Despite Alex’s attempts, we avoid talking about Metal Gear V until we get through an entirely new section on the show.

You Might Wanna Know: (Stuff we just found out about, and maybe you want to know about too.)

• How Long to Beat: For those who need to know how much entertainment their dollar buys.
• Rain: Have we talked about Rain?  Because games like this are why I’ll likely end up with a PS4.
• Spy Party: The paid beta has finally launched.
• State of Decay: Open-world zombie game with trust mechanics and permanent character death.
• Select Your Hero: Art!

Short News:

• Konami’s Pre-E3 Not-Really-A-Press-Conference Online Streaming Event
  • Kiefer Sutherland will be the voice of Snake in MGSV.
  • Dracula is the main character of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2.
  • Pro Evolution Soccer 2014 gets a new engine.
  • And that’s it.  Maybe there’ll be more at the Big 3′s conferences?
• Microsoft lays out all the information about how the XBone will work:
  • You can lend your games to a friend.  Once.
  • You can give your games away.  Once.
  • You can only sell your games to approved retailers.
  • Publishers get to make the decision if you even get to sell your game.
  • The XBone has to validate your games daily if you’re at home.
  • The XBone will validate your games hourly if you’re elsewhere.

Games:

• Read more »

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Sam’s back from moving!  But he won’t be joining Jonathan at Gen Con this year.  Sad face.

Gaerma is the grand winner (and only entrant) of the Don’t Starve giveaway.

Sam gives us his take on the XBone, and it’s not terribly positive, although Alex has some new feelings about it.

Molyneux’s “social experiment,” Curiosity, has finished, there’s a winner, and the winner will be a god (for a while).

Sam may still be unpacking, but he’s got 5 of his 6 consoles unpacked and set up.

Alex makes inconsiderate comparisons when talking about Knytt Underground.

Jonathan makes similar, but more appropriate, comparisons for Stealth Bastard Deluxe.

Next week we’ll stop revisiting topics that one or another host missed out on!

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In this episode, Jonathan’s finally finished Bioshock Infinite and he has stuff to say.

Before that, though, Sam tells us about his new internet service, and Alex tells us about previews of XCOM: The Bureau.

Sam is actually still playing Uncharted 2, rather than having finished it like I might’ve written in the show notes last week.  He has, though, completed Candy Box, and has also played his first Zynga game, What’s the Phrase?

Alex is in the beta for Card Hunter, and it’s exactly what he thought it was going to be and that’s great news.  He’s also been playing Monaco, and so long as you don’t mind throwing stealth out the window, you’ll have a great time playing it with friends.

All Jonathan talks about this week is Bioshock Infinite, and he doesn’t have particularly good things to say about it.  This isn’t because the game is particularly bad, but more because the media surrounding the game made it out to be something far greater than it really is.

The Holmberg’s official rating for Bioshock Infinite: Rent it.

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Better show notes will be forthcoming.  For now, know that we talked about A Valley Without Wind, Fish Out of Water, Disgaea 4, Eador: Masters of the Broken World, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, and what we think about cloning video games.

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Business:  We won’t be attempting an IndieGoGo campaign.  While we appreciate everyone who offered their support, fundraising would require treating WotG like a business, and that’s not in the cards right now.  The PC games will come, they just will take a little while longer.

News:  Microsoft’s new Xbox is going to feature DVR capabilities; 100% of WotG’s hosts have no use for it.  When focus testing The Last of Us, Naughty Dog had to specifically request female gamers be included in the testing.  And Skyrim has effectively un-capped character levels, because we all needed an excuse to lose more time in that game.

Games:  Jonathan tricks Alex into thinking he got early access to Injustice: Gods Among Us, but what he really played was the free iOS version of the new fighting game.  Alex and Sam explore JRPG goodness in the form of Hyperdimension Neptunia and Ni No Kuni.  And both Jonathan and Sam have put time now into Bioshock Infinite, and while they’re both stunned by the visuals and the world, they find the gameplay to be a bit dated.

Topic:  And while we’re on the subject of Bioshock Infinite‘s gameplay, is it fair to ask the question “Is it even necessary?”  Walt Williams and Jeffrey Yohalem, writers for Spec Ops: The Line and Far Cry 3 respectively, talked recently at GDC about the use of violence in games and making it more than just filler.  Moreover, how do you make a death meaningful in a game where the player kills dozens, if not hundreds, of people?  The guys take up these questions and see where they lead.

