Wow, I’ve got a lot of catching up to do! I probably won’t be posting anything about news that’s happened since my hiatus, but I’ll be going through and providing some impressions of games released since then and talking about news going forward!
EA games have typically been questionable. As a publisher, EA has managed to piss off a huge portion of its fan base. As a developer, it’s been known for pretty lackluster titles. EA’s head hauncho, John Ricatello, said that he regrets some of the choices that EA has made in recent years. He felt that EA had homogonized their development studios and stifled their creativity. He pledged to turn things around and give more freedom to the devs.
The developers of Dead Space were practically given free reign while working on this game, did EA’s change in philosophy help to create a good game, or is EA still struggling with it’s 180 degree manuever? Hit the jump to find out.
I’m back!
Anyway, look at this deal! Found over on Kotaku, Tabula Rasa is on the cheap at Amazon.com, for a mere $0.96. Yes, that’s right, that’s less than one dollar. It also includes a month of free play.
If you were ever interested in at least trying out Richard Garriot’s space FPS-wannabe MMO, now’s the time to do it…before they decide to shut the game down permanently!
Hey everyone! Sorry about the lack of updates. As many of you noticed, we had a bit of a technical problem on the site, but all is well now! I will be updating regularly again shortly!
I remember, a few years back now, when I had first heard of Spore. A buddy at work sent me a 22 minute YouTube video of Spore being demo’d. I sat through the entire video in awe of what I was seeing. Now that I’ve had a chance to sit down and try it out, does it live up to those wild and crazy expectations I had when I saw that video? Hit the jump to find out.
Looks like the Xbox 360 exclusive DLC for Grand Theft Auto IV is going to be released at some point in November. The only real information we have on what the content will be is that there will be two seperate ten hour episodes. There has been speculation on wheter it will be new cities, new side missions, or something else entirely. Looks like I need to get around to beating this game so I can check out the new stuff.
Kotaku recently reported that 7-Eleven will be carrying the World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King expansion at release. This, in and of itself, is pretty interesting news as most 7-Eleven stores don’t carry games and those that do carry a limited selection. According 7-Eleven, the majority of their core demographic are gamers…which makes perfect sense. So they will be choosing the 7 highest profile games of this winter and releasing them in stores available at midnight on the release date.
They also reported that 7-Eleven has a tentative release date of November 4th for Wrath of the Lich King. This number has been tossed around a few times in the rumor mill and is also the popular choice for a release date at sites like Gamestop and Amazon. The problem with this release date, however, stems from the fact that November 4th is also election day in the U.S. where we will be choosing the next president of the United States of America.
The developer’s blog for the XBLA game Castle Crashers has been updated today with a post saying that the patch that will fix the game’s XBL woes is in the works. The game works perfectly fine in single player and offline multiplayer, but the online multiplayer has some issues. The hosted games will crash out, and have apparantly deleted player’s save data. Hopefully they will be able to get this out quickly.
Bethesda announced today that Fallout 3 on the PS3 will not be launching with trophies. When asked about it, the response was in essence “Maybe later.” Not very good news to someone who had planned on picking it up for that platform.
That begs the question though, does Sony need to change their policy regarding trophies? Currently, they aren’t required. Microsoft on the other hand does require that Achievements be included in every game that lands on its platform.
When it boils down to it, I think Sony made a mistake by not making them a requirement from the get go, and will need to buckle down and change their policy to remain competitive. For someone who owns both platforms, deciding which one to buy a game for can come down to features like trophies/achievements. In order to hook players in and really give the an experience comparable to the Xbox 360, something needs to change.
I’ve always been resistant to social networking sites. I always viewed Myspace as a “friend whoring get-together”, however newer social networking sites are more than just collecting friends. Sites like Facebook are working to keep friends and family members in touch over the intarwebs in real time allowing you to see what your friends are doing at any given time at a glance. I’ve been more accepting of this type of movement as it really does help us stay connected rather than just be large conglomeration of strangers.
Enter Raptr. It shares a lot of the same principles as Facebook, allowing you to stay connected with your friends in real time, but it does so much more. You can create a list of all of the games you own and games you want as well as share these lists with friends. You can see stastics regarding games, how many people are playing what games and how often, read and write reviews of games, etc. There’s even a client you can download that will automatically patch games as new content becomes available for you and keep track of your playing habits and upload it to your profile so you can keep tabs on how you spend your time. The client is optional of course.
I’ve been in the closed beta for a few months now and I’ve watched it grow from a wire frame of a site into a living, breathing community and I’m proud to have been a part of that. Raptr is now public and ready for an open beta. Looks like there are about 2,000 spots open on a first come first served basis. So be sure to check it out, I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on how things go.
Here’s the official announcement: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-9877079-52.html