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| by Danny Internets | April 16th, 2009 - 3:17 pm
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As an avid PC gamer, I am frequently dismayed at the departure of polish and quality control from the industry, a change which has become increasingly evident in recent years. Unlike many of my peers, I refuse to grow numb to what many consider “teething” periods for new games shortly after their release, periods in which we pay retail prices for beta software. It’s a matter of principle that often casts me in the role of the hyper-critical curmudgeon battling off the mindless hordes of raving fanboys while reminding everyone that there was once a time before patches could be used to fix broken software after reaching the hands of the consumer.
While Stardock may have rightfully earned a large stock of credibility with PC gamers for its public stance on piracy and DRM, pushing Gas Powered Games’ Demigod out the door before it was ready on April 14th cannot and should not be excused. For those of you who haven’t picked up the game yet (or don’t plan to), an extremely large number of users are experiencing difficulty with the game’s networking which is unable to negotiate connections between different users’ routers properly, resulting in the inability to connect to games for which Stardock is squarely to blame (Stardock wrote the netcode for Demigod rather than Gas Powered Games).
Obviously the variety of networking configurations used by players is vast, however most other companies using similar lobby formats and Games for Windows Live have developed successful solutions (Relic’s Dawn of War 2, for example). Considering that Demigod effectively has no single player component, the fact that they didn’t perform adequate testing of the game’s multiplayer connectivity is an oversight of staggering proportions. Furthermore, there is a software bug in which players who actually can connect to their opponents still aren’t able to join the game, so either way players are beset with technical issues beyond their control.
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| by Danny Internets | April 15th, 2009 - 3:05 pm
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American director Gore Verbinski recently announced that he will surrender the helm of the extremely successful Pirates of the Caribbean franchise ($2.6 billion international gross) in order to pursue a new oceanic film project entitled Bioshock, after the multi-platform first-person shooter of the same name by 2K Games.
Verbinski was expected to direct a fourth installment of Pirates, but recently broke the news to producer Jerry Bruckheimer that he would prefer to bring the sunken city of Rapture to life on the silver screen. Also signed on to the project is screenwriter John Logan, whose credits include Sweeney Todd, The Last Samurai, and Gladiator.
Oh, and did I mention that it’s gunning for an R rating?
We’re prepared to make it an R-rated movie. I don’t intuitively see it as PG-13. The content and the graphic nature of the story itself is smarter than that. It’s not for young kids.
The utopian references and the way the characters and world are drawn in that delightfully inspired Jules Verne and Ayn Rand style places the film in a more elevated realm. It’s the realm of a graphic novel. It has to have that edge.
Source
If you’re anything like me, you just squealed, flapped your hands around, and maybe peed a little (it happens).
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| by Danny Internets | April 14th, 2009 - 9:27 am
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Today marks a rare occurrence in the history of World of Warcraft: the release of a content patch.
In keeping with their ridiculously slow update schedule, Blizzard’s patch 3.1: Secrets of Ulduar introduces new “free” content for the first time since the release of the Wrath of the Lich King patch (3.0) on 10/14/08, exactly 6 months ago. Is that new dungeon really worth $90 in subscription fees? Not to me. But, hey now, we can’t all come to our senses.
See below for a comprehensive listing of the 3.1.0 patch notes.
World of Warcraft Client Patch 3.1.0
The latest test realm patch notes can always be found at
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html
The latest patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/
Secrets of Ulduar
Since discovering Ulduar in the Storm Peaks, adventurers have journeyed to the titan city to learn more about its mysterious past. Further exploration has revealed that the magnificent complex is above all a prison, intended to permanently confine the Old God of death, Yogg-Saron. This ancient horror has corrupted its guards, and now it is breaking through the last of its restraints. Faced with the peril of Yogg-Saron’s imminent freedom, a band of mortals has made preparations for a sweeping assault on the city. Overcoming the legions of iron minions and towering defenses at the city’s entrance will take tremendous strength, but even that great victory may not be enough to overcome the madness that dwells below.
