'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)
(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”
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
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
In recognition for all my hard work and hours of Force 10 geekness, comes my first bona-fide article for tech-site-to-the-gurus Anandtech. (Nothing to do with whoring myself bountifully forum-wide, I promise you.)
Regardless of reason, if you're into building your own all-in-one entry-level office system for roughly $600, or are wondering how to build your own kick-ass gaming system for $1000 - including an LCD and all peripherals, look no further than the November Budget Builder's Guide. And yes, Dell, HP, Sony, etc - all rip you off. You can do it all so much better, and by yourself...
Here's another game review for FiringSquad.com's Games Review contest. This time its on the Crysis pre-release demo.
Quite possibly the most anticipated (and hyped) PC game of 2007, Crytek has officially released a taste of what’s to come in the form of a pre-release demo. Does it meet the sheer amount of hype that the game has garnered? No, it obviously doesn’t. Nothing ever meets up to its hype. However, the Crysis demo does not disappoint nor does it ever cease to be fun.
The plot goes like this: the USA sends in a highly advanced Delta Force team to battle North Korea over a bunch of kidnapped American archaeologists in an illegally occupied island and more importantly over a strange “meteorite” that had recently crash-landed. Crytek has already revealed enough of the story as is and if that’s not enough you can read the entire game script in a file called english.pak. Just open it up with a file extractor and enjoy the various documents within.
The most hyped facet of Crysis is its graphics and they’re just amazing. Unfortunately for some, it comes at a price. In order to play the game at any degree of superior visual quality, you must have at least a GeForce 8800 card and an Intel Core 2 Duo. Without these you will suffer terrible framerates or a not so pretty game.
The gameplay is equally as impressive as the graphics. You take control of a commando clad in a nanosuit who can utilize several impressive superpowers or abilities. These include a Predator-like stealth, superior strength and jumping, super-fast sprinting and armor. These powers use up your energy rather quickly, so use them smartly. In addition, you can customize your weapons by adding flashlights, suppressors, different aiming and tactical devices, etc. to suit your needs.
Crysis’ AI is pretty advanced. Enemy soldiers flank, take cover and coordinate with each other to take you down. What really struck me was the life in them. When you are overpowering the North Koreans, one of them may fire a flare gun to signal for reinforcements. While not in combat or on patrol, enemy soldiers may occasionally stop for a leak and chat with each other. When you begin attacking they will show some emotion, be that a sense of urgency or fright. This is just as well displayed facially.
The physics in Crysis are very advanced. You can mow down trees and crash through roofs which adds an extra degree of gameplay. There are some neat subtle effects, too, such as when you swim underwater and surface, water will drip down your HUD. Voice-acting is excellent although I wish there was an ability to activate Korean-speaking enemies on different difficulty levels and not just on Delta (the highest difficulty setting) as their broken English is a serious turn-off.
The Crysis demo includes an unprecedented 1 hour of somewhat nonlinear gameplay (not as much as Far Cry, though) that can be elongated by using the included Sandbox Editor to add all of the game’s weapons, an alien enemy, vehicles (including helicopters) and much, much more, whether by design or accident on part of Crytek.
The Crysis demo, just as any other pre-release demo, still needs some polish and bug fixes but so far the game we’ve all been waiting for appears to be very well worth the wait, kick-butt computer or no kick-butt computer.
RATING: 9/10
Here's a copy of a review I did for FiringSquad.com's Games Review contest. By submitting a 500 word or less game review you can win an unannounced AMD/ATI GPU and/or an AMD CPU! Be sure to rate it and give me your opinions.
From the opening scenes of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Seattle all the way through World in Conflict’s short campaign will you be full of heart-pounding adrenaline as you witness the game’s beautiful explosions and sheer destructive mayhem. You won’t see a more spectacular artillery barrage or nuclear explosion than the ones that World in Conflict offers. But don’t fret, two year old PCs should be more than able to handle the game without suffering from that icky taste of visual inferiority.
The game takes place in 1989 and pursues a “what if” scenario in which the Soviet Union went to war with NATO and the US rather than dissolving. The story borrows heavily from the 1984 film “Red Dawn” and Tom Clancy’s “Red Storm Rising” of which the latter’s co-author, Larry Bond, was a main consultant for Massive Entertainment.
World in Conflict is an RTT or Real Time Tactics game, rather than an RTS or Real Time Strategy game. There is no base-building or resource collecting but rather a set amount of reinforcement points that you use to buy units to send to the battlefield. If those units die then you are automatically reimbursed. There’s also “tactical points” which you spend on airstrikes, artillery barrages and single-unit reinforcements.
The campaign is well written and features some excellent voice acting and cut-scenes but is unfortunately too short at only 14 missions. The campaign’s ending, however, hints at a possible expansion to continue on the story. The multiplayer portion of the game is excellent and addicting. Instead of having each player command an entire faction, players take on the role of either air, infantry, armor or support and systematically coordinate with other roles to successfully defeat the opposing army. Statistics are clearly tracked in-game, there’s also various achievements medals to play for and WiC features VOIP functionality leading to an excellent multiplayer game.
Overall, World in Conflict is an amazing game that many, including those who don’t normally play strategy games, will enjoy. Definitely one of the best strategy games of the year… and that’s saying a lot with previous excellent releases such as Supreme Commander and Command & Conquer 3.
