General Game News

[Sideswipe]

That should have been an "In Search of" clip narrated by Leonard Nimoy!

[Variety of Cells]

Hell yes!  The Witcher 3 is in the works!  Count me as very excited.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/121900-The-White-Wolf-Returns-in-The-Witcher-3-Wild-Hunt

[Compound]

The Ouya, everyone's favorite Kickstarted android-based console, is now available for pre-order at retailers. $99 for the console and a controller. $49 for an additional controller. Expected June 2013.

[Compound]

BTW: Saint's Row 4? Due this September, just a few weeks before GTA V's release.

[Space version 2.0]

The Ouya, everyone's favorite Kickstarted android-based console, is now available for pre-order at retailers. $99 for the console and a controller. $49 for an additional controller. Expected June 2013.

I've already got mine ordered from the Kickstarter. Sprung for the special Kickstarter Edition too. Because I like to feel special.

[The Lurker]

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/wDnoUGE2oWY" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/wDnoUGE2oWY</a>

[Variety of Cells]

Meh. I think that'll be the first table I pass on in a while. I bought the last 4 or 5. Attack from Mars was great.

[Compound]

Bwah?

System Shock 2 is coming to GoG and Steam.

System Shock, if unfamiliar to you, was a horror based sci-fi game that basically paved the way for Dead Space, Bioshock and the like. (Resident Evil as well, since it predated it by a few years.) It's also been tied up in  legal nightmare for many, many years. But the legal battle seems to have been resolved almost overnight and it'll be released on GOG at 6 AM on Valentine's day. (Steam gets it eventually)

Go! Buy it! It's worth it!

Oh, and Assassin's Creed 4 will be out sometime between April 2013 and March 2014 and will be set in a non-Revolutionary War era. But System Shock 2 is more important.

[Compound]

Two things-

Sony is promoting some sort of Playstation announcement on the 20th. The PS4? A new Vita unit? The return of the Walkman? Probably not the latter, but you'll find out what the deal is on the 20th at 4 PM MST.

No, I won't tell you when that is on the East coast. Figure it out. It's what the rest of the country does when they get something in EST.

The other news- Bungie has announced their multi-platform Halo follow-up will be called Destiny. It's an online persistent shooter with social features. And it's always online, so Doc will be screaming about it from somewhere out in the wilds of wherever he is these days.

[Henry88]

http://kotaku.com/5982097/report-the-next-xbox-will-require-an-internet-connection-block-used-games

well cant say i saw that coming

[Pak-Man]

An open letter to video game big-wigs:

I am of a generation that likes to HAVE. I like to buy things like CDs, DVDs and Video Games so that I can keep them lined up on my shelf and thumb through their inserts and wrap them and give them to people as gifts if need be. I like getting thin rectangular packages on my birthday a LOT. I understand that this notion is becoming something of a relic and eventually, things will be all digital. For now, the only reason I might buy a product on Steam rather than picking up one of my coveted boxes from a retail store is that they can offer them to me DIRT CHEAP. This is an important distinction. I may pay $70 for a video game, but I have never, WILL never pay $70 for a file. The sense of "thingliness" I get from a file is significantly reduced, and its value to me is lessened. If you're going to try to be like Steam, and offer digital content and DRM to verify my purchases and block me from playing used content, understand that you are going to need to offer insane sales. You'll need to offer top tier titles that came out mere months ago for $10 - $20. If you want to be like Steam, you're going to have to embrace the whole business model.

You have 2 choices. Try to be like Steam, with everything else that entails, or give me the physical euphoria that is true ownership and cater to my shrinking demographic. We'll be here, ready to buy things from you, if you can make things worth buying from a retail store. Don't try to mix and match, though. We're not stupid.

Thank you.

[Compound]

Sony Press Conference live blogging!

Right now we're getting two decades of commercials.

Okay, the actual press conference begins. "We're strengthening the Playstation ecosystem." OOoh. Not pretentious at all. "The gamer is the focal point of the Playstation system." Okay, cross of the pandering to the gamer box from the Sony conference bingo card.

First thingee- we're expanding Vita to the living room... put we'll tell you more about that later this year. Gee. Thanks.

And the stream dies just as they announce the PS4. Boy, not a good omen there.

Okay, found a working stream again. Using x86 architecture, just like a PC. 8 Gigs of memory. (Matching my 3 year old laptop. Sigh.) Hard drive, so the stream only rumors weren't true. Dual shock 4 controller. Looks like the old dual shocks, but with touch pad, ala a notebook, light bar, share button and headphone jack. Plus some other thing that I missed.

"Easy conversion from PC to PS4." Hallelujah. Shows off some Unreal 4 footage.

Showing off a new title, "Knack" with a robot that gets bigger by absorbing destroyed stuff. He's fighting some very 40k looking "Goblins." More well spoken than Orks though in cutscenes.

Back to the console- suspend function, ala the Vita. Hit power button, current game will be frozen to be resumed until the new time you hit the power button. Also, games need to be playable as you download them.

