Make ready chains for the war machines, and bring down the city walls! Its time for another edition of EpicBattleCry; this week we discuss the alliance between Bungie and Activision, check out the Dead Space 2 trailer, ponder the indefinite delay for Game Room releases, consider the APB pricing structure, and mull over Alan Wake‘s free DLC.
First out of the gate, we check out the trailer for Treyarch‘s new entry in the Call of Duty franchise: Black Ops. We discuss our impressions of the teaser and what the future holds for CoD. Next up, with the summer movie season about to kick off (and Iron Man 2 and Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands waiting in the wings), we talk movie tie-in games and offer some thoughts on how devs could actually manage a good one.
The Battle Cry of the Week goes to the rumored Castlevania title, Gaming Heads‘ collectible Valve statues, UFC Undisputed 2010, and Mega-Man Legends.
If you’ve got a comment on the show, sound off below, if you’ve got a Battle Cry you want to share, click here and sound off on the latest topic-started post! Stay sharp.
-iPod compatible mp4 download-
SWEET.. ASS.. SKIRMISH
you dont have to say something funny
EPIC Episode as usual.
2080 joke was awesome.
well i agree with brent spiderman 2 i think is the best movie tie in game EVAAAAAAAAR, why becuase i think the people who made the game actually cared about it, but yeah i think the defining line into making a good movie tie in game is for the developers to take time in making it and dont worry about when the movie comes out.
I don’t understand why everyone’s getting there hopes up with the bungie and activision deal, It’s going to be a generic fps……………… FACE IT.
first of all good show,
my battle cry goes to Playstation copying everything xbox and nintento does later. After i saw Modnation as a clone of mario kart, i started realizing that there other titles were the same such as uncharted being a third person cover shooter just like gears, and resistance being about a super soldier fighting aliens in an fps. Now that the playstation move is coming out, and looks identical to the wii remote, t looks pretty blatant to me!
Yet another sweet EBC guys. I look forward to your guys’ show every week and are my go to site for gaming info. Also, did I hear Tony inadvertently say the word c*nt at the end or am I just hearing things?
Xbot alert
@DK : Belanger (Washington capitals) lost 7 teeth over the hit of Bergeron (Montreal Canadiens)! He did rip one of those seven on air… pretty painfull! Anyway, hail to the Montreal Canadians! Let them destroy the PENS!!!
My battle cry for a good movie game is to just re skin a good game.
You know how avatars for ps3 and xbox 360 get new stuff if a new movie comes out how about a dlc expansion pack to game that’s already out that has an infrastructure that can easliy be built on
Another idea i have, could be used in the whole gaming industry sell a game for 80 dollars built with a great engine and would have a great infrastructure but promise a full fledged sequel, new iteration or new game download for like 30 to 40. People have larger hard drives and can fit multiple games on there system and some time squeals are just new skins any way and the game hasn’t changed much and basically nothing new cough “super street fighter 4, madden, live and other sports games” The movie industry would benefit from this because they can say once you buy this movie game you’ll also get this game based on movie that’s coming out later this year cheaper. That’s my battle cry for good movie games reek havoc and don’t buy shity games they wouldn’t make people at Guantanamo play
great skirmish, but Legends? That spinoff ruined Mega Man for me.
I live in Australia and Eb generally combines all the Bonus dlc in one. so im happy. Since we dont have gamespot and such.
well to add on to the movie game tie in to have big named bands come and do a song for these movie games is just down right awful like for iron man 2 they have lab of god make a exsclusive song just for the game imo i think a bad game that has great bands in it will make the band look awful…. brent rules metal rules oh and the people from chilliwack B.c Canada say hello and stop making video games so dam pricy
Silly boy.