Metagame:  Defiance finally earned an aggregate score of 67, leaving the host’s average scores completely untouched.

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Sam is unable to record because [REDACTED DUE TO MORALITY CLAUSE].  Alex and Jonathan go old school and record a two-man ‘cast.

We start the show by discussing the demise of LucasArts.  Is it really something worth mourning or is the geekosphere reacting out of nostalgia?  We hope everyone who lost their job finds new and wonderful employment elsewhere, but we haven’t actually spent much money on a LucasArts game in a long time.

We also discuss how Sega Europe was forced to acknowledge that footage used in trailers for Aliens: Colonial Marines was misleading.  Alex doesn’t really care, because even the footage in the trailers failed to sell him on the game.  Jonathan gets it, but does a poor job explaining why.

Alex has completed Bioshock Infinite.  It’s made him forget just how much he loved Bioshock.  Relic gets discussed as Alex’s non-video-game game, basically an updated take on the board game Talisman set in the 40K universe.  Alex also met a younger version of himself while he was out of town last week.

Jonathan wants to know who wants to play Terraria with him.  It’s on 360 and PS3 now, and he’s down to get the game if anyone else is playing.  He also gets in his own non-video-game game by talking about the tabletop RPG Microscope; it’s very much a story game, but it’s a really interesting story game.  Jonathan’s also played some games provided free via Playstation Plus: The Cave, which may suffer from Jonathan’s favorite recent complaint, tonal inconsistencies; and Closure, a clever puzzle game that plays with light and shadow.

Finally, we wrap up the show with the MetaGame.  Defiance does not yet have a Metacritic score, and so we skip to our alternate game, Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge.  Jonathan does really well this week, only two points off the aggregate score of 71.  Alex and Sam picked numbers close, though, and so not much has changed on the leaderboard.  For the next round, we pick Injustice: Gods Among Us: Jonathan guesses 89, Alex 84, and Sam 80.

As Defiance still doesn’t have a Metacritic score as of release, let’s ask this question: do you like the Metagame?  Let us know in the comments below.

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They may not be piñatas, but we still have a plethora of games to talk about this week.  So much so, that we actually save a bunch for next time.  Let’s jump into it.

DmC: Devil May Cry – Jonathan gave this one a try.  It has some clever touches, but overall fails to hold his interest as both the gameplay and the story feel like nothing new.

FTL: Faster Than Light – Jonathan’s also still not sure about the mothership in FTL.  He took Luke’s advice, and still comes away from it feeling like the gameplay shift may not exactly work.  He fully admits that this may be a result of his inexperience with Rogue-likes, and also admits he’ll continue playing.

Assassin’s Creed 3: Wolfpack – Alex has a different take from Sam on AC3′s Wolfpack mode.  He feels it doesn’t support the gameplay claims it makes, and he wishes it were more like the competitive multiplayer.

Forza: Horizon – Sam learns the shocking truth that the ability to go around corners may be just as important as the ability to go fast in a straight line.  Also, he learns he needs to control his thumbs better.

Android: Netrunner – Sam also brings to the table an analog game, Fantasy Flight’s popular living card game.

Bioshock Infinite: No Subtitle – Jonathan has played the first hour, and Alex has played quite a bit more than that.  Jonathan was pretty hooked right up to the point where the shooting began, while Alex is learning to love the game he was given, rather than trying to play the game he wants.

In the MetaGame, we run into a bit of a conundrum as Army of Two: Devil’s Cartel was not only the first multi-platform game we’ve used, but it’s also the first game that didn’t have a MetaCritic score on the day of release.  We pull it together, though, and Sam, disappointingly, shows he’s got a gift for gauging game reviewers.

Sam scores a point this round, Jonathan scores two, and Alex takes the title of “Most Wrong” with a score of 16.  Luke’s guest guess placed him just ahead of Alex with 15 points.

The Averages: Sam at 4, Jonathan at 7, and Alex drops to third with 10.

