We’re clocking in early this week so the team can make their appointments on Thursday. In the news: World of Warcraft Visa card; Liam Neeson joins Fallout 3 voice actor cast; what defines cheating; Q&A and playlists!
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May 8th, 2007 at 8:05 pm
Episode name?
May 8th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
right, right, right
May 8th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
Oooo early podcast, new stuff to listen to when I get back to X3 later tonight.
May 8th, 2007 at 11:43 pm
Sweet
May 9th, 2007 at 12:07 am
Cunt Commander…or CuntCommander….or KuntKommander!
May 9th, 2007 at 12:30 am
What can PC users do that Mac Users can’t?
Warning: Coarse Languge.
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/images/stfu2.jpg
May 9th, 2007 at 1:39 am
well Mac as a gaming computer isnt all that bad, i been running bootcamp which is the beta apple made. http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/
its running XP on my 24 inch imac havent had any problem, i am playing supcom and C&C 3 and setting everything at high, and its great.
May 9th, 2007 at 2:53 am
Spore delayed until 2008!!!
http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=16083
May 9th, 2007 at 5:16 am
Is there Catfantastic in this?
May 9th, 2007 at 10:14 am
To correct Dan just a little bit: The liscence agreement for Vista says that you may not run it under _virtualization_ unless you’re using the Ultimate edition (or possibly one of the business versions as well). You can dual boot a Mac Pro with OS X and Vista without breaking any liscence agreement, but you’re not _supposed_ to run it under Parallels or any other virtualization software.
May 9th, 2007 at 11:48 am
Guys, check out the SecondLife Safari section at SomethingAwful.com.
It’s an odd place. No, I don’t plan to ever plague my PC with it.
May 9th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
I propose a round of Catfantastic in every podcast then at the end of the year the winner gets… something. Maybe not fired? Good plan.
And i demand Kristen pillowfight video podcast goodness!
May 9th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
lol, click commander… X)
May 9th, 2007 at 3:10 pm
Now about vista I thought I did my homework, heck my PCgamer was rolled up in my back pocket when I went into the computer store to buy my new computer I was going with your advice to go with vista home premium the clerks response was 32 or 64 bit …. argh! I went with 32 bit and they were nice enough to burn me a copy of the 64 bit version to try.
May 9th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
Seriously well done guys your podcast irritated me enough to post… You’re a PC podcast why don’t you know this stuff!?
Media Center is in Vista Home Premium.
In the US and Europe you really have 4 options (the others are for extended markets and Enterprise):
> Home Basic = low end pc (more robust XP equiv.)
> Home Premium = cool shiny stuff (new shiny + media center)
> Business = No fun stuff, business tools
> Ultimate = Everything (Home + Business) + Ultimate extras
As the guy above said Ultimate is needed for virtualisation not dual boot.
As for Xbox;
Achievements are not automatically disabled if a code is entered; it’s up to the developer, but very few 360 games have cheats that could help get achievements. I can only think of GRAW & Farcry (and Farcry’s are a pain to do).
All 360 games can upscale to 1080p a couple of games run native (such as Virtua Tennis 3). Most PS3 games are exactly the same (720p upscaled).
Ok I’ll go back to work now…
May 9th, 2007 at 4:35 pm
They’re so busy they don’t have time to know things.
May 9th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
Jeremy: the RSS feed for this ep is wonky, filename and title need fixing!
May 9th, 2007 at 5:37 pm
Oh how great! Fallout 3 is on its way to being as great as Oblivion! Liam Neeson is all they need. I’m really happy they let us know that! How reassuring of Bethesda! God how I love them!
*shoots face*
May 9th, 2007 at 7:22 pm
Yea, if they just give it Oblivion’s combat and leveling system, i’ll cry myself to sleep, and swear an oath to the blood god so that betheseda burns…
lovely podcast though, keep up the good work.
and SilverSlide. They are not a PC podcast. They are a PC “Gaming” Podcast. Meaning they spend all their time on gaming related issues, keeping in contact with developers, playing games, writing about said games. They do not have time to worry about the trivialities of the latest Vista skus…
The other stuff is console talk, which they arent paid to know anything about, so why should they?
May 9th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
Best exchange in this podcast:
Kristen: “I listen to This American Life and NPR podcasts like Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me”
The Vede: “I really like Adam Carolla’s podcast.”
