Wednesday, August 8, 2012

EXP Podcast #183: Listener Mail 2


We made the call and you answered. By post, pigeon, and pyschic connection, you sent in questions for the show. This week on the EXP Podcast, Scott and I answer them. We touch on game ideas, to DS favorites, and even the latest Kickstarter craze, the Ouya. As always, if you have questions or topics you want to hear discussed on the show, you can contact us at any time at experiencepoints[at]gmail.com or via twitter (@sjuster and @jalbor). We would also love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.

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Show notes:

- Run time: 32 min 07 sec
California Extreme's website
- Music provided by Brad Sucks

8 comments:

  1. It always fills me with a small bit of glee to hear my questions answered.

    Early in the cast you asked about saying where the people emailing you guys are from. So to answer that I'm an Australian listener studying Japanese Language and culture and am hoping to do my honours thesis looking at Japanese video games. I have a few ideas for project but I need to ensure the ideas hold up as most of them depend on some pretty big ifs that I'm not sure I can prove.

    I must say though... Shame on the one of you who never got a PSP... It's a console for rather exact genres I admit, but some really wonderful stuff. If you ever need a tight, glorious action RPG with wonderful music, Ys Seven is your game.

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  2. I agree with Rowan, the PSP is amazing, haha.

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  3. Hey, just so you guys know, "Anarchy Reigns" (on 360, anyway) is compatible and VERY import-friendly. All the menus are even in English!

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  4. I know! I'm a terrible person! Although perhaps I'll luck out with more PS3 ports in the long run.

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  5. And of course, being that game company fans, they have PS3s which are region free!

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  6. Hopefully! Although the biggest issue the PSP really has I think is that it's basically either a JRPG machine (action or turn based), or a 4 player local wireless multiplayer machine... With not a great deal outside of that besides PS1 classics. If you have an interest in either of those things, it's quite a great console, and has wonderful examples in both (even if you think you are tired of JRPGs).

    The PSP is quite interesting to look at though in cultural terms though... With it's popularity coming with monster hunter freedom 2, a very wireless local co op RPG, but with more intense combat, yet short mission based making it ideal for a local commute. Combined with a culture that doesn't often invite others to their homes ad hoc multiplayer is usually preferable to a home console title in the country.

    Combine that with a strong commuter culture and you make a situation where this kind of thing starts to get terribly cultural.

    And then that lead to the strong mission based structure common to a great many PSP games and you have a console who's library is basically made for Japanese teens. And if you look at sales data for the success of the console in Japan compared to the west it speaks for itself, that and that the best selling PSP game of all time never left the country.

    Although... Having said all that, the 3DS and Street Pass (which started with bark mode in nintendogs and DQIX's Tag mode) is basically cover all that and more, it just doesn't have the limited collection of genres to make it go the extra mile.

    But the fact the PSP still survives in Japan quite well and still a strong development platform is really interesting, it could well end up as the new Dreamcast in terms of the console that never really dies, but with the PSVita backward compatibility, and the similar power levels to the 3ds it could turn out that the PSP not dying for a long time actually works well for sony rather than negligible as it was for sega....

    Well... that was long... In short, the PSP is a uniquely Japanese console the likes of which we really haven't seen since the saturn I guess. Making it a worthwhile platform to investigate. Although a time consuming one... And, depending how much you want to get into it, one that at least asks for the ability to navigate basic Japanese menus.

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  7. Oh neat, thanks for responding to my question! Anarchy Reigns is easily my game of the year, but there's almost zero buzz for it, so I'm trying to talk it up wherever I can. The single-player campaign is very much a standard brawler like you guys say, but the multiplayer has quite a bit more depth and is really where the game shines. As someone who's always been scared away by the memorization and execution barriers of traditional fighters, it's awesome to finally find something that captures all the delicious yomi of those games while cutting out most of the arcane nonsense.

    Its North American release is looking more and more unlikely as Sega continues to self-destruct, but like Malachi was saying, the game has been released in Japan and is exceedingly import-friendly. It immediately defaults to full English voice and text whenever you boot it up, and there's a decent community of English-speaking players to be found on PS3.

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  8. After watching even more videos about Anarchy Reigns, I'm even more excited about it. Really looking forward to seeing what Platinum does with multiplayer!

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