Monthly Archives: September 2014
Doctor Who: Time Heist Review
If there’s anyway to describe the first few episodes of Peter Capaldi’s run at the helm of the TARDIS, it might be that he’s getting a lot of the standard Doctor Who adventures out of the way. There’s the Dalek adventure. He’s done the adventure with a historical figure. There’s the horror episode. This week, it was timey-wimey genre bending.
The Doctor and Clara were tasked with robbing the most secure bank in the universe. However, this wasn’t the standard bank robbery caper. Of course not. This is Doctor Who.
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Geek Links of the Week
In Canada, it’s a time-honoured tradition to use a VPN service to get to American Netflix since the Canadian version is slightly limited in selection. If copyright holders get any say in the matter, those users will be banned from Netflix for using a VPN. [TorrentFreak]
You’ve probably heard about the IPO launch of Alibaba but don’t quite get it. Here’s what you need to know about China’s largest online retailer going public on American stock markets. [Forbes]
What can iOS 8 do that iOS 7 couldn’t? A bunch of stuff that Android users will mock you for thinking is the greatest thing since sliced bread but still cool for the Apple faithful. [Gizmodo]
Given the popularity of mobile gaming and the continuous popularity of Nintendo’s handhelds, the death of the console might not be terrible games, greedy corporations or money. It might be a lack of portability. One man might have the solution for the Xbox One, though. [Ed’s Junk]
The accuracy of VG Chartz is sometimes debated but they also seem to be the only ones regularly tracking hardware sales outside of the regular press releases. Their lifetime sales chart as of August 2014 says that the PS4 is a two-to-one leader over the Xbox One and the Wii U is holding down second spot. [VG Chartz]
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GameStop Closing Operations in Spain
Back during the global economic crisis of 2007, one of the hardest hit countries was Spain. That tidbit of information is normally irrelevant on the blog but when the Spanish games industry has a bit of a shake up, it suddenly becomes relevant.
This week, games retail chain GameStop announced that they would be ceasing operations in the Spanish market and selling off some of its stores to Game.
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eSports Weekend Calendar: September 19 – 21, 2014
After a week away from League of Legends, it comes back in full force in this week’s eSports Weekend Calendar. It’s the start of the group stages for the 2014 World Championship. The sixteen top teams are playing down for the $1,000,000 championship grand prize. This week is the group stages with the playoff stages next week.
Elsewhere, StarCraft II features the Red Bull Battle Grounds grand final with Red Bull Battle Grounds: Washington tournament. Over in the Dota 2 space, Sina Cup 5 wraps up this weekend with the upper and lower bracket finals on Friday and the Grand Final on Sunday. And ESL One continues its qualifiers for the big New York event at Madison Square Garden.
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The ESRB Turns 20 (Infographic)
Did you know that the Entertainment Software Ratings Board issued its first video game ratings twenty years ago Tuesday? On September 16th, 1994, the ESRB’s first set of ratings included such games as Doom (for Sega 32X), Pitfall (for SNES) and Sonic Triple Trouble (for Sega Game Gear).
Over the last twenty years, the ESRB has rated tens of thousands of games, tweaked the ratings system a couple of times (they replaced Kids to Adults with Everyone and later added an E10+ category), changed the look of the ratings a couple of times and recently introduced content warnings for “interactive elements” of games.
For a look back at the history of the ESRB, they’ve released a handy infographic looking at 20 years of the ESRB and game ratings.
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The Walking Dead: Season Two Review: Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death
Telltale Games had a bit of an up-and-down reputation prior to the release of The Walking Dead. That game completely changed the way that most thought of Telltale and many critics felt that they set the bar for storytelling in games. After the numerous game of the year awards for TWD and a critically acclaimed launch for The Wolf Among Us, Telltale’s second comic book adaptation, The Walking Dead: Season Two was one of the most hotly anticipated games of 2014.
The problem with a game with all that hype is that it occasionally bogs down under the weight. The problem with a sequel is that they struggle to balance the needs of new gamers to the franchise with the desires of people continuing the story. There were times when TWD:S2 caved to these pressures as Telltale tried very hard to copy what made Season One so loved but missing the emotional mark that Season One hit. However, once Season Two came into its own, Telltale had put out another stellar experience.
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Formula E Beijing ePrix: Debuting with a Bang
The following post was originally written for The Lowdown Blog and was geared towards a motorsport audience. Most of the analysis is gear toward that audience rather than a tech crowd. However, I felt the first race of an all-electric motorsport series was worth posting about here.
The first ever race for the first ever international all-electric motorsports series got off with a bang. I mean that in both a literal and metaphorical sense too. For all the worries about the potential issues with Formula E, they put on a pretty good show despite the pit stop and car change nonsense. However, the race started and ended with literal bangs thanks to a Turn 2 incident on Lap 1 and a final turn incident on the final lap.
The result was that 24 laps and 19 corners of a race lead for Nicolas Prost was thrown away with one dangerous move that took him out of the lead and nearly injured Nick Heidfeld. That let Lucas di Grassi through to ink his name in the record books as the first ever Formula E race winner.
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Poor Destiny Reviews May Have Cost Bungie a $2.5 Million Bonus
It’s been reported in the past that developers have big bonuses tied to slightly arbitrary metrics like aggregated review scores. Fallout: New Vegas was infamous for Obsidian falling 1% short of its bonus goal on Metacritic.
Now, one of 2014’s most anticipated games and the new record holder for number of pre-orders for a new IP will fall afoul of its own review score goal. Destiny might have made a reported $500 million for Activision but Bungie won’t be picking up a reported $2.5 million bonus for scoring a 90% aggregated review score.
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Comic Book Pull List for September 17, 2014
When I do pull list recommendations, I try to look for new or interesting comics that might be worth a read. This week seems a little harder than usual to pick out recommendations. I suppose a good place to start would be the series finale of Thor: God of Thunder. Issue #25 will be the final Thor comic before we get the debut of the new female Thor in a series to start in October.
And DC continues their Future’s End series of comics with this week’s offerings including Justice League, Batman/Superman, Superman/Wonder Woman and Wonder Woman.
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Microsoft Buys Mojang for $2.5 Billion
The rumours are true. The biggest little indie studio in the world is being bought by the biggest evil empire in gaming (except for maybe EA… and Ubisoft). The earlier reports about Microsoft buying Minecraft developer Mojang was just a little off the mark. The US tech giant bought the Swedish indie studio for a whopping $2.5 billion.
et geekera 