Monthly Archives: August 2013
Geek Links of the Week
Warner Bros. is reportedly looking for an actor in his 40s to play Batman in Batman/Superman (AKA Man of Steel 2). [Hollywood Reporter]
I trust that proper Doctor Who fans aren’t worried about the casting of Peter Capaldi as the 12th Doctor. Just in case you still are, it turns out that Capaldi wanted to run the official Doctor Who fan club back when he was a teenager. [Digital Spy]
It’s not just Americans who are having their email searched by the NSA. If you’re sending an email into America, it’s being read too. [New York Times]
One of the devs working on the upcoming indie title Road Redemption talks about how games go wrong in development using the specific example of Ride to Hell: Retribution. [Road Redemption]
Sebastian Moss lets you in on a little secret about VG247. They have a terrible internal policy about sourcing which undermines the real newsbreakers and would seem to favour their parent site, Eurogamer. You already know what I think about the state of gaming journalism. Glad to know I’m not the only writer concerned. [PlayStation LifeStyle]
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StarCraft II Dropped from MLG Columbus Championship
If you’re a fan of the North American StarCraft II scene, now might be a good time to worry. Yesterday, Major League Gaming co-founder and CEO Sundance DiGiovanni tweeted that MLG’s November championship event in Columbus will not include a StarCraft II tournament.
As a result of this move by MLG, there are no major SC2 LAN tournaments held in North America.
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Xbox One Game Recording Only for Xbox Live Gold
As part of their corporate policies, Microsoft has mandated that they can’t go more than a few weeks without doing something to annoy their current and potential future consumer base.
So August’s early frontrunner for Xbone move of the month is Microsoft confirming that users will only be able to use the Xbox One’s ability to record gameplay if you are an Xbox Live Gold member.
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Dead Island 3 is a Free-to-Play MOBA
Wait. What?
No, that’s not a typo or a joke, I think. Third installment in the Dead Island franchise, to be called Dead Island: Epidemic, will not be a co-op first-person shooter but will instead be Deep Silver’s entry into the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) genre.
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Building (Critical) Consensus: Pikmin 3
We’ve all been waiting for Nintendo to bust out that killer app that’s going to get people to start buying the Wii U. With third-party publisher support for Nintendo’s next-gen offering starting to dry up, it’s up to Nintendo to give people a reason to pick the Wii U over the rest.
I wouldn’t call the Pikmin franchise one of Nintendo’s biggest franchises, nor would I consider Pikmin a Nintendo IP that will sell scads of consoles. However, the critics really like this game. It might not be terribly innovative but it uses the Wii U Gamepad and that’s more than we can say about a bunch of current Wii U offerings.
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Obama Administration Considering Making Streaming a Felony
A part of the defeated SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) legislation has been recommended to make a return to Congress to become law.
The Department of Commerce’s Internet Policy Task Force issued a report last week recommending the implementation a part of SOPA that would make the illegal streaming of copyrighted works a felony.
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Vietnam to Censor Online Current Affairs Discussion
The Vietnamese government has come under fire this week for Decree 72 which is otherwise known as “Management, Provision, Use of Internet Services and Information Content Online”. This new Vietnamese law, coming into effect on September 1st, will effectively ban people from engaging online discussion about current events, with an emphasis involving Vietnam’s current affairs.
At its heart, the decree will outlaw citizens from posting anything that “harms national security and opposes the state.”
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Building (Critical) Consensus: Dragon’s Crown
Dragon’s Crown might be one of the more controversial releases of 2013 in the ongoing concern over sexism and misogyny video games. The 2D side-scrolling brawler has been making headlines since its art first hit the internet. The “hypersexualized” art of the game which depicts a female sorceress with massive breasts, an amazon in almost no clothing and male characters so impossibly muscled that they shouldn’t be able to move.
Some reviewers didn’t let the art style influence their review while others weighed it heavily in their scores. Polygon was the site that’s taken the most flak from gamers (or, at least, Dragon’s Crown fans) over their review which came in almost 20% under the GameRankings average as a result of the game’s art style and depiction of female NPCs. But, of course, that’s why you read multiple reviews. And, of course, you’ll know ahead of time if the art style is off-putting so you won’t let a bad review heavily criticizing the art style get to you, I hope.
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Left 4 Dead 3 Accidentally Leaked
Just when you thought that Gabe Newell and his team at Valve couldn’t count to three, a photo from a tour of Valve’s office showed that they are working on the third game in a franchise. No, it’s not Half-Life 3 (yet) but the likely to be hotly anticipated Left 4 Dead 3.
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Remember Me Review: The Memory Remains
A while back, I wrote a column lamenting the loss of new intellectual properties coming from the big publishers. One of the few new multi-platform IPs that is coming out this year is Capcom’s Remember Me. It had an interesting premise and the rare not hypersexualized female protagonist leading the game. For the first few hours, Remember Me was certainly worth my past consideration as a new IP to wake up the industry.
However, the experience doesn’t hold up over time. While there are parts of the game that are very memorable, it’s certainly not the unforgettable rookie developer Dontnod were hoping for.
et geekera 