The original Rock Opera version of Dracula.
Lusipurr makes his much-desired return with Ginia and SiliconNooB on hand to provide important commentary on the issues of the day, including Final Fantasy XIV, the availability of Mew, the lack of NPD numbers, and the shocking sales of the PS Move.
CramLiked the outtakes where Lusi gets the 18th right, but the year wrong.
kenjujuuAnd he doesn’t realise that’s why they’re both laughing. It’s like October now, dude.
I didn’t realise that I said 2009 until I was editing the podcast yesterday evening, and I had to listen to that section several times. Only then did I realise why my two panelists were carrying on so.
Sigh.
KenjujuuI laughed.
The Oct. 18th, 2009 flub was my favorite, too.
Also, I enjoy Dragon Quest games on occasion. I never expect them to be particularly innovative, but they’re the closest thing to a new oldschool RPG as I can get sometimes.
The best way to play a dragon quest game is to turn it off.
SiliconNooBI agree with Lusipurr’s suggestion 120%
Haters gonna hate
Is Catfancy Cast the podcast that loves FFXIV? I unsubscribed them from iTunes quite a while ago, so I don’t know what nefailiousness they’ve been up to.
Dragon Quest V has a cliched as shit story, but it’s the presentation and stuff that make it fun. It’s like Chrono Trigger. Nothing original, but good fun and the slight twist makes it awesome.
SiliconNooB@EP: Shhhhhhhhhhh
@EP: Well, my comments are not specific. They are mainly directed at those who are so eager to love FFXIV that they have taken leave of their senses. You can like FFXIV, sure, but to try to defend every aspect of a game that has a 3.8 aggregate user score and a 5.4 aggregate review score, and to try to explain everything away as ‘well it is early days yet’–that’s just irresponsible reporting, honestly. It isn’t professional, and it isn’t fair to one’s readers. Our job as journalists is to inform our readers; not to dress up rampant fanboyism in the guise of objective statements.
The central fact is very simple: the game was released and it should not have been. To try and overlook this key fact is to ignore something blatant and obvious which should not be overlooked. Square Enix doesn’t get a ‘free pass’ on their shit game just because they ask for a free pass, especially considering that the vast majority of the problems with FFXIV have nothing to do with the ‘fluctuating playerbase’ that is the rationale for their request. Rather, the problems are issues with the design, with the interface, with the gameplay, and with the performance, all of which even the most cursory of development routines should have hammered out long before the game was ever released to gold master and sent to stores.
There are other people who will defend this game to the hilt. The questions you should ask yourself are, “What were they saying about this game before it was ever released? How does what they say jive with what everyone else is saying? Are these people trustworthy, or are they in a position where they are now trying to defend their own credibility?”
We’re not perfect here at Lusipurr.com, but I’ll be damned before I’ll let our enthusiasm for a game, series, or genre obscure our objectivity to the level that I have recently seen, most shamefully displayed, in certain other areas of gaming journalism.
The staff of Lusipurr.com wanted FFXIV to be good. We all planned to buy it. Most of us had it pre-ordered. As it happened, it turned out that FFXIV sucks: we were wrong. But we’d be even more wrong if we didn’t admit it right away.
I’m glad I cancelled my pre-order. Kirby’s Epic Yarn was a much better choice.
SiliconNooB“We’re not perfect here at Lusipurr.com, but I’ll be damned before I’ll let our enthusiasm for a game, series, or genre obscure our objectivity to the level that I have recently seen, most shamefully displayed, in certain other areas of gaming journalism.”
*Cough* The Sims *cough*
SiliconNooB-LOL, the funny thing is I REALLY am named after alcohol, albeit inadvertently since my grandfather used to own it … http://www.taylorswines.com.au/
I completely agree with your statement there, Lusi. So many video game reviewers (and their sites in general) are so afraid of being wrong and losing face that once they say something is amazing, they will never come off that stance. To me, this seems to happen more often on sites that are more concerned with not losing their adspace than with accuracy of their reviews.
One of the great things about the Internet age is that we get the chance to hear opinions and thoughts from people we never would have known existed. Unfortunately, we also have to filter through the opinions and thoughts of those who are actually shills for companies, are rampant fanboys or simply don’t think before they write something up. It’s a double-edged sword.
I’m very happy that I got to spend my time in the beta for FFXIV and see how terrible the game was for free. I too was more than ready to hand Square Enix my money before that experience, but there’s no way they deserve even $20 for what they put out on the market. While they may have fixed a few features here and there with patches at launch, they certainly couldn’t have overhauled the whole thing as was necessary.
@SN: This site has always maintained, quite rightly, that The Sims is not a game.
Long response time.
@DC: You bring up a matter which has always been at the forefront of my mind with this website, viz.
a) Adopt a traditional journalistic approach, dealing with companies via their official PR representatives, and presenting that information to our readers, thus allowing for fast-breaking news, reviews, and previews without placing a financial burden on the site, which could offset operating costs with advertising.
or
b) Occupy a position at the vanguard of the actual gaming public, eschewing the PR representatives and expecting site staff to buy and review games no sooner than any normal gamer could, resulting in fewer reviews which take longer to prepare, but which owe no fealty to any company, implicit or otherwise.
