Steam has slashed the price of Fable III and all of its downloadable content by 66%, bringing the price of the game down to $16.99. Things are quiet on Steam otherwise this week aside from the usual pre-order discounts and a sale on Cogs ($3.40).
Both Amazon’s download service and GamersGate have several King’s Bounty games on sale. All things aside, Amazon looks like the way to go as its prices are lower — the Platinum Edition is just $4.99. Amazon also has its usual discounts on newer PC downloads; NBA 2K12 was added this week and is only $23.99.
With all of the press about Max Payne 3 this week, the first two Max Payne games have been put on sale at both Impulse and Direct2Drive. The bundle of the two games looks like the way to go — at less than $4 there’s a good deal of entertainment to be had from both games, even if the story is a bit crazy.
I like me some cross-over events in comics but I sure hope this is the last time it shows up in a Spider-Man video game for at least a couple of years. Last year’s Spidey adventure was split across various dimensions — this time around we have a time vortex as the central plot device starring Spider-Man 2099 and Amazing Spider-Man in developer Beenox’s latest, Spider-Man Edge of Time. It’s a capable superhero action game that demonstrates that the team is getting better at crafting a Spider-Man game, but like most comic-licensed properties there is still room for improvement.
The plot itself is… a little silly. But that’s why I like my superhero comics. This game nails the whole “comic book mini-series cross-over event” and Peter David (co-creator of Spider-Man 2099) deserves some props for the story. Each of the Spider-Men are well written and performed just as well with O’Hara’s inability to take a joke clashing with Parker’s wisecracks throughout the adventure.
L.A. Noire was a curious omission on PC given its genre. It launched on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and it was only after weeks of waiting that Rockstar delivered the official word that a PC version would be coming before the year was up. Each time I’ve covered a story about Noire’s PC port, I’ve mentioned the absence of another Rockstar hit, Red Dead Redemption, on PC — it’s been out for upwards of 16 months and Rockstar has still given no indication it plans to bring the game to computers.
The subject of Red Dead on PC and Rockstar allegedly abandoning the platform came up in an FAQ Rockstar published this week. The answer didn’t dive into any specifics, which is what we really want to know, but it did imply RDR on PC wouldn’t be viable.
“We hope that with the announcement that L.A. Noire is coming to PC this fall, and the knowledge that our next big game Max Payne 3 will have a PC release (plus that we’ve released both Grand Theft Auto IV and the Episodes from Liberty City for PC), we can finally put to rest any misconceptions that we’ve ‘abandoned the PC platform,’” the FAQ reads. “We do know that, yes, there is just one title absent from our PC release plans — that game of course being Red Dead Redemption, and of course we’re well aware that some fans have been asking for it.
Perhaps From Software’s devilishly dark fantasy role-playing game Demon’s Souls caught your eye back in 2009. It received nothing short of unanimous critical acclaim, after all. But one crucial caveat kept you at bay: its fiendish and unforgiving difficulty level. Here was a game that dared to brazenly buck modern-day accessibility trends, testing its audience’s patience and self-control in ways that made even the good ol’ 8-bit era look downright tame. Demon’s Souls never held your hand; it lopped your hand right off, beat you to death with it, took all your stuff, and forced you to get right back to work (sans said hand).
Two years later, spiritual successor Dark Souls remixes its forebear’s merciless mechanics, enticing you to eat that same saucer of crow once again. This time, you give in; you’ve steeled yourself for the inevitable torment, determined to prove your mettle against this game that dares to flaunt its unforgiving reputation front-and-center, with a foreboding “Prepare to die” tagline. Conquer this, and you can conquer anything, right? Well, welcome to the most hellish fun you could possibly have with a video game. You’re going to earn those bragging rights.
Rage didn’t start out the way I thought it would. My idea of it was mostly based on its initial reveal some years ago: depicting a barren wasteland where people live, drive, and dress in whatever they can find. Just another Mad Max pastiche, right? So imagine my surprise when the game begins inside a cold, angled underground capsule (an “Ark”) from a forgotten time in the far-flung future. I guess post-apocalyptic worlds have to start somewhere.
