Played - Episode 10
Published by Mark November 1st, 2006 in Main Page, Podcasts.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN GUYS!
BooOOOOoooOOOooooo!! Our Halloween Edition is here!
Today we discuss the “controversial” boy-on-boy action in Rockstar’s Bully, the new Xbox Live! update released by Microsoft this week which included support for 1080P, Nintendo’s recently released list of games due to come out on their “Virtual Console” for launch. We also talk about a bunch of scary games perfect for playing this time of year. Elizabeth’s has a cool new gadgetry for those of you that like to play games at work. We discuss what we’re currently playing and of course -there is some rambling here and there.
Also, don’t forget to stick around for the outakes at the end -SO FUNNY! 
Elizabeth’s Gadgetry: The Stealthswitch
Splatterhouse!
Yes! That’s it, thats the game’s name.
I’ve never understood the big deal about 1080p in games. Like it’s the latest development in the industry, but I’ve been running 1080p since the Quake 2 days when I dropped that second Diamond Monster VooDoo 2 card into my system. Well, 1280×1024, which is only 56 lines of resolution short of 1080.
Now in the console space it’s a bigger deal of course, but how many people actually have TVs that can run 1080p? I’ve heard numbers ranging from 12% to 20% of America has any kind of HDTV at all. Let’s assume that after this holiday season that it’s 20%. Of the few people that have HDTVs, the vast, vast majority of them are the early adopters who have sets that only run 720p. Most people in the 1080 range can still only run 1080i. I think it’s a terminally poor business decision to try and shoot for 1080p for a game just for the bullet point, if it means sacrificing framerates or gameplay - especially on the first round of games. Wait for the second generation of games to come out so that the engineers have time to learn how to really schmooze the hardware.
Personally I’ll take 720p with massive AA and Aniso filtering over a 1080p game without those things anyday.
Especially since I don’t have a HDTV and I don’t plan on buying one for quite a while.
Splatterhouse is the game you’re thinking of Mark. An awesome game if you’re into the macabre, but hard as hell, it was like Ghosts-N-Goblins in that there was no health bar, you could take one or two hits before you died. Or, re-died. Since you were animated by the hockey mask and were there to take revenge on all the inside-out monsters for stealing your girlfriend and killing you.
Oh, and if you guys want bad videogame audio, check out http://www.audioatrocities.com. Most of it is terrible localizations (i.e. engrish), like the infamous “…you, the master of unlocking…”
Doom 64 had ‘The Laser Gun’ which by itself was nearly on par in terms of power with the BFG, but the real power in the weapon was that you could upgrade it to triple it’s starting power by finding /really/ well concealed secrets in the game. I think some of the secrets involved finding secrets in prior levels to allow you to find secrets in the levels that contained the upgrades. The end result was a ‘gatling spread laser’ that could sauce the end boss in seconds.
Seriously, how can you guys talk about scary games and not mention Aliens vs. Predator? The second definitely had it’s scary moments, but the first one is the only game I never finished simply because it was so stressful that I couldn’t enjoy it. The opening of the game had you waking up in a base that had already been evacuated because of a ‘problem’. Your XO gets on the radio and tells you “Wake up Marine, you’re in trouble”. Very reminicent of the infirmary scene from Aliens. And then you have to explore these pitch black halls with the constant >bupbupbupbupsquee-squee