SideQuesting

Welcome to the SideQuest, your semi-weekly podcast devoted to gaming, culture, and gaming culture, with the occasional tangent.

It looks like the show this week is a little earlier than usual!  And lucky for you, dear viewer, its a tad more organized. We’re joined again by devoted listener and friend, Joshua Arnold, we talk about Dali’s strange sex life, MAG, LOST, and the podcast goes off the edge of a cliff when Dali leaves and is replaced by Ryan. Then again, even Ryan has his own ‘Shocking’ charms, so tune in and enjoy this latest episode of The SideQuest.

Hosts:
Yaniv Pereyaslavsky, Dalibor Dimovski, Ryan ‘Pat Pat’ Gan, Mike Wehner, Josh Arnold

Music:
Main Finger

Links:

Twitter.com/MikeWehner
Twitter.com/kewlrats
Twitter.com/RyanGan
Twitter.com/randomslagathor
Twitter.com/yanivp

 

 The SideQuest Ep 126: Shoc Joc Edition [81:14m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (21)

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: “How do I get into games journalism?”

Now, we at SideQuesting don’t necessarily consider ourselves journalists; we’re more of the “active enthusiast” type.  We play games as much as we can, but don’t make a living writing about them.  We write for the fun of it, whenever we can, to whomever will read it.  We have many friends on the video game journalism side of things who make a living (sometimes barely) from reporting and writing about the industry.

We’ve always wondered, as have many others, just how they got into the field professionally.

So, it was a great surprise to us that The Freelancers Podcast recently launched.  The Freelancers — comprised of Xav de Matos and Kyle Horner — deal with answering just that question, giving hints and tips and reminiscing of both good and bad experiences in the industry.  Each episode the duo are also joined by a special guest sharing their experiences, allowing the listeners to hear from several writers and their points of view on the topic.

We dissect the show on this week’s OPP: Other People’s Podcasts.

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It’s been a long road.  The smashing year 2009 came and went, and now here we are: choosing our favorites of the year.  After a long month of arguing, fist fights, high fives, and liquor, we’ve come to the conclusion that we all have some pretty varied tastes here at the ‘Quest.  We’ve managed to play great games across the majority of consoles, hand-helds, mobile, and PC, and have created our list of our Top 5 of the year.

A little inside baseball: For this list we’ve used the 5-4-3-2-1 grading scale for our picks.  We realize that there are other methods, but in the end we utilized the simplest one.  We also realize that this list may not have satisfied everyone on our team or even our readers.  We’ve decided to list our editors’ and authors’ individual picks at the bottom, to allow our readers to see just what got us to the final 5 and to allow everyone to know what we’ve been playing and loving all year.

With that said, let’s begin with #5!
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Our friends over at the newly re-minted EGM have announced that subscriptions are now available for the upcoming new issues.  The plans include a split between digital and print issues of the magazine, with the print issues retailing individually for $6.99 and billed as a higher quality.  Subscriptions run from $14.99 to $24.99 for 32 and 64 issues, respectively.  We have a soft spot for EGM, with all of the turmoil and drama that had plagued their cancellation last year.

It’s nice to see the recent renaissance in gaming magazines continue.  Both Game Informer and GamePro saw updates to their traditional formats, and with EGM back in the game (#pun) the only “big” magazine left to begin anew is Nintendo Power.  Come on, NP… I want another Dragon Warrior pack in.

Subscribe here for the new EGM.

What’s this?  Fallout: New Vegas coming Fall 2010?  Yes, please!

The trailer for the next Fallout game has landed, teasing us about what we will see and play come Fall (read: probably October, right up against Fable III).  Is this something we will be playing?  Are we burnt out from shooter RPGs?  Are rats and mutants going to make dubious acquaintances?

Coming for the PS3, XBox 360, and PC.

This past weekend I packed for my recent business trip to Japan and instinctively included my DS.  Upon boarding the plane and plugging myself into the barely-comfortable seat (yay for coach!) I whipped out my Lite with a copy of Dragon Quest V and began to repeatedly press “A” for attack.  I always choose an RPG for my longer flights, as they provide enough meat to help at least 7 of those 12 hours go by without a flinch.  The hours melted away, thanks to the prerequisite grinding and slime-herding.

The gentleman next to me had a more unique situation.  He had both a DS and a PSP and switched between several games on each.  On the DS I watched him play what appeared to be a Japanese point-n-click novel (they’re all the rage) and what appeared to be a Hotel Dusk style of detective game in which there was a constant tapping taking place.  On the PSP it was more puzzle-based endeavors.

As for me, I didn’t change the DQV cartridge out of its slot.

