Well, it’s been longer than the normal wait for this one. Travel (and losing an episode due to technical crap) means that we were a bit delayed. The wait is finally over, though, as we present Mikes’ Video Game Podcast episode 4 (duh duh duh). Topics in this episode include:
- Cortana is still awesome (thanks Jen!)
- New intro sound (music found and credited here)
- Virtual Reattle-ty (a really bad attempt to mix Seattle with Virtual Reality… nothing to see here)
- Passing of Satoru Iwata
- Cinematics (Mike is a Sith)
- Blood and Thunder
- Mike is the master of Zen
As always, thanks for listening!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
If I exclaim “UNPAUSABLE CUTSCENE!!!” when my wife walks into the room and tries to talk to me, she is very sympathetic to the problems caused by this questionable design choice and will wait patiently until the characters are finished dramatizing. I forget which game it was, but one of them saw me shouting “UNPAUSABLE CUTSCENE!!!” so often that I eventually decided I would be better off watching a playthrough on Youtube instead of finishing it, because at least there I could pause it. =P
One of my favorite games for cinematics was Age of Kings, which was not in fact very cinematic at all because the cutscenes were just parchment sketches and narration. But they were nice detailed sketches with relatively good voice acting to set the stage. I much preferred those to the rather more awkward in-engine cutscenes of the later, fully 3D RTSes.
The ending discussion, with Mike’s incredulity about Mike’s gentle taming of angry internet people, was hilarious. I think I will try to emulate this approach on my usual TF2 server; at the very least, a few quiet words of consideration and understanding will make everybody feel suspicious and uneasy, and that’s not nothing!