Category Archives: Games

EA Has Money For You… Thanks to a Lawsuit Settlement

Are you one of the millions of gamers who regularly buy one of EA Sports’ football games? Thanks to a lawsuit over EA Sports’ exclusive licenses to make games for various sports leagues, you can get some money back. If you bought an EA Sports Madden NFL, NCAA Football or Arena Football game between January 1, 2005, and June 21, 2012, you’re entitled to a not insubstantial claim.

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Tags: Arena Football, EA, EA Sports, Madden, NCAA Football

The History of LucasArts

LucasArts is and was one of my all-time favourite publishers. They facilitated some great games from when I was growing up like the Dark Horse / Jedi Knight series, Tie Fighter, Rebel Assault (Shut up! I liked it.) and Knights of the Old Republic. That’s not counting the other massively popular LucasArts games like Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion and Grim Fandango.

Victor Lucas of the popular Canadian gaming news show Electric Playground looks back at the history of LucasArts. For a quasi-Easter Egg, watch for a young Geoff Keighley at the 3:34 mark as he worked in his early days in the gaming press.

Posted on April 18, 2013 | Video

Building (Critical) Consensus: Injustice: Gods Among Us

Apr 17

Posted by Steve Murray

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before but I’m a DC Comics guy. I feel as though that would make a good t-shirt. Specifically, I’m a Superman guy. I know I mentioned this one last week. Now, we finally get our chance to pit Superman against Batman. Oh, and most of the other DC Comics regulars also appear in NetherRealm’s new fighting game Injustice: Gods Among Us.

We’ve gotten a DC Comics fighting game from a Mortal Kombat developer before. That was the entirely forgettable Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe by Midway. With NetherRealm now at the helm of Mortal Kombat and having just released the best story in fighting game history in Mortal Kombat (9), could they do something special with Injustice?

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Tags: DC Comics, Injustice, Injustice: Gods Among Us, NetherRealm, Warner Bros

Hotline Miami in Real Life

What happens when Hotline Miami invades the streets? The crew at Mega 64 found out that people are either confused, concerned or far to quick to call the cops when a man in a chicken mask assaults two guys using a baseball bat.

Posted on April 17, 2013 | Video

A New Street Fighter Web Series Needs Your Money on Kickstarter

Apr 16

Posted by Steve Murray

Video game adaptations to a live-action dramatic performance don’t have the best track records. The best ones tend to be smaller scale adaptations by independent groups rather than big budget Hollywood productions. For example, the Mortal Kombat: Legacy series was a well-received adaptation of the game while the movies were slightly not at all well-received.

Now, Street Fighter might be getting a web series treatment similar to Mortal Kombat: Legacy called Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist. All it needs is $960,000 from Kickstarter funders to make it happen.

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Tags: Joey Ansah, Kickstarter, Street Fighter, Street Fighter: Assassin's Fist

The XCOM Shooter’s Web Presence Disappears Which Means…?

Apr 15

Posted by Steve Murray

On Friday, Digital Trends noticed that the official web presence for the much delayed XCOM shooter has disappeared. The former website for the game xcom.com/xcom now has a 404 error message. 2K Games also has appeared to have pulled all the trailers and gameplay footage from their official YouTube channel.

This development comes on the heels of a report from a couple of weeks ago that said that 2K Games had registered some new web domains for the game. Rumours now suggest that the XCOM shooter has been re-branded The Bureau but will keep the same premise as the originally planned game.

The Bureau/XCOM is said to be a third-person shooter after originally being designed as a first-person shooter. The last we heard, 2K plans to distribute this digitally sometime during their 2014 fiscal year which runs from April 1, 2013, to March 31, 2014.

Source: Digital Trends

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Tags: 2K Games, XCOM

The Organ Trail Review: Better than The Walking Dead Finale

Apr 11

Posted by Steve Murray

I should have written this review before I saw the season finale of The Walking Dead. You spend the majority of the season building up this inevitable confrontation between Rick and the Governor, the prison and Woodbury. What we end up getting is just an awful pay-off that doesn’t make sense. Presumably, this was Glen Mazzara’s revenge for getting fired.

And that brings me to the Organ Trail. No, not The Oregon Trail. The Organ Trail is an homage to the classic Oregon Trail and the zombie survival genre of movies that sees you try to traverse from Washington, D.C., to a safe zone on the west coast while fighting zombies, eluding bandits and just trying to make it in one piece.

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Tags: PC, Review, The Men Who Wear Many Hats, The Organ Trail

EA Repeats as Worst Company In America and are Trying for Three-in-a-Row

Apr 11

Posted by Steve Murray

In an unprecedented feat of terribleness, Electronic Arts has become the first-ever repeat winner of The Consumerist’s Worst Company in America poll. This year, they once again beat Bank of America to claim the Golden Poo.

While the Worst Company in America is a misnomer for The Consumerist’s poll as these things tend to degenerate into something closer to the most hated company, EA should still be taking heed of the massive victories they’ve been able to score in the poll. The problem is that they’re convinced that the results of the poll are largely unfounded. Sounds like EA wants to three-peat.

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Posted in Games, Long Read

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Tags: Consumerist, EA, Peter Moore

Vague Dialogue Trees Aren’t All They’re Cracked Up To Be

One of the things that Mass Effect was praised for was streamlining the traditional RPG conversation options by condensing full sentences down to a short phrase in its dialogue wheel. However, what was on the wheel didn’t always marry up with what Shepard said. That’s been the case on games that have borrowed the dialogue wheel concept for their dialogue.

So what would happen if you had your own dialogue wheel? Chances are it wouldn’t end well.

Posted on April 10, 2013 | Video

Batman is Back in Arkham Origins

Apr 10

Posted by Steve Murray

You knew that there was going to be another game added to the Batman: Arkham series. It was just a matter of what it was called. The May issue of Game Informer reveals that the next Arkham game will be a prequel called Batman: Arkham Origins.

Normally, I would say that a new Arkham game is cause for celebration. However, I have some serious reservations about this one beyond the fact that it’s a prequel (which can often be an indicator of struggling with ideas for a sequel which I’m certain they are after the conclusion of Arkham City).

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