Gary: And that right there is the difference between Kristen and Greg.
Nice work in editing in all those beeps, Jeremy, but I wish you had let one or two slip through. I still can’t tell what Gary’s band name is.
Also, how long do you need to have a credit card before you “build up credit”? Can I buy like, one thing, pay off my credit card bill, then cancel it? I’ve always done what Jeremy does…use my debit card for credit card purchases.
May 10th, 2007 at 2:07 am
I want to talk a bit about the Mac Pro. To answer the person’s question no you can’t buy a DirectX10 card and a DirectX9 card and put it in there. The reason is because the Mac Pro doesn’t use BIOS it uses EFI. So video cards need EFI compatible firmware to work on those. The problem is not that OS X does not supporting it. This also means you can’t upgrade it yourself unless the video card manufacturers come out with Mac editions of their cards.
But it’s not just the quadro that is available on the Mac Pro you can also choose to get an ATI X1900 or a GeForce 7300. The only problem with Apple so far is that they haven’t been keeping up with the GPU upgrades so far they’ve just seemed to have been focusing on the CPU now that they are buddy buddy with intel. I kind of have to agree though that if you are a PC Gamer that it is probably a better value to get a good PC since your money goes more to technology that benefits games. With the Mac pro most of your money is going toward the Xeon CPUs but you can get a better GPU on a PC.
If you could upgrade the GPU with off the shelf parts the Mac Pro would be a good computer for just about anyone provided you are willing to pay extra for the Xeon CPUs. People have been saying they need to make an upgradeable mid-range mac tower and I agree.
The 24 inch iMac is a really nice looking computer but Apple needs to upgrade the GPUs across the board before I can give them the thumbs up and this comes from someone who owns both PCs and a Mac.
*Hears that old switch parody*.. ah geez that’s an old one.. it’s not even funny anymore in my opinion.. sorry guys. There are actually more games than you might realize on the Mac and it’s going to get better in the future now that it’s on intel and they are making software to more easily port games to the Mac. It probably won’t ever be as much as on Windows but the Mac is a good computer especially if they fix the GPU situation…. and then you can also run your Windows games in bootcamp.
I don’t really think that Microsoft needs to make any kind of comeback campaign against Apple. I mean.. what’s the worst that would happen if they don’t. Apple would get a few more points market share? Would this threaten non mac users whole world? What’s so bad about Apple winning a few more people over I don’t think that should threaten anyone either.
Oh hey now that it is mentioned the first PC game I have ever played was Space Quest 1 on my Tandy 1000HX.
May 10th, 2007 at 10:09 am
I’ll hop in with the rest just to say that the technical fielding of the “dual-video cards in a Mac” question was atrocious.
Most of this has already been mentioned by the similarly dismayed folks ahead of me but…
- DX 10 cards are backwards compatible with DX 9, so there would be no reason to run dual video cards for iterations of Direct X.
-OS X doesn’t support ANY version of Direct X, 9 or 10, it will use Open GL for gaming graphics. So the DX level of the card is irrelevant for the Mac. It’s more important simply to see if the vid card you want has Mac OS X drivers.
- Vista Home Premium DOES have Media Center. SilverSlide explained this well.
- You can install ANY version of Vista on your Mac as a dual boot OS. It’s only under virtualization (such as parallels) where MS restricts the licensing to allow only Ultimate or Business to be installed in virtualized environments. That said, you can still easily install Home Premium or Basic in a virtual environmnet, you’re just technically breaking the EULA, it will run just fine.
Man, keep Logan on the show, and keep Dan away from fielding the tech questions.
Fun podcast, but whenever I hear a listener submit a technical question I brace myself for the cringe.
May 10th, 2007 at 11:50 am
L0LLing at minute 58+59.
granted, macs have changed since the last time Ive used them (OS 8, 9 time), and they DIDNT impress me at all. especially the fact that windows 95 (98) crashed ALOT less. Even if I wasn’t a gamer, i would probably still be on PCs. *bleep*, I’d probably be on linux.
May 10th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
I think Kristen should be lead singer for Cli* Commander. That’d be hot.
May 10th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Spooky Ball
May 10th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
God, how anyone can actually stand those Mac ads is beyond me.