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| by Danny Internets | April 11th, 2009 - 5:29 pm
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It appears as though someone over at Mondoxbox.com has obtained an advance copy of Game Informer and scanned images of the feature story on Assassin’s Creed 2 for public consumption. Earlier this month, Ubisoft unveiled a teaser website for the hotly anticipated sequel, follow up to the 2007 smash hit in which players travel back in time to roleplay as Altair, an assassin in medieval Jerusalem.
This time around, Altair is replaced by Ezio Auditore de Firenze, an Italian protagonist (from Florence) and assassin operating in Venice during the Renaissance. The article describes a number of new features, such as being able to utilize a da Vinci style hangliding device and swimming in the canals to both approach and escape from enemies. It appears that the AI has also been improved, with more intelligent enemies capable of investigating hiding places, especially if they have been used by Ezio before. Perhaps most interesting of all is the fact that players can now use any of the weapons wielded by enemies, as depicted in screenshots where Ezio dispatches foes with a polearm formerly carried by a city guard.
The article over at Mondoxbox can be found here:
http://www.mondoxbox.com/news/16117/assassin-s-creed-2-scan-in-alta-qualita-da-gi.html.
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| by Danny Internets | April 10th, 2009 - 10:35 am
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Relic has announced that the next patch (1.2.1) for their best-selling real-time strategy title, Dawn of War 2, will be going live at noon on April 13th. In addition to tweaking game balance and squashing bugs, the update also brings an impressive new 6-player map for online play.
The upcoming patch was reportedly completed by Relic sometime in mid-to-late March, however has been stuck in the Games for Windows Live certification quagmire since at least March 25th as evidenced by a statement in which Relic developer Jager first mentioned that it was being reviewed by Microsoft on the game’s public forums. If the patch drops according to schedule on Monday this will mean that GFWL has added 20 days to the patch development cycle at bare minimum. Ouch.
Despite getting in bed with the devil, Relic continues to prove that they’ve been paying attention to the community. Patch 1.2.1 skillfully addresses the four most pressing issues facing the community at this time: (1) lack of multiplayer maps, (2) faction imbalances, (3) drop-hacking, and (4) matchmaking.
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| by Danny Internets | April 6th, 2009 - 3:38 pm
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Stardock and Gas Powered Games (publisher and developer, respectively) announced today that their upcoming PC exclusive real-time strategy game, Demigod, has gone gold today and will be available at retail and by digital distribution on April 14th.
Interestingly, the digital download version of the game is affordably priced at only $39.95 MSRP, which is $10-15 cheaper than comparable new releases on the PC. Stardock explains that the lower price is not to suggest a bargain-quality title, but instead to entice more gamers to give it a try with a preemptive sale strategy in which the packaging costs savings are passed along to the consumer.
Demigod features hot army-on-army action with matches pitting up to 10 different players against one another. The game’s setting revolves around a unique mythology which establishes a pantheon of powerful gods, one of which has recently disappeared. The power vacuum spurs the demigods from across the mortal realm to wage war with one another as they each vie for the opportunity to ascend to full-fledged godhood.
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| by Timmy Walnuts | March 31st, 2009 - 4:04 pm
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If you’re old enough, you may remember the first truly addictive first person shooter developed and published by then fledgling gaming company id Software. This shooter became a staple for the genre, blazing a trail for other landmark titles. Simply known as Wolfenstein 3D, the game blended graphic violence with fantastical story, pitting the protagonist against an entire castle full of Nazis, with only a knife and pistol at your disposal as you break free of your jail cell. With groundbreaking gameplay and plot, the inevitable controversy came to light very soon after the games release. Not only was it deemed too violent, the use of the Nazis and their symbols garnered a banning from Germany on all versions of the game (besides the SNES version, which took out the Nazis. But who wants Wolfenstein without killing them?). Although Wolfensteing 3D received a lot of negative press, id Software never looked back and continued to churn out genre-molding, legendary games in the likeness of Doom and Quake.
