 5 bucks a month, technically you still making money.
Now Batman Arkham Asylum might just be the game of the year hands down. I mean you guys complain about the game stealth, brawling etc which to me is way better than metal gears and resident evil which to this day has not implemented jump or strafe options. This all comes down to if the game is not a like First person shooter, involves the main character using a GUN its like “Oh it must be crap”. I played the demo countless times the idea of pummeling people unconscious and not killing the is awesome. Plus also batman can’t use a gun so enough of the negativity. Its amazing how you give praise to brutal Legend and Dark void(Rocketeer ripoff) which to me are going to be garbage hands down. As for repetitiveness FPS Simulations(not games)are the most repetitive genre in the industry and its destroying it. I bet if the batman game had multiplayer the game will have been treated differently. A good example is how people are gaga over Uncharted 2 and Modern Warfare. Lets see same model Point,Aim,shoot, will be packed with loads of cutscenes and what else. AHHH we can’t forget Multiplayer. Ding Ding Ding. I mean to compare ucharted 2 to Splinter cell Conviction I think Splinter cell is better.
Its like last years game of the year was a Fallout which I think didnt deserve it. DEADSPACE was truly the best game last year hands down, its scarier than resident Evil 5, had no cut scenes unlike Metal Gear Solid 5 atrocity and it didn’t have multiplayer or First person mode like Resident Evil 4 which is still by far the worst in the RE series.
As for Germany banning violent games? Good, as long as they are FPS simulators. This genre needs to go away I’m so freaking tired of the lazy, unimaginative minds the game industry has had since the rise of Golden eye. Its all about the money it racks in because its crap created by morons to sell to morons. It doesn’t take much brain power to create a FPS game, anyone can do it. All you have to do is follow the same model which is. Point, Aim, Shoot…WOW I just made a FPS simulator. I’m a gaming genius.
My battle cry goes out to Konami, who according to Kotaku among others, have begun re-manufacturing some of the greatest titles from their company. Titles such as ZOE: The 2nd runner, Suikoden Tactics, MGS2 and MGS3 have already been announched.
I think this is the true meaning of a game developer who focus on their fans. It’s is true that they’ll make money of it, but it still allows for more people to play classic games, especially in the case of ZOE and Suikoden Tactics.
my battle cry goes out to DLC, i realize you guys have discussed this before but i am completely dumbfounded by the fact that i have to pay additional money for DLC let alone map packs. First off what exactly am i paying for in a map pack the company has all ready developed the graphics engine and the textures and so on and so forth so what work has actually gone in to creating a map pack, and beside didn’t i pay for the time and money that went in to developing the graphics engine and the textures and so on when i bought the game for $60. So what am i having to pay for when i download a map pack, or any DLC for that matter. To add to what you guys where saying about Microsoft not letting valve give it’s DlC for Left 4 Dead for free on the Xbox i can go download Halo map packs for free so there should not be any reason why Valve cant put there DLC up for free. Now, moving on from map packs granted that developing DLC for games like Fallout3 is more complex than a map pack there still is no reason i should have to pay for it, case in point the game of the year edition of the game comes with all the DLC except for mother ship Zeta at no additional charge so apparently it’s note a big deal for Bethesda to give away the DLC for free, also it was stated in a interview about Broken steel that it was the first DLC to be maid/worked on entirely post launch so that seems to suggest that “Operation Anchorage” and “The Pitt” where produced before the games ever shipped in which case it would seem that they should have included them in the realeas of the actual game. Now, i just want to state that i think that DLC is unfare abuse of the consumer and that we gamers should not stand for it, that’s not to say that i dont think company’s should make mony but that i think DLC is not the correct way for them to be nichle and dimming use. I don’t profess to haveing a degree in game development and or programing so if any one understands why it is right for them to be charging for DLC pleas tell me why. Other wise i think all of us gamers be it on PC,Xbox, PlayStation, or Nintendo should start a pettition that we will all boycote any and all DLC that is note free, also i think you guys with your weekly show wide audience would be perfect for kicking it of, also i think with the upcoming Modernwarfare 2 would be the perfect game for us to start with because Activision loves screwing the consumer case in point Guitarhero.