The Mac guy just comes over as arrogant and conceited, while the PC guy is at least likeable.
May 10th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
The guy who plays PC in the ads is a MAC user.
May 10th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
Mono: actually yes and no. While it is true that DirectX is pretty irrelevant on the Mac as it uses OpenGL for everything that doesn’t mean that a better card won’t benefit it. It’s not like in all actuality GPUs are “DirectX cards” at all. That’s just become an easy way for certain people to tell what kind of capabilities a card has. So for example on the Mac you can have a card that can’t support the latest graphical things on there because it doesn’t support a certain pixel shader version or something.
And again this really isn’t all about drivers per say but with how the GPU won’t work with the systems firmware because they use different and incompatible firmware. If OS X doesn’t support the latest video cards because of drivers even if they wrote drivers for OS X for those cards they still wouldn’t work because of the firmware…. Even in bootcamp because you have to go through the firmware before the OS even thinks of loading.
Praetor_Alpha: Oh believe me they are a lot different now than they where when you last used them. I never even was interested in them at all in the past especially in the OS 9/8 days. But now I don’t mind having one in fact that’s what I use most of the time I surf the web (and I sometimes even *gasp* game on it). Doesn’t mean I don’t also have a PC though especially for certain games. =P
May 10th, 2007 at 4:16 pm
RyePunk, I think the arguement that they are a PC Gamer podcast and therefore getting it wrong/guessing on other subjects discussed is ok, is crazy. They talked about it and I’d kinda hope as journalists they wouldn’t mind (too much) being corrected if they’ve strayed away from what they know.
Mono, I know how you feel…
May 10th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
SilverSlide,
Them getting topics wrong/guessing IS OKAY.
They arent paid to do this, so they arent going to lose their jobs. There isn’t any repercussions other than your disgust at them for not knowing everything about things not worth knowing in the first place.
But then i dont give a crap about Vista or Macs, so the fact they missed a question about them means very, very little to me. I care about the video game talk, not the hardware talk here.
Honestly i dont understand why people submit tech questions so frequently to this podcast. There are better places to ask them… *cough* Maximum PC *cough*…
If Logan had answered incorrectly you might have a legit claim, but they can only answer questions to the best of their ability if hes not around.
SPORE DELAYED TO 2009 POTENTIALLY!!@!@!@!
http://pc.ign.com/articles/786/786616p1.html
wow, that pretty much blows, first we learn it wont make 2007, now it might not even make it to 2008… jeez… Guess its better than shipping it too soon, but jeez ANOTHER two years… wow… hope its worth it.
May 10th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
Am I missing something here? Are there show notes posted somewhere? I would love to check out some of the podcasts mentioned by the panel this episode, but I didn’t have access to my computer while I was listening and I would really rather not have to go through the podcast again to hear the podcasts listed by the panel.
Did anyone else catch the list?
May 10th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
Our favorite podcasts:
This Week in Tech
Digital Life TV
Diggnation
Onion Radio News
Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing
Coverville
Game Theory
Official Xbox Magazine
Maximum PC
Mac|Life
…I think that was it, if memory serves. Also a couple more comic gems:
Tiki Bar TV
Ask a Ninja
Did we really screw up the Mac question so badly? I realize Dan was wrong about Vista Home Premium not including Media Center, and that dual booting required Ultimate, but I don’t see where we steered the guy wrong explaining that OS X doesn’t have any DirectX support, and that he’d have to use bootcamp to play games on his Mac. I think we just ignored the whole dual video card idea because it was absurd, so sorry if that caused confusion.
smoke_tetsu: Have to disagree with you. That Apple switch parody is old as hell, but it’s just as relevant as ever.
May 11th, 2007 at 1:21 am
The only other podcast I listen to is Keith and The Girl. Not game related but hilariously funny and there is 5 shows a week. Live phone calls, active forums and chat. Can’t get enough of it.
www.katg.com
Great show guys - you were the first podcast I ever found, broke my proverbial podcast cherry.
May 11th, 2007 at 8:44 am
A moment of silence please, Dan lets hug it out…..
http://ifmagazine.com/new.asp?article=4445
May 11th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
Heh, I’m never afraid to admit I’m wrong
1) I did screw up the Vista Home Premium/Windows Media Center thing. I think this just goes to show that yes, Microsoft is making things hard on everybody by putting out so many different versions that even nerds like me can’t keep all the feature sets straight.