Everyone in game industry copies each other. That is how games and consoles evolve, you copy something and try make it better. Without copies we would only have few games, all FPS games (Halos, Half- Lifes) are copies of Wolfwestein, all RTS are copies of Dune 2 and so on… First Xbox is copy of Playstation, SEGA and Nintendo copy each other over 10 years…
I just want to sound of on how tired I am of Nintendo and their Wii console and how they market their stuff. I just read the post about the New Black Wii bundle. Why do they put in that WiiSports shit in there, its not like everyone hasn’t already played that and are bored out of their minds with it. If the Nintendo marketing crew had a little wits they would make like the microsoft guys did and make a black WiiElite or something like that, hook it up with all the sweetest “gamer-games” like Metroid, The Conduit, No More Heroes 2 and Muramasa. I dont own a Wii, but i have both the Xbox and Ps3 and there are some exclusives with the Wii that seriously interests me, especially now that the console is so cheap. I totally loved Odin sphere, just give me a reason to buy the console with Muramasa and tempt me with Zelda, Metroid and some other sweet ass games and i will buy that thing. But if you keep putting out this shitty Wii sports stuff with all the silly family crap you might as well shove it where the sun don’t shine.
Great episode guys! Concerning the teaser for Cod: Black Ops, I assumed the main character was being interrogated through the use of drugs, or that he had been wounded and captured… Anyhow I’m really looking forward to it, as I thought that World at War had a better single player campaign than MW2 did.
Could U put new episode on gametrailers already, so I won’t have to watch it in 4 parts? Pretty please with a kick-ass-big f-in’ cherry on top
Extra credits for the member battlecry.
Glad to see other people who like the MegaMan Legends games..
It should be up sometime today; we don’t really have any control over when they post the show on their side. In the meantime you can always download the mp4 if you want to watch it uninterrupted.
hee hee. I hear what you’re talking about; its like he was trying to say the words ‘can’t’ and ‘come’ at the same time. As I said in the show: trainwreck.
I don’t get why they’re talking about the show getting long as a bad thing.
The longer the better.
Don’t cut the show.
Greetings from Germany
First of all I’d like you to know that you guys do the best gaming podcast on the web. Keep up the good work (DK keep up the good puns, Brent keep up the pun-hating and Tony keep up that delicious sarcasm of yours)
Since this week’s topic is about games based on movies my Battlecry goes out to what is possibly the best movie-based game ever made and remains one of my all time favorites.
The game I am thinking about is: The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher bay.
It is a prequel to the first Riddick movie Pitch Black and tells the story of Richard B. Riddick’s imprisonment in and (as the title suggests) escape from Butcher Bay. It also tells you how Riddick got his night vision eyes.
The story of this game is nothing short of awesome despite being almost COMPLETELY (except for the characters of Johns and Riddick) unrelated to the movie. It really shows that a game based on a movie does not have to be depentand on the original but can deliver a great standalone experience.
And the gameplay is good too which isn’t necessarily a given for stealth games (or any games for that matter).
Again, good episode guys; please continue crying havoc and being the voice of us gamers.
I agree.Very informative and entertaining show.Keep it up AxeHeads.;D
Great episode guys per usual.
I liked the idea of instead of always trying to create a super slick first/third person shooter (which fails nearly every time) devs should create side scrolling or platform games instead. These can work in a modern day gaming environment as Shadow complex has shown. Then have the game episodic, and downloadable, and spend more time on each episode to make it incredible (or in Daniels words: AWESOMESAUCE!). And finally sell the game for a reasonable price (7-15$).
What studios could also implement would be a code system where each bought movie ticket had a unique, un-reusable, code on it that would either give a special downloadable mini episode or some special in game item. This would help entice people to see the movie instead of downloading a crap cam torrent and promote the game and give the devs something unique to play with.
Now on to my own experience with movie tie-in games; I, like many, went and saw the awfulness that is MB’s Transformers with my gf in ’07 only to see my childhood heroes destroyed by Hollywood and MB. A couple of months later my gf gave me the PS2 Transformers Tie in game as a birthday present because she thought I had loved the movie, not realizing that when I talked about how I loved the Transformers I was talking about the Real Transformers (Cartoons).
So I had to sit and play this awful crap of a game for a couple of hours with her because I couldn’t tell her how much I had hated the movie and now the game. Hey its the thought that counts right?
In retrospect that game did nothing to promote the movie, in fact it made me even firmer in my views that MB’s TF’s would never be good and thus I didn’t see the sequel.