P.S. I apologize for any and all spelling and or Grammatical errors, and look forward to a response either from you or the community.
Hey, my Battlecry goes out to the good aspects of the used game market. Now I know how it hurts the developers and publishers of newer titles, but it is often the only way for people to get games that are a few years old ( outside of eBay). It’s really easy to miss good titles when they first come out, so I think its important that someone is still selling them years after release. I still go into Gamestop and buy 5 year old ps2, Game Cube, and Gameboy titles that I missed out on, and this would be a lot harder to accomplish without Gamestop.
bobby kotick can suk it
First, why do you climb Mount Everest? Because it’s there. Why does the Pirate Bay steel games? Because they can. Price in my humble opinion has nothing to do with it. I do think Acitivision representatives are forgetting who it was who raised them to their mega popularity and corporate heights… us, the gamers! In all fairness I think developers should get what their worth. If they don’t we may have a massive strike on our hands the likes of the great writer walk out in Hollywood a couple years back.
The monster that is Halo can not be contended with even if DarkVoid turns out to be a far better game. Look at Mythic going up against Blizzard with Warhammer Online AOR. It is an awesome mmo but WOW is so huge and has dominated the market for so long I don’t think Blizzard can’t be dethroned.
And I liked the Batman demo. Can’t say I was shocked at anything offered. Seems like fun but nothing real new or inventive stood out to me.
Awesome Podcast guys! Keep up the great work!
My battle cry goes out to your broken flash player. THE FUCK. It keeps on cutting out. THird attempt at loading and it just randomly cuts out even though it loaded the whole thing… well at least that’s what it’s telling me, when in reality, it didn’t.
My battle cry goes out to people who blame forms of entertainment for violence that others commit such as gaming, movies and music.
In the words of Eminem, Chris Rock, Seth McFarland and many others, it is not the creators of the media to censor them selves but the parents to stop there children from looking, listening, or obtaining violent things.
Parents should be held responsible for the actions of there children. If they thought them right they wouldn’t go on crime sprees or shoot up schoools.
My battle cry goes ut to the game companies that are creating shitty next gen games. Todays games are really expensive and to put a 60 dollar price tag on a bad game you practically raping the customers wallet. Put some god damn effort in to your work or dont be in this kind of business. Stop taking customers from good game companies and start over to make som good games instead of wasting time and effort in to something that is full of bugs,bad graphics and bad controls.
my Battle Cry goes out to the Xbox Live on Demand that just had come out today. (Aug 11th) now being Download our titles straight to our console this could possibly a heads up to Gamestop and best buy. what i mean is that says if you could download Modern Warfare 2 at full price on your xbox or whatever console you have for full price and maybe the add ons as well. this could cause the Gamestop to cease to sell in the gaming market. so my only thing is this going to have game marketers to rethink on how they sell games and at what price
my battle cry goes out to WTF prices for some mmo games like champions online and WoW, i mean 200 fucking $ just to be able to play the game all the time. look at games like flyff, rappelz, cabal online, lunia online, perfect world, ether saga, and the list goes on and on and on and on, these are all great mmo’s and guess what… there for free, free i tell you.
i just think that monthly pays of 20 or 15 $ or paying 200 fucking $ just to play the game, plus, you need to buy the game first, wich is already 60 $ or so, it’s just too fucking much.
My Battle Cry goes out to Infinity Ward for raping realism with Modern Warfare 2.
It is really strange to see how they try to base the game so mush on reality but in the end mess up everything and turn it into Fantasy Warfare 2.
One example is the fact that you fight against a whole army yourself.
While CoD2 did it’s best to give you the impression that you are a part of a army fighting a war.
