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Episode 296: Smooth But Not Silky

by Michael Cole, James Jones, Jonathan Metts, and Guillaume Veillette - July 1, 2012, 5:36 pm EDT
Total comments: 16

TYP hops in to talk up lots of games and help us pick apart the Nintendo Direct event where 3DS XL was announced.

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Jon is on vacation this week, but our good friend Michael "TYP" Cole stepped in and even brought some New Business with him. Mike catches up with the brilliant Portal 2 and a classic portable jam, Game & Watch Gallery 2. Jonny reports on the Kingdom Hearts 3D (awful subtitle omitted) demo, gets really angry at a late boss in Xenoblade Chronicles, and gives quick impressions of the bizarre Tomba as referenced last week. James is still deep into Pandora's Tower and evaluates the game's chances of an American release. Finally, our faithful editor Guillaume packs in more Infamous 2, the retail-to-eShop game Order Up!, and the overlooked party masterpiece that is WarioWare: Smooth Moves for Wii.

After a quick break, we look back at last week's post-E3 Nintendo Direct event. Why did it happen so soon after the last one and all those E3 media briefings? Where was the 3DS XL at gaming's biggest showcase, anyway? Are we planning to buy the new mega-sized system? How does the extra heft jive with our StreetPass obsessions? What's the deal with Namco-Bandai helping Masahiro Sakurai on the new Smash Bros. games? What can we expect from the New Super Mario Bros. 2 downloadable levels, and how much should they cost? Most importantly, do the full-game purchases, Virtual Console promotions, weekend sales, and a new Vice-President mean that Nintendo is finally realizing the dream of eShop? We cover all this and more -- it's a very interesting time to be a Nintendo fan!

We'd love to hear what you think of the recent news and our discussion of all the action, so "hit up that kind of rush" by sending an email to RFN -- we may read it on the show! Another great way to participate is by voting on the next RetroActive game, which we'll play together along with the community for a future episode. The poll closes soon, so vote now or read through the forum thread if you need help deciding.

This podcast was edited by Guillaume Veillette.

Music for this episode of Radio Free Nintendo is used with permission from Jason Ricci & New Blood. You can purchase their newest album, Done with the Devil, directly from the record label, Amazon (CD) (MP3), or iTunes, or call your local record store and ask for it!

Additional music for this episode of Radio Free Nintendo is copyrighted to Nintendo, and is included under fair use protection.

Talkback

RFN for me is a religion, and TYP is the *SHO-RYU-KEN*

KDR_11kJuly 02, 2012

Xenoblade gives you two commands for your allies: Attack my selected target and run to my position (in that stance they won't attack even if you move them into combat range). I think they're something like Z+dpad up/down (I play with the Wiimote and nunchuk). Not something you use often but e.g. when you're trying to bait one enemy away from its buddies you should tell your allies to stay close to you so they don't draw any attention.

Nice comment from James regarding his 1/2 hour of silence at the end.  Right before that I was just thinking "He must have annoyed Guillaume with something, and this is his revenge".

It's too bad Guillaume didn't enjoy inFamous 2.  I definitely see merit in many of his complaints (arbitrary "morality" system, issues with the way Cole handles his automated ledge grats, world redundancy, etc), but I felt that they addressed my biggest gripe from the first game, which was how quickly you could traverse the city.  In Empire City, while I loved the sprawling city landscape, I often found myself getting muddled in slowly climbing up skyscrapers while traveling through the city.  In New Marais, I thought movement through the city was much more fluid, and I was able to easily keep a quick pace if I paid attention to the landscape and buildings around me. 

Granted, I didn't have great expectations of Sucker Punch doing anything significantly improved with the morality system, and it seemed like they cared more about diversifying the powers set between "good/evil" than bluring the lines between the morality choices.

I do agree with comments about Portal 2 not necessarily being easy to those who aren't avid FPS players.  I've heard several people state that Portal 1 & 2 are great games for beginning gamers, and my experience with my wife playing the co-op with me was the exact opposite.  Handling two different analog sticks, while inuitive for experienced gamers, is daunting to a newer gamer.  Also, my wife had problems with getting used to moving around in a 3-D space without being able to see the character in a 3rd person perspective. 

Pixelated PixiesJuly 02, 2012

Great episode guys.

What happened to Johnny at 01 hour 53 mins 38 secs? That was just rude.

Only pulling your leg Gui, keep up the great work!

Fiendlord_TimmayJuly 02, 2012

Having just played Crackdown, I can say I vastly prefer Infamous' sticky jump to Crackdown's unpredictable ledge-grabbing. I could jump at a ledge in Crackdown several times before I managed to grab it. In Infamous, damn near everything can be grabbed onto. In Crackdown, you're never quite sure.

And for some reason when you're scaling a building and you jump up and hit a ceiling, you don't grab anything on the way down! At least not until you've fallen very far. I've died because I bumped my head on a windowsill near the top of a building and fallen 50 stories to the ground below, not grabbing a single thing on the way down, despite mashing A and pushing towards the dozens of passing windowsills. It is IMMENSELY frustrating.



Oh, and by the way, congratulations TYP!

