I’m off to the beach for 6 days (oooh yes saweeet), I will be back and posting on the 2nd of January.
Happy new year to EVERYONE!
AP has released their list of the worst games in 2007, and yes, Lair did make it in!
1. “Manhunt 2″: Rockstar Games’ strategy — offend the watchdogs, reap the publicity, then sell a substandard product — reached its nadir with this ugly, unplayable mess. It begins with a lunatic flinging human waste at you; after about an hour, you’ll want to fling “Manhunt 2.”
2. “Vampire Rain”: You’re part of an elite commando squad hunting vampires, but your high-tech weapons don’t actually do any damage. Try to escape, and you’re likely to run into an invisible wall. Why not just avoid the whole fiasco in the first place?
3. “Deal or No Deal”: It couldn’t be simpler. You pick one of 26 briefcases and gamble on whether it contains a lot of money. But the DS “Deal or No Deal” doesn’t even get the gameplay right, and is even more sluggishly paced than the TV show. For $30, no deal.
4. “Lair”: Sony lavished a lot of attention on this PlayStation 3 title, and it sure looks great. And who wouldn’t want to fly a dragon? But with awkward, imprecise controls and lackluster, repetitive missions, “Lair” crashed and burned.
5. “Escape from Bug Island!”: Kill giant insects (cool!) … by poking them with sticks (wha?). “Bug Island” could have been campy fun, but its annoying characters, inane plot and wretched graphics destroy any desire to keep playing.
The full list which includes “Most disappointing” and “Enough already”.
Source: SFGate.com
I really don’t think I need to say anything, except:
God Like.
It looks like Blizzard will be following Mythic’s example by coming out with their very own development podcast. The podcast will be based around Starcraft 2 (sweeeeet) and Wrath of the Lich King (eh, who cares), it will include interviews with devs, and fansite Q&A.
Here’s the official word:
Blizzard is spear-heading its approach to Community Fansites and fans in 2008. It’s going full-throttle with a internal Developer video podcast which will bring you interviews with Starcraft 2 and Wrath of the Lich King developers, fansite community interaction with developers, as well as fansite Q&A on video.
The first BlizzCast episode will air online through Blizzard’s website the first week of January. Fans will be able to submit questions to the developers through the fansites, who will forward the feedback to community managers: Karune and Nethaera. Fans may win some juicy Swag at the end of each BlizzCast episode. Again, this ongoing video podcast series is produced by Blizzard.This is an amazing effort that will bring the developers and the community closer. The best of it all is that each BlizzCast (video podcast) transcript will be fully localized to many supported languages reaching hundreds of thousands of Blizzard fans across the globe. This is basically a monthly BlizzCon presentation broadcasted directly to you via hot-download. The audience of BlizzCast Episode 1 and upcoming episodes will be monitored. These is an experimental in-house project. The more fan audience supporting these BlizzCast episodes, the better it will get, as more resources will be put to produce future episodes with full coverage of the development cycles of Starcraft 2, future World of Warcraft expansions and content patches, as well as the two unannounced games. Spread the word across forums online, and share the hype to encourage production of BlizzCast episodes for years to come. Tell all your friends online, at work or school to download episode one the first week of January.
BlizzCast Episode 1
* Interview with Sam Didier (Art Director SCII): Concepting Art for the StarCraft and Warcraft Franchises
* Interview with Jeff Kaplan (Lead Designer WoW): Highlights of Sunwell Plateau and Patch 2.4(At the end)Sweepstakes/Giveaway: Lots of SWAG
The first episode will be aired the first week of January.
Source: Blizz Planet via Kotaku
Anyone who has played a Racing Sim set in a major city will most likely have seen at least one in game billboard. You may have thought it helped to set the scene, you may have down right hated it. Either way I’m sure you will enjoy this idea.
The Scottish Government is about to spend £10,000 on virtual billboards within Xbox 360 sports sims. Why are you going to enjoy this idea you ask? Because the billboards are going to be aimed at stopping drink driving. And lets face it, nobody likes a drunken driver.
To start it off, the billboards will be seem in the online versions of Need for Speed: Carbon, Project Gothem Racing 4, and Pro Evolution Soccer 2008
If the trial is successful, they plan to broaden the range of road safety messages.
Good on ya’ Scotland!
The controversial game manhunt 2 took another hit in Britain. The game was banned by the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) for sale in the UK. To try and counter this Rockstar dulled down the game, taking out a lot of the over-the-top violence. They managed to get the UK Video Appeals Committee to reclassify the game, but the BBFC isn’t happy, and isn’t going to give up the fight.