I noticed something similar on the train and subway.  The Japanese all play games, but not so much on portable consoles.  Most of the time they engaged in cell phone gaming (flip phones, not touch screen) and in a rare instance I saw a DS come out to play.

That got me to wondering about what everyone else plays on their plane trips, car rides, and so on.  Are you an RPG person?  Or are action/puzzle games more to your forte?  And, do you play differently depending on your trip length?

Episode 125. It took us a while, but episode 125 is here.  We’re joined by Holly Attesi of TheXBoxDomain to have incredibly dysfunctional mayhem.  Mike is the XBox Gamer of the Week.  Dali needs to wash a baby. Yaniv wants more days off.

Hosts:
Dali Dimovski, Holly Attesi, Yaniv Pereyaslavsky, Mike Wehner
Music:
Mainfinger , Disco Link

Links:
www.TheXBoxDomain.com
Twitter.com/mikewehner
Twitter.com/yanivp
Twitter.com/supertess
Twitter.com/kewlrats

 

 The SideQuest Ep 125: The Year 2010 Makes Contact [78:29m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (196)

Yes, yes.  I know.  You’re sick of Apple iPad articles flooding the web the last two days.  Well, I am too.  I hopped on my favorite gaming websites and blogs and found information that, surprisingly, could have been summed up with one post — nay, one LINE — instead of 67: It has a bigger screen.  But no, I had to read a hands-on with the interface.  Then, a hands-on with the non-gaming apps.  Then the gaming apps (which were not even iPad games).  Then an article about the design, one about the specs, one about how it is a let-down, and one about how it’s divided the gaming world.

I realize that it draws immense traffic to websites, which in this economy of ad-driven economics is crucial, but it adds nothing to the conversation about games.

As a gadget geek I love to talk about a product and look at its specifications.  I love to debate on why my MacBook is better than any PC laptop I’ve owned, or which distro of Linux is optimal, or even which e-reader has the best UI.  But there are already several places I can do that: GDGT, Engadget, and Gizmodo had that covered in excruciating detail.  This simply isn’t gaming news.  Perhaps if there was some piece of gaming software that had been REALLY effing cool I would sit and read the RSS feed while on the crapper at work.  But nope.

Now, I realize Apple invited several gaming outlets to the event.  Pissing off Apple by saying “no thanks, we already have a tech blog team that can handle that” may seem like a bad idea but it certainly saves a little time to write about far more interesting things, like Mario cupcakes or Master Chief wallpapers.  Really, though, 6 articles about how it may or may not change gaming forever is 7 too much.

The amount of unneeded coverage has been deafening, and I don’t know about you but  I need a break from it.

Video game publications, websites, and communities have a tough job at the end of every December: selecting their top game of the year.  Will it be Uncharted 2 or Assassin’s Creed 2?  Is it an exclusive?  Is one console’s version better than another?  Is it an original game or a refined sequel?  There are plenty of factors that are looked at when determining whether one game is considered the “GOTY”.

I have often wondered how some of my favorite publications have selected their top games.  In many cases they rely on a point scale awarded to the individual editors/community members’ selections.  For simplicity’s sake this seems like a clean and standard method that has made the rounds:  Each voter selects 5 games.  The top game gets 5 points, the second gets 4, and so on down the line.  When all votes are tallied the highest scoring game generally wins out.  (This is in fact how SideQuesting is selecting our GOTY for 2009.)

But then I noticed some variables starting to pop up.  For one, the voting method is inherently flawed.  In a 5-point scale, there is a greater chance for ties to happen.  And, is a game that gets 17 points really better than a game that gets 16 points?  Also, point scale methods seem to have a “gray area” where the amount of voters plays a role in making or breaking the system.  Too many voters = too many games with low point totals.  Not enough voters = one-sided voting towards one or two games.  These issues were just the tip of the iceberg.

It’s time to get down to business.

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Let’s get this out of the way right now; I’m not a big Olympics fan. In fact, unless there’s some crazy-fast sprinter or a swimmer who appears to be more fish than man, I’ll likely avoid the five rings wherever I see them.

That said, when the opportunity came around to play Vancouver 2010, I was struck with the unmistakable feeling of nostalgia and my head filled with images of me, controller in hand, tapping feverishly at the A button until I simply couldn’t take it any longer.

You see, I’m a child of the NES, and virtual athletic competition, to me, has always meant straining my hand muscles nearly to the point of collapse, much like the athletes my avatar is attempting to emulate on the screen. Surprisingly, Vancouver 2010 is able to marry my childhood memories with modern video game sensibilities and create a pleasurable experience that most will appreciate, if not love. Read More »