Monthly Archives: September 2014
Blizzard Cancels Next-Gen Project Titan MMO
Is the MMO as we know it dead? After seven years in development and having never been officially announced or unveiled by the company, Blizzard revealed that they have cancelled Project Titan, the next-generation MMO that was to succeed World of Warcraft.
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Murdered: Soul Suspect Review: Cold Case
When there’s a game that I’m interested in reviewing, I reach out to the public relations officers at the publisher of the game (or their contracted PR firm) to see if I can get a copy for review. More often than not, I don’t get a copy of the game. Usually, I can wait for a sale and pick up a copy to play it through but usually that’s not for several months that it gets down to a price within my budget.
In the case of Murdered: Soul Suspect, I was figuring that Steam’s Holiday or a spring sale would bring it down to a price where I would buy it. Then I got it for $15 from the Humble Store in early August. Two months after the game was released, I’m already getting it for some 70% off. While I know it was a big enough flop to force developer Airtight Games out of business, it couldn’t be that bad, could it?
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Join et geekera on Steam
With all the changes to Steam and the addition of the new curation and discovery options, I thought that now was a good time to launch our own group on Steam. With almost 3,000 fans of the blog between WordPress, Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr, I thought that we can start doing some community things like gaming together and other events beyond that.
You can find the official et geekera Steam group at steamcommunity.com/groups/etgeekera.
We also have our own Steam Curator list that you can follow.
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Steam Overhauls Store to Improve Discoverability and Customization
If you’ve been on the Steam store since Monday evening, you might have noticed that things look a little different. Gone is the familiar black, white and grey. In is a mix of blue, white and grey that is just a little bit easier on the eyes.
The fresh coat of paint isn’t the only change that the Steam store launched this week. The whole front page and games listings have been given an overhaul designed to improve discoverability of new games and customize your Steam store experience.
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Who Watches the Watchmen: A Secret Game Journalists Group May Shape the News You Read
At the start of a column last year, I made a joke about how every games writer seems to be in lock-step when it comes to major talking points. I wrote: “I’m convinced that there is a missive sent out to video games writers with talking points that we’re all supposed to stick to for a year.”
One year later, Breitbart, an American news site with a pro-conservative slant to coverage, has uncovered a secret mailing list of leading games journalists that suggests that my little joke might actually be reality. A mailing list of about 150 leading games writers may be shaping the discussion and coverage of major games industry stories on leading websites.
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Comic Book Pull List for September 24, 2014
We’ve got a couple of new series and a couple of ongoing series to preview in this week’s pull list. Friend of the blog Larime Taylor is back with a new five-issue A Voice in the Dark miniseries and story arc starting with A Voice In The Dark: Get Your Gun #1. Over at Dark Horse, their Fire and Stone series continues with Aliens: Fire and Stone #1.
In ongoing series, the ever confusing numbering of the Spider-Man series continues in The Amazing Spider-Man #1.5 which concludes the Learning To Crawl arc. Star Trek continues the Q story line as DS9 makes an appearance in Star Trek #37. And DC’s Future’s End series continues with Superman, Aquaman, The Flash, Catwoman and more.
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Please Don’t Microwave Your iPhone 6
Remember last year when a fake ad claimed that upgrading to iOS 7 would introduce a feature that would make your iPhone waterproof? Well, probably not because it was a 4chan hoax. Some people inexplicably fell for that and ruined their iPhones but I wouldn’t say that they didn’t have it coming out of sheer stupidity.
This year, those same folks from 4chan are back with a new fake ad that claims that an iOS 8 upgrade introduces the ability to charge your iPhone in the microwave.
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Haven: Speak No Evil Review
A season premiere has a tough task nowadays. Ever since Star Trek: The Next Generation’s classic The Best of Both Worlds popularize season finale cliffhangers, the practice is now common place in television. The problem is that ST:TNG never had to worry about serialized story telling. You could watch the episodes in a fairly haphazard order and you wouldn’t be missing too much.
The difference between Star Trek and Haven is the nature of the story telling. You have to watch the episodes in sequence for them to make any sense so the story has to go forward and you have to have a reason to carry on. The challenge for writers is to answer enough questions from the previous season finale to satisfy viewers while leaving enough questions to bring you back. In some regards, Part Two of Haven’s fifth season premiere succeeded. In others, I’m not particularly compelled by it.
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Game Trailers Roundup for September 22, 2014
If you’re in North America, the big video game event of the year is June’s E3 in Los Angeles. If you’re a European gamer, you keep your eyes on August’s GamesCom for news. And if you’re a Japanese gamer, the year builds to the annual Tokyo Game Show.
For today’s Game Trailers Roundup, we have pulled together scads of trailers from this year’s edition of TGS. If you’re a Final Fantasy fan, you’re in luck because we have trailers for XV and Type-0 HD as well as an FF15 gameplay video. There are new trailers for Metal Gear Solid V, Bloodborne and The Great Ace Attorney. If you’re looking for non-TGS trailers, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel and Battlefield: Hardline also released new trailers last week for your viewing.
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Kickstarter Changes Terms of Service for Failed Projects
After some inexplicably failed and abandoned projects since the crowdfunding’s site’s launch, Kickstarter is changing its terms of service which won’t allow project creators to just take the money and run. Now Kickstarter won’t work as a pledge with no legal obligation to complete the project as promised but now will open up project creators to the possibility of legal action.
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