With the superior 3D graphical engine created, many developers utilized it to create notable first person shooters/fantasy. One company, however, housed the technical wherewithal to develop further installments of two very popular id Software series. Beginning their career using the Doom engine, Raven Software developed many games under the Heretic/Hexen game series, all formally published by id. Starting as primarily PC developers, Raven has progressed throughout their twenty year lifespan to working with consoles as well, most recently developing Marvel: Ultimate Alliance to generally positive reviews. With their success and collaboration with id, Raven was granted a shared development over Quake 4, and now were given the spotlight again for the next installment of Nazi slaughtering that will be Wolfenstein.
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| by Danny Internets | March 31st, 2009 - 2:14 pm
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Any fan of Dawn of War, Warhammer 40,000, or just good old-fashioned ass-kicking needs to see this video immediately. Embedded in this article is pre-rendered footage showcasing he developers’ collective vision of what Dawn of War 2 should have been. Had Relic been able to hold on to even a tenth of the awesome contained in this video Dawn of War 2 would easily have been the most visually stunning and downright nastiest RTS games ever published.
The biggest and most notable differences between the video here and actual gameplay are the fluidity of movement and robust physics. With the exception of leaping Tyrannids, most units in Dawn of War 2 tend to chug along very slowly and unit interactions are unnoticeable save for the elaborate (and, unfortunately, easily overlooked) melee “sync” kills. In this video we see the mighty Space Marines bowling over the smaller Eldar Guardians (space elves) and even knocking through environmental fixtures. Reality be damned, that is the breed of awesome that never gets old, no matter how many times you see it.
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| by Danny Internets | March 27th, 2009 - 8:20 am
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Yesterday on the Sims 3 website, development head Rob Humble announced that the next installment of the franchise, one of the most financially successful ones in history, will pass up on employing draconian DRM methods this time around:
Hello everyone I wanted to share news with you regarding our copy protection plans for The Sims 3.
We’ll have more information for you as we get closer to launch about everything we’ll have to offer on TheSims3.com and The Sims 3 Store, but we have heard your requests over the past months and here is our plan for The Sims 3.
The game will have disc-based copy protection - there is a Serial Code just like The Sims 2. To play the game there will not be any online authentication needed.
We feel like this is a good, time-proven solution that makes it easy for you to play the game without DRM methods that feel overly invasive or leave you concerned about authorization server access in the distant future.
Source
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| by Timmy Walnuts | March 26th, 2009 - 8:34 pm
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With the Games Developer Conference of 2009 well on its way, the biggest story to hit so far is that of OnLive. A new way to game, OnLive will allow gamers to play titles that are streamed. Now I’m not very computer-programming savvy, so when I read that its similar to “cloud computing” I have no idea whats being discussed. The concept, however, is very intriguing.
Considered a serious competitor to the console market, OnLive will let even low-end computer users, whether you are an Intel Mac running Mac OSX or a Windows PC running XP or Vista, stream any top end games. Though these games are limited to publisher releases, many big players have already signed on, including EA, Take Two, and Ubisoft. The idea is simple: OnLive will have dedicated servers to running these 7th generation games, requiring just a video output in order to play. Depending on your internet connection, “seamless” play can be achieved in standard or high definition, with a 1.5Mbps or 5.0Mbps connection, respectively. The creator, Steven Perlman (of QuickTime and WebTV fame), claims the system to be “future-proof,” meaning that games developed for future consoles and higher end computers will play fine through their hardware, as all the upgrading will be done on the back-end, within the servers hosting the games. Games will be available for a one time rental or a permanent purchase. Pricing, though has been a little iffy. No definite prices have been set, although we know that there will be a monthly subscription fee, and other fees may apply.
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