Tonight we have a smaller crew as both Grace and Thalen were unavailable, but we still manage to record a full show.  For weeks ahead of the launch of Star Wars Episode VII - Force Awakens we talked about this show being our discussion of Star Wars.  However...  since there are already so many spoilers floating around the internet, we did not want to add to the volume.  We still absolutely talk Star Wars but we do so in a way where we discuss our feelings and impressions... and not any details of the plot.  So you can listen to the show and feel confident that you won't get anything spoiled.

We also delve into this mission that Tam has been on lately, where he is trying to come up with a definitive list of the most influential game titles.  He has created a rubric with which to judge games, and has been delving into every game that has essentially ever been reviewed.  This is in fact a path to madness, but it is one I will cheerfully wave at Tam while he goes down.  This ends up being an interesting discussion about what makes a game influential.

On the show we discussed...

  • Star Wars - Force Awakens
  • Star Wars Battlefront
  • Destiny - Sparrow Racing League
  • Most Influential Games
  • Tetris
  • Super Mario 64
  • Sega Saturn
  • Sony Playstation
  • Nintendo 64
  • Infinity Minatures
  • Minature Gaming
  • Teaching Gaming Skills
  • Not Ready for Games of the Year Show

 

Direct download: aggrochat_episode88.mp3
Category:gaming -- posted at: 11:09am EDT

In the grand scheme of things we have performed a number of experiments over the last few months.  Shifting the format from roundtable to a largely topic based format seems to have largely been appreciated.  Tonight we perform yet another experiment and create what I think will ultimately end up being dubbed the “Super Show”.  The fact that we record every single week with six people… is a bit of a crazy thing in itself, but this evening we are recording with eight… and had everyone been here it would have been a show of ten.  Now juggling that many people in our normal format would end up with an insanely long show.

Instead we decided to shift focus a bit and pick a single large topic.  So for this week we are doing the “Villians” show that we talked about in the last episode.  Since this is a huge topic, and  ends up getting split off in a bunch of different directions we left the floor completely open.  We talked about favorite villians, favorite kind of fights, personalities that we love to hate and some of the problems currently plaguing video games.  Ashgar unfortunately had a really bad week and was unable to attend, but we managed to bring back the always awesome Nephsys, as well as including a couple of first time AggroChatters…  InkyBrushes and Pizzamaid.  It is my hope that we will do more of these in the future as we come up with sufficiently “big topics” and end up recording another super sized show.

Direct download: aggrochat_episode87.mp3
Category:gaming -- posted at: 10:04am EDT

This week we return to the whole topic driven focus, because honestly they seem to work better.  We had several topics we wanted to discuss but for the sake of time we pushed a few of them off to another episode.  Once again we have the full cast of Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen. 

The topics we delve into...

  • Rocket League - how we are apparently late to the party, and any time a game is getting played at the same time by wildly different groups of gamers... it should be checked out.
  • Space Chem - how Kodra falls into a deep hole of trying to create the most perfect engine in this video game that plays more like a really good board game... and also at times a programming simulator.
  • Otome Games - we talk about how our podcast got mentioned recently by Pizza Maid and Suishi Geisha...  and how it would be awesome if the games we liked to play had the same level of story fidelity that Otome games do.  This spawned an entire side discussion about story drive games in general.
  • Co-Opetitive Games - the games where you are playing co-operatively but also at the same time competing with your friends....  also fertile ground for losing said friendships.
  • Sandbox Games - We talk about the wall that happens in most sandbox experiences where we as players are just "done" with the game long before we have technically completed all of it.
Direct download: aggrochat_episode86.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:19pm EDT

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