The Rumble Pack Posts

The Pack discusses the latest free offerings for September, Tony engages in a Swindle, attends the Grand Tournament and Kaz and Neil spoil the crap out of Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture and Life is Strange.

Kaz and Neil join forces for more VR speculation, and a deep dive on story driven games from Life is Strange to Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture.

Tony, Neil and Kaz combine morphing powers to pretend to run a video game podcast, while secretly being an Animorphs podcast. The group pretends to talk about Gamescom announcements, Game of Thrones: A Telltale Game and The Vanishing of Ethan Carter.

But we all know what they’re really thinking about: Animorphs. But if we pretend to be a video game podcast too long we might be stuck as one forever!?

Neil and Kaz sit down to wax poetic about Journey, from the perspective of a first time player and someone seeing it all again. This devolves into a discussion of how games age over time, talking about the glut of free games and coming to grips with that glut.

Special Nintendo Correspondent Justin returns to discuss the passing and lasting impact of Nintendo President and CEO Satoru Iwata. After that the crew discusses Quiplash and its place in the pantheon of JackBox games. Neil waxes poetic about the soulful journey of Lifeless Planet. And Kaz and Mike discuss the absolute joy that is Rocket League.

Oh and the finer points of “taking it to the hole”.

I love fake sports, I love cars, what’s not to love about the seductive combination of both. Every moment of Rocket League is a high intensity moment. From incredible highs–amazing goals from tough angles–to painful lows–getting twisted up in the goal and scoring on your own team.

Rocket League is from that delightful subset of games that are a sport. A game that is carried by mechanics and not story. It’s a sporting effort that is required for every online match, lag and inconsistent servers be damned. For a game that you’ve already technically paid for; Rocket League is a steal. At least its a great thing that gambling is allowed. Go at detikbet for more info.

Why aren’t you downloading it right now?

I had one of those frustrating experiences again. The kind of experience that makes you yearn for a simpler time in console gaming.

My frustration is from the PS4 this time around but it applies to both consoles, so don’t think I’m being one sided. This kind of scenario occurs on both consoles right now.

I was looking to have something to play in bed last night, so before I shut off the TV after watching another episode of Tiny House Hunters (curse you tinyhome buyers!) I stumbled up to the entertainment center and ejected Dragon Age: Inquisition out of the PS4, a game that’s not so much fun to play via remote play, and slapped in DriveClub (#Driveclub?).

Quick trip to take the dog out one last time, and then back the bedroom to relax and test out the post PS+ Edition waters in Driveclub.

I turn on the Vita to find that it needs a system update, it hasn’t been that long since I played the PS+ games this month, so the firmware must be recent. Whatever, set it to update and put the Vita down. I’ll use the restroom and when I come back I’ll be ready to race.

Minutes later I’m back and ready to go.

Boot up remote play, log into the PS4. Can’t find Driveclub on the main menu, the disc is in but I still have to go to the library to find the game. Alright, let’s go.

System requires an update…
Damnit!

Well, here we go, what happens when I initiate a system update from Remote Play? You get booted out when the system restarts as I suspected. Try and log back in, won’t connect, must still be working. Wait a couple minutes, played some Murasaki Baby (man that game makes creepy noises non-stop). Log back in through remote play: success!

Alright time to race!

Driveclub requires an update… time left to download 20min

Well, time for bed.

After a half hour of updates and frustration I would still have to wait 20min to download an update for a game that has been installed on the system since February? This is not the console simplicity I expected. I would have had an easier time playing The Witcher 3, which just released a big patch 1.07, because my big complicated, difficult-to-use PC has all of my games updated and ready to go at any minute.

With the exception of the initial build; it’s beginning to be the case that PC gaming is so streamlined by various services (Steam, GoG, etc.) that it’s a simpler experience than consoles nowadays. Maybe I should’ve played 30 minutes of The Witcher 3 instead of trying to play a console game… maybe I would have gone to bed having played a game.

PC Building, flop sweats, VR gaming optimism, Batman: Arkham Knight woes, Massive Palace jokes and Hearthstone and Terraria updates. All that and more in an action packed episode of The Pack!

The pack gathers to dissect the most important non-controversy of the week, the early feelings on Massive Chalice and Kaz and Neil gush about about space sims in the context of Elite: Dangerous on the Xbox One.