I would advise you to view the SP and MP footage again and take a look at the next view things:
recoil, movement speed, damage.
the most ridiculous things i have seen so far are: AT4 being used as a surface-to-air missile and the heartbeat sensor.
I really hate to see these semi-decent games being over hyped and overshadowing the really interesting games like say S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat.
My Battle Cry goes out to almost all of us gamers. We just love to blow shit up and kill stuff! We just know how to get rid of our aggressions by playing games and going on flame-wars in forums!
Gaming is awesome!
My battle cry is playing off what you said in last weeks and prior weeks episodes reguarding Activision and they’re blatant arrogance. I hope and wish that gamers will stand up to them and say fuck you you arrogant cock suckers! Lower the price and we will play mw2. At least wal-mart doesn’t slap their dick in targets face. Activision doesn’t even show respect for schaffer for fuck sake. Personally i’ll be buying Operation Flashpoint in stead of MW2. I gotta give cred to the guys at codemasters for having the balls to come out during the same Quarter at mw2. And we need more companies to step up. Fucking decimate those red coated assholes. Dump activisions tea in bosten harbor.
My Battle Cry goes out to The Childs Play Foundation. After reading this article on kotaku.com (http://kotaku.com/5333593/gaming-before-chemo-a-childs-escape?skyline=true&s=x) I think this is a great foundation. Gamers and comapnies alike really, really need to get onboard with this.
I am 24 and was recently diagnosed with a non cancerous brain tumor that i had to have surgery removed. I had to spend a long week in the hospital and something as simple as videogames would have made things slightly better. these kids go through stuff that is 100 times worse than i can even imagine and i think EVERY hospital should have some sort of program like this. so the bottomline for me is two fold. First, gaming can be theraputic and people need to start seeing that. Secondly, the more people we can get involved the more we can make these children’s lives a little better. PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAoVX-K6sPU
This is my video battle cry of the week!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAoVX-K6sPU
My battle cry goes out to the game companies that decide to bring DLC out on the disc and not just out on PSN or XBL. This really shows that gaming companies IE Rockstar and Bethesda are catering to a more oldschool audience and they are really diversifying, because lets be honest, not EVERYONE has internet yet. These gaming companies are really expanding their audience and trying to reach more gamers and I give them props for that!
My battle cry goes out to EA and CNC 4. *Ahem*…NO TIBERIUM ON THE MAP!!!. We all no that there will be no harvesting of tiberium in cnc4. Fine okej, they have made a nother way to get tiberium. NO. As i just read there will be no F-ing Tiberium in the game. There will be hubs. F-ing hubs.
Like Red alert 3 but hubs…Do what ever you want whit the gameplay but for the love of jesus dog, named BULL*HIT dont remove tiberium.
My epic battle cry this week is to poorly executed promotions.
Brent makes a very good point about the execution of these promotions made by game companies. I encountered the same sort of situation with Age of Conan, where they had the free 2 weeks evalutaion period, when you sign up for this they offer up a promotion where you can get 20% off the regular subscription and also get some in-game goodies, but this offer was only available at that time and giving you about 30 seconds to decide, so what that means is that you don’t get the special offer ever again or during you evaluation period. This to me makes no sense? Like Brent said shouldn’t the users be allowed to evaluate first before they jump into the deep end of the lava pit? And I believe they would have had more subscribers back, if you they had that promotion up during the whole 2 weeks of re-evalutation, I know I was keen until I found out later.
Don’t get me wrong, but promotional ideas that game companies come up with are great, but they just have POOR execution.
Evening folks.
The last part of the podcast is prolly the most important one. While being interconnected with developer society myself, I must say that game prices or … at least PC games business model has gone NUTS, and thank god we have AppStore and DLC.
