Behold what weeks of frenzied anticipation and foolishly putting “crashers” in a game’s title hath wrought. One of the most anticipated XBLA titles in the service’s history has had its launch crippled by a hideously broken online component. Legions of gamers who have spent the day in their classes, cubicles, long-haul trucking cabs and coffee shops frothing at the mouth as they waited to get home and crash some castles ended up crashing the servers instead.

Attempts to join both quick and custom matches end in failure, as do efforts trying to create one. It’s a damn shame.

But before we all go crazy and condemn The Behemoth and Microsoft for a 1,200 MS point disaster, take a deep breath. There’s no true way to test these things until they hit market, and clearly Castle Crashers has failed its first test. While message boards are being set aflame by posters breathlessly declaring Castle Crashers to be “teh suck,” it’s a safe bet that the folks at both companies are feverishly working to take care of this. Hopefully, it’ll be resolved sooner than later.

If you’re like me and bought this puppy right out of the gate, you can suck up the crushing disappointment and take a shot at the single player. Find your favorite knight and level him up. Or read a book. I hear Bill Clinton gave a hell of a speech at the Democratic National Convention. Chop up the audio and make a hilarious meme. At about the eleven-minute mark, Bubba gives you “long, hard” for free.

If you haven’t bought it yet, I strongly advise you to wait.

Whatever you decide to do, have a little more patience until this fiasco gets fixed. But if we’re not crashing castles by the weekend… Viva la Revolucion!

The Gamers Pub | 2 Comments »

(Artist’s rendering of Bad Company’s pacing)

I was given a copy of Battlefield: Bad Company shortly after the game’s launch and quickly forgot about it. A brief and forgettable foray into the single player campaign and a week or so with the multiplayer did little to convince me that the game was anything special.

So, finding myself between game rentals in the calm before this fall’s release storm, I picked up the game again to see if perhaps I’d overlooked the game’s charm.

I hadn’t. 

Simply put, BC is one of the least compelling shooters I’ve ever played. Much of the game consists of long stretches of fighting AI soldiers that appear to be missing a crucial chromosome in bland, featureless environments. The rest is driving sluggish vehicles that never truly gain any kind of momentum through an unchanging field until reaching the next bland, featureless environment. 

Scratch that. At one point you get to drive up a winding cliff road, which is a nice change of pace, until you’re forced to immediately make a return trip and endure the same tedious battle you slogged through on the way up. I guess it’s somewhat commendable that by that point in the game the developers seemed to abandon the idea of trying to trick the gamer into thinking they were someplace new and just said “uh, why don’t we send them back down the hill? Down is different than up, right?”

Much has been made of the game’s destructible environments, which admittedly is a cool feature that I can’t wait for Infinity Ward to get its hands on. But there’s no real satisfaction in blowing shit up in BC, as you end up just blowing the same hole into different walls and only certain parts of any structure are vulnerable. I’ll bet eradicating buildings is not easy to program, but if it’s to be a game’s defining feature, it had best show that some love had been put into it in order to really catch fire.

But here’s the ultimate testimony to how I feel about Bad Company. At the beginning of what I believe is the final stage, one of my squad mates pointed out yet another checkpoint in yet another bland, featureless environment and said:

“Looks like we have to take the long way around.”

I turned off my console, wrote this post and now I’m going to bed.

Battlefield: Bad Company, Benjamin Salmon | 1 Comment »

Hello, and thank you fellow pubbers and Platform Nation members for welcoming me to the PN family. Let me take the time to introduce myself.

I’m Tabari Thomas from the state of Alabama and unlike my name might suggest, I have no family in the Middle East. I’m an old fashioned home-grown American.

Some things people might want to know about me; I game across all consoles and for some reason, while I’m a complete monster on games like Ninja Gaiden and Devil May Cry, I’m more of a target when it comes to FPS… oh well to each their own, right?

