Here’s what I learned from CheckPoint S3E24.

  • Sports games that aren’t FIFA can go die in a fire. That said, I hope they rip this non-FIFA sports game a new one.
  • Black Friday jokes? Neato. “Celebrate family by murdering family” is a bit too violent of a thought to be funny, in my view. I’d have gone with “Celebrate family by lining up outside a retail establishment for days on end without them.”
  • A new free-to-play Soul Calibur game? Now this could be a real step forward for fighting games. Their previous titles had weak stories to combine with a campaign-style mode that made playing a fighting game alone a reasonable notion. The depth of the character creation tools in previous titles in the series would allow players to completely customize the move set. If anything like this is on the horizon for the next Soul Calibur, I think it’s time for CAPCOM and other fighting game publishers to take notice.
  • With the cameras being shipped (or promoted) with the next-gen consoles, Sony’s approach to outsourcing photo content verification to Facebook seems like a pretty good call. Not only does the third-party integration strengthen how connected the Sony service feels, but it adds more and more value to having a Facebook account (along with a real name which is verified by the Facebook account) associated with your gaming profile. For consoles, the trend of moving away from anonymity doesn’t seem to be slowing down.
  • The football management genre of simulation games has finally come to American sports simulations in such a way as to finally be noticed. It’s not groundbreaking. It’s not even newsworthy to explain how it works further than “it’s fantasy basketball in your fantasy basketball based on how fantasy basketball works with other meta bullshit”.
  • “I hope senpai makes it to the Final Four.” OH DEAR GOD GRAHAM PLEASE LET’S NOT MIX COLLEGE BASKETBALL REFERENCES WITH JAPANESE DATING SIM-SPEAK.
  • A “recursive Xbox setup” is exactly how I’ll be using my systems when I decide to pull the trigger on the Xbox One purchase, provided the display lag isn’t terribly game-shattering.
  • A short reference to Sony’s “WE OWN YOUR X” clause in relation to communication over the Playstation network stuff. But it does kind of make sense, don’t use a gaming console to facilitate drug deals. Do it on the street corner like everybody else.

Here’s what I learned from CheckPoint S3E21.

  • Wasn’t Titanfall supposed to not see a PS4 release by design? Oh well. Graham will surely give us a reason to fear that it never will soon enough.
  • Whoa, Kathleen is particularly hyper this episode.
  • Jonathan Ross being hired by MSFT’s UK division as some sort of executive producer sure sounds like a good deal for the Brits and other Euro-folks, but I share Graham’s pessimism of the hiring. I know he’s a funny guy, but that doesn’t really translate into being a great inspiration for anything, much less video games.
  • The Command & Conquer cancellation. The end of a great IP.
  • Angry Birds: Star Wars on the PS4 or Xbox One for 40 USD? A new low.
  • Runescape developers JAGEX copies and implements a core aspect of EVE Online and finds rampant success in decimating the pirate gold community. Excellent.
  • EA promised that Titanfall would be MSFT-console exclusive thanks to publishing rights or something dumb where money was exchanged in order to reach an agreement screwing prospective PlayStation 4 owners.
  • Fill in that scene, Graham.
  • Sony playing it smart in some alternate business universe making some of their next generation games and accessories available before the actual console is officially launched. Anything new, here? NOPE.

Here’s what I learned from CheckPoint S3E20.

  • “Don’t?” I sense Rockstar bashing in the near-future.
  • brb preparing my sexy thuomp outfit
  • PlayStation 4 consoles in Brazil have an import duty? Well, that would certainly cause the price to rise by over four times the initial USD-equivalent price of the console itself.
  • Unreal Engine 4 is only for PC. That’s fine. I think I’ll join the rest of the world in waiting for Epic Games to port the engine to another platform that needs it–like the upcoming consoles.
  • Now the teaser at the beginning of the episode feels a bit harsh. Of course there will be malware-seeded torrents of PC games available on various trackers. I’m pretty sure every major release in the past decade and a half has a spam-filled copy or honey-pot vector out there in some manner. This is normal and shouldn’t have warranted a PSA, but I suppose that PC gamers feel a bit jealous of the final-hour current-generation console players who have access to this great game and would do just about anything possible to get their hands on a copy.
  • Isn’t reselling access to PBS a crime? If it isn’t, it should be. Shame on Microsoft for pressuring PBS to put content on its Xbox service and then hide it behind the paywall that everyone already pays for.
  • Nintendo invented a new princess character for it’s upcoming Super Mario 3D World. Annnnnnnnd no one cared because it’s a 3D remake of Super Mario World. Bonus Graham Nintendo zing!
  • The Wii is dead in Japan, long live the Wii! Double bonus Kathleen Nintendo zing!