Great Show Steve!

How about best underdog moment in online gaming history for the next final thoughts segment contest (if that hasn't already been done)

All your base are belong to Steve! (rofl)

Hey Steve, just heard your comment (still listening as I type) about the "disco inferno" on Dungeon Keeper 2.

If I'm wrong I bet someone else will correct me, but I think the cause of it is when you have a casino room and one of the creatures wins the jackpot. The game voice shouts "Jackpot Winner!" when it happens, and if you go check out the casino room where the creature won, there will be a bunch of fireworks shooting up into the air.

Great show, steve.

Lol, yeah, Dungeon keeper 2 Disco inferno is awesome... Nothing quite like seeing a dark angel dance disco... hah!

"Space exploration is boring" - Gaming Steve

Did you say you've played Star Control 2 (http://sc2.sf.net - free)? Now I find that hard to believe...

Even in EVE Online the exploration for a newbie player is all but boring - try getting through the player camped gates alive just in the name of exploration... Exciting and possible by simply out-smarting the player camping.

That was a bit out of line though since SC2 isn't MMO and Eve isn't about exploration.

Anyhow, why couldn't you have a MMO "SC2", but instead of meeting scripted aliens, you actually get a puppet which has its moves controller by a human player behind a web cam? I'd also like the aspect of seeing other players far away if they move in space and putting submarine game type of strategy elements in the space game. Silly but I like the idea.

Great stuff like usual, Steve.

I'm thinking STALKER is going to be another DaiKatana. It was impressive two years ago, but now it has nothing on Half-Life 2.

Oh yeah, and RE: AVP2, I used to play that game like crazy and still do multiplayer from time to time.

The expansion pack really sucked. I hear the Fox execs took control and decided they'd make the more popular characters more powerful for some reason, so it totally wrecks the playbalance (as you might recall, the Predalien's only weakness is his inability to headbite, which is changed in the expansion). Also the expansion maps are much more deathmatchy and symmetrical. I worked at www.PlanetAvP.com while all this was going on and you can just mark the death of the community at the release of the expansion. Everyone was psyched, mods were coming out every day, new skins, etc., then the expansion dropped and within a week activity had died down by something like 50%.

So You're going to speak at I-CON 25, as will Cassandra Peterson
(Elvira) who was on It's My Party With Roddy Mc Dowall, who was in In the Big Picture with Keven Bacon! Congrats steve, You have a Bacon Score of 3! http://www.cs.virginia.edu/oracle/ (That's always fun...)

It'd be great if you could get recordings of your speeches, Steve. I'd really love to hear them, but I simply can't afford the travel expenses or admission prices to these conventions.

When is GDC? I wonder if there will be something as good as the Spore presentation this year.

I hate to say it, but the game you reviewed really sounds like a shameless clone of the original classic: Warpath 97...Like...seriously, the similarities in gameplay and design are astounding, according to your description...

Here's a link to it: http://www.synthetic-reality.com/warpath.htm

I'll probably shell out the cash for Weird Worlds, either way, of course.

I think you gave good advice on the casual/indy games. Thanks for the help.

Great show.

BTW, EVE-Online only has one server that everyone plays on. The vast majority of players are from Europe and very very VERY few players from Asian countries.

I was wondering if Gaming Steve had any thoughts on EVE Online now that its been mentioned about space exploration.

I agree 100% with Steve that space exploration blows goat chunks. EVE Online is horribly boring in that aspect.

However, when you throw in the player vs. player aspect with corporations and 0.0 space... that space exploration suddenly becomes a main point of the excitement of EVE Online. It adds purpose to the game.

In essence the vast regions of space are countries that players constantly vie for control over. Just visit the various alliance sites and you will see the cutthroat business that are politics in EVE.

Space exploration suddenly becomes very interesting when you are moving 100+ players in a massive fleet formation to protect your turf.

Yes EVE Online is boring to play day to day and it takes forever to get skilled up to a point where you can get the big bad ass ships. But if you are into the idea of having a "home" and a purpose in an MMO... EVE provides it in no way any other MMO has done.

So Steve what are your thoughts on EVE Online... more so the player created content versus the boring space exploration/travel?

NOTE: EVE Online also just broke 100,000 subscribers.

I think the Stargate MMO would be better recieved as a SW: battlefront type game. Having all the major movie/show battles fought between human and jaffa(sp??). For the special characters like in SW battlefront you have gua-ould(sp?????????) and the asgard with some awsome powers.

You could even encorperate the space battles like in SWBF2. I wanna fly the promethius :(

Well, many thanks for point me at Weird Worlds, interesting, fun game. The AvP review, man, I really have to get this somewhere, sounds really great.
Oh, and a lot of luck in your efforts to bring gaming enlightenment to the millions ;)

The Weird Worlds demo is fun, but I've resisted buying it because I don't think the full game will have much more to offer.

I'll stick to Space Rangers 1 and 2 for my 2d space fix.

Millions of people listening to your show? What's the situation now? Well, all I know is that you've got one person from Finland listening to it...right now.

My guess is on XM radio... That'd be sweet, but then we'd have to pay for it :-(

We won't have to pay for it, there are so many other sources of free gaming news I would have thought it's unreasonable to expect people to pay for more of the same.

And if I'm completely wrong it would be bye-bye podcast for me or I'd just get it from another source ftp/irc/torrent.

Steve you said you haven't tried this and they are pretty fun.

Here is a good sudoku game web site for a bunch to try. http://www.sudoku.cc/sudoku-archive.htm

Star Wars Rebellion commentary:
1. I agree, the game was terrible.
2. The reason behind the green=Empire, red=Rebels was based on the color of the blaster shots on the fighters (I recall this being mentioned in an interview back around the time of the games release). Tie fighters had green blaster fire and X-wing fighters had red. So it did make sense, from a certain point of view. :)

-Lego

Steve, I think it is better for a marriage to only have one gamer. Think about those times when you both don't want to do the same thing. If you're both gamers, it'd be a fight over which game gets the big screen. Not to mention an extra source of competition. You'd end up not gaming together, anyway. I'm drawing from my own background here. It's just one more thing to argue over.

Me and my wife are gamers and we get along perfectly well. We both enjoy games and its just another thing we can share together. Though, she just plays games and doesnt know about the actual industry so I end up having to tell her things about that a lot since I study the industry quite a bit.

She kicks my arse in Halo and Perfect Dark Zero. She likes to rub that in my face.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the "reaching millions of gamers" thing is going to have something to do with WoW. Just a guess. :)