I heard about the Pub while listening to other PN podcasts, they put out the call for a writer and I decided to give it a shot. Thanks for reading my post and mad love to all of Platform Nation hosts, contributors and forum members.

The Gamers Pub | 2 Comments »

In which four brave knights in primary color armor hack and slash their way into the hallowed halls of legend. The odds are stacked against these knights of blue, orange, red and green; brutes, skeletons, beekeepers and ninjas will bring their bees, bones, and coffee mugs to bear as they throw themselves at these valiant heroes to keep them from their goal.

Will our heroes conquer their enemies? Who knows. Will they hack their way to the status of legends, whose names (colors?) will be repeated in the same breaths as Arthur and Beowulf? Doubtful. Who will carry the team and who will let them down? Guessing would be folly. 

Their paths will be smeared with glory and blood and some may not make it out alive. Find out as the legend is written this week. Stay tuned…

The Gamers Pub | No Comments »

Topics Include:

What we are drinking

What we are playing

What we want to see at PAX

Not the regular show…this was supposed to run short…really?

All this and more!

Intro song “Beer” by the band Psychostick, go check them out at www.psychostic.com

This weeks outro song is “Long Time” By Chapter 11

Direct Download (right click, save as)(to get the link you must post first, then you will see a direct download link, copy that and replace the direct download link that you see here. Only the red section will change)

Subscribe to this podcast:

 

 Standard Podcast [65:29m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

B Dazzler, Benjamin Salmon, Burnout Paradise, Castle Crashers, Fable 2, Fable 2 pub games, GTA4, GUI J, Gears of War 2, Ninja Gaiden 2, Penny Arcade Expo, PlatformNation.com, Steve519, TQCast.com, The Gamers Pub, TheGamersPub.com, Video Game Jocks, Xbox 360, Xbox Live, beer, microsoft, midway | 1 Comment »

So… here is a BIG Happy Birthday to my fellow Ohio’an Vinny, from the “ZANY, and Crazy” Video Game Jocks Pod Cast. Happy Birthday bro, I hope you find a girl who is 1/2 your age……really he likes it like that!

Video Game Jocks | 1 Comment »

For a game I know so little about, I’m unreasonably excited about Mirror’s Edge. I really dig on how Electronic Arts has quietly gone about developing a stable of beautiful-looking, original games that are going a long way to helping the gaming community pass the Evil Corporate Crown on to Activision.

Mirror’s Edge looks to be one of those special games — like Gears of War and Fight Night Round 3 — that dazzeled visiting friends during the 360’s infancy. While there have been many games that have illustrated the maturing of the platform (BioShock comes to mind), this game seems to be taking things up a notch.

Then again, forcing a first-person perspective down the throat of third-person action can be risky. The whole package could fall apart and end up just being a cool tech demo that grew too big for its britches. But I’m choosing to be optimistic. So while I’m also chomping at the bit for Dead Space, Fallout 3 and Gears 2, Mirror’s Edge is the fall release I’m looking forward to getting my hands on the most.

The Gamers Pub | 5 Comments »

We are gamers.  What does that mean?  How much gaming do you have to do to be considered a gamer, and how much time do you have to do it?  I’m know I’m not the only one who doesn’t have enough time for gaming.  I’m also sure the rest of you have done some gaming instead of what you should do, like me.

As a father of two, rapidly approaching 40 (I’m not there yet, damn it), I find myself reevaluating my definition of how much and when game time should be.  Am I setting a reasonable example for my kids, or are they getting the wrong idea of game time and the proper limits… hell, what the f*ck are the proper limits?

Sometimes when I want to be gaming, I find myself strangely choosing to watch a movie or read a book instead, because I feel it isn’t perceived as such a total time waster.  Movies are an accepted form of escape, and books (seems no matter what the content) are raised above all media as the end all be all of existence.  While I fully enjoy watching many different kinds of movies and I appreciate all the fine points of reading books too, I’m frustrated at even my own perception of games.  Can’t we value the strengths and weaknesses of all these different forms of media?  Couldn’t they could all be considered time wasters, depending on the content?