I respect you opinion…. but i’m still going to tell you it wrong. Playstation is not copying the wii or Xbox with the exception of the motion controls which Xbox is also copying. Gears and Uncharted play the same, but then again so does almost every 3rd person shooter with a decent cover system.
And first person shooters, they all play the same and are all about war, but if their story is told differently it is “a different experience” If you think that halo and resistance are the same then you might as well admit every FPS is the same (and they are, which is why I usually don’t usually play them.)
As for mod nation racers, everyone has done a kart racing game at some point, just recently Sega did one recently. its something everyone has copied but none has been successful because they just are not as good as Mario kart.
Motion controls is being copied by both systems, the difference is that PS3 is copying in a way that might actually work. I dont think it will succeed either way because even though the wii has some great motion control games, its mostly a gimmick and I doubt it will do much better on PS3, especially when PS3 comes with a standard controller so developers are not forced to figure out how make the controls work.
and before you comment back Im not a PS3 Fanboy, I don’t even own a PS3 (though I might get one eventually). but saying that PS3 copies Xbox and Wii is just silly
[...] Xbox 360 | Tagged: Game Room, Pitfall!, Super Breakout As discussed on the most recent edition of EpicBattleCry, Microsoft’s Game Room has recently suffered from a lack of content updates, but according to [...]
Hi Guys,
Great show as always. Love listening to it on the sly in work here in the UK!
My (first) Battle Cry goes out to DLC as a whole. I am amazed at the progression DLC has taken. Going from non-existent, to late and expensive, to just expensive, to day one and expensive, to day one and free…
I half expect DLC to start coming out before the game. I don’t get why all of a sudden we have all this day one DLC, free or not. Great games were released before without any DLC, now it seems we can’t escape the stuff! Luckily, I don’t know anyone without a console connected to the net… But seriously, if you were without the internet you would probably be missing out on half of the games released these days.
I like getting new content, but come on, I would love to just see a fully finished game without any DLC for at least a month or two. Let me finish the game without giving me more stuff (usually crap and should have been in anyway)!
Thanks! Keep up the great work!
Lets get right to it:
My battle cry goes out to every other country than the USA and UK. As you may or may not know, the Halo: Reach beta servers crashed when everyone was trying to play at the same time, and there were lots of problems with the download itself. On the bungie.net forums all I could see was people either from the USA or UK crying about the servers and how that couldn’t play for like 20 minutes(I didn’t see anyway who claimed to be from another country complain). Also the beta released a bit later than they thought, for the americans maybe at 13:00? For me it was 19:30 PM(I’m from Sweden btw). Anyway they had to cry about that too. Even though we all know that the USA is favoured when it comes to gaming releases overall.
USA people, you will probably get the retail game several days before everyone else anyway!
Fantastic episode as always, you guys always make me smile.
My Battle Cry goes to games like Star Wars: Knights of the old Republic and Star Wars: Republic Commando. The games are based around the movies Star Wars universe, but you don’t directly play as any of the characters in the lore of those movies. Instead, they show a different side of the universe, different time period, different place, and different perspective. They go in depth exploring the back story, using their imagination to bring the universe to more life. They are not restrained to any of the movies to revolve around. It almost feels like you’re playing a fan-made game that fits perfectly with the lore as a whole. Especially Republic Commando where you don’t play as a Jedi but as one of the clone commando’s which was freakin’ awesome. You get a sense of how vulnerable and difficult it is without having all those powers the heroes or villains have, and the story made really great sense along with the movies. Even then, the characters you play as does not have a “confirmed” identity and you basically feel like you are the character you’re playing as, as if you yourself is a part of the universe. If there were more games like these that can go together with movies, that’ll be really awesome. A couple possible movies that has potential of making a game of similar style is Lord of the Rings and the Matrix. I still want KOTOR3 and Republic Commando 2 though.