2) I was not aware of the EFI/BIOS incompatibility, mostly ’cause I haven’t owned a Mac since there have BEEN GPUs. But what I said about our benchmarks stands: a graphically maxed-out Mac Pro can’t hold a candle to a similarly-priced Alienware in game performance. And the very first thing I said about that question was that Macs don’t support any version of DirectX.
3) As for loading Vista under Bootcamp vs virtualization, I distinctly recall starting with “I think” and ending with “but don’t quote me on that,” since I didn’t have that info in front of me at the time.
4) When a long question is asked, we sometimes forget to answer part of it (that’s one of the reasons why we like to keep’em short). The DX9/DX10 backward compatibility thing just fell through the cracks.
And Buddhabob, I’d be very upset that BSG only has one more season if the third hadn’t bored me to tears.
May 11th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
who the hell is liam nelson
May 11th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
Dan, I have to give you props for owning up to what you said. Even though you were wrong, dammit, you were wrong for the right reasons!
Just in response to some of the other things said up above. I’m a recent “switcher” from PC to Mac, and it’s not because I’m some technophobe that can’t deal with the PC. I’ve built my own PC for years, had a Athlon X2 system with 7800 GTX in SLI mode… etc.. etc.. all that hardcore gaming stuff, but eventually when it came down to time to buy a new computer this past year, I chose a Mac Pro over another PC.
While it’s true that Mac often falls behind in their choice of GPU, there is a very good reason for this, heat dissipation. As with Apple’s philosophy for designing a computer, they want a elegant and easy to use box that doesn’t sound like a vacuum cleaner when you turn it on. You can imagine if they were to cram a 8800 GTX into the iMac, there would be a huge amount of heat issues (I would imagine melting LCD screens). Even the Mac Pro is meticulously engineered to dissipate heat with a minimal amount of fan noise, which also meant instead of offering up the newest and hottest video card available on the market, they would rather step down a notch, offer good performance without turning your computer into an oven. Keep in mind, when Mac Pro launched, the Radeon X1900 XT is near the best of the video card out there. The 8800 wasn’t out yet, and ATI either just launched, or shortly after, the 1950 XT.
When I had my PC, I had to open the windows to my room in middle of the night to drop the ambient room temperature so the computer doesn’t overheat while I’m in midde of a 4 hour raid for World of Warcraft. The two 7800 GTX I had not only sounded like jet engines, it heated up my room and the PC itself like one too. The all aluminum Lian-Li case I had was literally able to cook breakfast & play games at the same time. So while I’m freezing my butt off to keep my computer running at a decent temperature, I can still expect one or two crashes per night due to overheating.
With my Mac Pro now, I can do my work, play WoW for hours, run Photoshop in the background all at the same time without any issues. Fan noise is minimal, I can actually leave my computer on while watching TV, without cranking up the volume to ear bleeding levels.
Another note, is that people these days seem to think that DirectX is the only way to make/play games. Often we forget that there is a very powerful and stable 3d API on Mac, OpenGL. Remember when John Carmack first made Quake, he made it on OpenGL, not DirectX, because at the time OpenGL was much more stable and proven. DirectX has gotten much better over the years, and its game-centric focus makes it a winner for most game developers, but that doesn’t mean OpenGL isn’t a valid game development platform.
In fact, Apple recently updated MacOS with the ability to run multi-threaded OpenGL. It allows for multiple OpenGL operations to occur at the same time if you have a multi-core CPU. It “literally” doubled my frame rate in World of Warcraft (of course, after Blizzard patched multi-threaded OpenGL support into WoW). It is quite unbelievable that through a software update, you can get literally double the frame rate that you used to have on the same hardware.
I imagine part of that is game specific, since World of Warcraft seems to be more CPU limited than GPU limited. Right now WoW runs faster and smoother on my Mac Pro than my PC with SLI. However it still serves to say something about Mac as a valid game development platform, if enough game developers would be swayed into it.
TransGaming Inc. also made a software development platform called Cider that’ll allow developers to more easily port their titles to the Mac. TransGaming, if you recall, also makes Cedega which allows people to play Windows games on Linux.
