XYBA Podcast Ep 12

Episode 12 is out and is full of video gaming goodness. We have 2 special guest, Santana and Marco, and Eric makes a return. This is a longy, but goody. Goody's a word.

00:00 - Intro music by Grant
00:18 - Introductions :|: Andy, Josh, Eric, with Guest Santana and Marco
01:10 - Games we're playing :|: Bioshock (Eric beat it), Call of Duty 4 Beta, Skate Demo, Metroid Prime 3, Animal Crossing, Metal Gear 1 & 2, Final Fantasy Tactics, Hitman 2, and GTA San Andreas
15:54 - Bioshock talk :|: It's Awesome
24:39 - Gaming News :|: PS3 sales up 200%, Games Gone Gold, Joust the movie, Haze only on PS3, and more and Halo 3
41:00 - We discover that Marco is Italian
44:05 - Roundtable Discusson :|: Pregrame Hype and does it hurt a game or help a game
48:32 - We get back on the pregame discussion topic
52:55 - We talk about Metroid here
57:00 - Games we're looking forward to :|: Jam Sessions Bundle Pack, Mass Effect, Metal Gear 4, Little Big Planet, Skate, Team Fortress 2, Halo 3, Fallout 3, Splinter Cell, Call of Duty 4, and GTA IV
1:10:37 - Rants :|: Marco goes off on Sqaure about Final Fantasy, Josh hates crappy search tools on forums
1:16:30 - Shoutouts

Download XYBA Podcast Ep 12

skate Demo and Bioshock so Far...

There is demo out for skate - or as I like to call it, the reason I dropped $400 on a 360 and I just picked up Bioshock. Here are my initial impressions for both...

skate - I don't know why it's supposed to be lowercase, but this game rocks. It is the closest thing I've seen in a video game to actual skateboarding. This is great for those of us that are sick of trying to mimic real life tricks on rooftops or other ridiculous high platforms in the damn Tony Hawk games. Manuals take a bit of getting used to as does getting into grinds, but it's really fun. I have a bit of an issue trying to do some tricks - 360 flip for example - where my character just keeps doing shuv-its. I really want to see a non-park level to get an idea of how good this is going to be.

Bioshock - Pretty Damn Impressive. That's the best way to describe what I've played so far. This, (and skate) are games that actually look good graphics-wise on a standard definition television. The controls seem good (although if I tap right on the right stick, it has a tendency to keep floating off that direction.) I was worried about switching back and forth between plasmids and guns, but it is actually very easy. The enemies are my only real complaint so far, as they all look pretty much the same. But I guess I don't need a wide variety of people to hit with a wrench.

Both of these titles are shaping up to be pretty enjoyable (although since I've got them much of my time is still being spent playing Super Metroid) and hopefully I can find more 360 games that I like this much.

Bioshock Demo Live

The demo for Bioshock went live last night. I was holding off on posting about it because I wanted a chance to play it before I posted about it. Sadly, I've been downloading the 1.35 GB demo for over 7 hours now and it's only 79% complete. (Charlie has taunted me with an Xbox Live message saying how awesome it is.)

But in the meantime, I've done some web surfing(and napping and TV watching). In all that time, I did stumble across some interesting Bioshock information.

While Bioshock is expected to be a big hit for 2K Games, it was originally turned down by many studios. Executives just saw it as another FPS. And this was even though (or possibly because) the team behind System Shock II was behind Bioshock. System Shock II was a great game but apparently didn't meet the sales hopes of the distributors.

So while you're waiting for Bioshock's August 21st release, you can wait for the demo to download. ... If you're not busy with Madden 08.