The idea to charge that much money for a single copy of Modern Warfare 2 is pretty logical, as far as marketing goes, my guess is that they have everything figured out and counted. No one would release a title that big and pay so much money to the press to stimulate all that buzz around the end product without at least a 60% assurance of it’s revenue. … Activsion simply charges the maximal poss price, while they still can.
In my opinion as soon as DLC games start to become competitive in terms of sales (no graphics or story line or cameo appearances of 50 pence or whatever), big developers and producers will have to drop prices, unless they want another FatPrincess eating all the target’ audience money …
I was reading your article about Darksiders and I clicked on the official website link. There was music playing on the main page, so I put my headphones on and I just sat there for 5 minutes simply listening to the song. That reminded me how great music in video games can be sometimes and how much impact it can have in a game. So, my battle cry goes to all the music composers in the industry who are making those great soundtracks. Thank you guys.
My Battle Cry goes out to all these CEO’s and publishers and such becoming media whores what ever happened to the good old days when companies were measured on their games and not on how much they can spout off into the closest microphone. I can understand talking about your game and when it will come out and how awesome it will be but these guys fueling the flame wars, bashing other companies, or talking about how they would love to raise prices more if they think they could should just shut the hell up. If you want to hop in front a a freaking mic and talk about your game or the project you are working on great. Otherwise shut the hell up get to work and do what you are going to do. I don’t care how big your cock is all I care about is if the game your company is producing is good and worth playing.
Knowing full well it has been said before I would once again like to put focus on the one sad trend I keep seeing now.
Game developers putting more and more emphasis on graphics instead of the actuall gameplay. To answer the standard response to this: “No, I don’t want to go back to ‘Pong’ graphics.”
But I’ve been playing games since around 1992-1993 back when graphics weren’t all that importent sence you couldn’t really make a lot out of the systems of the time. And acording to me some of those games are still fun, personaly I remember Moonstone. Great game back then. And it is something I still enjoy.
But to tie this into this skirmish. According to me the cost of a game (or any product) should be a result of the effort put into it, such as time in development and so on. And I know graphics is a time consuming thing to program and therefor leads to an expensiv game. But I would like to see more games that focus more on the gameplay. I’ve seen more and more games the past few years that look great but are either too short or just not fun.
Put more of the development time into making it a fun game that I can’t finish in 1 day. I don’t feel like paying 500-600 skr (thats between 65-80 USD) for one day of fun. Most of the new games I’ll end up going to a netcafé and play through and there I pay 20skr/hour (about 2,50) or 100skr for 12 hours. That way I can finish most new games during one sitting. Yea I do know that isn’t the best way to enjoy a game to go through it in one sitting. But say a game is 8 hours long. Explain to me why I want to pay 5-6 times the money to play through it at home?
What I’m getting at is that I’d like to see games the way they were. When you could sit for a week and still not be done with a good game. But somewhere along the way it has become standard that a game is 6-8 hours of gameplay and thats worth full price. I would like to see more development time spent on the gameplay instead of the graphics. Becouse who can really argue that it is the graphics that make or break a game?
[...] I am fraught with deciding among too many good topics pontificated upon during this week’s EpicBattleCry. Choices that nearly made the cut this week are: Microsoft not allowing free downloadable game [...]
My battlecry goes out to Treyarch. Thanks Treyarch, for bringing more Call of Duty to the Wii. World at War was the first well done third party online experience for the Wii that I came into contact with, and although the support wasn’t on the level of the HD twins, it was there. (Hardcore TDM, and Hardcore FFA, the new modes they added later, are my favorites).