Next round: Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge, a game that’s already out for the WiiU, and is actually coming out for 360 and PS3 next week, but was chosen because there’s literally nothing scheduled to drop the week of April 7th.  All the hosts are within a point of each other in their picks.  It’ll be a quick round.

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We begin this episode with discussion of an announcement that two of the hosts refuse to buy into: Assassin’s Creed IV will feature a pirate.  Alex is excited, but we remind him that 2012 featured an open-world, tropical-setting, swimming-with-the-sharks game, too.

We also discuss expectations that EA’s digital sales are expected to surpass physical sales, news released in the same week where SimCity shows some ugly problems with the digital, online-only model.  (It should be noted that this episode was recorded before things really got ugly with SimCity, so opinions may change in the next episode.)

We try to keep the games section light this week.  Alex is trying out a new virtual trainer in the form of the Nike+ “game,” Sam discovers that he’s playing the love child of Metal Gear Solid and Bayonetta, and Jonathan gets deeper than intended into player agency and emotional manipulation in Spec Ops: The Line.

In the topic, we try to tie together a couple of related items.  In the first item, 58% of American adults (or at least 58% of roughly 3,000 adults surveyed) believe in a correlation between video games and violence.  Alex and Sam are dismayed by some of the other statistics revealed by this study, while Jonathan digs into the heart of the study and finds it may not all be doom and gloom.

In the second item, a noted expert on the subject of games and violence argues that there’s a lot more work to be done before a clear line can be drawn.  Moreover, he expresses concern that politics and tragedy harm the scientific process, leading to results and assumptions that may not be borne out by the data, but that are hard to overcome once engrained in the public consciousness.  His full paper (focused on the recent Supreme Court ruling, rather than the Sandy Hook tragedy) can be found here.

Finally, we return to the Metacritic Game (Metagame? Critic Poker? Name That Score? Yeah, we still need a name for this).  There won’t be a final rating for God of War: Ascension until next week, but we stick with the War theme and make our predictions for Gears of War: Judgement.  Alex bets 85, Sam guess 89, and Jonathan picks the middle ground at 87.  Next week, we’ll actually have a score to mock one another with!

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Sam’s reign of terror as host continues for a second episode in a row.  Fear the moose.  FEAR HIM!

Before we get started on games, Alex talks about how The News and The Podcast intersected in his life.

Jonathan, meanwhile, announces the release of a new podcast, We Just Watched a Movie.  Join us as we watch the movies on Time’s All-TIME 100 Movies list (plus a few more), and then rank them against one another.  We’ve set up separate feeds for the two podcasts, which you can find in the links on the right, or you can stay subscribed to the main feed and continue to get everything we release.  Either way, we hope you enjoy it.

In the meat of the episode this week, we finally talk about games we’ve been playing.

• Sam gives us a treatise on the Resistance series.
• Alex gets emotional about Journey.
• Jonathan dislikes weird inconsistencies in The Last Story.
• Alex hates on the update process of the PS3.
• Alex fails to understand what’s going on in White Knight Chronicles 2.
• Sam has also completed Crysis 3, and has good things to say about that.
• Alex talks about Banner Saga: Factions, a PC strategy game with clever mechanics.
• Jonathan wraps up with a quick plug for Pixel People,
• a quick warning about Early Bird,
• and a quick complaint about Spec Ops: The Line.

Finally, we introduce a new game!  We’re still looking for a good name, but we’re placing wagers on the Metacritic score for upcoming new releases.  We’re picking games a couple weeks out, and then we’ll follow up and see who got closest.  Lowest score at the end of X number of weeks wins!

This week, we take a stab at God of War: Ascension.  Be sure to give us your predictions in the comments below.

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Not much happened this week, so we’re not really sure how we’re going to fill the time in this episode.  If only there had been a two-hour press conference immediately before we recorded where the next Sony console was announced.  But, we make do with what we have.

Alex blew his game discussion possibilities in the WotG One Shot last weekend, so he’s rather quiet this go round.  Jonathan talks up Kerbal Space Program, just in case Matt the Cancer Merchant didn’t sell you on the concept.  And Sam talks about a bunch of games he purchased, but hasn’t yet played.

Then I suppose we can talk about the PS4.  Specs are discussed.  Price is prognosticated.  Threats of defection are made.  And a challenge is thrown down.  Enjoy!

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