As you can see, we have stuck with B. I have occasionally had my misgivings about this approach: we necessarily are behind other review sites, we have fewer reviews, and each year I have to go to my staff, cap-in-hand, and ask people who are paid nothing for their work to dig deep into their strapped pockets to contribute to keeping their ‘employer’ running.
But, at the same time, our reviews are completely free of any obligation to any company, designer, producer, or industry bigwig. We don’t have to worry about being put on a blacklist, or losing our advertising revenue, or not getting free review copies. I have watched as these things have corrupted even the most well-intentioned people (some of whom are my friends), presumably subliminally and without their knowledge, for it is human nature to wish to repay a gift, and such things oft operate beneath the surface of even the most objective reviewer’s mind.
The focus of Lusipurr.com has and must remain this: to be the first amongst gamers–not amongst the journalistic press–and as such to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with gamers. We are not paid, we don’t get our copies for free, we don’t get them early, we don’t talk to the companies, we don’t go to E3, and we don’t have any special privileges. We are exactly like you, and that means (or at least, makes a compelling case that) the opinions we have are closer to those you would have, the experiences we have are shared with you, and every aspect of what you get out of games is something we understand and experience and deal with ourselves.
So each week we comb over the writings of the journalists, each week we decide what people probably care about, and what they probably don’t, and each week we do our best to report these things in the irreverent and offensive way our readers and listeners have come to expect. And when a review is written, it is a review written by someone who bought that game, who spent their own money on it, who stood in a queue and paid for it with the sweat of their brow. It didn’t come in the post as a gift, and so they have an expectation that the game had better be worth the money. Just like you.
So now you know the philosophy of this site–or at least part of it. In reality, it is mostly just a giant engine for my own unceasing bigotry. ;)
LaneFuck journalists somehow beholden to publishers. I play games and sometimes they move me to write about them. The games don’t play me.
@Lane: Precisement.
SiliconNooBI cannot abide sycophants, that’s why I view Destructoid as a bastion of journalistic integrity!
darthgibblet- I’m mildly interested in Vanquish. I’ve had the demo on my PS3 for a few weeks now, but haven’t gotten a chance to play it.
- Since SE said reviewers should wait a month to review FFXIV, they should recommend consumers wait a month before buying FFXIV :D
- The digital strategy guide is a cool concept, but I’d be curious to see how they stack up against the physical ones information-wise. Are they just the same information, just digital instead of in a physical book? Also, they need to figure out a way to just overlay them on the PSP screen or something, because the current system is kind of ridiculous.
- I actually just downloaded Angry Birds yesterday. Everybody says it’s a great phone game, so I’m looking forward to giving it a shot.
@Lusipurr/Lane Agree 100%. Like Lusipurr said, there’s nothing wrong with admitting the hype for FFXIV was misplayed. A lot of the information we had about the game sounded good, but the execution just seems to be a complete trainwreck. I don’t really think the problem is that people are sycophants, but if you get the game for free, it’ll be impossible to divorce that fact from your opinion of it, that’s just human nature.
@Lusi, DG Over at TGB, we occasionally do get offers for review copies of games or anime (I’m playing one right now from NIS America) though they are few and far between, and most of the time they are games that we would be buying anyway. But, even if it’s free, we’re not afraid to tear a game up. We also disclose at the bottom of our review if the game was a review copy so that everyone knows. I don’t have a problem with getting review copies as long as you’re willing to be transparent. I think that transparency helps keep people grounded in their reviews (plus I’m not afraid to call bullshit on one of my fellow reviewers if I feel like they’ve inflated their opinions.) If it ever gets to the point where I feel like the review copies are damaging our integrity, I won’t have any problem pulling a plug on them.
To me, adspace is a whole different issue, and I don’t feel comfortable selling space on my site and then reviewing that title. There is a far more severe conflict of interest there, and that is nearly impossible to reconcile. We run basic google ads on our site to try to cover some of the server costs and we have an amazon button but that’s about it. Otherwise, I shell out everything else for the site from my own pocket including the occasional game for a reviewer.
Angry Birds is dumb
@Ethos: No, you’re dumb.
Angry birds is fun. I love artillery games!
Oh it’s definitely fun. Also, it’s dumb.
SiliconNooBI didn’t realise it was an artillery game.
darthgibbletI played through the first board (or whatever) of Angry Birds today and it does seem like a lot of fun, if only in small doses (perfect for a phone game). For a bit, I as worried there wouldn’t be any other types of birds than the standard one, and I was sad that there was such a missed opportunity. My one complaint is I kind of wish they would show the trajectories for all your birds this round, not just the most recent one. That could get really chaotic if you’ve got lots of vollies in later levels, though.
