Escapist Podcast: 055: Spy Games & Your "One" Game

[Team Hollywood]

055: Spy Games & Your "One" Game

This week, we discuss games about spies and what direction we'd like to see them go. We also talk about being frugal with your air conditioner, Bob Ross and The Food Network "chef pose".

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[DustyDrB]

I'm with Susan about LA Noire and the "Grand Theft Auto elements". I'm at the point where driving in games is just grating to me (the only exception: Bully and Red Dead. But they have atypical modes of transportation. Plus, I really got attached to my horse in Red Dead Redemption). I hate it so much that it's really killed those kinds of games for me. I quit Mafia II really early, same for The Saboteur.

So I had my partner drive me everywhere in LA Noire. What sucks is that the game punishes you for this. There's a part where you have to drive to a bunch of landmarks in the city. You have to drive, not your partner. And if you haven't driven any in the game up to that point, you have no way to know where you're going. So in this part, I just drove aimlessly until I either happened upon the landmark or until a point (like after 10-15 minutes of driving) when Cole just "figures it out" on his own and the point is marked on your map. I hadn't found any of these landmarks, so I wasted about an hour and a half just driving aimlessly. I finished that part and then put the game away for about a month, when the burnout finally wore off.

Yeah, so I would love LA Noire so much more without those elements. Also, the dialogue system you guys suggested (go through each statement and then push them at the end) is pretty much Phoenix Wright. I think that would work better too.

Also...I'm a massive Alpha Protocol fan. I don't remember any bugs when I played it on the 360, but the minigames were pretty terrible. There is one that causes some major eye strain.

 

[Eric the Orange]

I love myself some "Tangent: The Podcast". It may be unstructured but that is it's charm. Honestly I find more "professional" podcasts boring.

Though this podcasts was particularly good. I don't even know what you were supposed to be talking about.

 

[Vanquishuer]

Remember when this was a gaming podcast? neither do I.

Still nice to listen to.

 

[UNHchabo]

A Colm Meaney movie you need to watch if you love guilty-pleasure action films: Bad Apple [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0383902/]. It stars Chris Noth (of Law and Order fame) as an undercover fed, Colm Meaney as his partner, Jim Gaffigan as their tech guy, and Elliott Gould as the mob boss.

For LA Noire, the three options are "Truth", "Doubt", and "Lie". The difference is just that "Lie" means you can disprove what they say, and "Doubt" means you can't. I think it took me until the Homicide division to fully grasp that, but once I did, I got a handle on it, and I was able overcome seeing it as a "gamey" mechanic most of the time. If you guys haven't played through the whole game, I highly recommend it, despite the length. (I spent just under 40 hours on it)

 

[Stewart Shearer]

I was a huge Winback fan back when it first came out on N64. I even remember one magazine at the time of its original release doing an elaborate graph comparing its protagonist Jean-Luc and Solid Snake to determine who was the better secret agent (can we guess who the winner was?).

And just to correct the podcast, it was originally released on the N64 and was then ported the PS2 several years later. It even had a horrendously bad sequel.

 

[CDJO]

i think besides alpha protocol, Deus Ex human revolution is a great example of what a good spy game should be like. It has stealth, action, and great dialogue trees.

 

[Kae]

Oh my, if you like the Olympics, then you must say what you thought about the inauguration, because I loved it, and the things like Rowan Atkinson and James Bond were really funny, and did anybody else think that Daniel Craig was looking at those corgis like they were secret agents too?
I don't know I rally liked it, and the torch was awesome, I'm sorry I just really wanted to say how much I liked it, but yeah the lack of Dr. Who disappointed me quite a lot, in fact I was telling my friend to look for Tardis, at least Voldemort was there, but now they really need to add Quidditch as a sport because of that, I also didn't see any Sherlock Holmes which I thought was odd.
Talking about odd exceptions, in the really amazing music bit, I was waiting for Elton John to show up and he never did.

 

[Endocrom]

Of what I saw of the Olympics opening tonight I liked the doves/cyclists the best, also how the big flame is made of a lot of small ones. I'm just sorry apparently I missed THE QUEEN in a surreal action movie spoof.
[hr]Action free detective games? Hmm, I'm afraid what you are looking for may be in the bargain bin of an Office Depot mixed in with a bunch of "Hidden Object" games. At least that's what I thought when it was brought up.
(and thanks to researching that, I now know that there was a point/click adventure game of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective)
[hr]A game soundtrack with voices spliced in? Check out Destroy All Humans! There's a remix of The Big Bopper's Chantilly Lace with help from Orthopox (AKA Invader Zim)
[hr]Never heard of Draw squad, but that did remind me of an awesome show from my youth: The Book Bird [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1xa6vzInC8]. (Why it's called that, I have no idea) The guy narrates a book (in this case Balto) to illustrations he drew/is drawing. You could say it's Reading Rainbow meets Bob Ross.

 

[Janus Vesta]

I'm with Susan about LA Noire and the "Grand Theft Auto elements". I'm at the point where driving in games is just grating to me (the only exception: Bully and Red Dead. But they have atypical modes of transportation. Plus, I really got attached to my horse in Red Dead Redemption). I hate it so much that it's really killed those kinds of games for me. I quit Mafia II really early, same for The Saboteur.

So I had my partner drive me everywhere in LA Noire. What sucks is that the game punishes you for this. There's a part where you have to drive to a bunch of landmarks in the city. You have to drive, not your partner. And if you haven't driven any in the game up to that point, you have no way to know where you're going. So in this part, I just drove aimlessly until I either happened upon the landmark or until a point (like after 10-15 minutes of driving) when Cole just "figures it out" on his own and the point is marked on your map. I hadn't found any of these landmarks, so I wasted about an hour and a half just driving aimlessly. I finished that part and then put the game away for about a month, when the burnout finally wore off.

