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SHOWNOTES

00:00-Show Intro
07:08-Drunk Dials
13:27-Mailbag
22:54-Joe Danger Review (PSN)
28:33-Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker Review (PSP)
39:02-Blur Review with DJ Incompetent (360)
57:41- Retro Review: Night Driver (2600)
1:02:16-Feature Presentation: Modern Gamers View Contest
1:19:33-Five Things
1:27:43-The Last Shot
1:28:20-Show Close

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DGR: 06.13.2010

I’ve been bitching about how worthless E3 is compared to the smaller single hardware conferences for years. E3 is ok for dropping the scantest of detail on new hardware and namedropping the existence of something I would like without showcasing any relevant detail, but as far as gaming software is concerned, the target audience is everybody you’re affiliated with besides yourself.  DGR runs the ustream chat during E3 keynotes.  I don’t follow a livestream of the actual conference or anything, but I drop by various live IRCs and shoutboxes to watch the awful reactions to E3 unfold during my work day. They don’t cease to amuse. Today I overheard what I gathered to be the Microsoft keynote. I decided to cut and paste the fun snippets I read in passing. I have no idea what was announced at the time, but maybe you can put these into context…or just reminisce about what just happened.

2:12 jluedtke: Oh God…
2:12 jluedtke: This is awful.
2:13 jluedtke: Why do I watch these?

(more…)

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SHOWNOTES

00:00-Show Intro
07:19-Drunk Dials
17:18-Mailbag
33:46-Last Galdiators Digital Pinball Review (iPhone/iPad)
41:23-Tecmo Bowl Throwback Review (XBLA)
48:12-Super Street Fighter IV Review (360)
55:58-Retro Review: Drakken (SNES)
1:01:39-Five Things
1:34:00-The Last Shot
1:34:56-Show Close

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DGR: 05.02.2010

Drop Bear Attack by The BayssMekanique

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SHOWNOTES

00:00-Show Intro
06:09-Drunk Dial
14:27-Mailbag
27:01-Perfect Dark Review (XBLA)
36:06-The Red Star Review (PSP)
42:25-Espgaluda 2 (360)
52:30-Retro Review: Mars Matrix (DC)
59:44-Double Feature Presentation
Dan Loosen Interview
1:18:46-Shmoppera III-Part 3
1:36:23-Five Things
2:03:36-The Last Shot
2:04:33-Show Close

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DGR: 03.19.2010

Xbox Prime Time (Live Gold Only). Multiple Choice Trivia. $Free. Forced Ads. Can Only Play at Designated Times. Win Spacebucks & XBLA games. No Bob Sagat.

Worth the price/time?: It’s worth trying once.

Recommended: Trivia fans
Recommended: Players desiring to attempt making money off Microsoft through a test of skill, or players seeking a new online experience.
Not Recommended: If you can’t stand in-game ads or time restrictions.
Not Recommended: Impatient players.

I used to love game shows; the crazy rules, strange machines, and random challenges all brought me to smiles. The last game show if you even wanna call it that I liked was Sasuke, “Ninja Warrior”. The spirit of any jackass in Japan being able to attempt this obstacle course with inspiring or hilarious results was always a great eater of time for me. The best part is they released competitors one after another through the obstacle courses and didn’t really stop to talk to anybody until after the person kicked all kinds of ass. Later, my cable service became assholes and I lost the channel. But let’s talk about regular game shows, with the trivia, and the screens, and the wheels. These were decent back then. After the introduction of reality TV, game shows took a nasty hit not in ratings, but in format. Whenever Americans get a hold of a concept, we don’t get to go to the game anymore. After anybody does anything, we have to hear the life story of the contestant, what was going through the mind of somebody at the time something was happening, and the diatribe about why this person is going to pick this answer to a multiple choice question. Fuck. You. Shut. Up. This new style of running game shows slowed the game part to an uneventful crawl. Who Wants to be a Millionaire could spend a one-hour show on a single contestant and not finish his set. American Idol creates ‘results shows’ once a week, turning the concept of Ryan Seacrest opening up an envelope to read a name into an hour of unnecessary clip shows, outtakes, and sideshows. Deal or No Deal refuses to use a contestant that knows what statistics are so we have to listen to a verbose battle of a moron’s left brain trying to communicate with the right brain just to pick a goddamn number on a suitcase. Thankfully none of these fluff rituals creeped into the classics like Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy, where their respective hosts have surely been converted into interactive robots, as they refuse to age, nor quit. I’d love to imagine one of the Bobs from Office Space seriously asking Vanna White what she does for the game show with her honest reply being she needs to walk over and press the touch screen of the letter a contestant has guessed…in 2009. Those letters can’t possibly come up themselves. Ever. I remember the powers that be broke the new Press Your Luck and that made me sad. I abandoned game shows since American producers can’t differentiate running a game from reporting an episode of 20/20.

