Gamefront: Weekly Network Update 51 (week 51, 2011) - News - FileFront News Posted by: Danny on 12-25-2011 @ 14:27
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Here it is the 51st version of the Weekly Gamefront Network News Update, the news part of the update covers the news side of the Network and the Gamefront Main site over the past week. There has been a fair bit of news from the Main site including a lot of trailers, reviews, previews and a lot more. This week there are lots of reviews, more news from the latest games as well as a lot of news from VGA 2011 (trailers) . However you can find more news from the main Gamefront site - Here. Of course Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays to all of the Gamefront Members
We would love to hear any suggestions that you have; if you see something that you would like to be added to the Weekly Network Update, or you have any suggestions that you think may improve the Network Update then simply drop me an email at Danny[at]filefront[dot]com (please put "Network Update" as the subject though ).
Also If you like the Network Update please feel free write a comment as I would love to hear any critism, or support (constructive though please as this is the only way that I know how good or bad the insider is and it would help me to improve this further). Also I should mention that the comments section is not for complaining about the bugs of the network sites, most of these we do know about and are with the Break.com Tech Team , also again this is not the place for comments about the bugs, I myself do not have the ability or the knowledge to fix them, although you can use our forums to post your comments here - http://forums.filefront.com/filefront-com-help-center-1272/
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As the holidays draw near, all of us here at GameFront wanted to take a minute to tell all of you, the readers, one simple thing. Thank you. Thank you for visiting the site, commenting on our articles, using our walkthroughs and enjoying our original content. Without all of you, we wouldn’t be here. So, from everyone here, we hope you and yours have a wonderful holiday season!
We’re looking forward to improving our site offerings even more next year, so stay tuned for a lot more from GameFront. In the meantime, please enjoy our Sithmas card, made especially for our awesome readers. You rock!
Without a doubt, 2011 was an outstanding year for gaming. We were bombarded with good games this year, which makes picking the best of them even harder. Luckily, we’ve got you, the readers, to help us out.
Every day this week, we’ll be revealing our staff choices for the best games of the year in a variety of categories. We’ll also be reporting the results of our Reader’s Choice voting. So, without further ado, let’s get to the Best AAA Shooters of 2011.
Without question, 2011 was the year of the shooter. All year long, we were bombarded with excellent entries into the genre. The list was so overwhelming that we actually created two lists this year. One for AAA shooter titles and another for smaller releases, just to keep some really deserving games from being excluded. Even with that, the debate raged long into the night before our five finalists in each category were decided.
The nominees were:
Battlefield 3
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
Crysis 2
Gears of War 3
Resistance 3
Without a doubt, 2011 was an outstanding year for gaming. We were swarmed with good games this year, which makes picking the best of them even harder. Luckily, we’ve got you, the readers, to help us out.
Every day this week, we’ll be revealing our staff choices for the best games of the year in a variety of categories. We’ll also be reporting the results of our Reader’s Choice voting. So, without further ado, let’s get things started with the Best Indie Games of 2011.
This was a tough year to pick indie games. The scene exploded, especially on the PC. It seemed like every week another good indie game was launching, not to mention the large number of cool indie bundles. Still, we narrowed our field down to five after much debate.
The nominees were:
Jamestown
Minecraft
SpaceChem
Terraria
The Binding of Isaac
Without a doubt, 2011 was an outstanding year for gaming. We were bombarded with good games this year, which makes picking the best of them even harder. Luckily, we’ve got you, the readers, to help us out.
Every day this week, we’ll be revealing our staff choices for the best games of the year in a variety of categories. We’ll also be reporting the results of our Reader’s Choice voting. So, without further ado, let’s get things started with the Best Non-AAA Shooters of 2011.
Without question, 2011 was the year of the shooter. All year long, we were bombarded with excellent entries into the genre. The list was so overwhelming that we actually created two lists this year. One for AAA shooter titles and another for smaller releases, just to keep some really deserving games from being excluded. Even with that, the debate raged long into the night before our five finalists in each category were decided.
The nominees were:
Bulletstorm
Hard Reset
Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad
Section 8: Prejudice
Serious Sam 3: BFE
Without a doubt, 2011 was an outstanding year for gaming. We were covered up with good games this year, which makes picking the best of them even harder. Luckily, we’ve got you, the readers, to help us out.
Every day this week, we’ll be revealing our staff choices for the best games of the year in a variety of categories. We’ll also be reporting the results of our Reader’s Choice voting. So, without further ado, we happily present the Best Racing Games of 2011.
The racing genre expanded a bit this year as venerated franchises like Need for Speed brought their newest products to market alongside the return of classics like the Driver series. After countless laps around a ridiculous number of tracks, we finally honed the field down to five.
The nominees were:
DiRT 3
Driver: San Francisco
Forza Motorsport 4
Motorstorm: Apocalypse
Shift 2: Unleashed
Without a doubt, 2011 was an outstanding year for gaming. We were bombarded with good games this year, which makes picking the best of them even harder. Luckily, we’ve got you, the readers, to help us out.
Every day this week, we’ll be revealing our staff choices for the best games of the year in a variety of categories. We’ll also be reporting the results of our Reader’s Choice voting. So, without further ado, let’s get things started with the Best RPGs of 2011.
Could we have asked for a better year in the RPG genre than we got in 2011? A new Elder Scrolls title, the return of Deus Ex, and another Witcher game were just a few of the highlights of an absolutely stellar year. We can’t overstate how difficult narrowing this list down was, but with the help of gallons of coffee we got it done.
The nominees were:
Dark Souls
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Dragon Age 2
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings
Click below for the links and more
Read: Best RPGs of 2011 Gamefront News: Best Action / Adventure Game of 2011
Without a doubt, 2011 was an outstanding year for gaming. We were bombarded with good games this year, which makes picking the best of them even harder. Luckily, we’ve got you, the readers, to help us out.
