This week’s CO-OP is a little different than usual. The first segment has the guys giving their impressions of the new Mythic Disc maps for Halo ODST. While they look good, with a fan favorite returning from Halo 2, there just doesn’t seem to be that much to be excited about. The multiplayer is the same package from Halo 3 and the comments here come off as a little overly positive.
The iPhone game, Harbor Master, takes up the second segment. If you have ever played Flight Control, this formula should be pretty familiar. Harbor Master does expand on the concept and as Rob, Jason and Cesar point out, there is a lot of potential in this “genre.” There is plenty of value here with the game’s $.99 price point.
For a change of pace to the regular format, Matt sits down to talk with Facebook‘s Platform Manager, Gareth Davis, about the state and future of games on the platform. Games on Facebook are a lot bigger than many realize and they have built an infrastructure that will allows games on any platform to integrate with the service using Facebook Connect. We will see the first of these titles soon with it coming to the Xbox 360 this fall. It’s nice to see this kind market-facing type of segment and hopefully there will be more in this vein in future episodes.
The Jason Show — HALO 3 Multiplayer Maps, Harbor Master, Facebook Gaming
Runtime – 32:51
While the Facebook interview was really interesting, and it’s important for the gaming media to cover what is ultimately a huge market; it’s weird that it showed up on CO-OP of all shows. It’s not like the Facebook games are really all that visual or dynamic, so just watching the talking heads was informative, but not really entertaining.
Also, I’m getting to the point where I’m willing to skip the non-game segments completely. They’re getting worse as they rely more on the team’s acting skills.
The Facebook games themselves are not all that exciting at the moment, but the creation of a different kind of integrated games platform is exciting. I found this segment a nice fresh departure from the traditional “we played this game and now we are going to talk about it” segments. Your point about this kind of content not suiting a video show such as CO-OP is completely valid though.
I definitely agree about the “narrative” stuff. Obviously a week is just not enough time to come up with and execute anything too creative.
Apparently you guys are a little more resistant to this movement than me, as I immediately checked out “Typing Maniac” after checking out this episode. I think there’s a lot of value to having a video show that’s not only entertaining, but informative. That’s one thing I really miss from the old style G4/TechTV – more serious coverage about gaming topics.
[...] CO-OP – Episode 307: The Jason Show 2: Outtake Boogaloo As announced last week, this week’s episode is an interim entry as the guys are on vacation. Jason is heading things up for the second time with his self-title show, but his segments are kept more minimal than they were the first time around. [...]