Oh, right. This is a videogame review, isn’t it.

(more…)

Xbox 360 disc. $20. Three games: Raiden Fighters 1, Raiden Fighters 2, Raiden Fighters Jet. 5-8 Stages each. Two-Player dualplay (co-op), local only. Everything comes unlocked. 8-16+ Selectable ships. Detailed video settings (Scanline config, Tate, etc.). Caravan Mode/Score Attack, Boss Rush Mode, and Leaderboards with two difficulties per mode for all games.

Replays recordable, viewable from leaderboards, and savable to hard drives. Replays include fast-forward feature, but not rewindable.

Worth the price?: One of the best gaming deals, period!
Very Much Recommended: Literally everybody. Yes, even a host from Gamers With Jobs. Shocking!
Not Recommended: Anybody who absolutely cannot stand the Shooting Game genre for significant reasons. If you’re on the fence about the genre, that doesn’t count; buy this game. It’s the perfect place to begin or re-experience the genre.

Armed Police Batrider fans, get the hell over here, send Valcon some thank you letters for flying this west, and celebrate with case of (ugh!) Busch. This here is a party in a box for some frugal-ass gamers.

Raiden is a shoot-em-up series known for its slow pace, those bastard sniper helicopters, and the crazy fun purple laser. It’s usually enjoyed by gentleman with or without top hats and extremely dedicated “retro” gamers alike. But this is the Raiden Fighters series we’re talking about. Imagine the original Raiden series being a wine and cheese party somewhere in The Hamptons with detailed, frilly decorations hosted by Hugh Laurie and populated entirely by (the better) B-list celebrities but without Bruce Campbell. Now envision the Raiden Fighters series being Lil’ Jon crashing that party with the entire East Side Boyz crew, T.I., Akon, Michael Vick, a just-escaped O.J. Simpson, 17 Strippers, a bigass strobe light, Rasheed Wallace, Chuck Norris, Norm MacDonald, somebody in a big-ass Tinkerbell costume, Soulja Boy, and Vanilla Ice holding turntables and a pound of pure mixed with speed and adderall.

(more…)

From Comments of DGR: 02.27.2009

Your comments on Flower are pretty interesting, John, in light of the podcast I heard right before this week’s episode. I was listening to a recent episode of The Geekbox in which Ryan Scott was discussing R-Type Dimensions. His take on the game was essentially this:

“It’s good, it’s really hard… Thank God they put in Infinite Mode because it’s too hard for me to get through otherwise. But the game’s really short– I mean, you can blow through it in 45 minutes.”

While this is technically true, as shmup fans, we get a [i]lot[/i] more out of the R-Type experience than this guy did. Perhaps the same is true for Flower. Obviously, you can’t directly compare Flower with a shmup– DJ Incompetent is likely to vomit upon reading this, in fact– but for many folks, the experience that they get from playing through Flower is good enough that the length isn’t a concern.

- M.C.

I hear what you’re saying. Flower is a “flight-ish” game for certain, reminding me almost of Nights.

I have no problem with short games. Hell, I wish a lot of games were much shorter than they are. I just don’t have time for it anymore. But it wasn’t just the length of Flower that gave me pause. It was just the feeling of, “They could have done so much more with this” that I had when it was done. But like I said, I sort of go back and forth with it. The experience I had playing it was mostly great and often unlike any other game I’ve played. That itself is worth the price. But when I finished it I just had this sort of unfulfilled feeling.

- John

As far as I’m concerned, short games are fine, but I put a lot of value in games that offer options and alternate ways to play through the content. That is what earns the timeless replayable triple-A award for me. Did you know one of the bigger complaints expert players have on Gradius V is that it’s too long? This game clocks in at about an hour, but the ideal time STG players (myself included) want to spend on a one-credit session is roughly 30-something minutes. This is a large complaint for many Compile games as well (Aleste series, Zanac series, etc.), being long stages are a fault and not a feature, especially when they have dead zones of no on-screen enemies for several seconds. An ideal way to maximize content of a single shmup title is to have several different ‘courses’ of 5 stages instead of one massive 8-stage trek. Developers have not thought to include this option besides the compilation multi-game packages. Raycrisis explored this by allowing users to plot a course of five stages out of a selectable eight.