I don’t know guys. This is on the discussion you guys had on cheats at the end. I’m pretty sure DLC has less then 12.3% to do with why there are no in-game cheats anymore. I think it has 99% to do with the fact that gamesharks, those devices we all had 10 years ago for all of our consoles and portables, which let us input cheats ourselves don’t work anymore on current gen consoles. 90′s game developers said “screw it, they are going to cheat with infinite health anyways, mine as well add some godmode stuff of our own”. Cheats are what made even the worst games actually fun back then. Just think about Dead Rising… a pretty okay game that can get soooo frustrating sometimes. Instead of killing 50,000 zombies to get the Megaman buster, just a decade ago we would have gotten that by inputting “megamanrox” on the ingame cheat menu.
Cheats are what made games fun. Honestly, achievments were cool for like a year (maybe two) and I am tired of having to do the tedious work in ALL the mainstream released games nowadays. Sometimes, I don’t like a game at all for various design choices like Infamous. Maybe if I could just skip the B.S parts and get infinite health/all powers, I would find the game fun enough to beat. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am NOT talking about multiplayer cheats. I am just talking about single player, the “I have infinite health and bullets”-esque cheats like the good old days. I would have never beat so many games during my grade school years unless I had them.
Best cheat ever: Legend of Zelda- Ocarina of Time’s “Press L to levitate”. Why solve puzzles WHEN YOU CAN FLY!!!!!
Brent’s comment on Isac in the Dead Space 2 trailer was weird. You got to see Isac’s face at the beginning and end of the first Dead Space. Maybe I’m hearing it wrong; who knows?
Hello0o big guys !!!
My battle cry goes out to the subscription to Xbox live.
I’m from Sweden and I have to pay like 50 dollars a year for the subscription. And here we don’t get things like Netflix or last fm. The only thing we get is Zune and there we can only download like 30 different movies.
Do you guys think it’s fair that a country like Sweden has to pay the same price or hire and then get less of a product and what do you think they can do to make it less of a problem?
And BTW TURKISK PEPAR RULES !!!!
LOL what a hater.
Bro please, you haven’t even PLAYED ModNation Racers, none of us have but last time I checked, Mario kart doesn’t have any character customization or level creation.
Brent ought to fucking chop off your head for downplaying Uncharted like that. So any game that is a third person shooter is now a Gears clone? GTFO fan boy.
My EpicBattleCry goes out to Bethesda Dev Studio…ANNOUNCE A NEW GAME, I can only half-understand not announcing The Elder Scrolls V, but not announcing a new game at ALL is bulls*** yo we gotta see a new game at E3(that is in reference to the in-house developer, not the other games comin out under the publisher).
Sounds like Brent thinks the new Call of Duty: Black Ops will be….Operation Mindcrime
Essentially what this guy said. The best games that have anything to do with movies are those that actually have very little to do with them. Riddick is a good example where it is set within the universe but gives a completely new and full experience.
Batman: Arkham Asylum is not a movie tie-in game but the Nolan movies definitely put you in the mood for one and vice versa.
Transformers: War for Cybertron looks like it could be an excellent game that should have been how the transformers games were done; within the universe but not directly related to the movie and definitely not a reliving.
Essentially you want something that is it’s own experience. Something that may only share the universe in common with the movies, not even a character (SW:KOTOR, SW:Commando Republic). Something that gives you a backdrop of the universe that gives it depth and lore. It doesn’t have to come out immediately prior or post movie release date. A good movie can put people in the mood for a really good game set within the universe years after they’ve seen the movie and both can sell well AND be critically recieved well as long as the quality is there.
I’m a long time listener, keep up the great show!
My battle cry goes out to Ubisoft. I recently got over my issues with the DRM Ubisoft is using for their pc games and decided to buy Splinter Cell: Conviction on Steam. I bought the Splinter Cell pack for 75 bucks that includes all the games from the Splinter Cell saga and was excited as hell to play some Conviction. I plugged my 360 controller up to my desktop and sat back expecting to play some awesome stealth action…
Ubisoft fucks up again! I quickly realized that the button assignments for the 360 controller are completely wrong, eg. X=B, B=A. How could you fuck up something like this and release a game? It’s not rocket science.
I like to buy my games on pc, since I have a rig that can run most games at full settings and full res. This situation makes it extremely unlikely that I will be purchasing any Ubisoft PC titles in the future.
Then again, when I need my gaming fix, I quickly rack up “points” on my credit card.
