October 2011 Archives

One of the most anticipated games this year, Activision's Modern Warfare 3 joins its predecessors -- Black Ops and Modern Warfare 2 -- in the pre-release piracy box. Modern Warfare 3 is due out in stores on November 8.

Dean Takahashi reports on Venture Beat that a thief had physically stolen one of the discs from the two-disc set from a distribution warehouse where copies are being stored. According to the story, it's disc 2 of the set for the PC and apparently it's started to circulate.

The story also reports that Activision is actively seeking the pirates with one posting on Craigslist on being forced to delete or destroy his copy of the game or face immediate fines. Apparently, Activision has stepped up its game on being able to track who has what if the posting is to be believed.

Gamespot had also commented on the report by pointing out that simply having the second disc isn't enough to play the game somewhat mitigating fears over a rash of spoiler filled vids raining down from Youtube such as what followed Crysis 2.

Estimates can vary on how much of an impact this might have on sales, yet few doubt that MW3 will be a titanic windfall for Activision's coffers when it hits. Piracy is still piracy, though it arguably did little to dent the record breaking numbers of copies sold for either Modern Warfare 2 or Black Ops when they were released. However, an estimate on revenue lost due to the piracy of Black Ops reportedly tops $200 million that could have gone to Activision. Certainly nothing to sneeze at.

Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities who has often been quoted in the gaming press for his forecasts on associated trends, has estimated that MW3 will sell "16 million units by the end of the fourth quarter" and "another 8 million next year".

Rockstar greeted everyone hitting their homepage today with a dramatic flourish by revealing a huge, Grand Theft Auto V logo and word that a trailer is coming on 11-2-11.

It was pretty much a foregone conclusion that we knew Rockstar was working on it in some capacity and hopefully the trailer will be more than just setting the logo and still shots of the game to music. But Rockstar has been relatively quiet in the last few years on GTA, so any news at this point will undoubtedly set the 'net ablaze with speculation.

Whatever the case might be, I'm excited. Despite GTA IV's flaws, it was a ton of fun, though I'm hoping that they add in more worthwhile rewards for collecting things. And an NPC relative who does more than ask to go out bowling.

Rocksteady's Arkham Asylum was heralded by many as the most definitive Batman game ever made up to 2009. It garnered accolades from many and even from the Guinness Book of World Records as "The Most Critically Acclaimed Superhero Game Ever". Even with its flaws, it was an enjoyable romp as one of DC Comics' most iconic characters, though the incredible hype machine had also cast a shadow over the sequel.

Stringing up bad guys on rafters and beating everyone down with the Bat's martial expertise in a game soaked with as much respect for the source material as it was from the animated series was great fun in Asylum, so getting a sequel was almost a foregone conclusion especially given the ending. Two years later, here we are with Arkham City. And the good news is that it's polished with the lessons Rocksteady had learned from the first game.

Of course, what would Blizzcon be without some mention of Diablo 3. Blizzard's dungeon crawler is currently in beta but a firm release date is still in the air.

The latest one shows Deckard Cain's daughter poring over his notes to discern some meaning from the knowledge he has left behind, eventually stumbling on a villainous vision of apocalyptic terror. In other words, it's likely that you'll have to fight what you will see in the trailer below.

It's also rated Mature, so be warned.

Also out from Blizzcon is a new trailer showing off a bit more of the story in the next installment of Starcraft 2. It's spoiler worthy stuff meaning that if you haven't finished the first game, Wings of Liberty, you might want to avert your eyes as it picks up right after the ending with former Zerg queen/Terran Ghost operative Kerrigan finally returning home, so to speak, for revenge.

Wings of Liberty focused on the Terran story and Heart of the Swarm is going to be all about the Zerg along with adding a number of new units to spice things up online. All in all, it looks like RTS players are going to be playing with new and improved Zerg swarms when this breaks.

In a somewhat unusual act of traveling to the future, Activision has brought out Modern Warfare 3's "launch" trailer well ahead of the game's release date of 11-8-11. As if players needed more of an incentive.

