My New Favorite Video

If you guys are anime fans, you may have heard of ikimonogakari from thei Bleach opening HANABI. You could also have heard of them from the Naruto Shippuden opening Blue Bird. Now they're back in doing sort of a video game Mother video.

I've always liked singer Yoshioka Kiyoe. I love her voice and then you see her dressed up as a nurse, princess, newscaster, fast food worker, and in just a plain t-shirt rocker. It's just outstanding.



My Sweet Sweet Darling,
David

Cover Art Comparison - 10th Anniversery Edition

US Regular Cover

US Collector's Edition

European Cover

Japanese Cover

Personally? I think they're all overrated.



Z-Targeting was, is, and always will be..... shit.


Brad

Random Thoughts

Has anyone seen the packaging for the new Castlevania Judgement. I know the game's not going to be good but it's cover art is not bad. The character design ain't horrible either.

Metal Slug 7 is out too. The sleeve makes the game shiny. Too bad its on DS. I don't know how the heck that's supposed to work.

Another game that I love looking at the packaging, Luminous Arc 2. But why is it 39.99? It has the soundtrack, but damn they better not have charged 10 dollars more because they forced the soundtrack on you.

Lips is out. It's an iNis game. I wish there were something more to pull me in. I want to support Keichi Yano, but there's nothing much more than a kareoke game, right?

Left 4 Dead. I'll talk about it on the show this Saturday. I love it but some parts are frustrating. Last night was awesome though. JTVs archive problems are really becoming a bummer. There was this one mission where my life was dangling on one hit. I was in black in white mode for the entire last part. The 4 of us fought off multiple waves, a final wave, and also tank to finally make it to the safe room. Somehow, I didn't get touched. And just as I limped into the safe room with my comrades, a smoker grabbed me and pulled me into the darkness. My efforts and my life flashed before my eyes. My teamates rushed out and unbelievably were able to free me without any damage. It was an amazing feeling as I stumbled to safety still shaking from the situation. I could never reenact that situation. It's one of those things that happen and then you tell stories about later. It sucks that the archives weren't there to capture it. But again that's why we do a live show. Anything can happen.

I'm off to work,
David

Episodes 88 & 89 Actually Up Now...

Due to a small miscommunication, the last two podcasts, episodes 88 & 89 are now available for download on itunes! Sorry about this guys. If you haven't already, subscribe to the show on itunes and it will automatically download whenever the new show is made available. Also, I ask that everyone leave us a review on itunes. We would love to hear your input on what we do well and what we could improve on. Anyways, thanks again and expect to see me on Left 4 Dead TONIGHT.


-Nick

Lifecast of Travis

My favorite thing to be asked in the chat, "How is college Travis?" Well let me just lay it all down for you here instead of wasting my breath there. We all know where I am currently enrolled, why I am not on often and the like. So I am not going to reiterate myself on those aspects of my life. This Christmas I will be in my hometown, which is thirty minutes from Davids. Hopefully you will see much more from me before I move... To my new college.

I am Transferring to UT at Arlington. Majoring in English. I am going to be living in an apartment with one of my friends in which I will finally have Internet that I can play live on.

Also, I will be going to the same school that Matt is going to. We have yet to decide what we are going to do. But I think together we can do something. Maybe now, with a real Internet connection, we can begin an actual broadcast. Only problem being, Need the equipment. Matt and I plan on making plans, we will see what happens. Needless to say though, I am excited to have the opportunity to be more involved, rather than just talking via the chat room leaving my tid bits of information on the forums.

OK. So I have news.

One of my Favorite games of all time, one that I have never completed. One that has haunted me for a good 6 or 7 years of my life. A beautiful game, which I believe to be overshadowed by its predecessor. Final Fantasy IX. It is on my top ten. And currently I am on disc three. Twenty Five hours of my life have been blended into that game, this time around anyway.

