The GWJ crew has been a little excited about Mafia II up until now, so the opening of the show is even more disappointing as a result. Everyone but Lara has been playing it and they all seem to agree that the gameplay is sorely lacking with respect to the style and cutscenes, resorting to repetitive shootouts and overly mundane tasks. Shawn steers the conversation towards the far more positive, sharing his impressions on the co-op campaign of Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. In the game’s five hours or so, he didn’t think it dipped...
Gamers with Jobs returns to normal after their huge 200th episode bonanza and welcomes CastMedium’s own Jonathan Downin as well. They kick things off by talking about Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, which they were all quite impressed with. Conversation transitions to some general thoughts on $15 games on Xbox Live Arcade, namely that the quality of many recent games (especially Summer of Arcade offerings) more than deserves their increased price point.
Julian and Jonathan dive into a couple iPad games, Kelti’s Oracle and Nova,...
This week’s Gamers with Jobs is essentially a continuation of last week’s 200th episode, starting off as usual with games the guys have been playing. It’ll come to no GWJ fan’s surprise that Rob has been playing League of Legends and the rest of the guys have been playing more Starcraft II, the latter of which the guys briefly hit on once again. The first new game the guys discuss is the Mafia 2 demo, which Sands praises for solid controls and a seemingly engaging story. Shawn also talks about how impressive the game looks...
Shawn opens up the 200th show by giving a little bit of overview to the format, namely that the first half will be comprised of an interview with Ken Levine about Project Icarus and the second half will be taken from their live conference call at GenCon. Julian starts the interview off by asking why Irrational would revisit the Bioshock franchise, with Ken’s response that Bioshock Infinite would be almost completely different from Bioshock.
He makes it clear that the connections between the two games are almost spiritual, with Julian pointing...
The World of Warcraft speaking embargo drops on this episode of the Conference Call, starting things off with Cataclysm beta talk. It’s quickly established that this game is more of a sequel than an expansion, as far as new features and structure is concerned. Before too long, they hold back a little, saying that it’s likely they’ll be talking about WoW for months to come.
Staying on the Blizzard train, the biggest game of the week is clearly Starcraft II. Julian brings up the well-worn topic of having a multiple Starcraft campaigns...
Gamers with Jobs is back, Cory is hosting, and the Sands/Andrich duo are noticeably absent. Limbo starts things off and Allen lays out his very positive impressions after a seemingly excessive two playthroughs. The guys also discuss the atmospheric sound design and slightly disturbing art style before moving on.
After briefly hitting on the ultra-cheap Doctor Who Adventures, Lara talks about her time with Dragon Quest 9, which clearly left a good impression on her. Following up her review of DQ8 from the past, she feels that this iteration...
At the top of the show, Allen and Shawn talk a bit about their time playing RUSE due to its free weekend on Steam. Despite the game’s great gameplay and solid interface, the guys take issue with Ubisoft’s DRM and sadly can’t absolutely recommend it. Deathspank is probably the biggest game to release this past week and the guys chime in with their thoughts. While they seemed to enjoy the humor that Ron Gilbert probably helped contribute to the game as well as the unique camera perspective, some of the gameplay mechanics like...
Andrich and Sands are out this week, so Cory leads this week’s Conference Call with Rabbit, Allen, and Lara in the wings. After briefly hitting on Picross 3D and Starcraft 2, Julian talks about his latest “best iPad game yet”, Osmos HD. Between the fantastic music and stylized graphics, he has a lot to appreciate on the surface level, but the best aspect seems to be the controls that seemed to be designed for a touch interface.
This week’s topic is centered around the whole Blizzard Real ID debacle and what it shows about...
This week’s show opens up with a question about the future of gaming for handicapped individuals and quickly transitions into talk about Singularity. Andrich and Sands liken it to a Bioshock-inspired FPS, except made by Raven Studios. Sean goes on to say that the game does an excellent job keeping you excited to see what’s around each upcoming corner. Shawn has also played Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, which he fears might have been overlooked. He reports that it offers a fair amount of new things on top of the basic...
Allen joins a fairly normal podcast today, starting things off with his impressions of OnLive. Rabbit brings up the idea that a $200 price point is essentially the price ceiling for new consoles, which tangentially pokes at the foundation of OnLive with its combined monthly subscription and cost of games.
Risk: Factions has seemingly come out of nowhere and impresses everyone who got a chance to play it, offering some new features that integrate well into the standard Risk rule set. Sean breaks out yet another shocker that blew him away, Tranformers:...
With the looming shadow of E3 on the brink of departure, Shawn and Corey bring Chris Remo of Idle Thumbs onto this dense podcast. Things start off with the Nintendo 3DS, which clearly left a positive impression due to its good implementation of 3D and great design.
Portal 2 was Chris’s game of show, especially after a great demo with writer Erik Wolpaw. He talks about some of the mechanical changes in the game, highlighting the co-op play and the integration of some elements originated from Digipen students hired by Valve.
Civilization...
Gamers with Jobs invites our very own Jonathan Downin to the show for his inaugural episode as both producer and podcaster, starting things off by giving him the floor to talk about games he’s been playing. Alan Wake has been a popular choice among the GWJ crew, allowing Rabbit another chance to harp on about its excellent thriller elements. Shawn talks a little bit about his time with Alpha Protocol, which he describes as an “uneven experience” due to inconsistencies between the reality of the world and the game mechanics.
Jonathan gets...
Gamers with Jobs returns to regularly scheduled programming this week, starting things off with Shawn’s impressions of Alpha Protocol. Despite his best efforts to like it, the game’s die-roll combat ultimately cut the legs out from under Obsidian’s latest. Rabbit finally got a chance to dive into Alan Wake and shares his appreciation of the game’s tension, pacing, and horror elements.
The news that Lord of the Rings Online is going free-to-play has certainly sparked a lot of excitement both among the MMO community and...
Every so often, the Gamers with Jobs get together for Rabbitcon, a meetup designed to facilitate the eating of many ribs and the playing of many games. As is custom, they take advantage of this strange physical contact to play a lot more board games than usual, which incidentally opens up this week’s podcast. The most talked about game seems to be an adaptation of Battlestar Galactica, though they talk about quite a few other ones along the way including an Old West-style scenario and D&D 4th edition.
Rabbit finally finished building...
Red Dead Redemption continues to be the center of attention with the GWJ crew getting right into it. Shawn is pretty high on the game, which should come as no surprise to anyone who heard him talk about it on this week’s CastMedium Podcast, but Sean is not finding the draw at 4 hours in. Sean argues that it is too much of a GTA game, and that makes it feel a little stale.
Shawn finished Alan Wake and goes into some detail here. He again touts the game as a fun experience for couples. Alan also finished it and he chimes in with his thoughts...