Long time watcher (listener?), great show guys!
My BattleCry goes out to the folks at EA and DICE especially for stepping up and doing an amazing job where certain “other” companies slouched. I’m talking about Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and the series of updates and patches released by DICE.
Barely 2 months out of the gate and DICE has released multiple game fixes and balances, as well as 2 free (FREE, holy crap FREE) DLC packs. They might have contained only a couple maps, but the fact that they even exist is amazing.
The best part is that a bunch of changes they’ve made were looked into and suggested by the community that has been actually playing the game!
Regardless of whether you like the Battlefield series or a different one, it has to be said that the state of gaming in general would be much better off if every, heck even if only a few other developers would follow suit and listen to the gamers.
Keep cleaving away guys, I’ll be listening!
Dear Axe Leaders,
in your skirmishes you always make it sound bad that the “feedback section” of the podcast is getting bigger and bigger and that, by now, it has reached one third of the podcasts length – haven’t you always stressed that you care very much about the opinions of your followers? If you ask me it should be an exemplary feature that your podcast does have so much user feedback whilst other gaming podcasts don’t!
Anyway, have a bloody week! ;^)
My Battle Cry goes out to Epic Studio’s and People Can Fly.
Recently we saw a move from Epic games Cliff B. of the showing of GoW3. That title alone is a E3 Hype winner. But no he went showed it off on a T.V. Show. So i decided to look into why they could of done that.
No matter what happens GoW3 is going to a huge game and a must buy. Though Epic has been working with People Can Fly on a title called “Bulletstorm”. From what i have been hearing from Developers and Game Informer analyst’s. Is that the level of things you can do in this game is amazing.
I believe that epic knows that GoW3 will be awesome and we don’t epic so much for the reason we know what to expect. But putting for more time into a title that has to prove it self against titles of GoW3 and UT3. Epic Believes this game to kick ass. and what i have read of it and heard .. its going to kick major ass. I Applaud Epic to work with some one else and put forth time and effort to make a game that people of the FPS genre have been waiting for.
What’s up, my confidantes of cancellation, my associates of abrogation! How art thou!?
Fellow axe-head here, chiming in on the issue of movie games. I feel there are numerous factors that all lead to the poor quality and reception of movie-based games. DK has it right that the games need their own direction, storyline, and focus. I also think they need their own style, instead of always looking realistic, or following the same asthetic of the movie inherently lessens the value of the game’s content. Making more original changes like these would help distinguish the games enough to be their own entity, while the money would still go to the same place.
Also take the words “THE VIDEO GAME” out of the f****** title! Thanks, keep up the great work team!
My battlecry goes out to Sage Merrill from Bungie for having the MOST EPIC beard ever caught on film. Seriously he must be the norse god of facial hair.
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/x10-vidoc-halo-reach/61844 at 6:00 Epic beard epicness
Hi Guys.
Great show as usual. Listening to you guys it’s almost like having real friends. Which leads me on to my battle cry.
What in the hell happened to SINGLE player games. I swear to god if this new Castlevania really does turn out to be multiplayer I will cry shit out of my arse. Why? Because turning a solid single player game into a multiplayer game will more often than not, diminish the single player experience. The most noteable example I can think of is Resident Evil 5.
When did games become so sociable anyway? A few years down the line what’s gonna be left for the social outcast.
Oh yeah, about movie games, I got nothing.
Great episode guys! Am I the only one that figured out you could see Isaac’s face in the beginning of Dead Space? Just turn the camera around before he puts on his helmet. Go. I’ll wait………………………….See?
Hi guys
Im long time listner 1st time visitor to the site have been dowloading ur podcast for ages from itunes
and finally decided to get out my axe an sign up to your site 2 day .
my battle cry goes out to my most anticipated game this year read dead redemption after gta4 i hope they make have more fun things to do after u complete the main story gta was great story wise but after that it was boaring with not much to do untill the dlc and the multiplayer was good but needed refingment what are ur thoughts and expectations
Thanks Cillacam
Hey guys, been watching EBC since the beginning, definitely my favourite webshow ever. Anyways…
WHERE the hell is EBC 075?!
Will there be no EBC this week?