Now lets discuss why this game is better than VII. Final Fantasy VII is a good game, don't get me wrong. It is hard for a game to create die hard fans such that Zelda, Halo, and other various games have done. I know we all have at least one friend who knows absolutely EVERYTHING there is to know about FFVII, and could be yoru strategy guide. That is a fan for you, and those types of fans are all over FFVII. And thats nice. FFVII is a great game. With little problems other than the materia concept which I never liked. The story obviously had a lot of thought put into it, and the characters are everlasting in the minds of many.

So how could I possibly say that IX is better? Well, simple put, it takes the best of all Final Fantasy's. The story line is your "epic" tale of kingdoms waging war, saving princesses, princesses becoming queens. Kingdoms being destroyed, power being manipulated, and of course the evil man that creates it all. The item system is almost identical to that of Final Fantasy Tactics. When you equip an item, it has stats, and then it has magic attacks, skills, stat boosts, and the like attached to it, which if you wear them long enough, grow to learn. Then you never have to wear them again.

The skill system is interesting. The skills you learn, and the skills you begin with are all equip able, but you have a set amount of skill points in to which you can attribute these skills too. Making you choose between such things as Jelly, which keeps you from getting petrified, or Locomotion, which makes you immune to Stop.

While there is a large amount of things to do, they are not as frequent as FFVII. Not to say there isn't things to collect, places to run into unexpectingly and gain something valuable, nor any epic "quests" which are completely optionaly. This is all here, but not in such a great number as FFVII. I absolutely do not consider this a bad thing. A problem I had with FFVII was that there was way too many things for me to do. In a Japanese RPG, this really grinds my gears. I feel the absolute need to do everything, to get that best weapon possible, and in FFIX it actually seems possible.

The story in FFIX is so much more... immature. Not in the sense that it's made for kids, but in the sense that it was done in a light note. There are very serious issues displayed, such as racism, war, hatred, the like. But the seriousness of the game is not overdone, nor a complete mind fuck such as FFVII was. There are a many corny, cute lines which the characters shoot out. This game is funny.

The absolute best cinematics out of ANY Final Fantasy. Hands down. This game produces the most beautiful art, and the most amazing CG cut scenes. I don't have much to say about them other than these keep me going when the going gets... rough or something.

The battle system is simple, easy to master, and really basic. But leaving a lot of room for interesting attacks and sequences. Though definitely not as engaging as, say, Legend of the Dragoon. Though I absolutely dislike "Trance" which is basically Limit Break. You can't hold off your attack until the next battle. Once trance goes off, you have to use it. Though your trance attacks with your main character are tight.

With all that said, completely my opinion. Just trying to get a game that didn't get appreciated much some attention.

I will see y'all this weekend when I make the other 3 players cry as I destroy their childhood dreams and virginities.

Travis 08

Believe

Call me confused.

I'm someone who appreciates concept art. Much more than in game 3-d character models. The Tekken and Soul Calibur concepts blow the animated characters out of the water. Usually I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff and anything with half talent I can appreciate.

I've run into a big of complexity and I'm not sure what or how to feel about Ayumi, the character from the upcoming South Peak published, Gaijin Entertainment developed, X-Blades. Please don't get the developer confused with Gaijin Works, which is former Working Designs President Victor Ireland's new company. Which I haven't heard a peep out of for some time.

So X-Blades follows a female treasure hunter who's recent discovery of a lost treasure map sends her into an adventure to accumulate artifacts and I'm assuming eventually save the world from destruction by some alien super force. From first glance I think the character designers made her exactly how she needed to be to get someone to take notice. Long blonde hair, piercing blue eyes, contradicting dark skin, large swords, and piece meal clothing. But taking a look again at Ayumi all my flaws with the stereotypical female heroine come completely into light.