I look forward to playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (Wii) later this year, and getting pwned by people who are waaaaay too skilled for their own good.
hey guys great show!
my battle cry would go to STEAM, I know this service has been there for like A WHILE and all but down here in argentina with our low value currency and all these stupidly high taxes for imports its a freaking good way for buying games, I’m truly pissed off that PSN down here doesn’t have support for a store for some unknown truely idiotic reason but thanks to those psn cards on ebay I can buy some pretty sweet stuff from there too… sure I’d love to have my boxes and manuals and stuff but it’s also cool to know that I can re-download anytime anywhere the games I pay for, and I’m directly supporting the developers and paying a lower price and all, and some offers are pretty sweet! and even though the pricing is still high due to our already mentioned low-value currency, having a job porting games at gameloft (which is not dreamjob but hey, one foot in the industry I guess) has made this all possible so I’d like to mention that too
keep it up and thanks for taking the time to read this!
Just sending you a great link to an even more awesome video of Anthony Burch. Mostly an editorial about violence in games, or violent games. Anyway he is great, and mostly everything he says in that 8 minutes video, is true. I really encourage you guys to talk about it on the show!
http://www.destructoid.com/rev-rant-fun-isn-t-enough-142052.phtml
My epic battle cry goes this week to game journalist.
You guys are such an asswholes. If you think that after reading your shit an experienced gamer doesn’t notice that you haven’t even played the fucking game then you are square idiots. We (gamers) are so damn sick of this. You get payed for playing the game so start fucking playing it and stop this reviews based on youtube trailers. We need games like Ninja Gaiden 2 to be reviewed by people who can play it on “master ninja” not by someone who doesn’t know that you need to use block button to beat this game.
You need examples? Well how about Ninja Gaiden 2? Shit like “this game is too hard for most of the players” just pisses me off. My wife can play it on easy up to chapter 4 without a single death with almost randomly pressing the buttons! And she can’t even beat Ratchet&Clank. And hard mode in games ought to be hard! What about the shit you wrote about great games like Time Crisis 4? How can a lightgun game have lousy controls? Look – my granma can beat 2 stages without a continue! And she is 73 years old.
http://profile.imageshack.us/user/adrenalinq/images/detail/#261/p1030849tn8.jpg
http://profile.imageshack.us/user/adrenalinq/images/detail/#525/p1030850ci0.jpg
There a tons of underrated games that just fail because of the crap you post in your reviews and tons of overhyped shit. Stop doing this!
I liked the Batman demo. It was just plain old fun (like Red Faction Guerilla). Just because the game isn’t super deep, very hard, or life changing doesnt mean that it wont have 10-20 hours of enjoyment in it.
I think the stealth is a great addition to a Batman game, the graphics are solid, the art style is great, and overall I think it will turn out to be a B+ game and quite possibly the best comic book game.
I’m not sure if the game will sell 2+ million, but I could see it doing good enough that we see a sequel.
I’d post a battle cry but I don’t have one lol. I’m just quietly waiting for games to come out!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoUbmQlvnII
Here you go guys. Stay Metal!
Just wanted to recommend some opening titles if they havent been mentioned already.
Minstrels of Massacre
Templars of Torture
Troopers of Tyrrany
My battle cry goes out to all the “Open” betas for MMO’s.
I remember it was just a couple years ago when things like Lineage 2, WoW and the really great 3D MMO’s of yore had the true open betas. You went to their website, you signed up, and you get in. The best part? The “open” betas lasted months, and the final beta build of the game wasn’t all that different from the live build (in terms of content. Stability is a different matter.)
Those couple months really let people try the game in a way that a 1 or 2 week trial (with a level cap and only allowed to go to selected areas!) never could. With those open betas with a final build let players get to the meat of a game and really let you see if someone liked the game or not.
Not to mention all the “open” betas now typically aren’t all that open. Only people who subscribe to fileplanet or some such get to join. That could be the ideology “Well, they pay for fileplanet, so they’ll pay for an MMO.” but it’s annoying. I know plenty of people who pay for real MMO’s and the cash-shop “free” MMO’s, but don’t want to pay fileplanet to download something 3-20 minutes earlier.
Hey guys, awesome show again, I missed the audio podcasts at the beginning but have watched all the video ones so far. Keep up the good work!