Yeah, so I would love LA Noire so much more without those elements. Also, the dialogue system you guys suggested (go through each statement and then push them at the end) is pretty much Phoenix Wright. I think that would work better too.

Also...I'm a massive Alpha Protocol fan. I don't remember any bugs when I played it on the 360, but the minigames were pretty terrible. There is one that causes some major eye strain.

I drove every chance I got in LA Noire, and the mission to check out the landmarks was an absolute pain. The clues just didn't make any sense to me,the only one I didn't accidentally stumble across was the tar pits.

 

[blackrave]

Couldn't care less about Olimpics
Never understood appeal of it
Bunch of people come together to showoff the genetic aptitude, money, newest achievements in pharmaceuticals and power of will.
I admit, power of will occasionally does matter, anything else is kinda boring and useless, for most part
Must agree with Gus Sorola (from Rooster Teeth): Unless sports have some practical application I'm not interested in them
Much more interest in Nobel prize

 

[Susan Arendt]

Just occured to me - Susan, nothing but love and respect for you, but i was just wondering: is there anything that isn't "aMAAAAAAZING!!" to you?

also... i LOVE clavicals! me! right here! clavicals are my thing! i dunno if you could call it a fetish in that... i like ALL of a woman's body, but i absolutely see the attraction! and my theory behind common attractions to specific body parts is not so much the parts of body needed for reprduction (cuz let's face it, those are just the genitals) but the parts of the body that blatently seperate the sexes. i can only speak for men here, but breasts onviously, are one of the most obvious seperating features, and every man loves breasts. bums, i think it aludes to the wider hips of a woman. and clavicals? well for me it's because they're sort of the pinical of the entire declotage, shoulder neck area, which i think is important in recognising the smaller shoulders of a woman. i dunno. humans have a keen sense of vision and visual processing in the brain, so we can see the difference between the sexes in ANY part of the body by now, but that's my two cents on the matter.

I don't really understand the question. There are plenty of things I don't like, as is pretty obvious if you listen to the podcasts regularly. If you simply mean I use the word too much, oh, well. I like it. I also refuse to use "awesome" ad nauseum, as others are wont to do.

 

[II2]

Can anyone adequately articulate the personal experience of physical attraction and the compulsion behind it? Scientific or anecdotal, it's hallow words compared to FEELING. Rather than try to explain WHY, I'll simply state that various fetishes been with me as long as I can consciously recall and existed as a pre-pubsecent fixations exciting my imagination before they became manifest in my teenage desires and adult psycho sexual landscape. I expect, it's literally how my brain is wired. I expect that's as truthfully honest and complete an answer as you can get on the topic...

That said, I feel comforted that there's always someone weirder:

Spoiler: Anyone See Yourself?

 

[StriderShinryu]

Just to chime in on the whole foot thing. I would never consider myself to be someone with a foot fetish but have no issues with them at all. I like my girlfriends feet not because I find them as something worthy of objectification but just because they are part of someone I have extremely fond feelings for. I, however, am constantly running into people who absolutely hate feet and visibly squirm at the mere thought of being touched by them regardless of who they belong to. I actually find these people more difficult to understand than someone who would have a fetish for feet.

 

[GamerLuck]

Hey what was that game from e3 EVERYBODY flipped out over? Had "dogs" in the title? basically sounds exactly like their perfect spy game....

EDIT: "Watch Dogs" is what I was looking for!!! That looks pretty much exactly like what everyone wants.

 

[Susan Arendt]

Just occured to me - Susan, nothing but love and respect for you, but i was just wondering: is there anything that isn't "aMAAAAAAZING!!" to you?

also... i LOVE clavicals! me! right here! clavicals are my thing! i dunno if you could call it a fetish in that... i like ALL of a woman's body, but i absolutely see the attraction! and my theory behind common attractions to specific body parts is not so much the parts of body needed for reprduction (cuz let's face it, those are just the genitals) but the parts of the body that blatently seperate the sexes. i can only speak for men here, but breasts onviously, are one of the most obvious seperating features, and every man loves breasts. bums, i think it aludes to the wider hips of a woman. and clavicals? well for me it's because they're sort of the pinical of the entire declotage, shoulder neck area, which i think is important in recognising the smaller shoulders of a woman. i dunno. humans have a keen sense of vision and visual processing in the brain, so we can see the difference between the sexes in ANY part of the body by now, but that's my two cents on the matter.

I don't really understand the question. There are plenty of things I don't like, as is pretty obvious if you listen to the podcasts regularly. If you simply mean I use the word too much, oh, well. I like it. I also refuse to use "awesome" ad nauseum, as others are wont to do.

nar nar, i just meant i hear you say it every podcast. it's kinda funny is all.
a friend and i were disgussing the other day how nothing is ever "fairly decent" or "pretty cool" anymore. if it's worth knowing about, it's INCREDIBLE!! or AMAZING!! or as you say: AWESOME!!
not that there's anything wrong with it, we were just musing on it;D

I disagree with the assertion that my evaluation of things lacks nuance. I bring up things I'm passionate about and speak about them with enthusiasm. I don't simply vary between two polar extremes and I think it's utterly unfair to suggest I do.

 

[thewanderer41]

Um...I heard about the whole focusing on a specific body part conversation and thought I'd just leave this here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/25/women-and-objectification_n_1701275.html It's basically just about how people are viewed by their parts.

Perhaps more thoughtful comments later >.>