It’s a harsh beginning, but Rage doesn’t let up from there. After emerging on the surface of the largely-destroyed Earth, you’re saved from certain death by a kind-hearted wasteland homesteader named Dan Hagar (voiced by John Goodman, who also played a “Dan” on Roseanne, which was more than enough to keep me from taking this character seriously). Hagar wastes no time in employing your “services” to wipe out a nearby influx of mutants, and perform a few odd jobs around his settlement and the neighbors’. You get the hang of shootin’, drivin’, and survivin’, and eventually learn more about your past as an enhanced human candidate of the “Eden” project, initiated by the oppressive powers of the Authority, who try to keep this crazy world in check… for their own gains, of course.
If you’ve received any emails suggesting you’re in the Star Wars: The Old Republic beta but had previously gotten no indication you were actually in the beta, you don’t have to worry about them coming from spammers. They also don’t mean you’re now in the beta.
A pair of emails were sent out to a number of people yesterday who had signed up for the beta. One provided some encouragement to pre-order and mentioned, “Now that you’ve had a chance to experience your own Star Wars: The Old Republic saga, make sure you don’t miss out when the game launches.” The other offered thanks for participating in the beta and provided a link to a survey about the game. This left many people wondering if they had been added to the beta and not been informed.
In a post on the official TOR forums, senior community coordinator Allison Berryman explained that the emails were accidentally sent out to more people than intended. Having received the email doesn’t mean you’re in the beta right now, nor does it guarantee an invite is on the way.
Capcom doesn’t have a blanket policy when it comes to deciding whether or not to include a particularly annoying form of DRM with its PlayStation Network games. And at least for the time being, it’s going to stay that way.
“Sony has a form of network DRM that we have chosen to use on a couple of titles, really as much as an experiment as anything else, to see what the impact was,” Capcom’s U.S. vice president Christian Svensson told Eurogamer.
The DRM requires users to be connected to the Internet in order to play. This style of DRM is typically seen in computer games. Deemed a success by Ubisoft, it was planned to be used in Driver: San Francisco on PC before a public outcry led to the requirement being dropped so that players would only need to be online to open the game.
It was over three years ago that we first got our eyes on 2D/3D hybrid platformer Fez. Although it had been planned to be out before the year’s end, designer Phil Fish revealed on Twitter yesterday that its release has been pushed back by a month or two.
Fish didn’t provide an exact date for the game, only saying it’s coming to XBLA in “early 2012.” He explained, “A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever,” which prompted him to get a number of tweets about 3D Realms and the oft-delayed Duke Nukem Forever. His response? “ALWAYS BET ON FEZ.”
As for what prompted the delay, he stated that time spent on things like debugging, certification, and waiting on Microsoft adds up.
Though it took longer than expected, the first downloadable content pack for Portal 2 will soon be here on all three of the game’s platforms.
Portal 2: Peer Review, as it’s been officially titled, was announced shortly after the game’s release in April. It was scheduled for a summer release, and when it began to look like Valve wouldn’t meet that date, it reassured fans it would be out by mid-September. That date, too, came and went, but we now have an actual, hard date, and one that’s far too close for it to slip once again.
It’s never acknowledged at any point in X-Men Destiny that you’re one of the most powerful mutants to ever appear in the X-Men universe. You can freely swap out abilities and powers at will, setting enemies on fire one second and freezing them the next. It’s uncanny… astonishing even (see what I did there?). Yet when you’re approached by any of the X-Men or Magneto’s Brotherhood, this topic is never breached. You’re simply treated as a newb that needs some coaching throughout the game’s brief four hour adventure.
My core experience was with Aimi Yoshida, one of three different characters you choose to play as and little is done to differentiate them beyond their introductory cut-scenes. You’ll still have access to the same choices of powers and abilities, same levels to traverse, and the same bosses to defeat. Most of the interactions with the X-Men and Brotherhood throughout the game are also the same. And when you’re forced to choose a side, it doesn’t matter unless you’d rather hear either Cyclops or Magneto give a heavy handed speech at the end of the game. This lack of variety makes the whole concept of having to choose a character at the beginning of the game irrelevant.