Every day this week, we’ll be revealing our staff choices for the best games of the year in a variety of categories. We’ll also be reporting the results of our Reader’s Choice voting. So, without further ado, let’s get things started with the Best Action / Adventure Games of 2011.
As has been the case in recent years, we had a healthy crop of good Action / Adventure titles to choose from. Many favorite characters returned, like Batman and Nathan Drake. We also had new faces like Cole Phelps, whose face was ultra-realistic thanks to Team Bondi’s new tech. After the dust of the 9-hit combo we had to land had settled, we had finally found our five favorites.
The nominees were:
Batman: Arkham City
Dead Space 2
LA Noire
Portal 2
Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception
Without a doubt, 2011 was an outstanding year for gaming. We were bombarded with good games this year, which makes picking the best of them even harder. Luckily, we’ve got you, the readers, to help us out.
Every day this week, we’ll be revealing our staff choices for the best games of the year in a variety of categories. We’ll also be reporting the results of our Reader’s Choice voting. So, without further ado, let’s get to what you’ve all been waiting for: Game of the Year for 2011.
Ah, 2011. You were a banner year for gaming. All year long, we were treated to great games in almost every genre. Of course, this made the selection of the best games of the year all that much harder. Still, we locked ourselves in with lots of coffee and donuts, and spent hours arguing over what should be included. After much discussion and very little sleep, we finally narrowed the list to five.
The nominees were:
Dark Souls – Read our review!
Deus Ex: Human Revolution – Read our review!
Portal 2 – Read our review!
Resistance 3 – Read our review!
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Read our review!
Gamefront News: Activision’s Lawsuit Against EA Will Proceed
You’ll recall how last year, the heads of EA and Activision took delicious potshots against each other through the media. Awesomeness. Soon after, it was alleged that infinity Ward delayed some aspects of Modern Warfare 2 in order to benefit EA. That allegation came as part of an ongoing court battle between Activision and former Infinity Ward heads over their moving over to Electronic Arts. A trial, also aimed at EA, was eventually scheduled for May 7, 2012.
Obviously, EA doesn’t want to be sued, so they requested the case be dismissed on the grounds that there is insufficient evidence to prove that they recruited Infinity Ward’s Jason West and Vince Zampella inappropriately while the two were still under contract with Activision. The presiding judge disagrees, and the case will go forward as planned. This is delicious for those of us who love drama, but it also raises the interesting possibility that we might see a real challenge to the amount of control a company has over their employees actions. Either way, May, 2012 is going to be a lot of fun.
So, last week we got our first look at Alan Wake’s American Nightmare, the new episodic sequel to Alan Wake that will have Alan face various evil baddies inspired by American horror lore. And, now, we get to look at it for the first time again, because we have an extended edition of the original trailer. It looks pretty sweet and perhaps more intense than most of the first game, and I’m ready for this crap. Ready, indeed. Watch this.
The Star Wars: The Old Republic early access period is going swimmingly, if we are to believe Cowen & Company analyst Doug Creutz, who says that, based on the fact that EA had 140 servers going for the game on Saturday, there could be as many as 1.5 million users playing the game already.
It’s not even launch day yet, and it looks like the game is doing pretty well. And if they had 1.5 million on Saturday, one can only imagine how many they’ll have when everybody actually gets to play it all at once tomorrow. I bet it’ll have a lot.
That’s Star Wars for you. So many people still love that name, even though it no longer makes sense to do so. Whatevs.
There’s no doubt Skyrim is an incredible experience. It did top our list of the year’s best RPGs, after all. But wouldn’t it be even better if some otherwise normal gameplay element was transformed so that it would be consistently hilarious? Voila! I give you Skyrim modder Snoopey’s Singing Autotune Bear Mod
See? Genius. The fact that it only affects bears is the best part. Tired of Autotuning? just leave nature. So I don’t want to see autotune dragons or autotune people who used to go adventuring until they took and arrow to the knee or anything stupid like that, OK?
The mod is hosted over at Skyrim Nexus. So people, get to installing it and tell us how it worked for you.
Read: Autotune Bears In Skyrim Gamefront News: Batman: Arkham City Challenge Map Pack Goes Live (TRAILER)
Rocksteady just dished out some new Challenge mode DLC for Batman: Arkham City, including the new Batcave map. We’ve got a trailer below detailing what you’ll be getting out of it.
If you prefer text, though, here’s a quick rundown: You get The Batcave, a new map, plus the Joker’s Carnival and Iceberg Lounge. The latter two maps were previously only available as pre-order bonuses from GameStop and the Arkham City Collector’s Edition, respectively. You can see the Batcave in action below, and you can pick up the map pack on 240 MS Points on Xbox Live or about $2.50 on Steam and the Playstation Network.
DICE loves to bury hints at future releases in its titles, and the recently discovered photo above might just hint at such a thing — although maybe the Internet is doing that thing were it reads faaar too much into a random image stenciled on an in-game wall.
As you can see, the number 2143 appears in the above image from Battlefield 3, which could be an Easter egg hinting at Battlefield 2143, an as-yet-unannounced potential sequel to Battlefield 2142. That game previously showed up in Easter eggs in Battlefield 2: Euro Force and Armored Fury in 2006, way before it was announced. Could we be seeing something similar here?
The launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic seems to have been pretty successful, a few technical issues notwithstanding, and players are finding themselves waiting in lengthy queues in order to get into games. That’s good, in a sense — lots of people playing is the whole point — but at the same time, it means a frustrating inability to find places to play.
Lots of servers are seeing high population density and players needing to queue up to access their characters on those servers. BioWare has heard a lot of requests from players to transfer their characters to other servers, but currently, SWTOR doesn’t support that capability. To deal with the high influx of players, it sounds like BioWare is working on a character transfer ability, but there’s no ETA on it.
