Diablo III

I love “Click it ’til you kill it” games, and they are measured against their ability to stand next to arguably the grandpapa of them all: Diablo. Well, Diablo II probably…

That being said, Diablo III looks like more of the same, but a lot more. With the Auction House(s), PVP arenas, and the new Inferno difficulty mode, Blizzard will no doubt keep many of us attached to the PC screens, trying desperately to level up and get more loot before Carpal tunnel sets in from so much clicking. Releases on PC and Mac

Max Payne 3

The Payne trilogy wraps up with an older and balder Max fighting through personal demons and drug lords through the streets of South America. According to the official site, it will feature, “cutting edge shooting mechanics for precision gunplay, advanced new Bullet Time® and Shootdodge™ effects, [and] full integration of Natural Motion’s Euphoria Character Behavior system for lifelike movement…”

Whatever all of that shit means. My translation? The gameplay will be as good as, if not a little bit better, than Red Dead Redemption, this time set in the mean streets of Brazil, hopefully with fewer horses. Some horses, maybe… Releases on Xbox 360, PS3, and PC

Game of Thrones

I really want to call this game The Game of Game of Thrones, but it’s actually called The Game of Thrones: The Game, which isn’t quite as cool, but whatever. Full disclosure: I haven’t read the books yet because I’ve been reading too many manuscripts in my other life. Additionally, I don’t have HBO, and this show has fallen down on my queue’s priority because of a deal I made with my wife (full details will be omitted, but it has to do with the Marvel movies and our unwillingness to pay Disney’s ridiculous prices for movies just so our kid will repeatedly watch their garbage on his way to being indoctrinated by Walt’s legacy, all the while screaming for more officially-branded Disney crap).

That being said, the game looks pretty cool, and it *might* serve as a good intro into into the world. I assume that knowledge of the world, while not a requirement for game enjoyment, is probably a prerequisite for getting everything out of the game. It’d probably be like watching X-Men: First Class without reading any X-Men comics. Sure, you’d get the gist of it, but you’d also miss out on the impact of Charles being put in a wheelchair. Releases on Xbox 360, PS3, and PC

Battleship

This game should probably be called Battleship: The Game Based on the Movie Based on the Game, but not Really. After making waaaaay too much money off of Transformers, Hasbro went deep into the well for this movie-adaptation-game-adaptation. Promising to be a combination of tactical sea battles and FPS gameplay, this game might have its hands in too many baskets, but really, anyone expecting the next Half-Life or Arkham City from this property might be setting ridiculous expectations.

But seriously, why does this movie get a game and not Avengers? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot… Releases on Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, Nintendo DS, and 3DS.

Pixeljunk 4am

This game looks weird, and I’m not even really sure how to describe it other than by saying that it looks weird. Basically, it’s a music creator for the PS3, and it requires Move. In other words, there are about seven people who will play and enjoy this game, which is kind of sad, because the game is unconventional and original, two qualities that are needed in games to stave off development stagnation.

Nothing else, this game will probably be the best way to spend a 4am gaming session when you’re too *impaired* to do anything else. Releases on the PSN.

While our wives and/or mothers are all basking in the afterglow of us being responsible children and spouses, surprise her with a post-Mother’s Day game. Or if you already got her the best present ever (including, but not limited to breakfast in bed), take some time off with a good game.

You’ve earned it.

First things first: The Avengers has made a lot of money (almost $700 million worldwide at time of posting). Aaaaand the game is… Where? Apparently THQ Brisbane (one of the studios closed by THQ) was working on the movie tie-in game before closing, and now Ubisoft has picked up the rights for the game, reported to have Kinect functionality. Am I excited about a Kinect Avengers game? Well, how well was Star Wars Kinect received? Exactly… I’m pretty bummed about this, and not just because I had such a freaking good time watching the movie, but because some of the leaked screenshots of the cancelled game look pretty cool: 

Mass Effect 3: Bioware announced that PS3 users will finally be able to enjoy the fun weekend operations that PC and Xbox users have been getting off on for the past few weeks. If you’ve been waiting to jump into the fray, this looks like a great weekend to start, with the goals as follows:

Allied Goal: Kill 3,000,000 banshees
Squad Goal: Survive until a full extraction on any map against any enemy on gold difficulty.

