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Archive for the ‘General’ Category
The world is coming to an end. Civilizations that had lasted thousands of years will be wiped out completely in December, with the memory of our species living on only in rubble stretching across the planet. No societies, no economies, no concept of “money”. Only a handful of survivors flitting in and out of the rubble, awaiting the inevitable. And the game companies know this is coming. That’s why they’re out to sell all their games to us now, so that they can roll around in the money one last time before said extinction-level-event wipes us all off the galactic map.
Quick, make your time now, say your prayers, take a third mortgage and sell your parents, wife and kids into slavery. Anything to buy all these games now, before your corpse joins millions of others in the streets. No games where we’re going. There will be no gamers next month, no console wars, no fanboys trolling forums. Cortana knew… she knew! This is the way the world ends.
Jade Raymond, producer of Assassin’s Creed, is one sad panda these days. And if Jade ain’t happy, UbiSoft is mad. After all, she and her team delivered one spectacular baby in the form of Assassin’s Creed. And if UbiHulk goes all green, it’s very bad news for Something Awful, which found itself staring down the barrel of a lawsuit after someone posted a particularly tasteless comic of Jade trying to convince nerdy gamers to buy Assassin’s Creed by giving them really messy head. While I love SA.com’s reply to the lawsuit and think that’s what you deserve for being a lawyer, I am aghast at some of the comments made by gamers worldwide in response to this.
Suddenly, people are calling Jade “a touchy bitch” and talk about how she was using her sex appeal to sell the game , to how UbiSoft was pimping her to sexually frustrated gamers to get them to buy the game. One comment at ActionTrip even reads:
Ubisoft are the ones who blatantly exploited Jade Raymond’s good looks and sexuality; every single interview on AC I’ve seen building up to the game’s release, every single presentation was carried out by Ms. Raymond.
We have official confirmation! In a press release that was sent to us just now, Microsoft India says that the Xbox Originals service will indeed be available in the country on December 4, along with expectations that Xbox LIVE will cross the 10-million user mark by June 2008.
Each Xbox Original will retail for 1200 Microsoft Points (or approximately INR 590 a pop) and will range from 2GB to 7GB in size, which should take us about, oh, 2 days to download on our crappy 256k lines. (Sorry, Microsoft, that 4 - 8 hour download timeframe is for the lucky people in the rest of the world who have access to great 2Mbps lines!) And yes, we too will get the chance to download Carcassonne (or Hexic 2, we’re not sure) within a 48 hour period as we had previously reported. Also.. wait, what?! That’s not what we reported! We thought it was a 24 hour period, unless my Math is that phenomenally bad. But the press release claims we should be able to download “a free Xbox LIVE Arcade game*, within a 48 hour period starting 15 November 1:30 PM.” Oh well, this one’s better anyway.
Reviewers have it tough these days. With a dozen or more games coming out each week, they’re probably under horrible pressures to deliver their goods faster than ever before, with the result that we get crazy scores for games like Need For Speed: ProStreet and Assassin’s Creed. And the latter is pretty disturbing, considering the sheer scope of the game and how it promised to deliver truly next-generation gameplay.
But it looks like dear Gabe from Penny Arcade has stumbled on to the obvious fact as to why such a promising game is getting 7-something scores.
Some people have all the luck in the world, with way too much money, gorgeous wives and girlfriends, blazing internet connections and the latest and greatest gaming “stuph”. Or have the pleasure of knowing such great girls who love them some videogames, while the rest of us sadly have to make do with “If you don’t stop playing that f$^%@ game right now, we’re through!”
Getting their game on at the Festival Arcadia 2007 in Montreal, the girls at the Miss Video Game 2007 competition got to test their skills at Mario Kart 64, CounterStrike: Source, Guitar Hero 3, Brain Age II and Nascar 2008, with the lovely 20-year-old Lauren Berggren, from Mandeville, Louisiana, walking away with the coveted title.
According to the official site:
The Miss Video Game competition began a year ago as a way to showcase the incredible talents of female gamers worldwide. Using the TitanStrike gaming platform, over 500 girls from all over the world entered the competition. The field was narrowed down to 48 of the top gamers as judged by their peers in an online voting system.
The remaining field took part in an online tournament which consisted of going head to head in Counter Strike. Subsequently, the top three contestants from the online tournament were given a berth in to the finals.
We love you, girls, y’all know that right? Hit the jump for pictures (from Adelle’s blog), and if you need some more MVG goodness, head on over to Adelle’s Flickr page for more pictures, including shots of the hotel room.. and other stuff… like the Cosmic Cinema listings for Lara Croft: Tom Raider: The Craddle of Life and Supermans Return. Oh boy!
2007 is definitely the year I am filing for complete and utter bankruptcy. As if it wasn’t enough that the past few months have left my wallet completely dry, it looks like the dam’s burst all over again. This week sees no less than fifteen new games being released, including the recently released BlackSite: Area 51 and Super Mario Galaxy. And the joke is, we’re still waiting for Gears of War (PC), Call of Duty 4 and The Orange Box (X360) to show up here. Like Jay said, the world must be ending on December 1, 2007 or something, seeing as to how every game publisher has decided to unleash their entire pack of hound dogs at us! So what games will you be buying before you join me in the Brotherhood of Broke? And why the heck isn’t anyone even remotely interested in Beowulf? Hit the jump for the full list.
The Orange Box is already well on top of my list for Game of the Year. Sure, it’s not a game, but what the heck, Portal alone is worth any award heaped upon it, even if you don’t count the excellent Episode Two or the insanely fun Team Fortress 2. With Episode Two wrapping up with a gut-wrenching cliffhanger, fanatics such as yours truly are already salivating over playing Episode Three and Portal 2. That is, provided they are released some time before we die, considering Valve’s infamous release date hijinks.
Talking to Rock, Paper, Shotgun’s John Walker for an interview, Episode Two’s project lead David Speyrer has justified the lack of an Episode Three trailer saying that they are trying something “pretty ambitious” for the project, and didn’t want to overcommit.