Monthly Archives: June 2014

Game Trailers Roundup for June 9, 2014

With E3 starting right now, news coverage is going to get a lot busier around here. We’ll have the usual keynote roundups, breaking news items and all the trailers that the devs and publishers have. For today, we’ve got some reveal and teaser trailer released over the last seven days ahead of the big trade expo. I figured that it would be a good idea to move this post up to avoid the rest of the E3 news crunch.

If you’re a fan of either Crytek or WB Games, this is a good roundup for you. WB Games has new trailers out for Batman: Arkham Knight and Mortal Kombat X. Crytek has two of their new properties on exhibit this week. The Homefront sequel gets its first public exhibition and so does their new IP Hunt: Horrors of the Gilded age.

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Tags: E3, E3 2014

GOG Announces DRM-Free Gaming Platform, GOG Galaxy

Jun 9

Posted by Steve Murray

GOG.com has a new addition to their current lineup of DRM-free offerings. This time, it isn’t a new DRM-game on the store but a new way to access your GOG purposes with the new platform GOG Galaxy.

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Tags: CD Projekt, Galaxy, GOG

Geek Links of the Week

Jun 6

Posted by Steve Murray

A new study says that we’re about four years away from eSports broadcasting being a $300 million per year industry and viewership topping 6 billion hours of video consumed annually. If you want to get in, it’s a good time because eSports is only going to get bigger from here. An etg. sponsored eSports team/competition anyone? [The Daily Dot]

The much ballyhooed eSports Global Network (ESGN) didn’t go too far before running into financial trouble. The first attempt at an eSports channel in the same style as the 24-hour mainstream sports networks hasn’t exactly been successful. What might this mean for eSports? [PC Games N]

There’s probably fibre internet in your city. You just can’t use it because Big Telecom will cut off your town from the outside of the world if someone tries selling you its use. [Vice]

Have you ever wanted a rough look at the data that travels across the internet in real-time? That would be what this site says they’ve got for you. [PennyStocks]

Looking for a review of the latest Ubisoft game? This link has you covered. [Games.on.net]

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Fans React to The Mountain and The Viper

Jun 6

Posted by Steve Murray

Let’s get this out of the way first: SPOILERS!

There was no other possible choice for this week’s edition of Fridays of Ice and Fire. As soon as we saw this week’s episode, we all knew that the reaction videos were coming. Fortunately, the book readers had us covered again. It’s as if they take a sadistic pleasure in watching us suffer, much in the same way that GRRM loves making us suffer.

So here are a few fan reaction videos. Once again: Spoilers.

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Posted in TV/Movies

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Tags: Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin, HBO

New Facebook App Feature Activates Your Phone’s Mic When You Post

Jun 6

Posted by Steve Murray

Just when you thought that Facebook had reached the height of privacy invading evil, they find a new trick to make you think that they may be worse than the NSA. A recent Facebook mobile app update includes a hidden little feature that activates your phones microphone when you’re writing a post, listens to what’s going on the room and includes what you’re up to in your post.

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Tags: Facebook, Mobile, Privacy

World e-Sports Championship Games Seeks to Be New eSports Olympics

Jun 6

Posted by Steve Murray

Just when you thought the realm of international eSports competitions in which one represents their country rather than their team or themselves disappeared with the closure of the World Cyber Games back in February, a new group has stepped into the breach to form a new international eSports competition.

Aegis Gaming Networks and the Global Mobile Game Confederation to start their own global eSports competition called the World e-Sports Championship Games.

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Tags: WECG, World e-Sports Championship Games

Dawngate Beta Impressions: Breaking Meta But Not the Mold

Jun 5

Posted by Steve Murray

I’m not so sure that it’s everyone wants to get into MOBAs but everyone feels as though they have to get into MOBAs. While Riot Games is on their own and on top of the pile, all the other big players are trying to get in with their own MOBAs. Blizzard/Activision is trying something a bit more fan service and team objective based with Heroes of the Storm. Deep Silver is doing the Dead Island zombie MOBA. WB Interactive is onboard with Infinite Crisis. And, of course, Valve has Dota 2.

Now, Electronic Arts is the last one to jump into the MOBA fray by publishing someone else’s MOBA under their banner. Dawngate might seem to have a lot more in common with League of Legends than the other competitors but it also has some unique ways to differentiate itself from the king of MOBAs. Does it find its way to a solid third in the pack?

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Tags: Dawngate, EA, Impressions, MOBA, Review, Waystone Games

Critics Corner: Murdered: Soul Suspect

Jun 5

Posted by Steve Murray

If you follow me on Twitter (@TheSteveMurray), you probably saw me mention that I wasn’t disappointed that I was turned down for a review copy of a recent release. The game came out to pretty poor reviews by big release standards so not spending 10 hours of my life playing and a couple more writing and editing a review was probably to my benefit. Instead, I’ll spend a couple of hours reading and condensing reviews of Murdered: Soul Suspect for a Critics Corner post.

Murdered: Soul Suspect sounds like a fairly intriguing concept at first but it sounds like the execution was a little lacking. Just about everyone found some aspect of the game a bit “meh” but most found more than one aspect to be lacking in polish.

So enough of my little preamble. What did the critics think of Murdered: Soul Suspect?

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Tags: Airtight Games, Murdered: Soul Suspect, PC, PS4, Square Enix, Xbox One

Apple Unveils iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite

Jun 4

Posted by Steve Murray

There are some things that happen so regularly that it almost doesn’t deserve to be considered news. The sun rose this morning. Apple showed off a new iteration of both iOS and OS X at their Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). Apple fans hailed it as the greatest thing since sliced bread. Something expected to be great was compared to sliced bread. You know, the usual stuff that is somehow still news.

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Tags: Apple, iOS, iOS 8, OS X, WWDC 2014

John Oliver Calls Trolls to Arms to Save Net Neutrality

One of the important parts of my post Game of Thrones ritual is staying up to watch Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on HBO. (I don’t stick around between 10:00 PM and 11:00 PM because that’s when I watch Cutthroat Kitchen on the Food Network.)

This week, John covered the death of Net Neutrality at the hands of money-grubbing corporations. He also touched on the fallacy of competition in the regional monopoly system but that’s a different matter. In his look at cable and internet providers and what they’re doing to kill the internet, he had an epic call to arms for the denizens of the internet to save net neutrality from the abyss made dark by corporate interests.