In 1972 , a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum-security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem… if no one else can help… and if you can find them… maybe you can hire… The A-Team.
Building (Critical) Consensus: SimCity [Updated]
My time with the SimCity beta made me think that this is what players of the original X-COM went through when last year’s reboot was launched. It was familiar but it wasn’t the same. While it was nice to have SimCity back, it just didn’t feel like the SimCity that I knew and loved. But based on what the critics think, maybe I was wrong to feel turned off by the streamlined controls and the game telling me I have a slow rig.
When reading through this, please note that some reviewers trying to be the first ones out at embargo never had a chance to experience the queues to get on to servers, download issues or had the ability to download it locked out while Origin sorted its shit out. It’s also unlikely that press members on the one dedicated media server found out that your cities are locked to the server you created them on. It’s probably a bit early to be cynical about the whole thing but isn’t always-online DRM a magical thing? Read the rest of this entry
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Mass Effect Is Getting an Ongoing Comic Book Series Called Foundation
At last weekend’s Emerald City Comic Con, Mass Effect 3 lead writer Mac Walters revealed that the Mass Effect series would spawn a comic book series. While the Mass Effect saga is no stranger to comic books, previously, it had only been in the form of one-off digital comics or short miniseries.
Now, Mass Effect is getting a full-fledged comic series to be published by Dark Horse that will span at least twelve issues. It will be called Mass Effect: Foundation.
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The Unauthorized History of Mass Effect 3
Today marks the one-year anniversary of the release of BioWare and EA’s Mass Effect 3. The highly anticipated conclusion to the Mass Effect trilogy launched on March 6, 2012, to great reviews from the gaming media but was almost immediately at the centre of a massive controversy among fans over its ending and DLC practices.
Let’s look back at the history of ME3 from launch to today to see what happened and when it happened to make one of 2012’s most anticipated games one of its most controversial. Read the rest of this entry
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Reports Say Dead Space 4 Has Been Cancelled
Dead Space 3 has been out all of a month but it looks like EA has seen enough from the sales figures to make a call about the series’ future. Reports say that Dead Space 3 failed to meet its sales targets so EA is pulling the plug on the series, including cancelling Dead Space 4 which Visceral Games already had in pre-production.
The rumour that DS4 has been cancelled is disappointing but apparently not a shock for people inside EA and Visceral Games. While the Dead Space series has been reasonably popular among gamers, it didn’t seem to have too many fans at the publisher. Read the rest of this entry
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Building (Critical) Consensus: Tomb Raider
Lara Croft is back and rebooted in the new Tomb Raider. While the title may not be original, it’s still better than that last reboot we saw called Devil May Cry: Devil May Cry. Also, it seems that Tomb Raider overall was better than DMC: DMC. Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix were so confident in their game that the review embargo for the game ended eight days before its release. It turns out that they gambled correctly on this one. Read the rest of this entry
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Is Gran Turismo 6 Coming This Year?
As a PlayStation guy, the discussion of road car, grand touring and sports car racing sims begins and ends with the Gran Turismo series. Even my friends who weren’t racing fans talked about the game and I can remember one long and heated discussion about the relative 180 made in handling models from GT1 to GT2.
According to an interview with Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Senior Vice President Michael Denny, it looks as though Gran Turismo 5 wasn’t our only taste of Polyphony Digital’s epic racing series on the PlayStation 3. Denny might have let it slip that Gran Turismo 6 will be out this year. Read the rest of this entry
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Can You Name All 26 Famous Video Game Locations in This Video?
Dutch artist Tim Hijlkema has put together a video featuring twenty-six different famous locations from video games. It’s not a compilation of game footage, however. Hijlkema created new stylized art and animation for each of the worlds he recreated in this video. While the levels all look different, they retain the feel of the original games they were based on.
If you want the full list of levels and games in the video and a collection of wallpapers to go with it, click through to the original video on YouTube.
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Geek Links of the Week
While you’d be forgiven if you think that millionaire Dennis Tito’s plan to send a privately funded space mission to Mars and back is a bit outlandish, not everyone thinks it’s impossible. [Wired]
Kickstarter has become the medium of choice (for lack of a better term) for small game developers looking for funding for a new game. We know how it works from our end as backer. Now, a one-man dev team explains the process from the other side. [Gamasutra]
Uncharted 3’s multiplayer went free-to-play this week. At first glance, it doesn’t make much sense but I think it’s a brilliant business move and it may be copied by other games. [The Lowdown Blog]
Who doesn’t love a good gaming glitch? Okay, apart from people who got hosed by a glitch. Anyhow, here’s a look at a half-dozen unintentionally hilarious glitches. [Cracked]
Normally, I don’t run videos in the Geek Links but I love Conan’s Clueless Gamer segments so much that I had to make an exception. Here’s Conan O’Brien reviewing the upcoming Tomb Raider game.
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GoldenEye 64 in Real Life
I could be wrong but I’m not sure that there was a more influential title than GoldenEye 64. It is not only one of the best-reviewed first-person shooters of all-time, it set the bar for both FPSs and FPS multiplayer modes on the home console. Prior to GoldenEye, the first-person shooter was largely seen as a PC genre.
And that history lesson brings us to this video recreating GoldenEye’s multiplayer in real-life. Not only does it recreate some of the tactics that people used but the You Only Live Twice game mode and paintball mode easter egg. It’s all that you remember about playing GoldenEye with your friends in one video.
et geekera 