Successful completion of the allied goal will grant all players a Victory Pack.
Successful completion of the squad goal will grant all squadmates a Commendation Pack.

Bioware also released this infographic on some of the gamer stats from the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer:

Borderlands 2: IGN’s Youtube channel has released a couple of gameplay videos, one featuring the Gunzerker, the other one spotlighting the Siren class.

The Gunzerker:

The Siren:

Batman: Arkham City: If you’ve been looking for a reason to dive back into Rocksteady’s near-perfect Arkham City, look no further than Harley’s Revenge DLC, releasing at the end of the month (May 29 to be precise). Focusing on the events at the end of the main story, you’ll play as Robin as he goes in search of Batman, who’s gone missing after looking for some kidnapped cops. If you haven’t bought the game yet, you can wait for the Game of the Year edition, which will have the DLC, too.

This is not your momma's Robin…

Okay, enough of space operas, mutants,  and superheros. What else has been going on?

Downloadable/iOS/Casual Games:

Minecraft on XBLA was a ridiculous success… After breaking Trials Evoluion’s XBLA sales records, reports have come out that Mojang’s Lego-voxel-zombie-cave-game sold more than 400,000 units in one day. For $20 a pop no less… Crazy. With Minecraft’s 1 million mobile sales and 5 million PC sales, it’s reasonable to say that the game has been a success.

I still don't get it.

Jetpack Joyride: okay, so this hits close to home, as I think this is one of the more fun free-to-play games that I’ve been obsessed with lately. Winner of Gamasutra’s 2011 mobile game of the year award, the game is fantastic. It has also been downloaded 14 million times. Seriously.  Now Halfbrick’s little masterpiece is heading to Facebook, with all of the purchase options as the original, now with Facebook integration and leaderboards.

Soon to include the option to bug your FB friends.

Angry Birds developer Rovio recently announced their one billionth download of Angry Birds-related games, which is a serious number. Soon afterward, they talked about their new game, Amazing Alex, which looks like a Rube Goldberg style game, and will probably spawn a collection of stuffed animals and board games. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

The digital-delivery-of-games section of the world got some interesting news this week, too.

1. Steam is giving away Midnight Club 2 to anyone who joins the Rockstar Games Steam Community. If you join the group by May 15, Steam will deliver a non-giftable version of MC2 to your account. For free. What are you waiting for?
2. A rumor has come out that Gamestop will be selling Steam download cards in their store, which is kind of funny/sad/ironic. I remember calling my local store a couple of years ago, asking them if they carried Steam cards, and the dude laughed, saying that they had their own digital distribution platform, and it wouldn’t be good business to sell those kinds of things there. Well, we’ll see… We’ll see.
3. GoG, one of the best places to get old games, released Quest for Glory, 1-5, for $10. If you’re unlucky enough to have never enjoyed them back in the day, go there now and get your classic-gaming-fix. Great stuff.

Blizzard/Activision released some financial info this week, announcing net revenues of more than 1.15 billion dollars. That sounds crazy, but it actually is a little less than last year. Perhaps WoW has been shedding accounts, similar to SW:ToR? Nope, apparently by all accounts, Warcraft has stabilized at around 10 million subscribers, which is a lot of people. In other non-WoW-related Blizzard news, Diablo III broke Amazon’s preorder sales records (passing Cataclysm and Starcraft II ironically enough). Additionally, Joystiq announced that more than 2 million gamers participated in their recent beta-test. That’s a shitload of clicking.

click click click click click click

Rounding out some of the other news pieces from this week, we see that Ghost Recon has announced some DLC before the freaking game even is released, Microsoft might bring Kinect-powered internet browsing to 360s soon, and Bioshock Infinite has been delayed to 2013.