EnnerJuly 03, 2012

Oh, that was the boss you were stuck on in Xenoblade Chronicles. I thought it was some other one. I don't remember having any trouble with the boss and boss area in question. Actually, I didn't wipe at a boss until the final one. Ah, you make me wonder what I did wrong. The obvious answer is that I've been over leveled through out the entire game. That makes sense given how I completed many of the side quests.

Pixelated PixiesJuly 03, 2012

I am aware of the boss that the guys on the podcast hint at and I remember the acid in particular being very frustrating. For me, however, there is another boss (not the last one) which was more annoying.

I found Egil to be super frustating. It may have been that I was just way under-leveled, but the crab-like enemies he spawned in had this body slam attack which always instant killed me. So frustrating.

@lolmonade  - Ah, I didn't want to give the impression that I didn't enjoy the game. I did! I wouldn't have played through it otherwise. I did touch on the quick traversal last week, I very much enjoy that about the game. I guess this week I focused more on what disappointed me.

@Pixelated Pixies - Ah, yeah, I guess I could have made that transition smoother. I really wanted to leave my joke in, though, so I have to keep Jonny's unfinished sentence in! At that point we were interrupted by James' Audacity woes.

To be fair - I only half listen to Jonny anyway.

LithiumJuly 03, 2012

There's a command for bringing party member's towards you in xenoblade that makes that fight with that particular boss much easier although they hide it in the tutorial menu and never prompt you to look at it as far as i know. Anyways i was at level 80 by that point and had a bunch of level 5 gems so needless to say i didn't have a rough time with it. However i can imagine if i never level grinded i'd probably would have raged just as much at that boss fight.

Chocobo_RiderJuly 04, 2012

Another great episode (what else is new?) !!

Just wanted to say that James and Gui are spot on about the DSi XL being the holy grail of handhelds.  I'm sure I have shared that opinion before... but it still hasn't become any less true.  I don't play DS games on my 3DS just so that I can still use my beautiful and comfortable and blissful DSi XL.

Can't wait for the 3DS XL............. even though I AM going to wait until more colors are available for NA.  *fingers crossed* for the all-white one JP is getting or one with this shade of green: http://i47.tinypic.com/qs2zuv.jpg

Uncle_OptimusJuly 05, 2012

Quote from: NinSage

Another great episode (what else is new?) !!

Just wanted to say that James and Gui are spot on about the DSi XL being the holy grail of handhelds.  I'm sure I have shared that opinion before... but it still hasn't become any less true.  I don't play DS games on my 3DS just so that I can still use my beautiful and comfortable and blissful DSi XL.

Can't wait for the 3DS XL............. even though I AM going to wait until more colors are available for NA.  *fingers crossed* for the all-white one JP is getting or one with this shade of green: http://i47.tinypic.com/qs2zuv.jpg

Judging by how the XL colors have been distributed throughout the three regions, it's seems plausible that America was originally tabbed to get White alongside the good ol Red and Blue (and then released on july 4th...kidding).
Perhaps it came down to production limitations...the White has a key difference from the other colours in that it's interior plastics is white instead of black thereby necessitating a separate component production run. Maybe Nintendo was not able to produce enough of that interior white for both the Japanese and U.S. markets?

Otherwise I have difficulty understanding why only the U.S. market, the largest and probably Nintendo's biggest concern, received two colour choices whereas the other territories received three.

roykoopa64July 05, 2012

Wow, episode 300 quickly approaching...

Oh man, I'm about 50 or 60 hours into Xenoblade and I don't think I've faced that horrendous boss Jonny talked about. Sounds awful! I hope getting over that hurdle is not going to be such an endeavor, but we shall see. I'll have to check out what some of you guys are saying about being able to change the way your partners behave in battle, as I surely glanced over that useful bit of information.

I'm still unsure about whether I want to get the 3DS XL or not. I honestly love the fact I can carry my 3DS around so conveniently. Also, I'm not sure I'm ready to dish out another two hundred bucks at this point.

NeifirstJuly 05, 2012

As it's been noted on here, when in combat just hold the Z button and a menu pops up on the right-hand side of the screen with different command options.  I utilized these quite often during the game, particularly the 'focus' command as I found picking off enemies one at a time usually went much more quickly (and easily) than each character taking on whatever monster was nearest to them.

As for 3DS XL, I'm holding off until the inevitable special Black Friday bundle in North America is released, and my guess is that it will be the white 3DS XL with New Super Mario Bros 2 or (hopefully) Paper Mario.

Pixelated PixiesJuly 05, 2012

Quote from: Neifirst

As it's been noted on here, when in combat just hold the Z button and a menu pops up on the right-hand side of the screen with different command options.  I utilized these quite often during the game, particularly the 'focus' command as I found picking off enemies one at a time usually went much more quickly (and easily) than each character taking on whatever monster was nearest to them.


Wait! Some people weren't using that?

NeifirstJuly 06, 2012

Quote from: Pixelated

Quote from: Neifirst

As it's been noted on here, when in combat just hold the Z button and a menu pops up on the right-hand side of the screen with different command options.  I utilized these quite often during the game, particularly the 'focus' command as I found picking off enemies one at a time usually went much more quickly (and easily) than each character taking on whatever monster was nearest to them.


Wait! Some people weren't using that?

Apparently not Jonny from listening to the latest RFN!

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