A lot of how people feels about the Mac platform stems from the OS 8/9 days, when Apple seriously lagged behind PC in terms of progression and development. It isn’t like that anymore, everyone should revisit their platform of choice with a critical eye and re-evaluate their choices. In fact, Windows Vista is one of the major reason why I chose to go with Mac as well. I just don’t want to deal with the completely stupid segmentation with multiple versions of Windows and all the hardware support issues. Not just on the release of Windows ista, but we all know driver issues and hardware conflicts will never go away with PC as a platform.
Lastly, if I really have some Windows game I really, really wanted to play, I’ll just use Boot Camp and boot back into Windows and play from there. I might still get Windows Vista on my Mac Pro one day, if the whole “gaming for windows” thing ever works out… it just seems like a farce at the moment.
May 11th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
Ok since I posted one of the comments that the guys in question seem a little upset over; I’ll clarify what I said. If I was going to answer a question (as me Joe Bloggs public; not a journalist, podcaster or even a blogger) and I wasn’t sure about the answer I’d personally at do a quick Google first.
You know like: http://google.com/search?q=vista+versions gets you the 4 versions and the media center info.
When I say I’m irritated it’s partly the above and partly listening to the discussion that follows which uses that incorrect premise (i.e. quick example; less that somebody didn’t know media center was on Home Premium but more that then I listen to; “well there you go proof that Vista is too complicated” etc.. afterwards all the time thinking “but the initial point was wrong!”).
Now this isn’t keeping me up at night but as a pseudo participant you want to interject; say “actually it’s like this…”. Fortunately you have comments here so I can and all’s good (but trust me on the Google
)
May 12th, 2007 at 12:20 am
On the subject of cheating in games, I don’t mind using the occasional walkthrough if I get stuck somewhere, but I knew a guy who as soon as he’d get a new game before he even installed it would go online and get the “god mode” and all “weapons cheats” for his new game. I was there when he did this for Half-Life 1 and asked him WTF he was doing and he said he did it to see if the game was any good then he’d play through it again without cheats if he liked, ever since that I’ve seen him as a bit of a wuss and last I heard he’d forsaken PC gaming goodness altogether to play on the PS2.
May 12th, 2007 at 11:51 am
I’ll use a walkthrough if I’m stuck, or I’ll use a cheatcode to get through a part if I am, yet again, stuck.
I don’t really care if you’d call that cheating or not, I play games for my enjoyment, if I get stuck (and I mean REALLY stuck) I’m not having fun, etc.
May 12th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
I use cheatcodes to play the game that “I” purchased in order to play it the way “I” want to play it.
As an example, I play GTA:SA all the time. I don’t play it to go through the missions. I play it in order to relieve stress. So I have a save game that has all the areas open and all weapons, god mode, etc… I want to be able to drive around and have fun without having to follow the missions. I can still go through the missions if I ever feel like it, but I probably won’t.
If I’m going to play for the sake of playing the game, I’ll not touch cheatcodes. I do use walkthrough’s occasionally when I get stuck as “qrter” mentioned. I also don’t consider it “fun” to be stuck and not be able to figure out how to get out of being stuck. Not everyone who plays has the smarts to get out of some of the puzzles that the developers setup.
May 12th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
I agree with qrter and VesperDEM, getting stuck too long means no fun till you get through that part of the game. Its true that when you play you somehow wanna feel smart for not needing a walkthrough but at the end is smarter to just keep having fun and enjoying the game.
May 12th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
I don’t mind getting a hint for a certain area one is absolutely stuck in from a walk through. I’ve always done this going back to Space Quest 1. However I never.. ever use things like god mode. I knew people who probably never even played the original Doom without using iddqd and idkfa, etc. But I find the monsters in that game aren’t so tough that you need to do that especially if you use wasd+mouse. =P
Those people also complain that the game is mindless well it wouldn’t be so mindless if you didn’t use cheat codes all the time. Well actually at one time I did use them because those guys for some reason felt compelled to put on those cheat codes even when they see someone else firing up the game as if they are doing them a favor. But I quit later on (using the codes). For me part of the fun of games is possibly dying and making it regardless. But those people I mentioned seemed to be allergic to losing even a few health points.
