"Podcasting?" said my mother, "What the heck is that?" - Two years ago I had no clue what an MP3 player was. I knew it had something to do with digital music (something else that confused me) but I didn't know how it worked. I was like a caveman being given a digital watch who didn't know whether to put it on my ankle or eat it. Keep in mind I'm a guy who's dad had an 8-track player in his Chevy Nova and still has a small record collection. In the last two years I've bought a laptop, an iPod Nano (for me but later traded in), iPod Shuffle (for my daughter) a video iPod and now have my own podcast. Once I get hooked on something, I'm in all the way.
.
The new coloradojoe podcast is available on iTunes and here on this blog to the right. Its a little raw right now (its kind of obious I'm a writer and not a radio DJ) as my brother and I tinker with the format and length but I have big plans for it. Interviews will be a big part of the podcast. I plan on having some locals I know (the Gazette's Andy Wineke and Warren Epstein, KCMN DJ Tron Simpson, KKTV weatherman Ty Shesky), some gaming industry insiders (Treyarch's Jeff Zaring, OXM's Fran Reyes, Andy Shatz of TKO, GameDaily's Eli Shayotovich among others) and maybe even a few sports figures. Of course I haven't actually gotten around to asking any of these people yet (except Warren) but I think I can talk them into it. I also plan on posting any interviews I manage to strong arm people into at E3 on the coloradojoe podcast as well. And while this site is a gaming site, my brother and I plan on tackling not just gaming but movies, television, music and pop culture.
.
There should be some good stuff on the podcasts so please be patient as we work out the kinks, I think it'll be worth your time.
.
Misc. stuff - Some site regulars might also have noticed that there has been another addition to the site, some of my favorite youtube gaming clips. I'll be changing these periodically...A few new songs for "Guitar Hero III" coming out in the fall have been announced. Check 'em out - Paint It Black (by The Rolling Stones), Cherub Rock (by Smashing Pumpkins), Sabotage (by Beastie Boys), The Metal (by Tenacious D), My Name is Jonas (by Weezer), Knights of Cydonia (by Muse), Rock And Roll All Nite (as made famous by Kiss), School's Out (as made famous by Alice Cooper), Slow Ride (as made famous by Fog Hat), Cult of Personality (by Living Colour), Barracuda (as made famous by Heart)
.
18 comments:
>>I plan on having some locals I know (the Gazette's Andy Wineke and Warren Epstein, KCMN DJ Tron Simpson, KKTV weatherman Ty Shesky), some gaming industry insiders (Treyarch's Jeff Zaring, OXM's Fran Reyes, Andy Shatz of TKO, GameDaily's Eli Shayotovich among others) and maybe even a few sports figures.<<
...and of course, Frosty and JohnX will make an appearance.
;)
That's actually not a bad idea. I wouldn't be opposed to having a call in episode where you two and other readers come on. That would be fun.
Cool.
Count me in! Maybe we can even record an episode from Phantom Canyon! ;)
Sorry for not chiming in on the PC vs. Console thing. Been a pretty crazy 2 weeks. But I'm back in the saddle. Look for some comments, and ya'll might wanna check out my blog from a few days ago entitled "Microsoft's Meltdown."
I'm a PC gamer, but man - Microsoft is making it REALLY tough to like anything about Vista and/or Games for Windows LIVE.
I spent the better part of the weekend trying to get Shadowrun (a mediocre game at best - Strike One) to run. LIVE wouldn't
connect, which it MUST do in order to be played online (Strike Two). For HOURS I thought it was something with my XB Live account. Turns out it was Bigfoot's Killer network interface card. LIVE doesn't recognize this wonderful device and WILL not play nice with it (Strike Three).
I'll be writing a big ole blog about all this in the coming days as well... stay tuned! ;)
I'm glad you are starting a podcast and am interested to hear how it goes. However, for those of us reading you through an RSS reader, it would greatly help if you put links to the original audio files in the posts.
Thanks!
Eli- Shadowrun really is a great online shooter, very fun. Give it a chance.
IMHO, it's a very derivate, uninspired, three years too late, gimmick game to show off Live. Nothing more.
They took a great RPG license in Shadowrun and totally bastardized it by turning it into a watered down online (that can ONLY be played if you're connected to Live) FPS. Staid graphics. No RPG elements of any kind. No story. No single player content, and only a handful of maps? For $45?!?! Uh, no.
On top of that, WizKids (the owner's of the Shadowrun property) denounced it, and FASA Studio's (the game's developer) own website has NOTHING about it anywhere on their site. Not a single word.
