'Nooooo...' (at the thought of another WW2 shooter)
'NOOOOOOAAAAHRHRCCCCKKKHHHHHHHGGHHH!' (at the thought of crappy-COD3-developer Treyarch taking over the reins from COD4 demi-gods Infinity Ward)
(Ed. This actually sounds like a rumor, but we should all still be praying for Treyarch's immediate demise from the dev scene regardless)
GamesRadar has an amusing look at some of the more criminally-minded celebs to have graced us with their gaming presence...
Name: Tim Allen
Appeared in: Home Improvement (SNES), The Santa Clause 3 (GBA)
Heard in: Toy Story 2 (PC/PSone), Toy Story Racer (PSone)
Rap sheet: Tim Allen's stint in prison is rarely discussed, but hardly a secret; before he was synonymous with family-oriented comedies, Allen (then named Timothy Allen Dick) was a cocaine dealer (Wtf). In 1978, he was nabbed in Michigan while carrying more than a pound (somebody's coke bitch?) of the stuff, and subsequently served more than two years in prison before turning his life around and embarking on a career path that included some of the most aggressively mediocre tie-in games ever made.
Oh, so many more funny ones following the jump below...
Name: Danny Trejo
Appeared in: Def Jam: Fight for NY (PS2/Xbox)
Heard in: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (PS2/Xbox/PC), Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories (PSP/PS2)
Rap sheet: In movies or in games, Danny "Machete" Trejo has always been a scary-ass mofo, largely because he used to be one in real life. Specific details about his early life of crime are sketchy, although in an interview with the UK Guardian, he claims to have started by smoking pot at eight, doing heroin at 12 and then graduating to armed robbery, all of which put him in and out of jail through his teenage years before finally landing him in at least three separate California prisons between 1963 and 1972. Prison boxing and a 12-step program helped Trejo turn his life around, and his record since his release has been spotless. Of course, that doesn't make him any less fun to play as in the raptastic Def Jam: Fight for NY, in which you can put his tattooed muscles and intense, mustachioed glare to good use hurling Flavor Flav through a penthouse window.
Name: Steve-O (aka Steven Glover)
Appeared in: Jackass (PS2/PSP/DS), ESPN NFL 2K5 (PS2/Xbox), Tony Hawk's Underground 2 (PS2/Xbox/PC/GC), Tony Hawk's Underground 2 Remix (PSP)
Rap sheet: We never knew this before, but it turns out that getting naked in public and stapling your nutsack to your thigh isn't just a good way to have fun without drugs or alcohol - it's illegal, especially if you do it in Louisiana. Steve-O's most infamous run-in with the law began when the hyper-obnoxious and frequently nude Jackass star performed the "Butterfly" stunt at the Abyss nightclub in 2002, after which he was arrested, charged with obscenity and assault and eventually put on probation and barred from ever performing in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana again. Later incidents saw Steve-O arrested for trying to smuggle drugs into Sweden in 2003 (for which he paid a fine and admitted to drug possession), and charged with disorderly conduct after publicly pissing on potato chips (yes, really) during a Lollapalooza show in Pennsylvania.
Name: Macaulay Culkin
Appeared in: Home Alone (NES/SNES/GB/Genesis/Game Gear/PC), Home Alone 2 (NES/SNES/GB/Genesis/PC)
Rap sheet: Frankly, we're not really surprised that a former child star with a private life as reputedly effed-up as Culkin's has been arrested. What surprises us is that he's apparently been arrested only once, after Oklahoma cops found him carrying weed and prescription drugs during a traffic stop in 2004. After posing for a gruesome mug shot and being briefly jailed, the kid we fed to giant evil Christmas trees in Home Alone 2 was sentenced to drug counseling. Not exactly a harrowing tale of steel bars and hard time, but we are only getting started.
Name: Paris Hilton
Appeared in: Paris Hilton's Diamond Quest (mobile)
Rap sheet: Everyone already knows that media target/attention whore Hilton was jailed for 22 days in June 2007, after repeatedly violating her probation and driving with a suspended license after her 2006 arrest for driving under the influence of alcohol. What you might not have known is that she also starred in her own cell-phone game, Paris Hilton's Diamond Quest, an odious piece of vanityware described by IGN as a hybrid of casual games Bejeweled and Jewel Quest. And that's really all that's notable about Hilton's connection to the world of gaming, aside from the fact that she was roundly ridiculed for getting the name of her own game "wrong" during a press event at E3 2006. Whether the title was changed because of her flub is up to history to decide, mainly because we don't care enough to take even a cursory look into it.