But what’s the issue here with the semi-controversial Flower and FlOw?
They’re great stand-alone games, but players complain not enough is done with it.

(more…)

My oh my do I miss the good ole’ days of my youth. Back in those days, the internet was just getting started, and the flame war hadn’t even been conceived. Back in those days, there was no Microsoft, and there was no Sony. There were two companies: Nintendo and Sega (unless you were John, too busy loving the Atari Jaguar after “the incident”). And the young-uns out there like to talk about the current console wars, but those of us who lived through the greatest generation remember the single biggest, baddest, and bloodiest console war the world had ever seen: Super Nintendo Vs. Sega Genesis. Back in those days, the battlefield wasn’t on message boards or in the blogosphere, but rather on the playgrounds or in the cafeterias of this great nation’s schools. Here you could see and hear the battle raging all around you. I know because I was there. I was THERE, in the middle of that hell with my brothers around me, as I was a captain in the Sega army.

It wasn’t my decision. My parents made that decision for me on that fateful Christmas morning in the year 1991when they gave me my weapon of choice. And from that moment, I knew who my leader was as I marched straight to the front lines to fight for what was right and just. I still believe in the principles laid down by early Sega. The great visionaries who laid the groundwork for an entire empire which I helped pave with my piggybank. Those men rewarded my loyalty with a hero who could lead us to victory over the evil plumber and his fascist regime. Our fearless leader was a blue hedgehog named Sonic, and he fought along my side through the good and the bad. There were other heroes like Axel, Shinobi, Chaz, and Vectorman, but the deeds of these patriots pale to the heroics of Sonic.

Unfortunately our struggle was lost. Our leaders led us astray with far too many add-ons. Our failed surprise attack on the market during what was to be known as “Saturnday” failed miserably. When the Saturn needed resupply from Japan, our American generals had no faith in their abilities in combat and were thrown to the wayside. The small island nation of Working Designs kept the holdouts like myself supplied with the ammo we needed to fight back. However their batshit crazy dictator Vic Ireland was a greedy man who supplied our mysterious new enemy named Sony with arms as well, which was another nail in the coffin. All that were left after the unspeakable casualties banded together in one last desperate attempt to keep our sovereignty with Operation #9.9.99. At first we were successful, but Sony then crushed our final resistance, and we were forced to do unspeakable acts.

It hurts to think about what has happened to our once proud leaders. Shinobi and Shining Force went on to be shells of their former selves with Sony. Some moved onto Microsoft where they flourished with fantastic bravery but were completely ignored by their new home and perished. And Sonic…he never recovered. After the Dreamcast Blitzkrieg failed, he just kept trying and trying to relive past glory, but he was overworked. Last I heard he was drugged out in some back alley in Philly. To think my hero would let this happen to him. I can’t even bear the sight of him anymore. It just hurts too much. Old timers like myself like to remember the good ole’ days of yore. The 16 bit era stays in our memories as a sign of what could have been, and it’s great to see that there are indeed still people at Sega committed to keeping the memories of those lost alive in the form of Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection
(more…)

We’re trying hard, on Oscar Night, to figure out what Noby Noby Boy IS and failing miserably. But our spirits are lifted as we rejoice in the glory that is Street Fighter IV! In addition, John lets us know about Dragon Quest V and we talk the news. All this and more on this weeks show!

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SHOWNOTES

PSN Review: Noby Noby Boy
DS Review: Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride
360 Review: Street Fighter IV
Retro Review: Ninja Five-0 (GBA)
News: DSi Release Details
Commodore 64 on VC
Watchmen-End is Nigh Release Date
Return of American McGee’s Alice
Release List
The Last Shot
DGR Mailbag

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DGR: 02.22.2009

This week we welcome Glen Percival, aka Torgo, from the PSNation Podcast. We talk Soldner X, Prince of Persia and the news as we eagerly anticipate seeing Bruce Campbell! Join us on this week’s show!

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SHOWNOTES

PSN Review: Soldner X: Himmelssturmer
360 Review: Prince of Persia
Retro Review: Hover Strike (Jaguar)
News: Mirror’s Edge Expansion
New Game from Q? Entertainment
Uncharted 2 Announced
God of War III at Spike TV
Release List
The Last Shot
DGR Mailbag

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DGR: 12.06.2008