Meanwhile, if you’re trying to get into a server with a consistently high population, BioWare advises that they’re seeing these servers hit their absolute limits as far as population. That means you’re not getting in until someone gets out.
BioWare devs are recommending that players who want to avoid queuing up to roll some new characters on a few of the less buys servers. Fire up a few of the less-populated servers and try out a different character. There are quite a few you could roll, after all. Here’s a list of high-population servers BioWare recommends players avoid:
Back in July, we reported that Star Wars: The Old Republic creative director James Ohlen promised fans that the new Star Wars MMO would last for decades. In August, TOR writer Daniel Erickson claimed Ohlen was only kidding.
However, in a recent interview with Gamasutra, James Ohlen and BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk made statements that suggest they are, in fact, in it for the long haul.
Ohlen said:
Unlike a lot of other game companies that, once they launch a game, downsize their teams radically, our plan is to keep the team together and continue to focus on building content. [...] We’re very much focused on Star Wars, Star Wars, Star Wars for the foreseeable future.
Apparently wanting to one-up Ohlen’s promise of TOR lasting for decades, Greg Zeschuk added:
It’s hard to say right now what we may or may not do as far as future projects. We’re really busy working on future SWTOR content as well as continuing to improve the service. This will never end.
Remember back when DICE was taking pre-orders for Battlefield 3? Like a lot of games, it offered two different DLC packs through two different pre-order programs. Pre-order from one outlet and you’d get the Back to Karkand DLC pack. Pre-order from another, you got the Physical Warfare DLC pack. But you could only achieve one or the other.
This pissed off quite a few Battlefield fans, and even resulted in a boycott of the game by fans who were annoyed they could never get All The DLC. In order to cool things down, Electronic Arts and DICE compromised by announcing that they’d give away the Physical Warfare pack to everybody sometime in the future, for the low cost of free.
Welcome to the future, friends.
The pack comes with new weapons — the Type 88 LMG, a Flash Suppressor for the SKS Sniper Rifle, the DAO-12 Shotgun and Flachette ammo to fire with it. The Physical Warfare pack is available for download on PC and Xbox 360 right now; Playstation Network players have had it available to them for a while.
Developers at BioWare told Wired this week that they’d be looking to the extremely popular and well-selling The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for inspiration when building the next title in the Dragon Age series. As you probably already know, Dragon Age II was both lauded and hated for some of its design elements this year (and for feeling rushed out), and BioWare went so far as to change the game somewhat substantially through DLC, addressing things like repeated environments and enemies.
BioWare is looking to take some of the improvements it made in Dragon Age II and marry it to the things people loved about Dragon Age: Origins, and that sounds like it’s the primary design goal and hurdle for the Dragon Age series as it approaches a third installment. It’s not officially announced yet, but there have been rumors about multiplayer elements and playable dragons, and BioWare has been coy about the whole thing thus far.
What inspiration BioWare might take from Skyrim and other open-world games isn’t really clear and the developer didn’t elaborate to Wired. But what it does seem like BioWare is very keen on is addressing just about all the fan feedback it received on the last two Dragon Age titles. So if you’re really adamant about something about the next DA game, it may actually pay for you to go voice your opinion on the forums. Sounds like BioWare is listening.
There’s a lot of money that got sunk in Star Wars: The Old Republic to make it the gaming event it has become in the last few days. It has millions of players on it, so I suppose that paid off. But if the Star Wars route wasn’t going to work out, BioWare had some other ideas — like basing the game on The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, or Game of Thrones.
Originally, a three-man team drew up the 10-page design document that was the start of SWTOR, PC Gamer reports. The publication spoke with Director James Ohlen, who said that in the early stages of developing the MMO, a compelling narrative was the most important aspect. Ohlen said his vision for the game from the beginning was a story-driven MMO, “…because hey, it hadn’t been done before.”
While BioWare was in its lengthy negotiations with LucasArts over the rights to use Star Wars, the developer considered other possible settings, like George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels and Stephen King’s Dark Tower series.
The day before the launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic, BioWare took a few minutes to address concerns that the official release would result in large queues for players, promising that though they would happen, they would be “manageable and reasonable“. Are they? For the most part, apparently, but I’ve been seeing a ton of tweeting players complaining about the wait. Not to worry though, BioWare is on the case… gradually.
In a post to the The Old Republic forums today, they acknowledge lengthy wait times and promised that they’re working on the problem. Here’s that post in full:
“Hey folks, as you may likely have seen in the last 24 hours, we’ve been redoubling our efforts in optimally managing the time it takes to get into Star Wars: The Old Republic.
The BioWare Live Team has been carefully watching the influx of players into the game and is addressing with surgical precision the longer wait times on the small number of servers that were having longer wait times previously. We’ve also being doing our best to get every little bit of possible performance on our servers to increase capacity: we’ve “turned them up to 11” to do our very best to get you in and playing as quickly as possible. As a result – you should now be seeing significant improvement versus waiting times at the end of last week.
We’re also addressing the concerns about losing your place in line if you happen to disconnect for some reason before getting into the game. We’ve been working very hard on this and are performing final testing on potential solutions.
Pretty soon, Waves is getting a free update in the form of brand new Chase mode. To prove they’re actually doing this, the good people at squid in a box have released this work in progress footage that, honestly, is pretty awesome. And I’m not just saying that because the music is wonderful.
(This is another edition of , a weekly opinion piece column on GameFront. Check back every week for more. The opinions expressed are those of the author, and do not reflect those of GameFront.)
Activision is an evil company, we all know that. I used to make a hobby out of seeing just how much I could hate Activision on any given day, pushing myself to new boundaries of pure, unbridled venom. This year, however, Activision has looked positively saintly when seated next to Electronic Arts (which they’re doing in court), a company that was once considered public enemy number one, started to earn good favor, and then deftly reclaimed its position as the arch nemesis of decent human beings everywhere. It’s somewhat amusing that EA has spent so many years trying to beat its rival publishers in various genres, but the only thing it’s “won” during that battle is a far greater level of resentment and animosity from gamers.