Heaps more on the GamesRadar site here
(Click on the image above for PennyArcade's comic)
By now you may or may not have heard of how Jeff Gerstmann, Editorial Director of huge-flashy-corporate-gaming-for-teens website Gamespot, was fired last week. What you may not know is why: apparently publisher Eidos Interactive threatened to pull the plug on a massive advertising campaign after Gerstmann dished out a low 6/10 review score to the rather mediocre Kane & Lynch: Dead Men -published by, yep, Eidos Interactive.
More after the jump below.
CNET (parent company of Gamespot), immediately issued an official statement declaring:
"For over a decade, Gamespot and the many members of its editorial team have produced thousands of unbiased reviews that have been a valuable resource for the gaming community. At CNET Networks, we stand behind the editorial content that our teams produce on a daily basis"
Eidos threatens to pull the plug
Eidos reportedly threatened to pull a massive advertising campaign for Kane & Lynch if the "tone" of Gerstmann's 6/10 review wasn't changed. Apparently Gerstmann did in fact alter his review but it obviously wasn't enough to appease the demi-gods over at Eidos or CNET.
When asked about the situation, Eidos declined comment, "Eidos is not able to comment on another company's policies and procedures," said a company representative.
Sarah Cain, a spokesperson for CNET, did say,“We do not terminate employees based on external pressure from advertisers,”
Aw, isn't that nice to hear?
Gamespot digs an even deeper hole?
Now there is news of how Eidos is deleting hundreds of user complaints from its forums, citing: “There will be no further discussion”, an Eidos forum administrator bluntly warned visitors, describing the complaints as “ugly spam”.
Alex Navarro, an Editor for Gamespot had this to say on the state of CNET:
"Remember SimCity? Remember what a joy it was to build up a fully functioning, living, breathing city, full of life and wonderment? Then, at some point down the road, after you've built up your city to the peak of its productiveness, you'd start mashing the disaster button and a wide variety of tornadoes, earthquakes, and fake Godzillas would come tromping through, laying fiery waste to every bit of what you'd worked so painstakingly to create? Yeah. It's a little bit like that. Except someone hit the disaster button for me."
What does this all mean?
Not much really. Unless you're seriously misguided or just an eternally annoying optimist, you were probably able to put two and two together just after you'd left university and realized that;
a) The world wasn't quite as rosy as you thought for the first 21 years of your life
and
b) Its all about advertising, marketing and PR, baby....its all about that.
What can you do?
If you happen to be a reader or subscriber to anything related to CNET at all, you can stop reading and cancel any subscriptions as a way to voice your displeasure at this whole debacle. Just know that there aren't that many other sites out there who don't practise something similar already. CNET / Gamespot just got sloppy on this one, but don't expect IGN, 1UP or any of the other big sites to play any fairer.
Highlights from Gerstmann's review of Kane & Lynch:
Story and characterization
“It's impossible to care about anything that's going on in the story, because every single character in the game is almost completely unlikeable. There's no one to root for here, not even in a cool anti-hero sort of way. You're just left with a bunch of really ugly characters that just become impossible to care about over time”
“The dialog's not particularly great, though the voice acting's not bad, but really the problem is that every third word out of every character's mouth is the F-word... it's great when properly used, but here it's just so done to death... it just becomes a real crutch and stands out as just kind of lazy.”
“But it's not the story and the premise that are going to drive you away from Kane & Lynch Dead Men, the gameplay itself also has more than its share of flaws”
Gameplay flaws
A system for taking cover from enemy fire behind objects is “a real pain that you just never use because it's kind of a hassle”
“The squad tactics... don't work very well because the AI on both sides of the game is really pretty flawed”
“The enemies get stuck on cars and run in circles and do all kinds of dumb stuff. So that's not much fun either”
The game's multiplayer mode is “a really neat idea, but unfortunately that idea plays out in the context of Kane & Lynch, so it has most of the same problems that the story mode has”
Conclusion
“Probably not worth purchasing”
Excruciating to listen to, this pretty much sums up everything negative I think of online gaming, use of headsets and the entire Halo franchise pretty much. All in 2:30 mins...
And here is the rest of it
After 1UP reported that PS3 sales were 'phenomenal' for October following a price cut and introduction of the 40Gb PS3 at $399, Sony CEO Howard Stringer said that the new $399 PlayStation 3, combined with the 80GB price cut, helped to sell over 100,000 consoles in America in the week ending November 11.