My battle cry goes out to Bethesda. Please, for the love of all that is holy, fix fallout 3 on the PC. I cannot get outside of the vault (yep, at the start), without it crashing literally every 15 seconds. I bought it at release and have tried EVERY patch and combination of patches and fixes so far. They just seem to have forgotten about the large swathes of gamers stuck out in the cold. Honestly, every time I see them releasing new DLC it makes me want to murder their pets.
p.s. this would have been a video, but my webcam stinks.
Hey guys I was wondering what you think about movies based off of things like comics, games, and book with the G.I. Joe comeing out, I havn’t seen it yet but it looks bad (not good), movie I looked back at movies like Speed Racer, Max Payne, and others do you think that if a movie is based off something like a comic, game, or book then they would have to keep it based on the base matteral or add to it like the Resident Evil movies.
P.S. You guys are awesome love the show
My battle cry goes out to Valve for destroying my hopes.I read on several forums that valve has been working on the ps3.http://vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=78800
But on this week GTV the head of value has said they have no plans with the ps3.I feel left out of the fun and it’s one of the worst feelings a gamer can feel.
In tribute to Bill Paxton my battle cry goes out to the epic 80′s cult classic Near Dark starring the man himself. I would give a review but go fucking see it for yourself, no go and rent it, buy it or youtube it.
In response to what Tony said about not knowing about a game that broke the genre, E.T. need I say more?
My battle cry goes out to the purepwnage.com crew. They have recently announced that they got a deal with the SHOWTIME channel. They are one of the few popular Canadian online shows. They relate directly relate to the hardcore and have great writing and sense of humor, and having them go on television with their own show will only help the acceptance of gaming.
Hey guys,
My battle cry goes out to the Guitar Hero guys. Recently i found out that if you buy the new Guitar Hero 5 game, you will automatically receive Guitar Hero: Van Halen for free…..and you will get it before its official release date. Two games for one is a deal nobody can pass up. Thanks guys keep up the great work.
My battle cry goes out to Daniel.
How dead do u feel inside when u have to do voiceover promotion for a game like Wolfenstein?
Aren’t u affraid that ur etarnal soul is going to be cast into darkness, for trying to trick ur fellow gamers into buying that kinda crap?
There are games we know are going to suck even before they come out, although I can’t remember if u did a promo for it or not but: I said the first time I saw a glimps of Bionic Commando that the game would suck and sell bad. Yes that was an easy one to predict but u get my point.
I srsly wish that GTTV would stop do promotion and stuff like that to games we know are going to suck.
That is why I love EBA “the Gaming News that Cuts Through the Crap!” because u really do.
This might not be the best time for me to wright in so if this doesn’t get to be Battlecry of the week I’m going to post it again.
If this battlecry turns out to be good in the morning.
IT’s not 6 in the morning here and I haven’t gone to bed yet so I might just be really F**ked up right now.
My battlecry goes out to publishers like EA who are adding additional content as incentives for people who buy new games: All I have to say is, KEEP DOING IT! Moves like these will definitely help lessen Gamestop’s bloodletting of the gaming market, and get me cool stuff in the process. Anyone who complains about companies doing this hasn’t really thought it out, frankly, because only a fool goes to Gamestop when he can get the same used game in better condition for less money on eBay. Best Buy tried lowering their new game prices to compete with Gamestop’s used, but Gamestop has such a huge profit margin on used games that it’s practically impossible to compete unless you do things like add content that gamers are unable to get otherwise. I think it’s a great idea and we should have done it sooner.
My Epic Battle Cry (Waaaaggghaaaaaahhrrrrrwwww!!!!) goes out to Microsoft and the censorship of videogames in Germany once again!
Gears of War 2 for example… I had to import the game because it was indexed by the BPjM (German ESRB counterpart). Which means only that the game can’t be advertised, sold, rented, or otherwise given to minors.