There are dozens of reasons to hate EA. Just this year, it has committed crimes both galling and trivial, both offensive and ridiculous. In 2011, it popularized the vile “Online Pass” practice to such a degree that it’ll likely become standard, it put subscription fees in Tetris, it barged into the “freemium” market with $60 Theme Park rides and $100 Need for Speed cars, and it introduced us to Origin, one of the most pointless services in the history of videogames. Those are just a few examples from this year alone. Somehow, even stood next to the Satanic corruption that is Activision, EA has managed to make itself look like the sleaziest publisher on the planet, and that’s an almost impressive feat.
GameFly is pushing its way into the PC digital download market, releasing the client for the service as a public beta.
It’s particularly good for GameFly members, packing an unlimited play feature that allows members to run several different games as much as they want, with the cost rolled into their monthly GameFly membership fees. It sounds a bit like OnLive (minus, perhaps, the streaming), with a few worthwhile titles mixed in that you can access for basically nothing if you’re already into GameFly.
The rest of the client is the massive database of games to sell the company acquired when it bought Direct2Drive, so you can purchase PC titles directly through the portal. As if you need another place to buy PC games — especially with a Steam holiday sale going on.
The third of four Season Pass Gears of War 3 DLC packs, Fenix Rising, is headed to Xbox Live come January.
The new pack features a mess of new multiplayer stuff for the third-person shooter, according to a press release from Epic Games, including a new experience system for multiplayer that takes a page from Call of Duty’s Prestige system. It’s called “Re-up,” and allows players who hit level 100 to “re-up” as many as three times, gaining a new icon next to their name each time they do to demonstrate how much better they are than other players. They also get exclusive weapon skins:
Re-Up Plasma – Animated flowing plasma in gold.
Re-Up Omen – Shiny, red Omen.
Re-Up Electric – Animated, golden electric shocks.
The primary thrust of the DLC pack will be five new multiplayer maps, all centered around the family of protagonist Marcus Fenix. Here’s the list with Epic’s descriptions:
Are you excited about the March, 2012 release of Max Payne 3? Perhaps you should be. Did you know it’s been nearly 9 years since Rockstar games released a Max Payne game? I’m not kidding, it really has been longer than a typical successful presidency.
The reason for this is that despite positive critical response, Max Payne 2 kind of tanked, and it hurt the franchise. Yes, it probably sold about 2 million copies, but the original Max Payne sold closer to 5, and to this day the series total hovers around 7 million sold. That’s disappointing, especially compared to Rockstar’s GTA series which, at the time Max Payne 3 was released, had already enjoyed the staggering success of III (12 million copies to date) and Vice City (17 million), and they were less than a year away from San Andreas (the third best selling game of all time).
The fact that the 2008 Max Payne movie was absolutely terrible probably didn’t help, but at long last, Rockstar is bring back Max Payne for a third installment, and they’ve concocted an interesting gimmick – dah, I mean, interesting promotion – to drum up buzz for it. They’re selecting 8 lucky players to have their likenesses immortalized FOREVER, or at least until people stop playing Max Payne 3 the second GTA V comes out, as playable characters in Max Payne 3 multiplayer.
Tom’s Hardware recently got a hold of early price listings for Intel’s Ivy Bridge processors and compared them to their current generation Sandy Bridge counterparts. The results look promising: the price points are comparable.
Tom’s Hardware has produced a neat table that spells out the pricing details; check it out.
As the picture above demonstrates, Tom’s preliminary results demonstrate that Ivy Bridge processors outperform Sandy Bridges, especially when it comes to gaming, so Ivy over Sandy is a no-brainer for anyone building a new system. The question is, does the increase in performance justify the cost for those who already own Sandy Bridges?
Market research is showing that more gamers spent their gaming dollars outside of traditional brick-and-mortar retail stores than inside in the third quarter of 2011.
The numbers come from NPD Group, which states that U.S. gamers spent $1.64 billion on gaming in Q3 2011 without actually going to a retail store. That includes a lot of things, though — including rentals, used game sales, digital downloads, DLC, Facebook games, subscriptions and mobile games.
On the flip, U.S. gamers spent roughly $1.3 billion in retail stores on new games. Once you throw in hardware and accessories and the like, the total number of gaming spending for the quarter goes up to $4.2 billion — about 11 percent less than gamers spent during the same period in 2010.
It’ll be interesting to see the numbers that account for November of this year, though. Chances are good that with all the huge releases in 2011 that were packed up right ahead of the holiday season, the story these numbers tell could change.
Happy holidays y’all. And I mean all y’all. They even have a winter gift giving holiday in the Planes of Telara, and the people behind Rift: Planes of Telera have created this video to prove it. Enjoy the delightful evil snowmen, the shiny winter lights, the magical winter fighting and best of all, the ferocious Christmas Tree of Doom.
With all eyes on the Old Republic, other MMOs have been having a hard time making headlines lately. Let’s turn our attention to five other big names in the MMO world and see what they’ve been doing in response to TOR’s launch. Are they competing for the spotlight, or bowing in submission?
World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft has remained surprisingly quiet during TOR’s launch. Apart from some more Patch 4.3 hotfixes, which mainly contain nerfs to the difficulty of some dungeons and raids, WoW is letting TOR have its moment in the spotlight. Or, more likely, Blizzard is gathering intelligence and planning a surgical strike that will have former WoW players dropping their lightsabers and running back to suckle on the Lich King’s frozen teat.