Did I miss anything? Well, anything important? Let me know down below.

You can check out more of my videos, such as my Ani-Meh Reviews or other pointless nonsense at PSOHB.com. But you don’t have to. I won’t mind. Honest…*sniffle*

Last week, Bethesda and Zenimax released the following announcement trailer:

While the video is cool, it doesn’t really tell us anything. For facts, you have to do a little digging.

According to reports, the game will be set a millenium before the incidents of Skyrim, and will have the player facing Molag Bal’s attempt to pull the entirety of Tamriel into his own evil and demonic realm.

Additionally, The Elder Scrolls Online—TESO for all of us who love shortening the name of MMOs—will feature nine playable races, spread over three major factions. Here is a breakdown of the specific race/faction pairings that you’ll more than likely be able to choose from. Also, like Dark Age of Camelot, I’m sorry, DAoC, the game will feature three-faction PvP, answering my wishes of updates to the over-used two-faction-fighting that we’ve all become accustomed to.

More details will surely be leaked onto the internet over the next few weeks, as its online hub will be managed by Game Informer. The June issue has a ton of details, including the heretical fact that it won’t be entirely built on the real-time combat system that has been integral to the franchise’s success over the years, one of many changes to the existing formulae that we’ve come to expect from an Elder Scrolls title, including, but not limited to:

• Not being able to contract porphyric hemophilia and lycanthropy (i.e. no player vampires and werewolves)
• A new AI system, more in line with traditional MMO NPC schedules and behavior
• No plans to include player-owned real estate
• No NPC romances or marriages
• Full voice acting

—Blessner, Adam. (2012, June) From Skryim to Morrowind, and Everything in Between: The Elder Scrolls Online. Game Informer. 230, 46-57.

The game is expected to release in 2013, and we’ll keep abreast of the situation, letting you know of important information as it comes available. Until then, what are your thoughts about this? Is it exciting news? Horrible news? Meh news?

Calling it a $99 Xbox is a tad misleading, as it requires a monthly payment along with the contract, but the math is simple.

Xbox + Kinect + 2 years of Xbox Live Gold = a total of $460.

If you were to piece them together, it would actually be $420 (although you can find deals on 12-month Gold cards. You just have to look at the biggest online retailer out there). A lot of commenters on some of the various sites talking about this are complaining that it’s actually more expensive to go this route, complaining about the “hidden” costs and whatnot. You’re basically spending more money on a machine that might be on its way out before you finish the contract.

I get that.

And I agree; in this day and age, with all of the various monthly charges many of us already incur, this seems insane. Think about it for a second. Many of us have cable, internet, Netflix, cellphones, cellphone-data-plans, and Xbox Gold memberships. That’s already a good chunk of change. That list right there could easily be between $100 and $150. Or more.

But.

What about the people who for one reason or another (*cough* RROD after warranty *cough*) don’t have an Xbox right now? Could this be a good deal for them? I know that the argument that it’s more money in the long run is logical and mathematically sound. I get that. It might be that we’re looking at this the wrong way.

First: The article says:

We’re told that the two-year subscription will provide access to the Xbox Live Gold service and possibly some additional streaming content from cable providers or sports package providers.

“Possibly some additional streaming content”? I know that’s a little vague, and this is still a rumor, as Xbox has said that they don’t comment or speculate about rumors, so there you go. It’s all hearsay, right? Don’t count out the possibility that someone is throwing out this to see what kinds of reactions happen (I have absolutely zero proof of this statement; I’m just saying it’s possible.). But going back to the additional content statement, maybe the $15/month charge will be like a Gold+ membership or something…

Second: Don’t forget that some people don’t have $400 laying around to throw down on a new console (especially if it’s to replace a broken one). So what are your options if you don’t have that kind of money? A refurbished Xbox? Sure, if you’re brave. What about a credit card? That seems easy enough, right? But if that’s your avenue, and you were to only pay $15/month, that’d be basically the minimum payment, and it’d probably take six or eight years to actually pay the thing off (I’m not an accountant, but you get the idea).