They think if you lose any health then you have lost. I would sometimes see them try to play without codes but as soon as they lose say.. 20-50% they run to the cheat codes. Perhaps using cheat codes can help you learn the controls in a FPS for example but once you learned them you should be able to play without cheat codes… just my 2 cents.
Playing online however is a time when absolutely no cheat codes should be involved at all. Imagine how pointless it would be if everyone in a deathmatch was in god mode.
May 12th, 2007 at 6:34 pm
BTW, I understand what some of the others above are saying that sometimes they just want “stress relief” and so they put on cheat codes just so they can run around and do whatever in a game like GTA without thought to completing any missions or anything. But in general I’m just not for cheat codes myself. But since some people aren’t even for looking up a hint even when you are stuck (should you just quit playing the game at that point then?) then I understand how they might feel about people telling them they shouldn’t. So I am not I’m just saying how it is for me my personal preferences.
May 12th, 2007 at 8:50 pm
gonna rep the MOGARMY, great podcast that is mostly about online games, such as mmos or bf-2142, the show is also fu*king hilarious, they had the director from the “world of horecraft” site on last episode, one of the funniest interviews (if you can call it that) i have ever seen… www.mogarmy.net
May 13th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
I remember back 10 years ago i used to use cheats quite a bit, it made games fun, but around the time of Starcraft i initially ALWAYS used cheats to get through its singleplayer… (hey i was like 13 and wasn’t quite used to strategy games) But then when i went to play online, my cheats suddenly didnt work and i had to learn how to use strategy to get through the games if i wanted to win. So thats when i stopped using “cheat codes”… and now i never use them.
Walkthroughs i utterly avoid using, but if i’ve been stuck at a point for hours, and i’m enjoying the game, then i use it because i actually want to beat the game.
IMO, cheat codes remove why i play games; for a challenge. If i cant die, what’s the point of even bothering to play? I mean there is literally no challenge in that… Besides game developers take alot of time to balance all the various units, weapons, and anything else in a game, so if you use codes then you arent really playing the game that the devlopers made for you to play.
Podcasts that i also listen that havent been mentioned yet:
Lost Official Podcast; They give much insight into the 7th season’s Zombie Season.
Penny Arcade Podcast; Barely even a podcast, so much as leaving the mic on while they brainstorm… still hilarious.
IGN Podcasts, Scoop, and IGN is AFK, Wiik in Review; One’s serious, one’s not. Ones about nintendo.
May 13th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
The guy I was talking about that uses cheats right out of the box is 23 which makes him a wuss that can’t stand to be challenged. I quit playing multiplayer with him because he got all whiny when he started lose using excuses like the map was too big and that if I’d been playing the game longer than he had I had an unfair advantage. He had no imagination or interest in adapting to become better so he devolved.
May 14th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
X-com. Rumor mill has it that Take Two’s Irrational is making a new X-com. Hopefully the horrible clones that keep coming out from eastern europe don’t ruin the concept before Irrational can finish it.
May 15th, 2007 at 2:50 am
I had thought of a question. Would you (PC Gamer) consider spamming quick save to be cheating (as in using quick save every few seconds)? It seems to me that it might be considered just a function of the game like a second player being able to join in and drop out of the game at any time but if you use quick save too much it kind of does seem like cheating a bit to me.
May 15th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
“Technically” is not cheating since is already built into the game but yeah if used too much means you are very lazy and probably not good enough to beat the game like a man.
May 15th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
I’ll be your bass player in Cl!t Commander, Gary.
May 16th, 2007 at 2:38 am
smoke_tetsu: In Postal 2 if you used the quick save too much in a short period of time the Postal Dude would bitch at you saying things like “My grandmother could beat this game if she saves as much as you.” While not cheating I’d imagine it would be a bit annoying.
May 16th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
Poor sportsmanship, I think is the term. It’s not playing the game in the way it was intended to be played, but not technically cheating. In any case, I ain’t judging anybody for the way they like to play their single-player games.
May 16th, 2007 at 4:20 pm
First off, great work on the podcast…I haven’t missed an episode! Also, Jeremy…busiest man in podcasting! Great work on the editing, I don’t know how you find the time!