RIFT
Rift continues to celebrate its ongoing holiday of Fae Yule, a world event of such merriment and whimsy that only a video could do it justice:
In a revealing interview with Eurogamer, Naughty Dog studio co-president Evan Wells admitted that the developer is intimidated by the transition to the 8th generation of consoles. “The geek inside you is always excited about a shiny new toy”, Wells said, “but then the practicality of it starts to set in: this is going to be a lot of hard work. When you’re going to new technology, every day is a slog, progress is slow and it really takes a different kind of attitude and mentality to get through that kind of push and it’s not right for everybody.”
Wells discussed the transition from gen 6 to gen 7, saying that “Naughty Dog had its darkest days and we lost people on a weekly basis – people just couldn’t get through it”. Naughty Dog’s other co-president, Christopher Balestra, added that the process is ‘terrifying’, admitting that “We made some mistakes with our move from PS2 to PS3 and we won’t make those again.” The benefit? Naughty Dog is going into the current transition far more aware of the challenges ahead than last time.
I should certainly hope so. It would be insanely stupid for Uncharted 4 not to lunch with Playstation 4. As for me, I’m just hoping it’s better than the initially incredible but in retrospect highly disappointing Drake’s Deception.
Eurogamer is drawing attention to something that adds even more fuel to the new XBLA dashboard sucks fire. It seems the video player doesn’t work right anymore. A sizable number of Xbox owners are complaining that the new dashboard forces videos to run at lower RGB levels, causing video colors to have a grainy, washed out quality.
Here’s a comparison:
Old Dashboard:
New Dashboard:
Not the worst thing in the world, but pretty noticeable. Making matters worse, Microsoft is apparently aware of the problem because it was pointed out by numerous users during beta. Microsoft responded to the complaints by deleting the thread and adding this nice bit of passive-aggressive kthxbye:
“Thanks for the feedback! Though we will not be able to incorporate your feedback into this release we will save it for consideration in future releases. Thanks for using the new Xbox Update and please keep up the feedback!”
Nice! So this would appear to be by design, in which case, why? Is it related to the way Microsoft casually told indie developers to F-off? Or is it simply something they don’t care about and choose not to deal with. Perhaps the public stink will change their minds, so add our voice to that. In the meantime, Eurogamer has a fairly detailed breakdown of the whole thing, worth looking at in full.
Modern Warfare 3 players should expect big things in 2012, at least if Infinity Ward’s Robert Bowling isn’t just talking out of his multiplayer map. Talking in a COD Elite Video nabbed first by CVG, he revealed that the first scheduled MW3 DLC – yes, actual DLC and not just a map pack – drops in January. And he’s hinting at big things. “The way we’re doing downloadable content this year is unlike we’ve never done before. Not only in how you can get it – in content drops or choose for the collection – but also the type of content you’re getting.”
If that sounds familiar, it’s because he’s basically talking about the promised premium content for Call of Duty: Elite that we spent so much time talking about last fall. Even so, it’s a tantalizing hint that the Call of duty multiplayer experience is going to be vastly improved, at least for Elite Premium members. Alas, it’s only for Xbox, at least at first. That much was confirmed by an Activision spokesperson who told Computer and Videogames: “Today we informed the Call of Duty Elite Premium community that the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Elite Content Season will officially kick off on January 24 for Xbox users. We’ll have more details about the entire 2012 MW3 Content Season in early January, so stay tuned for updates.”
A few recent leaks in the competitive world of graphics cards have revealed benchmarks for NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 780 and AMD’s Radeon HD 7970. 2012 is shaping up to be a great year for PC gaming eye-candy.
The above picture shows the huge jump in performance between the current GTX 580 and the next-gen GTX 780, using a Core i7-3960X as a test system, running at 2560×1600 resolution with both AA and AF enabled. Your eyes aren’t deceiving you — that looks like double the performance.
NIVIDIA’s leak came shortly after AMD’s:
New Dashboard:
The AMD Radeon HD 7970, rumored to launch December 22nd, boasts an average performance increase of 50% relative to the Radeon 6970 when it comes to tesselation. Was the NVIDIA “leak” an effort to one-up AMD’s leak?
Of course, both of these leaked pictures should be taken with a grain of salt until anything official is released.
Note: this is not a Humble Bundle. This is some other guys making something that is very much like a Humble Bundle. We’re cool with this, because the more there are things that are like a Humble Bundle, the better.
This is the Little Big Bunch, created by Get Games. It comes with Explodemon, Frozen Synapse, NS Soccer 5, Munch’s Odyssey and Serious Sam Double D. You pay what you want for it, and you decide how much of your payment goes to the developers or the charity Games Aid.
It is, of course, not a bad deal. Frozen Synapse, for one, is a $15 game, so you’ll probably be getting the whole bundle for less than what that one game is worth. Pretty good. Get the Little Big Bunch here.
Indie developers really hate the new Xbox Live dashboard. And with good reason! It’s not only an ad-infused eyesore difficult to navigate unless you have a stupid Kinect, they absolutely buried the Indie Games Marketplace, requiring players to make a ridiculous 16 clicks to find it. So what do you do if you’ve been handed what feels like a deliberate middle finger from microsoft? Why you return the favor, as Indie Devs Mommy’s Best Games has done with their latest game, a hilarious digitized f*ck you back to the new dashboard called ‘Game Type’.
Remember the Game-breaking Skyward Sword glitch we told you about a few days back? At the time, there was no word on when or how Nintendo would get around to fixing the problem, only advice on how to avoid it. Now, however, word comes that Nintendo has opted for the most convoluted and Wii-Channel-justifying solution possible: They’re creating a Skyward Sword Channel that, when installed on your Wii dash, will fix your broken game, assuming you still have the same saved game.
Called the “Zelda Data Restoration Channel”, it became available today. Download it from the Wii Shopping Channel, in the Wii Channel section and go from there.