After inserting my copy I tried to download the Flashback-Mappack with my FREE included code but after hitting the download-button it says: “This downloadable content isn’t available in your region.” So Gears of War 2 in general is missing in the German Marketplace. Wich makes sense, it’s indexed…
Anyway, I’m using my US-Account and the same thing again, even though there are DLCs available! What the “truck”?!?
Thank you Microsoft for supporting the BPjM and checking my IP and therefore preventing me from activating my FREE Flashback Mappack. You realize that you’re preventing me from downloading every future DLCs for Gears of War 2 too? Well, no money for you bitches and I thought that’s what Microsoft is all about. Making money…
Here’s just a reminder: Gears of War 2 is only indexed! Not a subject of search and seizure as Wolfenstein 3D e.g. Because this would mean it’s forbidden to sell, hire or otherwise give the game to anybody…
PS: The Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany says: “There is no censorship”. Ironic isn’t it?
Hey everybody, my battle cry goes out to the new Entropia Universe MMORPG that’s comming out on monday. For those who don’t know it yet it’s like second life, but it runs on CryEngine 2 and it’s free AND it’s FREAKING HUGE!!!!!! gamewise, I’m in the dark like everybody else, please check it out, it’s currently on bit torrent and it just looks amazing. For those who can’t wait for either Mass Effect 2 or Crysis 2 to come out might as well give it a go. I love the world the setting, and some trailers for everyone. http://www.planetcalypso.com/media/trailers/
Thats one step towards the Matrix and one giant leap for MMO kind!
https://account.entropiauniverse.com/download/
if anybody want sum
My (angry) battlecry goes out to this whole “pre-order to play the beta” thing that a lot of MMOs coming out in the near future are pulling.
I’ve noticed a lot of upcoming MMOs are allowing access to the beta (Or in Champions’ case, another game’s beta) if you pre-order. When did beta tests go from being about polishing the game for retail release to being a “Hey, try the game early!” gimmick to get more people to pre-order? And honestly it’s a terrible idea if your game isn’t that good, because people can just pre-order, realize they don’t like the game by playing the beta, and then cancel their pre-order (Some titles disallow this if you get the beta access), or just not pay off the rest of the game. (I honestly put 5 bucks down on Aion just to test it out, probably won’t play retail.)
My battle cry goes out to Nintendo. Those guys seem to be getting wise to the fact that everyone’s trying to create a gimmick now, and perhaps it’s better just to stick to making games about their tried and true mascots. It seems to me that they finally realize that while gimmicks work for a while, as soon as someone invents a better one, you’re left crawling back to the hardcore fanbase, which, may I remind you, you spent the last couple years completely blowing off.
I believe that this might be the chance for Nintendo to really shine through and create amazing games that hit the market like bombshells while Microsoft and Sony are sitting on their fancy new hardware going “what the hell just happened?”
My Battle cry is to Daniel for getting beat up by a Canadian on GTTV which i found hilarious
My battle cry has to go out to EA. I was already at little pissed that they got rid of co-op play (non xboxlive)on the same team in dynasty mode in ncaa07 and on and getting rid of things like the “classic” cam, etc. But what in the hell is up with the latest iteration of NCAA and Madden and wanting you to spend actual money in the game in addition to what you have paid for the game? In NCAA they have accelerators you can purchase and in Madden (can’t recall the name of it) but you can pay to boost your stats in the game as well. This whole thing just feels wrong and I really hope it is not the beginning of a trend in the video game industry. It just seems very wrong to even have that as an option to even ask any gamer to spend real money on stat or recruiting , etc boosts in a game you just paid $60 for. Maybe that’s just me though. Seems unethical or something.
My BattleCry goes to Cryptic and “OPEN” beta of Champions Online !!!
If it’s an open beta why the hell I have to pre-order the game to have access to it. There is an option to have the key and the client from File Planet but You have to be a subscriber (not the free account) to have access to it. I always thought that open mean available for everyone. Bravo for Cryptic for not being precise here
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