My incoherrent ramblings stem from my deep desire to play and finish Mass Effect (and many other ‘pile of shame’ games) without loosing myself and too much time on a ‘game’.  Why was it so much easier to dovte a few hours a night to the Mass Effect book, but not to the game?  Maybe someday, the rich experience gaming can offer will be valued by the masses, I just hope it’s not wrapped up too tightly in Wii Sports, Wii Fit or Wii look stupid playing these iminanary instruments!  While I’ll admit those experiences can be fun, I would rarely consider them rich.  I think I’ll stop writing now and go play a damn game.  You should stop reading, print out the coupon above and cash it in for some good ol’ gaming… and tell them the Pub sent you.

The Gamers Pub, game | 4 Comments »

It’s heartening to see that the gathering storm that was swirling around Braid’s fifteen dollar price (or 1200 Microsoft Space Bucks) hasn’t seemed to hurt its sales. It’s due in no small part, I’m sure, to an overwhelmingly positive critical response that thankfully avoided the tasteless orgy which greeted GTA IV, whose luster faded faster than Barack Obama’s hair color.

For my part, as soon as that little dinosaur recommended I buy the game at the end of the demo, I immediately said “yes, please,” and kissed that astronomical fifteen dollars goodbye. And while Braid hardly redefines gaming, or even platform gaming, it is a quality experience that kept me enthralled for three or four hours — the kind of mental and visual escape that allowed games to steal my heart in the first place.

However, what thrills me the most about gamers embracing this title at its scandalous price is what it could mean to the future of XBLA development. Up until now, XBLA has been a library of mostly forgettable games and ports punctuated by the occasional gem. What Microsoft has done with its oh-so-savvy “Summer of Arcade” marketing blitz is take what was easily its strongest month’s worth of titles so far and make a push to expand the service’s potential, perhaps in response to the highly-desirable lineup on the PSN.

Once they couple the success of Braid with the pending success of Castle Crashers, I imagine Microsoft will be quite pleased with its little gambit. More developers with more capital will be encouraged to drop more adventurous IPs onto XBLA, with Braid having set the precedent for the cerebral and Castle Crashers arguing for action. But most importantly, all that nonsense about a supposed and undeclared ten dollar price cap on XBLA games has been smashed and when any marketplace — digital or brick and mortar — is freed from shackles such as that, consumers stand to benefit.

So sure, fifteen bucks may seem a bit steep for a short-and-sweet rendezvous, but many of us were willing to take the plunge and we’ll all be richer for it.

Benjamin Salmon, The Gamers Pub, XBLA, Xbox 360, Xbox Live Arcade | 3 Comments »

Topics Include:

What we are drinking

What we are playing

Meet Benjamonsalmon!

Is the iPhone a gaming system

Gaming news with the beer goggles on

All this and more!

Intro song “Beer” by the band Psychostick, go check them out at www.psychostic.com

This weeks outro song is “Gimme the Short Circuit” (Notorious B.I.G. vs. Daft Punk)

Direct Download (right click, save as)(to get the link you must post first, then you will see a direct download link, copy that and replace the direct download link that you see here. Only the red section will change)

Subscribe to this podcast:

 

 Standard Podcast [80:11m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

B Dazzler, Benjamin Salmon, Bionic Commando Rearmed, Burnout Paradise, Castle Crashers, Community, Fable 2, Fable 2 pub games, GUI J, Gears of War, Gears of War 2, Halo 3, Lion Head Studios, Ninja Gaiden, Ninja Gaiden 2, Nintendo, PAX, PS3, PSP, Penny Arcade Expo, PlatformNation.com, Playstation, Podcast, Rock Band, Soul Calibur, Steve519, The Gamers Pub, TheGamersPub.com, Trixie, beer, bioshock, game, microsoft | 1 Comment »