At Blizzard's Blizzcon in Anaheim, big announcements were made not the least of which was the introduction of a new race to World of Warcraft - the Pandaren.

The race has been used before as an April Fools joke in the past with Warcraft 3 in 2002. In 2005, the Pandaren Xpress was jokingly referred to as an upcoming in-game service wherein players could order out for Chinese food without leaving their PCs. And now it looks like Blizzard has actually made it real.

The jokes were taken in stride by Blizzard's fans who were fascinated by the idea and loved the humor that the developer wasn't shy about sharing.

This time around, the announcement has met with some decidedly mixed opinions across several forums. Reading through the thread at PC Gamer, for example, doesn't seem to have the kind of glowing response that one might expect with one poster believing that this is the point at which the MMORPG has "jumped the shark".

A thread on the official forums is also filled with mixed opinions, though many are just thankful that Blizzard has continued with its stellar support with another juicy expansion that brings in more than just another race but a host of other additions including pet vs. pet battles, a new land to explore, and plenty of nice art to gawk at.

Whatever you decide for yourself how to take this news, WoW fan or not, it's coming, so get prepared by watching the official preview below.

DICE and Electronic Arts today released a new trailer focused on Battlefield 3's multiplayer, also known as the part of the game that FPS fans will actually play.

Here's a new trailer for Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception.  Sony Computer Entertainment and Naughty Dog released this today.

"You're going to keep going aren't you? For what? Treasure?"

Batman: Arkham City easily ranks as today's most anticipated new game.

The sequel to Batman: Arkham Asylum includes appearances by classic Batman villains like the Joker, Riddler and Poison Ivy. The game also features voice acting from Mark Hamill, who played the Joker in "Batman: The Animated Series" and writing from Paul Dini, a wordsmith who contributed his talents to that terrific show.

Batman: Arkham City is released for PlayStation 3 and XBox 360. The game's PC release is set for Nov. 15.

A list of more games out can be found here. Among the other new releases, I think the most intriguing is Rocksmith, a title billed as more of a guitar instructional than a game per se.

Here's an interesting note on piracy. Eurogamer reports that James Grimshaw, founder of Vigilant Defender, leaked a modified version of Deus Ex: Human Revolution's preview to torrent sites.

The preview had already been leaked all the way back in May, but James made his version kick players out after a certain point in the game to an online questionnaire asking why they did what they did. In essence, he's turned the preview into a unofficial demo.

Vigilant Defender, based out of Ireland, purportedly works to offer anti-piracy strategies to publishers and this experiment is but one way that they are trying to prove that pirates can be customers.

It's an interesting use of torrents which, by themselves, aren't illegal though the same cannot be said as to what is actually being torrented. Disguising the preview as the work of other piracy groups is also something that skirts several issues, not the least of which is that distributing the preview likely isn't condoned by Square Enix despite having been leaked awhile back.

That said, it's an interesting if not very grey method in being able to tap pirates on the shoulder and ask for their opinion. For instance, the article mentions that of the 26,000 that declared their interest to pay for the game in the questionnaire, Grimshaw discovered that the average price that seemed fair to them was around 14.49 euros.

It's an incredibly low price for what is considered a AAA title, yet it also begs the question of whether low prices would actually move more product to recoup costs versus the present $60 USD model typically used for big console releases. It's no secret that when Steam launches one of their special seasonal specials, downloaded product flies through the door, so to speak, thanks largely to the temporary fire sale.

Software piracy has been around since the first games had been copied to floppies and despite many efforts to curb it, it's still an unfortunate reality to publishers and developers. There are many reasons as to why pirates do what they do, but Grimshaw and his company seem determined to shed some light on why - and in the long run, how to better deal with it.

If one article can summarize everything that's wrong about the modern state of gaming, this one from Giant Bomb should do the trick.

The website is reporting that paintball mode in Goldeneye: Reloaded will be exclusive DLC for people who buy the game at GameStop. Seriously.