Third: What if this is a sly, sneaky way to make it look like they’re discounting the Xbox as they make their transition to the next console? Well, people are smart enough to see around that. Believe me. You can’t throw a rock on the internet without it hitting a comment string where people are discussing at length the real cost of the subscription plan. I don’t think that people are that stupid to actually think that it’s cheaper (I mean, it is cheaper, but only when compared to financing it). If they’re trying to be sneaky, then screw them for thinking that we’re a bunch of morons who can’t do simple math. It has to be something else…

Fourth: What if they’re simply re-orienting the Xbox’s position as not simply a gaming console? It’s not a traditional pricing scheme that we, as gamers, are used to. We pay for the console once, and then we plug it in. Period. In an LA Times blog article from late March, it was stated that, “Microsoft’s Xbox 360 video game console is now used more for watching movies and TV shows and listening to music online than playing video games online.” So it would stand to reason that they’re not selling it as just a gaming console. This is something akin to a Roku player or an Apple TV. Oh yeah, and it plays games, too.

Fifth: It’s only got a 4gb harddrive! What the hell, man? Seriously? That’s like a Wii. If you wanted to install Mass Effect 3, you’d need about 12.4 gbs. That’s a wee bit bigger than the 4gb available. What about downloading all of those movies and games? Yup. One at a time. One at a time. So go buy a new harddrive… Wait, that’s more money…

Sixth: The rumors state that Microsoft would sell the package at, “its range of Microsoft Stores in the US.” Wait, there are Microsoft stores? Well, there are 21 right now. Not exactly a corner-big-box-store kind of deal I guess. There again, it could be an attempt to bring people into those stores. I didn’t even know there were Microsoft stores before this, so hey, I guess that’s a good move in a way.

I don’t think that this is necessarily the biggest announcement in gaming, but it could usher in a new string of creative-pricing strategies for consoles. This sort of thing might be necessary as the consoles beef up their hardware. If the only choice for the next console was either paying $600 once or $99 plus $21/month for two years, I know which one seems easier to swallow (and which one would be an easier sell for my wife).

What do you think? Are they up to no-good, or is this the first of many contract-based consoles?

Interestingly, the ways in which gamers and fans can augment the experience go beyond modding or testing a game; they also can fund games and create experiences that exist beyond the realms of the games themselves (Cosplayers, anyone?).

Holy Christ that's amazing cosplaying

Kickstarter, the crowd-funding site enables people to distribute the funding across millions of people, also gives the funders perks for contributing to the game, incentivizing the process (as if good games weren’t the only needed result). I’ve talked elsewhere about some of the potential problems of Kickstarter, but overall, I find it a very positive thing for the gaming world, as it gives some of the power back to the fans themselves. Now we get to decide where the money goes (and apparently most of it goes to Wasteland 2 and Double Fine Adventure).

What about  the story of the Warballoon team? They wanted $20K, got more than $30K, and then they broke down for the viewing audience where that money actually went. They are still positive that Star Command will be made; it’s just that the actuality doesn’t necessarily match the potential. User expectations can create a sense of undue necessity.

But this does look awesome…

Crowd-sourcing, and the increase in openness between developer and gamer could be increasing a sense of entitlement on the part of gamers (mentioned in a previous post and in passing on the Reverend’s review of Mass Effect 3). As this sense of ownership grows, is it necessarily a bad thing that there are gamers who feel jaded at the decisions made by the different publishers and developers out there? EA/Bioware has buckled/been nice before, and they’ll probably do it again, but where do you draw the line?