It's almost as if Microsoft is intentionally trying to sabotage itself into oblivion. Vista is a complete joke (as a "gaming platform"), Live (on the PC) is a total scam, and both of their "flagship" games (Halo 2 - a 3 year port - being the other) are mediocre showcases at best.
Before Vista I was a died in the wool MS and Bill gates supporter. I'd throw down with any Apple cruncher any day of the week.
But they (MS) have screwed the pooch in so many ways (within such a short period of time) that it's almost impossible to care one iota what Billy does next.
Alot of people seemed to have jumped into Vista assuming that it would be the greatest OS and greatest gaming platform ever. Right away I noticed there were no drivers for video cards that were supposedly made to support DX10. Took a few months to get those working with Vista. Then, some games that ran great in XP ran like junk in Vista. Then this whole "pay to play" online was a bunch of junk. It's great if you already have an XBL account, but...that would mean you already have an XBOX and/or 360 so why put yourself through all the hassle of trying to get Vista to work properly with your hardware and software when you can just stick in a disk and go? For those people who didn't think there would be problems with Vista...You obviously don't have much experience with Windows. While XP is fine nowadays, it was hell when we were all still trying to play games that were made for use in a DOS environment. 9 out of 10 games that we wanted to play, members of the gaming community had to come up with a solution in order to get the game to function under XP again. The only way I would attempt to use Vista is if someone were to donate a kickass new PC to me with Vista already loaded and a bunch of free games to test out on it. Otherwise, all the gun jumpers can keep it.
Eli - FASA has a shadowrun website (www.shadowrun.com)
Vista...eh, I have it but not gaming on it.
The RPG...I too was a shadowrun fan, from PnP to Sega game...but, also realize that this isn't an RPG, nor was it ever brought forth as an RPG...so, I take it for what it truly is - a good online shooter that has taken the online FPS and added another element that strips away from the typical same 'ol same 'ol of standard fare shooters.
Maps...yeah, it has nine. But the damn things are so large that it will take quite awhile to get them down. And, there is already DLC in the works.
Single player...with the online FPS I rarely finish a SP game, since I got caught up in playing online.
But, it seems you're talking about this angle, and I am talking about that...
Frosty
Bottom line: Shadowrun isn't terrible. It's just not worth the price of admission.
I'd still rather play UT2K4 than this game. Or STALKER. Or FEAR. Or Prey. And I won't have to worry about hooking into MS's LIVE to play those much better games.
BTW, LIVE doesn't play nicely with some third party NIC cards. It won't recognize Killer's NIC for anything and instead of saying that comes up with a cryptic error message that not even Microsoft has on their official list, nor did their "customer service" folks know about.
You guys have to remember something... I, like Double T (TnT!), get paid to review games. To dissect them and find what's fun and not fun about them. I am not nobody's fan boy. The "not fun" parts of Shadowrun far outweigh the "fun parts. I WANTED to like this game. Really. But in the end... all I want to do is uninstall it, and Vista (because it was again my job to review Vista AS A GAMING PLATFORM IN ITS CURRENT STATE - much like LIVE)... and go back to XP. ;)
BTW, Frosty... that Shadowrun website is run by Microsoft, not FASA. Hell, FASA is run by Microsoft now (really), so... take that for what it's worth. Check http://fasastudio.com/default.htm to see what I'm talking about.
Also, FASA has been scattered to the seven winds. Apparently the entirety of the dev team for the game has taken "mandatory vacations" and are already broken up and assigned to other projects. Meaning? No patches. No updates. No support of any kind.
Nice.
If memory serves....
FASA was the original company that developed a number of tabletop games in the 80's, including such classics as Shadowrun and Battletech.
FASA Interactive was their video game division, that made things like the Virtual World pods, that eventually led to the Mechwarrior franchise on the PC. (best PC series EVER!)
FASA itself went out of business a while back, selling the IP for shadowrun to WizKids, while FASA interactive was acquired by Microsoft (either in the late 90's, or maybe around 2001?) They've made a few games at least while under Microsoft's umbrella, I believe.. The later expansions to Mechwarrior 4, for instance, I believe were made while owned by Microsoft. I beleive FASA also made the Mech Assault games for the XBox (sad bastardizations of the mechwarrior series).
FASA Interactive actually didn't own the IP to shadowrun at all.. I believe they had to license it from WizKids to make this game.
FASA is just another group of people at Microsoft. Just like there is the SeaDragon team, or Zune, or Turn 10. Turn 10 is just a group of people with a studio name. They are in the same building as publishing support staff for all of MGS published titles.
