Here’s the latest hot bit of news from the rumour mill. While everybody was either hunting for black Friday deals or playing one of the numerous November releases, former Rockstar developer Danny Ross did an AMA on the Opie and Anthony subreddit. Answering a question, Ross seemed to strongly hint that Red Dead Redemption 2 was the next project out of Rockstar Games.
This week is a quiet few week for the Game Trailers Roundup because most of the big trailers are being saved for Thursday’s The Game Awards. I’m not a huge fan of the cross between what Geoff Keighley wants to be the Oscars of gaming and an industry marketing event but publishers like revealing footage on Keighley’s platform. It’s how his awards shows are still running even if the Oscars or Golden Globes aren’t directly used as a marketing platform for other movies.
Anyway, we have six trailers for you to watch today including three for games that will be launched in the next week-and-a-half. And depending on how fast videos get to YouTube, we might have a TGA Trailers Roundup on Friday.
Last weekend, Blizzard let a bunch of people into the Overwatch closed beta for a stress test on their servers. With the game’s launch no more than seven months in the future, it might be a little early to tell what Overwatch will be like when the game is released to the public. However, a lot of big names in the gaming world have been sinking a lot of time into the latest IP out of the house that Warcraft built.
Since I’ve probably spent far too much on StarCraft and Heroes, I was able to get into the three-day Overwatch stress test. I may not be much of an FPS gamer but I certainly didn’t feel too out of place in the game.
It’s not an uncommon occurrence for a gaming news outlet to be blacklisted by a publisher. You can hear Jim Sterling talk about blacklisted regularly on The Jimquisition. Destructoid was blacklisted by Konami. At one time or another, EGM was reportedly blacklisted by numerous companies including Sony, Midway and Ubisoft. Jeff Gerstmann infamously lost his job at GameSpot over a poor review of Kane & Lynch that resulted in Eidos Interactive threatening to pull ads from the site.
The latest publication to take their blacklisting public is Kotaku. Editor-in-chief Stephen Totilo took to the site to reveal that the company had been cut off by the PR branches of both Ubisoft and Bethesda. While some in games media are standing up for Kotaku, those content consumers that Kotaku are supposed to be producing content for aren’t on their side. When you’re as divisive as Kotaku, there isn’t much sympathy for the devil.
The 2015 edition of the Steam Fall/Thanksgiving/Black Friday sale is just underway. For gamers, it’s kind of like early Christmas. You can get deep discounts on those games that you wanted to buy at $60 but held off knowing that this day would come.
There will be a change for this year’s fall and winter sales that you might have already noticed. Last week, Valve sent notice to publishers that there would be no daily deals or flash sales during the sale. Instead, the discount they set will be fixed for the duration of the sale.
It’s interesting how well-received that Game of Thrones is in print and on TV but the ASOIAF/GOT franchise has never been well-received in the gaming world. Unfortunately for Telltale Games, so far, the critics have said the same about their take on a Game of Thrones game.
Telltale’s Game of Thrones series came to an end with the sixth episode. Perhaps the extra length beyond the standard Telltale fare was unnecessary. The series had been good but not the greatness that we were used to from Telltale. Unfortunately, Episode Six: The Ice Dragon did nothing to change that perception.
What does the honest trailer for the last surviving game in a near-dead drama look like? Even the folks on Reddit are willing to admit that the Honest Trailer for StarCraft II is both funny and sad because it’s true. Watch as the trailer takes you from the campaign to the multiplayer dominated by David Kim to the competitive scene that is even farther beyond your skills. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, it’ll become a part of you.
As I am wont to do to start a new week, Monday ends with a roundup of all the noteworthy trailers from the past seven days. I say noteworthy because there were some DLC and “accolades” trailers that I left out here. I don’t understand the accolades ones especially. There was one for AC Syndicate but how can anyone say with a straight face that it’s the best one in ages when its aggregated review score is about 10 points less than AC4 from two years ago?
Anyway, this week’s roundup has nine trailers for four games. It’s mostly indie releases in the roundup this week with Just Cause 3 as the triple-A representative this week, including their 4K trailer. I asked Square Enix for details on what was needed to run Just Cause 3 in 4K at max settings. I’m still waiting on an answer but I would guess that it’s more power than most could afford.
After five years, the story of StarCraft II comes to a conclusion in its second expansion. In the great tradition of the franchise that first launched in 1998, StarCraft II played out in three parts, each focusing on one of StarCraft’s three races. The third and final part of SC2, Legacy of the Void, not only focuses on the Protoss as they try to take back their homeworld but also includes an epilogue to wrap up the series’ story.
While I get a lot of my games from Steam, if I was to tabulate where I get my games, Green Man Gaming would probably be number two on the list. That doesn’t mean that Green Man Gaming has a good reputation in the gaming world. Ever since CD Projekt said that they hadn’t sold any The Witcher 3 game keys to GMG, the site has come under fire for the alleged sale of grey market keys.
Following a second flare up of this grey market controversy, GMG is getting reactive about the information it’s including on its website. In a statement, Green Man Gaming announced that they will now tell you when you’re getting a game key and where that key’s coming from.
et geekera 