In 2012, the US Federal Trade Commission did a mystery shopper sting to see if stores were selling adult-rated movies, CDs and games to kids. It turns out that video game retailers have the best compliance in not selling M-rated games to kids. Take that, NRA. [FTC]
But for the gaming industry, it’s two steps forward and one step back. Here’s a look at some of the most offensive attempts at video game marketing. [Cracked]
A group at Full Sail University have spent months breaking down the weighting behind Metacritic’s games review weighting system. Metacritic claims that the results are inaccurate but of course they’d do that. They wouldn’t want anyone to know they give a volunteer site the highest possible weight and Giant Bomb the second lowest weight. [Gamasutra]
A report says that fewer games have multiplayer components. While I’d suggest that when you include indies that may be true, if you were to only look at releases from the big publishers, I’d bet that the percentage with multiplayer has gone up. [The Penny Arcade Report]
With Doctor Who coming back this weekend (can you tell that I’m excited?), here is a look at some of Matt Smith’s best moments as The Doctor. [Geek Sugar]
The second half of Series 7 of Doctor Who begins this weekend too. We’re six episodes into the fourteen episode season (if you include the Christmas Special) which means we have a fair bit of time left to figure out what the deal is with The Doctor’s new companion, Clara Oswald.
Here’s the official launch trailer. The show is back tomorrow (Saturday, March 30th) in the UK, Canada and the US.
Game of Thrones returns on Sunday for Season 3. Unfortunately, HBO has put the first showing of the season premiere against the season finale of The Walking Dead. Assuming that three weeks of nothing happening hasn’t turned people off of TWD, you can always catch the 10:00 PM and 11:00 PM showings.
In case, for some strange reason, you missed Season 2 of Game of Thrones, you can catch up on the show with this short recap video.
As part of their Mass Effect retrospective panel at PAX East, BioWare released an infographic detailing the decisions made by players. They didn’t reveal stats like completion rate or which ending was chosen (for obvious reasons) but they did detail the most popular classes, FemShep vs. BroShep, paragon vs. renegade, the favourite squadmates and even total single player play time across the community.
Pokemon Snap always struck me as an oddity in the Pokemon gaming series. While the Game Boy games were about travelling though Kanto (and subsequently added regions), catching Pokemon and being the very best (like no one ever was), Pokemon Snap was about you as a photographer. Not quite as glamorous and exciting.
That doesn’t mean that the Snap concept is unsalvageable. The team over at GrittyReboots have given Pokemon Snap a remake for this movie trailer.
At GDC, Heido Kojima let us in on the biggest secret in the video game industry that isn’t really a secret at all. The Phantom Pain, a game originally teased at the 2012 Spike TV Video Game Awards, is actually the upcoming Metal Gear Solid V. The game will combine the previously unveiled Metal Gear Solid Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain and will officially be titled Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.
Do you remember Miniclip? When I was in high school many a joke class (like intro to business, civics and career studies) was spent playing flash games that wouldn’t crash the old, cheap computers. The original mainstay was miniclip.com, which, I’m slightly surprised to say, still exists today.
That’s where I first played the Red Lynx’s Trials series (it was called Trial Bike back then). I had seen proper Trials on TV on an old show called Motorsport Mundial so I knew what Trials was about and was instantly hooked on the flash game. Naturally, I’d have to pick up Red Lynx’s first PC Trials game since it left flash.
The problem is that while Trials Evolution, the most recent Trials (né Trial Bike) game, is a critically acclaimed game on the Xbox 360, Red Lynx should have kept their PC games on flash.
You know what? I’m already sick of those 1995 style intros for TV dramas. One was unique but I’m already tired of it and only a couple more have popped up since that first one for The Walking Dead.
However, UnusualSuspect2011 has a pretty good and, thankfully, unique take on the stylized TV intro. He did an intro mashup of Marvel’s The Avengers with the classic Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers intro. It even has Coulson! How can you not like that?
When Lucasfilm and Disney announced that they would be wrapping up The Clone Wars animated series at the end of this season, they also announced that they would be providing bonus content after the end of the series. Sources inside Lucasfilm Animation have told TheForce.net that this bonus content would be story arcs from the planned sixth season of the show but wouldn’t be providing the resolution and closure that many fans would have liked.
I’ll readily admit that we don’t do very well covering comic books for a geek blog. In my defense, I was only able to track down where I can buy comic books in my hometown (in a hobby shop rather than a standalone comics shop). Now I’m going to have to start making weekly visits on Wednesday when the new comic books get released.
What am I looking at this week, you might (though are unlikely to) ask? Well, seeing as the fan voting is down to the final four, I’m looking forward to Injustice #3. I missed Doctor Who: Prisoners of Time #2 so that’s on my list. More importantly, it’ll move up Doctor Who fans’ must-buy lists if we don’t get a 50th Anniversary special on TV. Finally, I’m a huge Judge Dredd fan so Judge Dredd #5 is on top of my must buy list this week.
As you can likely tell, I’m still getting back into comic books. I’ll try to make better picks next week.
et geekera 