Category Archives: Games
BioWare Reveals First Mass Effect 4 Details
While BioWare doesn’t want anyone to call the fourth Mass Effect game Mass Effect 4 and are keen to emphasize that this is a new story for the franchise, Mass Effect 4 won’t be a complete departure from the status quo for the series. At San Diego Comic Con, BioWare used their Mass Effect panel to reveal the first details of the next game in the franchise.
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Sony Settles for $17.75 Million in 2011 PSN Hacking Lawsuit
It’s been three years since the big PlayStation Network hacking incident that saw the PSN having to be shut down for 24 days and the personal information of 77 million users stolen. While Sony ran the Welcome Back promotion that saw users get free games and a free month of PlayStation Plus, the lawyers have decided that wasn’t enough and now Sony will be paying up to $15 million in damages as a result of the PSN hacking incident of 2011.
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Kickstarter Suspends Campaign for Areal Amid Accusations of Foul Play
It’s not often that a Kickstarter campaign is the subject of such controversy but controversial is about the only way to describe the campaign for the planned game Areal. The game, by a new company of experience developers called West Games, was to be a spiritual successor to the STALKER franchise by developers of the games. Sounds like the perfect project for a Kickstarter, right?
That’s when the wheels started coming off. The game’s campaign was criticized for not having any sort of gameplay to show for itself despite the devs saying they’ve poured every last cent into developing the game to this point. Spam comments flooded the campaign, allegedly to bury questions or criticisms about the campaign. And it ended with a couple of massive last-minute to push a campaign that had stalled out over the goal.
The suspicious circumstances surrounding the campaign resulted in Kickstarter suspending the campaign two days hitting the goal and told backers that their pledges wouldn’t go through.
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Valve Changes Steam Controller to Add a Thumbstick
The Steam Controller was one of three new Steam-themed projects that Valve announced last fall and it’s undergone a lot of testing and revising since the initial announcement. While it hasn’t been officially revealed, the latest Steam client beta was mined for data and it looks like the next iteration of the Steam Controller prototype will swap out the d-pad for a thumbstick.
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Game Trailers Roundup for July 21, 2014
It seems as though we do one week on, one week off for game trailers. One week, we get a whole pile of trailers for upcoming and announced games. The next, almost nothing. This week is a week with lots of trailers.
We lead off with the trailer for this week’s Episode Four of The Walking Dead: Season Two. I know I’m behind on the reviews for this season so I’m hoping to get both Episode Three and Episode Four done this week. From the triple-A ranks, E3 favourites AC Unity and NHL 15 get new trailers. From the indies, World of Speed and The Long Dark get trailers and I’m still excited about The Long Dark.
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Grid Autosport Review: Pedal to the Metal
While they started as a bit more of a racing sim company, Codemasters transition to the pseudo-sim (not a hardcore racing sim but far from a simple arcade racer) has come with massive critical acclaim. The launch of the Dirt series from the Colin McRae Rally franchise and the transition of the sim TOCA Race Driver series to Grid were met with praise from critics and gamers alike.
Then 2012 happened. Someone at Codemasters went a little crazy and decided that more arcade-style racing games were what Codies needed to get to the next level. The result was Dirt: Showdown, F1 Race Stars and Grid 2 all being released in quick succession. The pseudo-sim gameplay had been replaced with arcadey minigames, shallow gameplay, and a disregard for proper racing and the laws of physics, respectively.
While the F1 franchise motored on, the rest of Codemasters’ IP floundered without a direction. The company’s move from sim to arcade was backfiring with critics and fans. So Codies did something rare for the games industry: They listened to their fans. The gamers who were fed up with the direction of Codemasters would get their way with the latest iteration of the Grid franchise. Getting away from the arcade/floaty driving style of Grid 2, Grid Autosport would be a return to the more sim style of racing that Grid and the Race Driver franchises were known for.
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Former Panamanian Dictator Manuel Noriega Suing Activision Over CoD: Black Ops II
Former military dictator of Panama, Manuel Noriega, is the type of person you’d expect to be used as a basis for a Call of Duty villain but his turn as a character in Call of Duty: Black Ops II hit a little close to home for him. Noriega is suing Activision over using his name and likeness in the popular game series.
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Yogscast Reveals New Program In Which They Earn Revenue From Indie Game Sales
Somehow, the gaming press has only now clued into the fact that some YouTubers are being paid by developers and publishers to cover some games. This isn’t exactly news given that most YouTube personalities that have some respect for themselves and their viewers disclose which videos are paid promotional content.
What we should all be focusing on is the implications of the new revenue scheme dreamt up by the team at Yogscast. Their new YogDiscovery program will see the company have indie developers pay a portion of the sales increase from Yogscast coverage of their game.
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Wrestling Legend Jim Ross Commentates Video Games
The legendary voice of wrestling Jim Ross has had his voice leant to videos of just about everything. He’s called fails, dancing, other sports and now, he’s the voice of video games. YouTube’s The Blue Owl has come up with three absolutely perfect video of Jim Ross commentating the action of various video games.
And GOOD GOD ALMIGHTY! GOOD GOD ALMIGHTY! THAT KILLED HIM! AS GOD AS MY WITNESS, HE IS BROKEN IN HALF!
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EA Says Dungeon Keeper Mobile “Innovated Too Much”
In June, EA CEO Andrew Wilson referred to the mobile version of Dungeon Keeper as “a shame.” In doing so, he seemed to be admitting that EA had made a mistake with their approach to bringing the cult classic to the mobile gaming space as a free-to-play game.
Don’t tell that to EA Mobile boss Frank Gibeau. He didn’t think that the failure of Dungeon Keeper Mobile was a result of the monetization model. Instead, in an interview with Games Industry, Gibeau said that Dungeon Keeper Mobile “innovated too much or tried some different things that people just weren’t ready for.”
et geekera 