And now the "social aspects of gaming." Allow me to doze off for a sec. Hit share button on controller and the system will upload a few minutes of gameplay to the cloud. Your friends will be real world friends, with real names and pictures gathered from your social network! (The ones that I specifically try not to upload photos and my real name to?) Tablet and Vita connectivity. Showing off friend gaming info wall, ala Steam. "We'll try to predict the next game you buy and download it to your console so that you can play it in an instant!"

Wow. Okay, that's a neat trick, but I really don't want you downloading crap to my console without me asking. Your system updates are annoying enough, but to have my connection tied up and to have my hard drive space eaten up just because you think I might want Madden loaded up, just in case, is pretty damn annoying.

Ugh. PSN network time.  Faster speeds, fine. "We'll let you know when your friends buy a new game!" I hope it's the Steam way of doing that rather than a popup, like I suspect it might be. Trying to have all title downloadable day 1. Tie-ins with Ustream and Facebook. Again, ick. Also demos for most every game. "Friends can comment while you're playing!" Wow. That won't be annoying.

Whoops. "PS3 titles not natively supported on the PS4." But then a brag that the cloud service will allow all PS1, 2, 3, Vita, etc. games could be played on  the PS4.  So, the water is wet and dry? Also, Rockstar not having GTA V on the PS4 might suck.

Developer time. Quantic, Double Fine, Worldwide,  Harmonix. "Your system will be aware of what is in the room." Okay, once again, stop with the creepy intrusions into my life. I try to avoid data mining already and for you to be bragging about doing it... not cool.

Oh, hey. Games. A new Killzone: Shadowfall. My tweets are comparing it to Crysis 3, graphics-wise, and not in a positive sense. I'm not the biggest graphics-guy myself, but I'm not seeing anything here that looks better than Black Ops 2 or Halo 4.

Ooh. Cars. Gran Turismo? No. Drive Club. New IP. "Team based racing." And fitting our "permanently connecting social lives." Whimper. Seriously, I want to be left alone while I drive suckily.

Sucker Punch time. Showing a world (Seattle) where cameras are everywhere. Hey, it's PS4-land! Anyway, it's inFamous: Second Son. Cole doesn't seem to be the lead in it. (I think he's dead in at least some of the inFamous2 endings, so it makes sense.)

Stream is stuttering heavily now.

The guy who made Braid is up now. "The Witness." You explore an abandoned island. But it's also about epiphanies! Yeah, it's the Braid guy alright.

Quantic is here, babbling about polygon counts ad how expressive a character can look on a PS4. The character shown does look remarkably lifelike. Very low uncanny valley feelings there.

Oy, every stream seems to be getting hammered now. Almost slide-showish in quality.

Media Molecule- can't really tell what the hell is being discussed. I'm getting 1 sentence in ten. Sony's apologizing for the stream on Twitter. Anyway, it's something move-based and seems to be the PS4's Wii Music title. Yeah, remember that? It's something with puppets.

"Every major third party developer will be supporting the PS4."

Capcom. Huh. 3d animation in Japanese is "3d animation." Who knew? "Long history with Sony." Ooh. Onimusha sighting. I miss that series. "Code Name: Panta Rhei" New engine for game design. Showing off new IP using the engine. Fantasy based. Swordsman fighting a dragon in a cavern. "Deep Down" is title. (Still stuttering madly in the stream.)

Square-Enix arrives. Heh. A Japanese guy saying "without further adieu" in halting English amuses me. English. Mugging other languages and taking their words. And it's the same trailer as the one they showed off at E3. Yeah, we've seen that one. Last year. "PS4 is a game developer's dream!" And someone from the Final Fantasy team  steps up to talk. (Dear lord this stream sucks. It's like I'm back on dialup.) They'll show off more stuff at E3 this year. Wow. Thanks Square. (Facepalm)

[Compound]

(Continued)

Ubisoft. I wonder if they'll bring Jay Mohr along this time. Nope. I guess not. Watch Dogs being shown. Saw that at E3 as well, but it looked good then. "Everything about you is stored on your phone." And on your PS4 too! The irony of talking about invading everyone's privacy is not lost on me here. Game still looks very impressive though.

Chris Metzen from Blzzard now. Blizz? Really? And Diablo 3 will be on the PS4. (I'd still like to see Starcraft:Ghost, but hey, I guess the PS4 folks might play D3 since we PC gamers aren't keen on it.)

Last partner: Activision. Quelle surprise, especially since Blizz just showed up. And Bungie pops in as well. This would be a Destiny promo then. And with exclusive PS4 content!

And it's all coming "Holiday 2013."

Well, it looks interesting, but the forced social connectivity is a huge turnoff, especially since neither my 360 or PS3 tends to be connected to the net unless I need to download something. We'll see whether it's Steam level social annoyance or whether it's Facebook game level social annoyance later this year as the release date approaches.

Oh, and Square? "We'll show up and remind you to watch E3 to hear more about Final Fantasy news." Not cool.

E3 is mid-June, BTW.

[Compound]

Oh, and BTW, Sony never did show the actual console.

[Rainbow Dash]