What happens when a well and truly terrible game lands in the hands of games critic Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw? You’d expect him to explode with great new Yahtzee-isms. He definitely does come up with some great metaphors but he seems more amused by how bad the game is than anything else. He actually recommends it too.
Russia to Ban Swearing on the Internet
While Russia is busy waging their war against gays and those who support them, they’re engaging in a mission to single-handedly fix the internet that’s so ridiculous that is makes Aaron Sorkin’s internet writing on The Newsroom seem Emmy worthy.*
Russia is planning to clean up the internet by requiring all web pages with profane language be blocked from access in Russia within 24 hours of the profane language being posted. See, told you Will McAvoy wasn’t this crazy with his mission to civilize.
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Rogue Legacy Review: Everybody Rogue
With the games release schedule decidedly quiet during the summer, it’s a good time for everyone, including would-be games critics, to catch up on games that you might have missed during the first months of the year. To be quite honest, I’m not sure how many of this year’s big releases I’ve finished.
I’m starting with the current indie darling du jour, Rogue Legacy. It’s received heaps of praise from critics but what do I, a gamer of average skill and free time, think of the latest big thing on the indie game scene?
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XCOM: Enemy Within Rated by Korean Ratings Board
Well, we knew that the classic style of XCOM games would continue after the success of last year’s XCOM: Enemy Unknown but we didn’t know that a sequel was so far along in development.
Yesterday, the Korean Games Ratings Board posted a rating for a PC, PS3 and 360 game called XCOM: Enemy Within.
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Nintendo’s Financial Results Show Wii U Worries
Nintendo’s first quarter results had some good news and bad news for the Japanese console manufacturer. On the plus side, they turned a net profit for the three months from April to June and scored their highest gross profit compared to sales in the last five years.
The bad news is that those good financial results were on the back of 3DS hardware and software sales. The 3DS managed almost nine times the console sales and eleven times the game sales of the Wii U as Nintendo’s next-gen offering limped through the quarter with only 160,000 consoles sold.
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The Humble Deep Silver Bundle?
I could be wrong but I think that Deep Silver secretly bought the rights to sell games via Humble Bundle in the THQ bankruptcy fire sale? That’s the only logical explanation for the latest Humble Bundle being the Humble Deep Silver Bundle.
The base deal includes copies of Saints Row 2, Saints Row: The Third, Risen 2: Dark Waters and Sacred 2 Gold. If you pay more than the average, you add on the SR3 Full Package (season pass) and Dead Island: GOTY Edition. As an extra bonus for big spenders, dropping $25 or more gets you Dead Island: Riptide.
I’d imagine a lot of people picked these games up during a past Steam Sale or even during the Humble THQ Bundle. If you haven’t, here’s a chance. But if you do own some of these games, folks on Reddit say the Bundle doesn’t let you gift those games. They just disappear. Suddenly, $25 for DI:R and the SR3 season pass doesn’t appeal to me.
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Ouya Monetization “Better Than Expected” Despite 73% of Users Not Buying a Game
In a recent interview with The Verge, Ouya CEO Julie Uhrman said that, “Monetization on Ouya is so far better than we expected.”
The problem with that statement is that is makes no sense by almost every objective metric. In the first month following the $99 console’s release, only 27% of owners have paid for a game. That leaves three-quarters of consoles sticking with the free games and trials currently available.
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Australian Government Inquiry Says High Tech Prices Aren’t Justified
The Australian House of Representatives Infrastructure and Communications Committee released its findings report after a lengthy 12-month inquiry into the pricing of technology in Australia. The committee was determining if Australian consumers were actually higher than other countries and if those price increases were justified.
The committee concluded that Australians paid a massive premium on tech products with Aussies paying an average of 50% more than consumers in other countries with some prices being up to 100% more.
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Comic Book Pull List for July 31, 2013
Well, I’ve certainly found some interesting offerings if you’re looking for something just a little bit different from this week’s comic book releases. Dark Horse continues its “new superhero initiative” with the debut of the vintage styled Captain Midnight in Captain Midnight #1. Wolverine has a very unique new culinary mystery series written by Top Chef Masters winner Chris Cosentino called Wolverine In The Flesh #1. And the Judge Dredd Year One arc ends in Judge Dredd: Year One #4.
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Phil Fish vs. Marcus Beer Says More About Games Journalism than Either Man
The weekend’s big gaming news story wasn’t about a new game or another major announcement but a feud between two gaming personalities.
On one side was Marcus Beer, GameTrailer’s Annoyed Gamer, who criticized prominent indie developers Phil Fish and Jonathan Blow for not commenting on Microsoft allowing indie game self-publishing on the Xbox One. On the other side was the aforementioned Phil Fish who didn’t take kindly to Beer lobbing personal insults at him on video.
However, I don’t think that the takeaway from this feud should be anything about either Beer or Fish. I think how this feud started says more about how this gaming journalism works and why it might be irreparably broken.
et geekera 