I realize moaning about a simple paintball variant is a weird thing to get hung up on, but hell, paintball was one of my favorite modes from GoldenEye 007 Unlocking paintball wasn't easy, either; it required beating the Dam stage on Secret Agent in two minutes and 40 seconds. This was a satisfying achievement before Microsoft attached scores to such things. My friend group would sit around the TV for hours, playing each level over and over again, in hopes of shaving a few seconds off our time.

We never did unlock Invincibility.

But when we finally unlocked paintball, we'd earned the right to play paintball--and damn it felt good. So while anyone who picked up GoldenEye 007: Reloaded through GameStop could optionally unlock the mode early, everyone else would still have the ability to flip on paintball the old fashioned way: earning it.

Maybe Activision, the company publishing the Goldeneye remake, will be gracious enough to let customers eventually pay for paintball mode, which was indeed a fan favorite. But the nickel-and-dime approach to DLC is one of the most annoying trends within gaming, since it's getting harder and harder to escape the conclusion that players are being charged for incomplete products when they buy new games.

In this writer's opinion, there's nothing wrong with companies charging for substantial DLC, the kind that's like an expansion pack gives real value for somebody who has already paid $60 for a retail game. Bethesda and Electronic Arts, for example, have done well in offering quality DLC for games like "Broken Steel" for "Fallout 3" and "Lair of the Shadow Broker" for "Mass Effect 2."

But DLC that doesn't actually expand upon a player's initial purchase is ridiculous. As much as I would praise Lair of the Shadow Broker, I have no interest in paying for Mass Effect 2's alternate costumes. That's the kind of thing that gamers used to unlock by actually playing the game, when paying for a new game once was considered to be enough.

Mass Effect 3 will indeed have multiplayer, a major change for BioWare's space epic that will no doubt spawn countless Internet arguments over whether multiplayer makes sense for the popular series or whether the developers still make the kind of RPGs that made them famous.

I, for one, don't care whether a game meets genre expectations as much as whether its fun. I can understand why the serious RPG fans among Mass Effect's players did not care for the (choose your own bias) simplifications/streamlining/dumbing down that BioWare employed in making the game's sequel, but I personally enjoyed both games and didn't miss the lack of extensive inventory management while playing the sequel.

That said, the addition of multiplayer, called Galaxy of War, strikes me as a strange choice for ME3. As anyone who has played the games knows, Mass Effect puts players in the role of one Commander Shephard who fights to save the galaxy as he or she sees fit. The games' appeal stems significantly from its dramatization of space exploration and the moral choices that players must make as they go about their mission.

The kind of multiplayer gameplay that BioWare and game publishers Electronic Arts confirmed today takes some of the focus off Shepard. As announced, multiplayer mode will let players join four-person teams to achieve a military objective that will be relevant to the players' single-player mission. Shephard is still the star, but Mass Effect 3 will let players join something like a galactic special operations squad if they want to try another type of gameplay.

I can see a number of pros and cons here. On the pro side, I'm happy to see a developer attempt a variation on multiplayer different from the deathmatch modes we've seen so many times before in Goldeneye, Medal of Honor, Counterstrike, Halo, Call of Duty, Resistance, etc ...

I also like that the idea that multiplayer will let players try different character types, e,g, solider, sentinel, adept, without having to start a new playthrough,

Now for the cons. Adding an entire new mode to what players expect to be the final chapter of an epic trilogy doesn't make much sense to me. I doubt EA is going to induce new legions of fans to buy the game just because it has multiplayer. In fact, I've never heard anyone say they would buy Mass Effect if it had multiplayer.

I'm also not crazy about multiplayer affecting the single-player campaign. Although the idea of soldiers fighting across the galaxy makes sense, those soldiers are not the focus of the story. The multiplayer press release says Galaxy at War is an alternative method of achieving single-player campaign objectives, but the idea of breaking from the game's narrative to take on the role of a minor character seems like it might be kind of a chore.

If it was up to me, I would have produced Mass Effect 3 as a single-player game and developed the multiplayer as a separate budget title or DLC for fans who want more Mass Effect after completing the trilogy. But then again, I don't run BioWare nor EA.

Mass Effect 3 is scheduled to come out in March.