I found myself getting a bit angry with Dan while he was giving his position on cheating. For the record, I hate using cheat codes in game. I give my son a hard time if he visits a cheat site in order to get codes to help him beat a game because he is too impatient to learn the game mechanics. While I agree that entering codes to gain an unfair advantage or an ability that you wouldn’t normally have (i.e., unlimited ammo, invincibility, etc.) is cheating, I strongly disagree with his black and white assessment of what is cheating and what is not cheating. There are always shades of grey where walkthroughs and cheat codes are concerned.
Here is a perfect example of the grey world:
There I was, a budding young Jedi in Jedi Academy. I had just finished killing every creature/bad guy in a level. I walked around that level for an entire day trying to find out what came next. I looked for any hidden triggers, any passageways that I may have missed, some underground tunnel; but alas, I found nothing. I actually stopped playing that game for more than a week because I was so pissed off. I decided I would look for a walkthrough site to help me find what I was missing. What I found was several web pages detailing a bug in that level whereby the door that led back outside didn’t open up for some people. I had two options; start over from the begging, with no guarantee that the same thing wouldn’t happen all over again; or turn on the NoClip “cheat” so I could walk through the DOOR THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO OPEN THAT DIDN’T. What would you have done? What do you think I did?
By Dan’s black and white definition, I cheated. It conforms to his definition; it was outside of what the developers had intended for the game and it actually involved actually opening the console and typing in a dev code. If I hadn’t done this though, I likely never would have finished Jedi Academy. I don’t consider it cheating personally.
Now, just for the record, I don’t begrudge Dan his position and I’m not losing sleep and I’m not even gonna send DJ hate mail. I just wanted to point out an grey situation to Dan’s black and white rule.
Again, great work on the podcast! And Dan, where are those C&C3 videos with you, Norm, and Gaz?
May 16th, 2007 at 6:02 pm
So let me get this straight: you entered a cheat code and you’re wondering whether it’s cheating? Yes, it’s cheating. But as I said in the podcast, I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing to cheat, and sometimes it’s even necessary due to a broken game. I didn’t say I never cheat. In fact, I happen to love using cheats after I’ve played through a game - it’s a great way to get some extra fun out of them.
As for the C&C videos, they’ve been a victim of us having very little time. Keep reminding us and we’ll have to get around to it eventually.
May 16th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
Jmelton: That reminds me of a problem on Star Trek Voyager Elite Force on a certain system. In that game towards the end you get up to some force fields that are automatically supposed to drop when you get near them. However on that particular version the porters must have dropped the ball somewhere because that didn’t get triggered. However using noclip wasn’t an option because there are other triggers that are supposed to be triggered there too and your team is supposed to make it with you to the elevator that is close by which triggers other things so even if you use noclip you are still stuck there.
You bring up a point that is a good one though. Cheat codes are actually for dev purposes so they can test certain things without dying in the process.
In the end there really isn’t anything you can do about it if people want to use cheat codes so why get huffy over it? It’s not possible to become the cheat code police. Not that I’m condoning that sort of thing but you get what I mean.
I think poor sportsmanship might be a good term for overuse of quick save. But as with anything there are probable exceptions. Like if the developers of the game didn’t balance the game good enough so the only way to beat the game is to save often.
May 16th, 2007 at 6:56 pm
Has anybody experienced like JMelton’s case… getting frustrated for hours, not finding what to do next then quit playing for a few days… and then the next time you play you find out what to do in a few minutes?
May 16th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
I think my biggest problem is with the use of the word “cheat”. It has a negative connotation to it and I have always striven to be the most honest person I can be in both real life and in gaming. Cheating does and always has felt bad to me personally.
I would still argue it’s not cheating if the game is broken and you are left with no other option except not to play. Besides, was McGyver cheating when he used the ink pen to fix the throttle spring on a deuce and a half vehicle? He was using a pen for purposes other than what it was designed for. To quote Gunny Hightower, “He adapated…overcame.”
Sorry…had to throw a couple of TV/movie references in there…even if they don’t directly apply.
May 16th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
This is perhaps one of the most useless arguments/discussions that has ever occurred. Why does it matter who considers what cheating!?
Could also be that I’m getting ornery waiting for my new PC to arrive (ordered yesterday)
E4300
+Gigabyte DS3
+7900GS
=Great budget build with OC potential
$1200 Canadian for full tower + monitor