My guess is they put some new people on the DLC, as it seems that would require less talent, and they move the lead devs to new projects, be it under FASA or someone else.
Frosty
Frosty... yep, yep and yep! ;)
Ok, finally got a chance to sit down last night and listen to all 4 episodes of the podcast...
First off, really enjoy the banter between you and Phil. The two of you play off each other very well and sound natural doing the show. Sounds like you've been doing this for a while - which is GOOD. The show is VERY well organized and has a good flow. No "dead air" or awkward pauses. Really good sound quality too, even with Phil calling it in.
Random thoughts from the podcast topics:
I was really disappointed with Spidey 3 too. For many of the same reasons you mentioned in fact. I too grew up with the Spidey comics, but this movie had too many villains, to emo (although him playing the bad boy was actually fun to watch), too much romance. And too damn long. There's gotta be a Spidey 4 with Gwen Stacy though... and Venom was flat out BAD ASS. He needs his own movie.
UFC is thuggish, but it's a lot more entertaining then boxing in its current state. I don't watch it mind however. I used to be a HUGE boxing fan... whole family was. Then Don King and his ilk ruined it for everyone. I'd rather watch wrestling then boxing because at least we know that's scripted.
Hate basketball now. Haven't watched it since the the early 90's. Remember the rivalry between the Showtime Lakers and the Boys From Beantown? THAT was basketball. These thugs playing now have no respect for the game.
Hockey & soccer = snooooooooooze.
Activision's "Gun" absolutely sucked on the PC. Remember I was talkin' about sucktastic ports? That was one of them.
Don't like Final Fantasy either, and although I'm not a console gamer (at all), I gotta agree with you about the GTA series being the
greatest series of all time. LOVE 'em. Love sandbox games, and thus the reason I love massive multiplayer games (City of Heroes/Villains being my fave).
Great work so far! Looking forward to the next one.
Thanks Eli! I know I work really hard on the podcast...Well, maybe not me, but I know my brother does. I'm sure he'd appreciate your comments to, but he's without his computer till monday cause he's in grand junction. Look forward to talking to you eventually as a guest on the show.
Phil
I listened to some of the podcasts as well. I FF through some of it because I can't stand to listen to people talk about sports that I have no interest in. Put 30 minutes of Women's Tennis or Men's Professional Bowlign talk, then maybe I'll listen. Just kidding.
Eli: We gotta hook up and play some FEAR some day (PC version of course). For Shadowrun, there seem to be a lot of old time Shadowrun players that are pissed off because it's not like the original. To them I say "Get over it". I approached this game as an entirely new game that I had never heard of or played a previous version in the franchise. Because that's the only choice in approaches that I had. Having only yet played the demo, I did enjoy it on the 360 and it seems the game might have quite a following at least until Halo 3 comes out. Sort of fills the immediate void on lack of FPS games coming out right now.
In other news, prepare yourselves to get DiRTy. DiRT comes out tomorrow!! yay!! Or ships tomorrow or whatever. I'll be getting a copy for both the PC and the 360 (late father's day gift). Now all I need to do is get a wheel for the 360 so I can go for all the top times.
The only other racing games I've played alot of are Burnout Revenge and MotoGP 06 on the 360 but I've been playing PC racing games since the days of Test Drive and then started up again around the NFS III times. Ok gotta get back to work.
Shadowrun... if Microsoft hadn't FUBARed the whole thing with LIVE, I'd have probably given it a 7. A 6 isn't horrid. But to me it's just not worth $50 because it only offers 9 maps, and no single player experience. It's a shell of a game.
My inital reaction to "(Shadowrun) Sort of fills the immediate void on lack of FPS games coming out right now," is... that's a console problem, not PC problem. We have tons of games. There's NEVER a shortage of something to play. So to me, it's an excuse and it still doesn't make it a great game. ;)
Heck, Terry didn't even care for it all that much, and he's a console gamer.
I don't do racing games much. Got into Need for Speed for a bit (PC, had to review it), and when I actually played my Xbox and PS2 I had a few NASCAR games that were loads of fun (had the wheels too - actually still have all that stuff). Never been into them all that much though. I'm an MMO (certain types, none of that fantasy WoW crap) and FPS (like FEAR) guy.
My online name in game is Eli the Mad Man (on AIM as well), or some very close variant (depending on the space available for tags in each game).
Any of you PC guys play STALKER?
I haven't tried Stalker yet. I probably will sometime in the future. On the PC, I primarily enjoy UT2k4, CS:S, Call of Duty 2, and FEAR in no particular order.
Post a Comment