If you are fluent in Japanese, you can check out the original announcement on the official Nintendo Japan site.
The good people behind Dungeon Defenders have released possibly the most awesome holiday-themed DLC of the year. For only 10 bucks, players get 4 new skins – Apprentice -Santa Clause, Mrs. Santa Squire, The Huntress as Santa’s Little Helper, and Monk as Rudolph. There’s also a new challenge mission, 4 new weapons and a new boss, the Mega Snowman. And 10 bucks, right now on Steam!
Anyway, I can’t do justice to the description on Steam, so here’s the pitch, wrapped up and placed under the tree:
Celebrate the Winter Holidays in Etheria with the Etherian Holiday Extravaganza! event!
Mega Snowman and his minions are out to stop Santa from spreading joy through the land of Etheria this Holiday Season. Santa can’t do it alone so he’s enlisted your help to deliver and defend his presents! Though, those aren’t the only things that may need protecting… when Mega Snowman gets fed up, it’ll take the strongest heroes to defeat him and save Christmas!
Remember the Game-breaking Skyward Sword glitch we told you about a few days back? At the time, there was no word on when or how Nintendo would get around to fixing the problem, only advice on how to avoid it. Now, however, word comes that Nintendo has opted for the most convoluted and Wii-Channel-justifying solution possible: They’re creating a Skyward Sword Channel that, when installed on your Wii dash, will fix your broken game, assuming you still have the same saved game.
Called the “Zelda Data Restoration Channel”, it became available today. Download it from the Wii Shopping Channel, in the Wii Channel section and go from there.
If you are fluent in Japanese, you can check out the original announcement on the official Nintendo Japan site.
Vita launched in Japan on Saturday, and it sold an impressive $728,000 units upon release. That’s got to have a lot to do with its much stronger slate of launch titles than the weaksauce lineup Nintendo paired with the launch of 3DS. But naturally a hand-held with as many features as Vita is going to have problems, and the reports are coming in fast and furious*. It seems launch copies are experiencing numerous issues with the touchscreen, in which it simply doesn’t register contact without making several attempts, and an annoying tendency to freeze when certain applications are activated.
Here’s a video posted to YouTube by one such customer aptly demonstrating the problem:
I half expected to hear “ファック. 君.” or some similar oath, but Japanese people are far more polite than I am. Of course, as Jim Sterling wisely notes over on Destructoid, this is to be expected, considering the tech is new and feature-rich. Hopefully Sony will have a few of these kinks worked out by the time Vita launches stateside on February. In the meantime, Japanese Vita owners can take heart in the fact that they can still feel infinitely superior to people like me who own 3DS.
Prototype 2 introduces a new gameplay mechanic to the series; that of “hunting,” in which you learn about some guy you need to consume, and then you scour the city looking for him. Rather than simply having a marker on the map that shows you where he is, you actually have to do some searching. That’s fine, just fine. Learn all about it in this video.
Sony is out to make it absolutely clear that, despite Nintendo’s increasingly dismal track record, it is in fact quite possible to have a decent slate of games available the day you release your new gaming device. They’ve released the full list of games that will be available on day one when Vita launches on February 23, and it’s actually awesome. Without further ado, here’s what you’ll be choosing from:
SCEA Launch Day Titles:
Escape Plan (PSN Only)
Hot Shots Golf: World Invitational
Hustle Kings (PSN Only)
Little Deviants
ModNation Racers: Road Trip
Super StarDust Delta (PSN only)
UNCHARTED: Golden Abyss
wipEout 2048
Launch Window Titles:
Gravity Rush
MLB 12 The Show
Reality Fighters
Unit 13
Those of you looking forward to getting your hands on one of Razer’s upcoming Blade gaming laptop are going to have to wait a little bit longer. The bad news was announced in a post to Razer’s facebook page by co-founder Min-Liang Tan. It’s not actually bad news, however. According Tan, the delay is because they’ve been able to renegotiate the price of certain components and are subsequently buffing the hell out of the Blade.
How much the hell? For starters, they’re replacing the 320GB HDD with a 256 SSD drive. That’s… pretty awesome. And better still, the price won’t change a bit. The Blade is still going to cost a hefty $2799.00, but considering the improvement, that almost seems like a bargain. The problem is that the improvement came at nearly the last moment, which means Razer won’t be able to fill orders before the end of the holiday season. The Razer Blade will now ship in January. To make up for the delay, people who visit their online shop and select ‘Notify me’ will now also recieve a coupon for a free Razer gaming mouse. That’s pretty awesome.
Read: Razer Blade Laptops Delayed Gamefront News: Registration For F1 Online Closed Beta Has Started Its Engines
Codemasters acquired the rights to make video games based on the Formula One brand a few years back and have proceeded to release three F1 games since – f1 2009, F1 2010 and F1 2011. They’ve also been cooking up a racetrack-sized mmo version of the Franchise, a F2P called F1 Online. That game is set to launch next year and as of today you can sign up to join in on the closed beta test. You can register for the closed beta here and in the meantime, enjoy the new trailer.
According to the rumors section of the latest issue of PC Gamer magazine, Relic is working both on a Dawn of War game and “something to do with” Company of Heroes, an RTS title released in 2006 to critical acclaim. Two standalone expansion packs, Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts and Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor, were released in 2007 and 2009, respectively, but failed to reach the high standards set by the original.
Last we heard, Company of Heroes Online was canceled. Given the diminishing review scores of the expansion packs — which plummeted the franchise from a 93% to a 70% on Metacritic — it’s difficult to believe we’re in for another standalone sequel. While Relic revive the franchise with a long-awaited sequel, or will this be a Space Marine-esque spin-off?
Remedy is spreading around some new details about the upcoming Xbox Live downloadable follow-up to Alan Wake. The latest feature to hit Alan Wake’s American Nightmare: Arcade mode.