"It's the breakthrough we've been anticipating," he said. "We've been holding our breath."
The company reported that the PS3 has been selling about 35,000 consoles per week. Following the 80GB price cut, the company reported its sales rose to 75,000 in a week while the new 40GB model pushed it up to 100,000.
Now we have Bloomberg saying that the figure of 100,000 sales is actually the total number of Sony consoles sold for the week including the PS2. DOh. Way to go Sony. (Ed. Way to go 1UP!)
While Ubisoft are busy high-fiving themselves and fattening their expense accounts with news of a 52% boost in sales over 2007, the rest of us PS3 gamers will have to wait another 3 months or so before we see the light of day for Haze. Billed as the biggest (only?) first-person shooter PS3 exclusive since Resistance, the game has been pushed back from its December, 2007 release till 'sometime before March 31st, 2008'. Boo, fucking hiss. :( (Ed. who wouldn't get excited about a game involving big heavy machine guns, snipers and a drug-fucked protagonist loaded on 'nectar'? Thats another boo for you, Ubisoft.)
Via GamesIndustry.biz
Coming from the notoriously finicky gaming magazine EDGE, a 7/10 score is actually quite decent. But when we are talking about one of Microsoft's biggest blockbusters for the Xbox 360, things start to look a little shaky. EDGE has only ever given out five 10/10 scores in just over nine years, but in the last three months Halo 3, The Orange Box, and now Super Mario Galaxy have all been made recipients. I'm a big fan of EDGE normally and have more respect for them than any other gaming publication. Still, I was very surprised to see the 10 given to Halo 3. Anyway, here are the rest of the scores:
Super Mario Galaxy - 10
Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune - 8
Assassin’s Creed - 7
Crysis - 9
Mass Effect - 7
Call of Duty 4 - 9
Kane and Lynch - 6
Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground - 6
The Simpson’s Game - 5
Zack and Wiki - 8
The Witcher - 5
Bladestorm - 8
Castlevania Dracular X - 7
Silent Hill Origins - 7
Hellgate: London - 6
Timeshift - 6
Mutant Storm Empire - 8
Guitar Hero III - 6
Beowulf - 5
Need for Speed: Pro Street - 6
And here is the rest of it
Been playing the PC version as thats all that got shipped to me - and I have to say, I'm underwhelmed. The storyline sounded cool; Iraq followed by Starship Troopers-meets-War-of-the-Worlds aliens in smalltown Hicksville. The squad tactics also sounded cool too - although a little too simplistic compared to what they were touting. Visuals are nice, but thats it - nice. Physics and character movement are a total letdown and just feel stale, and not very well thought out. It all plays out very much like an FPS I would have expected from 3-4 years ago (albeit with prettier graphics) than a 'next-gen' FPS. I've yet to get even halfway through, but to be honest - like Medal of Honor: Airborne, I've completely lost any desire to carry on. Its destined to be one of those games I'll go back to next June when there's a complete drought of games out. Simply put, up against the likes of Crysis and COD4, the bar has been raised....and Area 51 doesn't even come close to clearing it.
6/10
A lot of gamers who got their hands on the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of Ubisoft's latest game, Assassin's Creed, are reporting numerous graphical glitches, invisible walls and framerate slowdowns that exist throughout the game. Having viewed several videos, I am of the opinion; Yes, its a shabby piece of work. Ubisoft, why the rush for a mid-November launch when the run-up to Christmas is just weeks away? More after the jump.
DiggingTheWeb has a little mini-rant here about Assassin's Creed
The "Ladder Dance"
Double Assassin Glitch
The Horny Guard
The Wall Blunder
Glitches & Freezes
Potential fix for PS3 owners: disable the Information Board (press Triangle) and do not log in to PSN. Also, update to v2.01 as soon as its out.
Shameful isn't it? Makes you wonder just how much advertising space Ubisoft pays for on all those review sites that gave Assassin's Creed 9/10 - folks, you should be reviewing the game "as is" and "out of the box" - not according to whose paying you to have that second mortgage you just took out...
As much as I love the underdog, in this fight with Intel, AMD really needs to start pulling out some bigger hits than this. Continually delayed, under-performing and most definitely late to the party, comes AMD's newest line of CPU processors. The reviews are in, and they're not pretty...
Anandtech
PC Perspective
Hardware Canucks