Of course first is her clothing. The bikini top has been done a multitude of times before and disregarding all practicality, I think it just looks tacky and is a quick way of getting people to point out that you are a hoochie. But if that werent enough shes not wearing pants either. She's got some sort of chaps device and the bottoms for her bikini plain in sight. They're not even trying to tasteful at all. I think the female form is beautiful, but I also believe it is more attractive when you have to work to see it. Part of a woman's allure is the mysteriousness so having it all out there from the get go, makes things a little less interesting.

Her character is not exactly the most interesting either. She carried around "gun blades" which I don't know how anyone isn't calling in Square-Enix to comment on. Maybe the game is so insignificant that they don't really care to bother. Her name is Ayumi. I guess it's nice to see that they're not trying to stereotype a Japanese name into a completely asian looking character. It makes me wonder what the point is then. It feels like they tried to take a piece from everything that makes a video game girl attractive and then shoehorn them into a compliation girl. For example, guys think asians are hot, let's call her Ayumi. But to cater to the American crowd, let's make her blonde with blue eyes. Let's make her a bad ass and have her carry around these big weapons. What's a big weapon? Guns? Swords? No, no, no, how about guns with swords!!

You see my confusion now? Everything is based around the character. The story is laughable. The sidekick is a joke. There's no emphasis on level design or world creation. You've put this character as the focal point for this game and even she's kind of an abomination. Visit the official site to see what I mean. Just let is sit on the screen. I mean WTF?

Maybe I'm being a little harsh and expecting too much out of something that isn't supposed to be anything more than semi-fan service. I'm a pretty picky guy and quick to have opinions on things that I don't think are right. But part of us growing as people and a culture is to point out mistakes that we've made. Bring them to the light and understand why we made them and keep making them. We have an opportunity to have brilliant ideas and I'd like to see more of it.

Here's to a character done right,
David

A message to all our mods from your fans.

Thanks Skyliner12 and Mr Fabulous for putting this together. Amazing stuff. Just need to add some clever pics into the clip and you got gold.


Brad

Two videos of what I didn't want in my Tomb Raider game.

This is now a 30 dollar game for me.






*sigh*

I really don't think this series can ever be great again.


Brad

Who are we?

People always have wondered why we're called the 4PlayerPodcast. For a majority of our shows, it's only been two or three people. Back when we started as EastvsWest and the [workingtitle] podcast, we struggled to find an identity. When Brad moved back up to Austin and Travis joined the show, we all of a sudden had these 4 guys who loved to play games. Being as how most console games only support up to 4 Players, that's how we came about the name. And while it's great that the 4 of us became such great friends, I think it's also important to point out that it's not just the 4 "founding" members that makes us who we are. It's all the personalitites that we have accumulated and involved combined with uniqueness of the chatters that really makes 4PP. In a way, we've kind of outgrown the name.

There was also another reason why we were so behind the idea for the name and also why we've never been so die hard about having 4 people on the show everyweek. We do the show because we love it. Life is tough. The daily grind can get to you. So whenever we do get together, it's because we want to. Because just sitting around playing games is not enough, we've got to talk about them and discuss them and disect them. It's our release that we need for the games we play. So, it's really a show 4 Players. For you guys at home to enjoy and laugh at, but 4 us as well. You could think of it as The For Player Podcast.

I think you'll see and hear a lot more from Sandra starting from here on out. Mike will keep working on art and video projects. Juan will broadcast during the day when he can get out of the house. The Mods will still keep the order in the chatrooms. Travis will make his return whenever he's back in town from college, and eventually so will Matt. Look for Steffon to start helping us with some more video ideas and Steven to do some more original music. None of us know what will happen in the future, so we'll just keep walking forward and see where we end up.

Thanks for listening,
David

4Player Podcast Show #089

Here's this weeks show recorded 11.14.2008. Brad, Nick, and David are joined by Sandra Foy this week to talk about what else but video games.

#089 - The Foy Player Podcast [download]

Thanks,
David

Does anyone know how I can link an account to our old itunes?