On our fourth anniversary together, the RFN crew just do what it do.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/rfn/28960
On this fine episode, we start by noting a nice milestone -- four years with the RFN crew you know so well. However, we waste little time in getting on with the episode, starting with New Business As Usual. Lindy gets it going with Terraria, the 2D side-scrolling tribute/rip-off of Minecraft that might be even more appealing than its source material. James, having solved his Xbox woes last week, finally delves into Deus Ex: Human Revolution and finds it to be ripe with gameplay possibilities. Jonny breaks the Nintendo cherry for this show with updated recommendations for Nano Assault and VVVVVV on 3DS. He also has some thoughts on a PC shooter called Hard Reset, and he spins a heart-warming tale of a 30-year-old man playing Dungeons & Dragons for the first time. Any and all video game fans ignorant of D&D should take heed! Greg wraps up with much more in-depth impressions of Mega Man X2, plus analysis of Shinobi's closing stages and bonus content.
In part 2, we catch up with your Listener Mail and have some excellent questions and topics from the audience. At your request, we speculate on Miyamoto's next genre and the possibility of having multiple online platforms/storefronts on Wii U. We also debate how reviewers should handle buggy games like Skyrim, and we try to pull dear Sgt. Foster out of his Nintendo rut. Send your own email and we may just answer it on the show!
Finally, we announce the winner of RetroActive #21, and it's none other than Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones. Many voters cited the fact that this series has rarely been mentioned on RFN, and that's going to change very soon. It's part of the 3DS Ambassador program, so there's a chance you might already have this game for free and just needed an excuse to play it. Now that you've got one, head over to the official RetroActive forum thread to leave your thoughts and see what others are saying as they play along.
Look, I'm a Bethesda fan, but their bugs are starting to piss me off! For instance, an entire city is bugged for me (I'm playing the PS3 version). Literally -- the entire city of Markarth is unplayable because an army of guards would always attack me for no reason whatsoever. The conversation system does not work in, or around the city: a guard would come up to me, tell me I've killed someone and must go to prison, I'm given a choice to submit or fight, I chose to submit but the game doesn't register it, so the guard echos the poorly acted sentence again! It's an endless cycle of repetition until I leave the conversation and then he, and an entire army, starts attacking.I have the exact same bug (360 though). It really is frustrating because all my open quests require me to go to that city so the game sits there unplayed until they fix it. I have had funny bugs in Bethesda games (a Deathclaw randomly launching into space over and over again in Fallout 3) and I forgive those but the bugs that alter actual content are terrible.
Also, my heart was glad to hear D&D mentioned on the podcast. I'm not a huge fan, but I did my graduation paper for an English degree on the positive uses of game systems like D&D in the classroom. So, I kind of grew fond of it. The Red Box is a great start and is the one I use with my middle schoolers (and Pathfinder).
Good episode. As a Bethesda hater (not really, but close), I just want to point out why I really dislike their products. I've played about six hours of Oblivion and I finished Fallout 3, both in the Playstation 3. The problems you discussed are also true to these previous games. Fallout becomes nearly unplayable after a while. I would have to reboot the game every 10 minutes to avoid it freezing in a slide show. As far as I know, Skyrim suffers from the same problems. The fact is Bethesda knows their engine will not work properly in the PS3 as it doesn't have as much memory as the PC in which it was initially developed. They know it for years now and they don't care to change it because they think the press, for most part, is to eager to bite the hype and objectively review their games and their customers are stupid enough to learn from their previous products. As the company appears to not care about their customers' experience, I stopped caring about their games.
Regarding Skyrim, I might be biased but I am not sure why so people are excited about it. The graphics are better than Oblivion but the characters still look pretty bad. Also, if the game follows Oblivion and Fallout and considering what I heard so far, the story should be mediocre at best without no emotional linkage to the player. Finally, I keep hearing praise for this game from the same people who complains about padding in Skyward Sword. Really? I guess Bethesda improved their quests design a lot since Fallout.