In the end, the fans, acting as unpaid interns, work to create a world around the game. The developers need the fans for funding, unpaid reviews, and word-of-mouth convos. Oh yeah, and for buying the games. Sometimes it seems as if there is something missing, though—a disconnect between the creators and the fans, and not the one that has existed in traditional arms of the publishing world.

cheap shot

Sometimes, it’s not an honest mistake of a developer not listening to the fans; it’s a developer/publisher acting as big brother. Erling Løken Andersen decided in December of 2011 to create some Fallout-inspired posters as fan art. Subsequently, he received a letter from a law firm representing Bethesda that he was to cease giving away the posters (he never sold them) and turn over his domain (fallout-posters.com) to Bethesda. (Read all about it here) While I understand the need for copyright owners to protect their property, in this day and age, it’s no longer enough to simply protect the content like it used to be protected prior to the internet age. Anderson’s retort was balanced and reasonable, and it reflects the mentality commonly held by many today that sharing and fan-creations (especially when not in direct conflict with an existing product) are a genuine expression of appreciation for quality IPs. Here you have a devoted fan who is basically advertising for the company for free, and he gets preemptively harassed. It doesn’t seem right.

Likewise, Hasbro went after an Australian blogger for discussing unreleased Nerf Guns (yup, you read that right). They contacted him and said that they needed his address so they could ship him some free stuff in appreciation for all of his blogginess, and then lawyers showed up instead. Here you have a dedicated fan, increasing visibility of a product line for other fans, and they bring in the big guns to take him down (I understand that there is some sort of supply chain screw up here, but still).

This shit just got real

It’s almost as if some of these companies have forgotten that core fans, the ones that will spend their cognitive surplus on talking about and creating fan versions of their products actually increase the worth of said products. And they also forgot how important PR is…

What about Crytek’s position about the next generation of gaming consoles fighting piracy by blocking out used sales? When asked about the possibility that the next generation of consoles would prevent used sales, Rasmus Hojengaard, Crytek’s director of creative development said, “From a business perspective that would be absolutely awesome.” While selling used games may not be the most beneficial thing for the publishers, it is the gamers that this sort of thing ends up punishing. These are efforts directly aimed at destroying the unity and cooperation between gamers and creators. While I understand that the nature of used game sales is problematic to say the least, quality content gets bought on day one. Period.

You want to talk about something that scares developers? What about the networked nature of extremely smart gamers? Gamers know now when games come out with on-disc DLC. They’ll crack a disc, read the contents, and post it. They know when they feel fleeced by companies, and they are able to communicate with each other about it.

And they’re scared. But should they be?

Oh Capcom…

This back-and-forth between gamers and creators is ultimately a good thing. We’ve never been able to be so open with companies, and they’ve never been as open as they are now. What does this mean for the future? Like Jeffrey “Qualitybeats” Demelo said on Twitter, when referring to The Walking Dead: Episode One: “Walking Dead is how I want to absorb…say…60% of my gaming experiences. Monthly, episodic, quality. Support a business model!” I believe that that’s a smart move, and it’s one that coud definitely result in positive gamer-feedback-integration.

Real time communications between fans and creators, updating data quickly and seamlessly, eventually ending in something akin to a broadcast model seems to be the way that we’re heading. Fans’ content will be embraced as an integral part of the process, one that companies see as enhancing their own content.

And then we can keep shooting aliens in the face. And that’s a really good thing.

The sale ends on May 7th, so you only have a few days to pick them up. If you haven’t played them yet, now’s the time. They are easily the best tables on an Ipad (IMHO), and at 99¢ a pop, it’s not a bad little deal.

Source: Zen Studios 

Most likely we will be waiting till this November to find out for ourselves. But we will know more for sure come Tuesday, May 1st, 2012. As the picture, from callofduty.com, above states the World Wide reveal of the next COD game will be during the NBA Playoffs on TNT. There are two games on Tuesday: Philedelphia vs Chicago starting at 8pm Eastern and Denver vs Los Angeles starting at 10:30pm Eastern.

As you may have seen there are hundreds of rumors about the next COD game already floating around the internet. Stay tuned as I will stick with the facts and bring them to you as soon as they are made public!