New Wolfenstein Trailer: Bad Ass!
August 1st, 2008 Duster72Wolfenstein meets Ghostbusters meets Bioshock. YES PLEASE.
We can buy our own beer.
Surprise! Nintendo not a Fan of Piracy
July 31st, 2008 Slitt Vicious
Full story
It should come as no surprise that Nintendo and 54 (Yeah, 54! Holy Shit, I say) software makers have teamed up to sue the pants off of R4 and similar groups. It seems to me that the problem would be solved if they just started giving their games away. Forcing me to be a DS and an R4 is highway robbery.
Microsoft Announces Summer of Games Promotion
July 30th, 2008 Slitt Vicious
When the majority of XBLA releases are terrible (arcade rehashes, crossword puzzles…ugh), there is simply no reason to pay attention to each week’s releases. Microsoft has finally done something that might ignite a bit more interest in the service. They are offering some serious prizes and promoting some highly anticipated games.
PS: The prizes are cool, but they could have just worked on quality (vs quantity) over the past year and not had to fight this battle.
PPS: I’m looking forward to Geo Wars 2 and Castle Crashers.
See the MS press release.
See what arstechnica had to say about the upcoming titles.
Still Want a Wii? Make a Deal with the Devil!
July 29th, 2008 Slitt Vicious
Found on consumerist.com:
Comcast press release
All you have to do is be a new subscriber to their Triple Play service and sell your soul for two years. Hooray.
Seriously, Comcast isn’t as evil as your credit card company, so why not?
Cold Storage map comes to Halo 3 and for free!
July 7th, 2008 Canis Firebrand
Releasing on Bungie Day 7/7/08, Cold Storage comes to Halo 3 as a new multiplayer map. The nice news about this is that the map is free. Cold Storage is a remake of the Halo: CE map Chill Out. Cold Storage will be implemented in regular rotation in playlists that require the Legendary Maps. In addition to this free release, the price of the Legendary Map pack has been reduced from 800 MS Points to 600 Points. Anyone still not owning these maps would do well to jump on the price reduction.
If you like to collect themes and gamerpics for use on your 360 dashboard and gamer profile, Bungie has also released a special Bungie Day theme and gamerpic available only on Bungie Day 7/7/08. It is the little things like these releases that makes Bungie such a great game company.
Resident Evil 5 Trailer
June 3rd, 2008 Duster72I am not a huge Resident Evil fan, but this trailer makes #5 look pretty darn cool. I am sure it will be fundamentally broken in some way since it’s from Capcom and I will be disappointed.
Still looks nifty, though.
Interesting Too Human Video
June 3rd, 2008 Duster72If you are like me, you are already tired of Too Human. Early previews were disappointing, news lately has been hit or miss. Now, however, the game is coming soon. It’s due out 8/19. Microsoft seems to be a believer in the title, which is a good sign.
Why should you care? It has 2 player co-op (better than no-player co-op) and promises a lot of replayability.
Here’s a video from Microsoft. The first 3-5 minutes are very good. The last 10 are silly fake oops fan fiction crap that is like a bad Lost rip-off.
Niko Bellic wants more money
May 27th, 2008 RyJen
Michael Hollick, the voice actor for Niko Bellic in Grand Theft Auto IV, blames his union for not protecting the talent.
According to a New York Times article, Hollick was paid roughly $100,000 over 15 months for his voice acting and motion-capture work on GTA IV. He complains of the fact that he will not receive royalties or residuals as he would for work on television programs, films, radio shows or albums.
“The first GTA IV trailer generated something like 40 million hits online, and that’s my voice all over it, and I get nothing,” Hollick said. “If that were a radio spot, I would have. Same thing for the TV ads.”
Contracts between the actors’ union and the entertainment industry make no provision for videogames and the Internet, classifying them as “Electronic Media”.
“Obviously I’m incredibly thankful to Rockstar for the opportunity to be in this game when I was just a nobody, an unknown quantity,” said Hollick. “But it’s tough, when you see Grand Theft Auto IV out there as the biggest thing going right now, when they’re making hundreds of millions of dollars, and we don’t see any of it. I don’t blame Rockstar. I blame our union for not having the agreements in place to protect the creative people who drive the sales of these games.”
I dissagree with Mr. Hollick. GTA IV sold 500 million copies in its first week, true, but if you believe for a second that any of those sales had anything to do with fans of Hollick’s voice then you are sadly mistaken. Aside from the rare chance that his mother bought a few copies. Its the game content that drives the sales of the titles, not the voice over actors. From what I can gather from most gamers out there it could be Michael J Fox doing a poor russian accent playing the role of Niko, as long as they can speed down a crowded sidewalk and mow down innocent pedestrians while listening to the “Intellegent Agenda” on the radio.
“What drives videogames is not Tracy and Hepburn; what drives it is the conception of the creative director,” said a former Hollywood executive who is now an entertainment lawyer, Ezra J. Doner. “The actor whose appearance or voice is used is more analogous to a session musician for a band. The session musicians don’t get residuals on the sales of the CD. They get paid a session fee,” he told the New York Times. “It’s not like the star quality of Tom Cruise that’s getting people to buy that videogame.”
Ryan Johnston, the voice actor who portrayed Irish hood Patrick McReary in Grand Theft Auto IV - at a pay rate of $1,050 a day,(about 50 per cent higher than the general guild-negotiated rate) said he believed it was just a matter of time before actors’ financial participation in games caught up with their popularity.
The difference between payment for traditional entertainment media and electronic media is expected to dominate negotiations between Hollywood and the actors’ guild this summer, with many predicting an actors’ strike to parallel the writers’ strike last year. A writers strike that revolved around many similar issues.
Get Ready For Retro Night: TF2 DLC Coming Soon
May 22nd, 2008 Duster72
You know those PC guys have it made. Frequent free updates to TF2, mouse and keyboard, tiny PC speakers, ahhhh the life.
Us console folk are left on the outside looking in.
Fortunately, it looks like the DLC for Team Fortress 2 is coming to the 360 after all (not PS3, sorry). What’s in the DLC? At least a new map, new gametype, and new character-dependent achievements that unlock new weapons a la COD4.
Sounds awesome, eh? Time to re-buy the game and get ready for the retro nights.
Battlefield: Bad Company Demo w/ Pre-Order
May 22nd, 2008 Duster72
EA is up to their usual tricks. In a lame effort to inspire high pre-sale numbers, they are offering early access to the Battlefield: Bad Company demo to those who pre-order the game. For the record, the demo is out 5/29 for those who pre-order and 6/5 for those who don’t.
If you’re like me, you’re thinking, I could give Gamestop $5 for the chance to play the demo a couple weeks to decide if it’s worth a buy. If it’s not, I can always cancel my pre-order and get my money back.
BTW, this game looks exactly like COD4. Don’t we already have that game?