Here's the trailer for Marvel Comics' and Paramount Pictures' film version of the Avengers, which is scheduled to be released in May:




The Tech-Out critique: Movie trailer editors really need to figure out a way to build the audience's interest without relying on the same old tricks. The first few seconds of this trailer seems to be the same as the trailer for every other action movie in the last five years. Start out slow and scary, give the impression of some kind of sinister threat and have a loud sound effect on each cut.

On the positive side, Robert Downey Jr. is playing Tony Stark again. Downey's portrayal of Stark as a fast-talking narcissist with a reluctant conscience in the first "Iron Movie" is probably the best acting in any superhero flick.

Here's a new trailer for Insomniac Games' "Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One, which is scheduled for an Oct. 13 release for PlayStation 3.




And here's a flashback from the ad campaign for the original Ratchet & Clank game, which boasted one of the best video game commercials of all time:

Here are two trailers and a sword fighting tutorial for Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, scheduled for Nov. 20 release for Nintendo Wii.


The other two are after the jump:

As popular as Apple's "1984" commercial is, I don't think it's their best one. I prefer this commercial for the iMac, in which a revitalized Apple promotes how easy its iMac is to use compared to the competition.




Keep in mind that Apple practically disappeared from the public consciousness in the early 1990s, after Steve Jobs was ousted from the company. Computing in the mid-1990s, for most households, meant buying a big desktop with a separate monitor and possibly, an external modem. Anyone with a new PC had to connect several components to each other, and then connect power cords and a phone line their wall. Everything would usually work, but not until people ended up with a tangled mess of cords behind their wall. The brilliance of this ad is that, unlike Apple's modern current commercials, the company doesn't tell the viewer that buying Apple will make them cool. It simply tells the viewer that their product is easy to use, and I like the straightforward approach.

Apple announced this meeting that its chairman and co-founder, Steve Jobs, died today at the age of 56.

Jobs, one of the computing industry's pioneers, was one of the most important American business figures of the last half century. As the founders of Apple, Jobs and business partner Steve Wozniak, were instrumental in bringing the computer to the household and the classroom.

Here's the intro for NBA 2K12, perhaps the most exciting NBA video to emerge since last season, since the association's labor dispute means nobody is playing in real life right now..


(H/t Kotaku)

Playing the BF3 beta was a little confusing. The game is due out in a few weeks, so putting it into beta this close to release seemed bizarre.

It covers only one multiplayer map, Metro, which takes place in a subway tunnel in France along with a little above-ground action for plenty of close quarters shooting. It's also objective based meaning players will be switching roles between defense and offense. It also means that it's a map with no vehicles which can be a bit disappointing to some.

Technically, beta tests are handled a few months in advance of finalizing the code for release so that if anything critical crops up, it can be fixed before hitting retail. At least that's how it's ideally supposed to go. Though in today's world of "0-day" patches and broadband speeds, that probably doesn't mean a hell of a lot.

Likely, the "beta" for BF3 was to test multiplayer stress on the network to better prepare for when it goes prime time on October 25th. On that count, it seems to be doing okay even with the occasional  128-player hack floating around in PC Land.

I also hope that some of the other issues won't show up in the final game such as prone clipping, or falling through the map and getting stuck leaving suicide the only escape. I was killed on one map by someone trapped this way because they were able to shoot me from below the objective I was attacking.

One thing that stuck with me was how familiar it felt. Coming off of Bad Company 2, BF3's beta felt like I was heading back for more of the same with a new set of maps. That's not entirely a bad thing, especially if you couldn't get enough of the game. And I'll admit that I had some fun while shooting through Metro's wrecked venue.

The demo also cuts loose with a large number of unlocks and, from what I could see, no level ceiling, so if anything, it's a nice, free multiplayer shooter. Some players have also really taken to it - I've seen a few leveled into their twenties and thirties already though I doubt any of that will carry over into the full game.

If I weren't a fan of the series before I doubt this would have convinced me as much as the trailers had worked so well to, but I'm sure that the full game - with actual vehicles - will be a lot more exciting when everything comes together near the end of this month.