In addition to its single-player campaign, the game will feature a mode called “Fight Til Dawn,” which has players taking on the role of Wake and fighting of waves of the game’s possessed enemies, the Taken, using a handful of available resources like guns, flares and the game’s signature flashlight.
For those unfamiliar, Taken enemies (who exclusively use melee weapons but can sometimes throw them at you) are imbued with darkness that has to be banished with light before Wake can kill them with more conventional weapons. That means blasting bad guys with your flashlight or flares before taking them out with shotguns — or nail guns and uzis, as the case may be in American Nightmare.
From the sounds of things, you’ll be sprinting around a closed arena that’ll be littered with weapon drops and unlockable weapons caches, as well as the game’s heavily lit “safe havens.” It’ll also include online leaderboards.
Alan Wake’s American Nightmare is due out in the middle of the first quarter of 2012.
I haven’t had a chance to play Renegade Ops, but it does look like fun. The game consists of tons of top-down vehicle-based blowing-up-of-things, and I can get behind that. Plus there’s a Steam sale on right now, so who knows — I may end up owning this game by the end of the week.
Meanwhile, this trailer makes me think that that might not be a bad proposition, given that lots of other gaming outlets seem to enjoy it. Me, I just enjoy things that were previously whole becoming not whole in a fiery blast.
Risen 2: Dark Waters, that RPG sequel everybody was surprised to learn exists, now has a release date, and that date is April 27. That’s the official word, anyway. So now we know when we’ll be able to get our third-person pirate on in 2012. Yay! We are so darn excited.
In other news, the Tennessee Titans suck, and I hate that I’m a fan of them. Sigh. Moving on…
You’ll be able to play Risen 2 on the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
Gamers, and anyone else who likes the idea of a free Internet, rejoice: the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) has been pushed back again! Last week we brought you news that a scheduled full House vote over the attempt to ruin the Internet for everyone had been cancelled so that the House Judiciary Committee could continue to examine concerns, raised by some opponents of the bill, that certain provisions would actually lead to increased online security risks. Despite initial reports that the delay was indefinite, the very next day the committee announced a new hearing scheduled for Wednesday, December 21.
Fortunately, the US Congress opted today to enter winter recess at the close of today’s congressional session instead of tomorrow night as originally planned. Therefore, as confirmed by Judiciary Committee spokeswoman Kim Smith, the committee had to postpone the hearing until “early next year“. Awesomeness. This doesn’t mean we’re out of the water of course. Despite being a legal nightmare that robs online users of their first amendment rights by depriving them of their fourth amendment rights, and despite awarding non-governmental actors accountability-free legal authority to destroy their competition on the slightest insinuation of broadly defined copyright infringement, the bill retains strong support in Congress. So we’d best get to work increasing the pressure on our representatives who might not understand how deeply unpopular this thing is.
Read: SOPA Hearing Pushed Back To 2012 Gamefront News: Sony Sued For Putting ‘You Can’t Sue Us’ Clause in Playstation Network Terms of Service
It’s almost ironic, but this is the way the legal system works. Hilariously.
Not too long ago, Sony updated the terms of service for the Playstation Network and included a clause that said you couldn’t file a class-action lawsuit against Sony (for situations like, you know, paying for service and then losing service and a bunch of personal information after a massive security breach knocked out the network for a month). By using the Playstation Network, you automatically agreed to those terms of service, the reasoning went. It was like signing a contract, and in that contract, you agreed not to sue. Just by using the Playstation Network.
I’ve felt the legality of that particular clause probably wouldn’t hold up to judicial scrutiny, and it appears I’m not the only one. According to GameSpot, somebody has gone and filed a class-action lawsuit — even though Sony expressly told them not to. That’s just rude.
Anyway, the lawsuit alleges that Sony forced users to give up their rights to legal recourse and that it didn’t make the provision added to the ToS clear and apparent enough to users for them to know they were giving up their rights. The suit was filed by a Northern California man and the paperwork says it’s on behalf of all PSN users who purchased a Playstation 3 and used the network before the update went through in September.
Gone but not forgotten, Star Wars: Galaxies will long live in our hearts and minds. If, that is, you played it. 8 years is a long time for an MMO, particularly one that often struggled, and though the word is that The Old Republic is awesome, it’s bittersweet for fans of the game TOR killed. Which is why Sony Online Entertainment have created a massive, 253 page book chronicling the game’s long run with screenshots, comprehensive lore and even a timeline. They book closes with a tribute to the community that says it better than we can:
The explosions marking the Empire’s end could be seen across the galaxy in the skies above the planets, and the celebrations that followed were unmatched. Peace reigned as Star Destroyers and dark lords became memories of another era, of a time long past, of galaxies long gone.
Gone, but not forgotten.
Indeed. You can view the whole thing or download the Pdf directly from SOE.
The Australian Classification Board has refused classification on Starbreeze’s upcoming Syndicate reboot. With the game listed RC on the Classification Board’s website, only a successful appeal will prevent this game from being effectively banned in the land down under.
Any game that rates above “MA 15+” is refused classification — meaning games deemed not suitable for people under the age of 15 don’t pass muster. This can only be a secret government plot to make games in Australia such a rare commodity that its people will understand why games in Australia are overpriced relative to elsewhere in the world.
If you haven’t seen it, check out the Syndicate – Pay Day trailer. If you live in Australia, this may be the closest you’ll get to playing this game.
The US Army’s Dismounted Soldier Training System sounds like one of the greatest shooters you’ll never play. Unless, that it, you’re willing to commit to a 4 or 8 year contract. That’s because the ‘game’ is, or rather will be, exactly what it says on the box. Still in-development by Intelligent Decisions, the game is the result of a 57 million dollar grant from the Military to create a combat simulator more realistic than anything previously seen. If it works as promised, Dismounted Soldier Training System will feature realistic vehicles and stunningly accurate environmental elements including weather.