The BBFC was able to argue that the “game had been approved for release on a misinterpretation of the law”. It was good enough for the judge, and so now the fight will move to the British High Court.
So, why do I feel like there are double standards in this particular case?
Well, because the BBFC recently approved the uber violent film Eastern Promises saying that “…it was up to adults to decide what they wanted to watch and that movie-goers were free to look away from the screen”…. Soo, if it’s a movie, adults are able to choose for themselves, but if it’s a game, we’re apparently ill-equipped to make that judgment.
Johnny Chung Lee has done it again. He has seem the true potential of the Wiimote and turned it into something incredible.
For those of you who haven’t heard of him before, this will be a treat:
Other projects of his include a Minority Report-styled finger tracking system, and a multi-touch interactive whiteboard.
Source: Johnny Chung Lee
Shanda is one of Mainland China’s biggest MMORPG developers – they were asked by police to confiscate virtual items from a player’s account while they invested the sale of stolen virtual items (I guess messing with a dudes online alter ego is a sizable offense in China. I’d hate to see what happens if you’re caught using Aim-bot in CoD4). Shanda followed the police’s request, but then forgot to put the items back when they police had finished. When the owner of the account found out his stuff was missing, he sued them.
Shanda lost, and was forced to apologise and pay 5,000 RMB (around $900 NZ). Doesn’t seem like much to you? Well, it didn’t seem like much to him either, so he’s going after them again:
The gamer surnamed Zhang discovered six virtual items, worth more than RMB1,500, missing from his game account on November 22, 2006 and contacted Shanda regarding the disappearance. Shanda said that the company had taken the items in accordance with a police investigation regarding the sale of stolen virtual items. According to the report, Shanda failed to follow police instruction and return the items after the investigation ended. Having spent much time away from the game, Zhang said he plans to take Shanda back to court. This time he plans to sue for the RMB150,000 he claims to have spent in the game during the past five years. Zhang sued Shanda in the Hunan Qiyang People’s Court.
Source: Pacific Epoch via Kotaku
Ubisoft is giving it another go!
They recently released a rather lame trailer that was not picked up too well by the community, so, they’ve decided to make a second trailer/teaser. It’s better, don’t get me wrong, but I find it just as pointless as the original. No real gameplay footage, just some nice CG of a helicopter and a couple of dudes jumping out of it. But! Here it is for you anyway:
[gametrailers 29095]
And just in case you wish to add salt to the wound, here’s the original:
I apologise for the mix-match of GameTrailer and Youtube, but it would seem that GameTrailers has removed the original teaser.
I’m not even going to start. I’m sure you already know how pathetic it is that games get blamed for stuff like this, while facts like the 17 year old being drunk are left and forgotten.
Source: Joystiq
Two teens, 17-year Leonard Roberts and 16-year old Maria Trujillo, have been charged in the death of the girl’s 7-year old sister. According to various sources, they were either playing Mortal Kombat at the time or simply re-enacting moves from the game. If it’s the latter, the identity of whoever linked Mortal Kombat to the death — either the accused themselves or some outside observer — is never made clear.An actual link to the game is even more ambiguous. According to NEWS.com.au, Trujillo alleged she was “playing ‘Mortal Combat’” with her sister, and it’s unclear if that’s a misspelling or the sisters’ name for their general roughhousing. The same report also mentioned that Roberts was downstairs playing video games while the incident occurred upstairs, according to an affidavit.
Another article by the Denver Channel said they “were wrestling as they always do, karate kicking, punching and kicking,” implying that the behavior is perpetual and perhaps not related to the game. Of course, labeling it the “Mortal Kombat” death makes for an admittedly catchy headline. (An article from the Rocky Mountain News abstained from mentioning the game in its headline, although a broken link on their Most Viewed sidebar indicates they may have once named it “‘Mortal Kombat’ tragedy.”)
What’s disturbing for us is that, while an unverified link to video games makes it into the headline, noting that Roberts was drunk at the time gets lost in either the middle or very end of the articles we read. Shouldn’t we be worried about an intoxicated 17-year old just as much as we are his gaming habits? (For international readers, the legal drinking age in the US is 21.) Sure, underage drinking and stupidity is not as new of a hot-button issue as video games, but shouldn’t we try to present all the pertinent facts with appropriate prominence?
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in.]
Read – Teen accused in child’s ‘Mortal Kombat’ death (Denver Channel)
Read – Teens charged in ‘Mortal Kombat’ death (AP via Yahoo! News)
Read – Teens charged in death of girl, 7 (Rocky Mountain News)
Read – Game blamed for death (NEWS.com.au)