Apple today announced the iPhone 4s, an upgrade to its popular iPhone 4 that is not the iPhone 5.

Many had expected the iPhone 5, a technological marvel that would have raised its owners' children, prepared five-star cuisine and paved the way for comprehensive peace settlements across the globe.

Instead, Apple announced a new phone that is reportedly an upgrade from a previously released product. It also has a voice-recognition feature called Siri.

Here's the real story from the San Jose Mercury News:

In a closely watched but ultimately anticlimactic product launch, Apple (AAPL) on Tuesday unveiled its latest iPhone, with a low-key Tim Cook emceeing his first event since iconic CEO Steve Jobs resigned in August.

Disappointed fans jumped all over Apple for releasing merely an upgrade to the iPhone 4, dubbed iPhone 4S, instead of the widely expected iPhone 5. But analysts reminded them that many cool features -- faster operating system, slicker camera and video -- were hiding under the hood.

"The improvements in software and the new camera, for example, are impressive," said analyst Roger Kay with Endpoint Technologies Associates. "But if you don't have a new look on the outside, people tend not to get as excited."

Cook seemed comfortable on stage but was working a room clearly missing the energy Jobs used to infuse into these events. The real star of the show was Siri, the new voice-recognition feature billed as the user's "personal assistant," a female voice that soon will be helping millions of Apple fans answer e-mails, make dinner reservations and remember to pick up the dry cleaning, all without a single key stroke.

As of this writing, the world has not fallen apart.

Today's a big day for new releases, as Rage, Dark Souls and NBA 2K12 hit stores, while former PC exclusive Crysis becomes available for XBox Live and PlayStation Network.

Rage, from id Software and Bethesda Softworks, is an FPS set in a post-apocalyptic earth. The people at id Software gave the world bloody FPS games like Castle Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake back when the FPS genre was dominated by PC titles and gamers actually played the single-player campaigns. Rage is released for PC, PlayStation 3 and XBox 360.

Dark Souls, developed by From Software and published by Namco Bandai, is the "spiritual sequel" to PlayStation 3 exclusive Demon's Souls. That game earned a reputation for extreme difficulty, and Namco Bandai is banking on that reputation to promote the sequel. Dark Souls is a PlayStation 3 and XBox 360 release.

NBA 2K12 is 2K Sports' latest iteration of its basketball franchise. The developers are trying to build on last year's well-received Jordan Challenge mode with the new "End the Debate" feature, in which players can play as all-time greats like Jordan, Magic and Dr. J to settle who deserves to be known as the GOAT. NBA 2K12 is out for Nintendo Woo, PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Sony PSP and XBox 360.

Console gamers probably missed Crysis, Crytek's futuristic FPS that is probably known more for its high system requirements than its gameplay. But after releasing Crysis 2 for PC and consoles earlier this year, the original game is now available for console players via PlayStation Network or XBox Live download.

So big that it's going to require a little disc swapping on the Xbox 360 to see it all. The PS3 version comes on one blu-ray, but both versions allow installation of content on the consoles given that you have enough space to pack all of it down.

The PS3 version, for example, is an 8GB installation that will have players doing something else for the several minutes it will take to complete. And as an aside for the PC "Master Race", installations are just par for the course other than in waiting for a service like Steam to unlock the game for its official debut on October 4th.

According to id's own Tim Willits in an interview with Eurogamer, however, Xbox 360 players won't have to install everything. They can get away with installing one of the discs (such as multiplayer which is on its own) and then uninstalling it to install another if they're pressed on space though that sounds like more of a chore than in simply getting up and switching the disc.

We've come far since the days of installing multiple floppies and CDs on PCs even though the dreaded disc swap is still with us. Developers have also been getting a lot better in organizing the data to make sure that its as one-way as possible.

RPGs have been doing that with titles such as Lost Odyssey and FF13, though some players are still irritated at having to physically change the media regardless of whatever technical advances are made. For me, I see these as small breaks to do something else before diving back into the action - such as loading up on snacks before the next action packed run.