Dismounted Soldier Training System is built on CryEngine 3 (CryEngine is also used to make the Far Cry series). Two new videos have made their way online, both demonstrating that learning to be a soldier is a hell of a lot nerdier than in the days of Full Metal jacket*.
Here’s the in-engine cinematic video:
And here’s a video showing off the technology behind the game.
Apparently, the BBC put together an MMO based on its highly popular reboot show, “Dr. Who.” Apparently that MMO is in public preview right now. That means, apparently, that you can play it right this second.
It’s called Dr. Who: Worlds in Time, and it’s a casual, free-to-play MMO from Sega-owned studio Three Rings. You can join up by hitting up DrWhoWIT.com. You’ll quickly slap together a character from one of four races, then jump straight into the action, where Dr. Who himself will dish out quests that you’ll need to complete with other players. There, you’ll explore locales from the show and deal with signature enemies: specifically, Daleks and Cybermen, and the creepiest of the creepy, the Weeping Angels.
The game launches commercially starting in the first quarter of 2012, and being free-to-play, it’ll run on microtransactions that sound like they’re similar to the kind of thing you’d see in games such as FarmVille. You’ll be able to buy items and implements that will accelerate your progress through the game.
Tearing yourself away from Star Wars: The Old Republic to give Dr. Who: Worlds in Time a go? Let us know what you think in the comments.
If you play Rift, be warned: The Rift database has been hacked. Trion Worlds confirmed that unfortunate fact earlier today in a statement posted to their official site. Though they insist that there is “no reason to believe, that full credit card information was accessed or compromised in any way”, they acknowledge that hacked data may include user names and passwords, billing addresses, DOB and email address, and most importantly, the first and last four digits of stored credit card information. Yikes!
“We have already taken further action to strengthen our systems,” the statement continues, “even as we, with external security experts, continue to research the extent of the unauthorized access.” Needless to say, if you’re a Rift player, now would be the time to start changing your passwords and other information, and to keep a close eye on your financial records to make sure you haven’t been compromised.
THQ has been engaged in a very bitter battle with Ubisoft over allegations that THQ had ‘poached’ Ubisoft Monstreal employees in violation of said employees’ noncompete contract clauses. Setting aside the odious nature of such clauses, a ruling against THQ could have significantly hurt them, forcing them to cease development on games created using contested staffers. Luckily, the presiding judge didn’t agree with Ubisoft, and ruled against them. As if they’d wielded a legal argument combined with a giant floppy purple dildo, THQ had bashed in Ubisoft’s hope of restricting where their former employees may work, and THQ may thus continue to hire who they like.
On the ruling, THQ’s Ed Kaufman said “The Court of Appeal’s decision is a tremendous victory for THQ Montreal and all of the creative talent working in the video game industry in Montreal. We are thrilled with the Court’s decision in this matter because we believe strongly in an individual’s freedom to choose where they want to be employed. Our goal has always been to promote free competition and to allow the many creative talent in the interactive entertainment industry in Montreal to be able to choose where they want to work. We believe the Court of Appeal’s decision will promote competition, alleviate people’s fears and encourage more talented people to join Patrice and our other creative employees at our state-of-the-art studio in Montreal.”
We know Spike TV’s Video Game Awards are basically a giant marketing scheme designed to further reward the year’s most successful games. So they’re meaningless. Even so, it was kind of lame that the prize for best character went to The Joker from Arkham City. I’m with Rock, Paper, Shotgun in feeling a bit ‘come on, really’ about it. Anyway, since they had the actual characters themselves ‘accept’ the award, each of the nominees’ developers created an acceptance video just in case. Here’s what we would have seen had Wheatley from Portal 2 won.
Gamefront News: Zynga Stock Falling After $1 Billion Initial Public Offering
FarmVille maker Zynga made an initial public offering for its company on Dec. 17, selling 100 million shares at $10 each, but its stock has been all over the place since it became available.
According to Business Insider, Zynga stock had fallen 4 percent from its $10 initial price, down to about $9.10, on the second morning of trading; then it closed at $9.05, a dip of nearly 10 percent.
Bloomberg is predicting even more volatility out of the stock. Analyst Paul Kedrosky thinks the stock will bottom out at $6 during the next six months, citing a weak market coupled with “weak fundamentals” from Zynga itself.
It’s not all bad news. In fact, Zynga’s IPO raised $1 billion, which makes it the biggest tech IPO since Google way back in 2004. Investors and traders might be causing the stock to fluctuate, but at least Zynga has some scratch to do something with. It might be a little too early to start shouting the social game maker’s doom.
Grand Theft Auto San Andreas: Grand Theft Auto 3 – 10 Year Anniversary iOS Launch Trailer
Gamefront News: Grand Theft Auto 3 – 10 Year Anniversary iOS Launch Trailer
Jeez, can you believe it’s been a decade since GTA III came out? Seriously, it’s difficult to even imagine what it was like before I played it; the only thing comparable is the effect DOOM and Quake had on everything in the 90s. But 10 years old it is, and as befits what is now hopelessly outdated software, there’s an iOS version, which sounds pretty cool. Something violent and amoral to do with my iPad!
Gamefront News: Team Fortress 2 Having Another Australian Christmas
For the second year in a row, Valve is having an Australian Christmas in Team Fortress 2, whatever that means.
We may not understand it, but we know what they’re giving us. We’ll be getting a pair of “retro-futuristic” Dr. Grordbort class packs for the Pyro and Engineer. We’ll also be getting a bunch (14) of new hats and weapons and other items, and a new control point map called CP_Foundry.
And, of course, many items in the store will be on sale.
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12-27-2011 @ 04:40 - Gamefront: Weekly Network Update 51 (week 51, 2011) - Files Part 1
12-24-2011 @ 16:15 - Christmas roundup