RATING: 9/10
Looking good, but boy does it resemble Gears of War...
And looking better than ever - I was kinda expecting to be disappointed with the year-too-late PC version of last year's 360 hit, but everything thats been shown so far looks like Gears of War for the PC will be another hit for Epic Games. Pro-G UK has a fairly in-depth preview of it here.
After the customary summer lull, comes autumn in full force:
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (PC / 360 / PS3 - November 5th)
Crysis (PC) - November 15th
Haze (PS3) - November 19th
Unreal Tournament 3 (PC - November 2007 / PS3 - Early 2008 / 360 - Late 2008)
Timeshift (PC / 360 - October 30th. PS3 - December 2007)
A chinese website has uploaded files that claim to be able to soft-mod a $499 AMD Radeon HD 1Gb 2900XT gaming card into a $1899 professional-grade AMD FireGL V8600. Whether or not it works is anyone's guess but there's a tidbit for all you wannabe 3D-designers-on-a-shoestring out there...
EDIT: Word on the web is that the mod is available for the much cheaper $130 AMD Radeon 2600XT as well. Hit the chinese website link above for the actual files...
Thank god. Now I can delete that FIFA 08 demo.
The product is relatively simple; users store their music files on a PC with Winamp running. Then they enable the application for remote access. After setting that up, users fire up the Wii or PlayStation 3 web browser and head to http://winamp.com/remote to sign in. As long as the host PC is on, has Winamp running and connected to the Internet, the user can allow a friend to stream music and video from that machine too. If the user was on the road, at a party, over a friend's or trapped in a coffee house with bad music, they can access their tunes remotely from anywhere with an Internet connection. Gamers with old PCs can either use their current PC to stream the media or take an older PC (at least with a 2.4 GHz CPU) and use it as a makeshift media center. (source)
This is likely to open your PC up to resemble mosquito fly netting in terms of security, so be warned...
GRAW is back and with yet another Mexican rebel slaughter, but are you prepared to hold your fire from slaughtering your own teammates for insubordination or has developer GRIN learned from their first iteration?
The first GRAW was chock full of terrible AI and glitches that would make even the most calm and silent person run out the door and scream profanities in 7 different languages. GRAW 2, however, promises to fix that by offering improved graphics, new settings, smarter AI and an easier squad control system.
Unfortunately, GRAW 2 offers nothing much in the way of a change of scenery from the drab tan color palette from the first game, but it does offer some spectacular effects and great graphics, but nothing next-gen worthy.
Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about the AI. Whilst it is much improved, there are still many key problems such as their lack of taking cover instead of standing around and waiting for orders and their inability to think for themselves. Aren’t they supposed to be elite, trained soldiers, not children who need a babysitter? I guess those soldiers are all occupied in Iraq, so the government decided to step up recruiting by getting people with bipolar disorder!
But the new CrossCom 2.0 is a great improvement over the original: you can now know where the soldiers will be positioned when you order them to move (you will see light blue circles under their new position), you can see what they see, you can even switch to different tactical modes such as Assault (Rambo warfare) or Recon (silent and stealthy) and of course it features everything from the first game, like the tactical map, but only better. At the beginning of every game, you can select your weapons (there’s a larger weapon inventory this time), different squad members and even multiple entry points.
The story takes place a few days after the first GRAW where you had to save the American and Mexican presidents from a military coup in Mexico City. This time around you have to help Mexican loyalists fight the rebels whilst trying to locate and disarm stolen nuclear missiles before they go off in the USA.
Most missions offer little other than going around a mostly linear path, killing and destroying things. It gets extremely tedious when your team starts dying because of their stupidity and having to constantly die because of the enemy’s extremely accurate fire and their overwhelming numbers. GRAW is also very slowly paced.
But that’s the selling point for some, such as myself, who greatly enjoy slow-paced, realistic, tactical warfare where the enemy can be anywhere and where you have to constantly take cover.
What most people don’t want are dumb-asses for squad mates. You will have to constantly micro-manage your teammates, tell them where to go and what to do, which is something that a trained soldier doesn’t and shouldn’t have to do. When they’re getting shot at, you’ll have to tell them where cover is. When an enemy tank approaches, you have to tell them to destroy it with their rocket launcher. However, GRAW 2 isn’t all bad, it offers hours of fun for the tactical FPS fan, and I myself enjoyed it. It is, however, not worth $50, and I would have preferred playing the game in an entirely different setting with non-linear paths.
Gameplay: 7/10 – [Add one point if you enjoy tactical FPS]. Basically consisting of going down a linear path, killing and destroying any enemies along your way and extracting to repeat the same process, however there is a lot of realism involved that tactical FPS fans will enjoy. No running ‘n’ gunning here.
Graphics: 8/10 – Whilst not on the scale of some of the newer games coming out, it’s still excellent and so are some of the effects.
Music: 6/10 – It gets very repetitive very quick, but it usually fits the environment.
Sound: 8/10 – Some great sound effects but nothing spectacular.
Replay Value: 5/10 – I don’t think the campaign is worth completing again as its nothing more than linear killing and multiplayer is pretty standard.
Overall: 7/10 – Its not at all a bad game, I personally enjoyed it, but for those of you who aren't patient enough to find cover or micro-manage your team, then it's not the game for you. However, if you enjoy realistic, tactical first person combat then get the game... when it drops down to at the very most $40.
As a little refresher from all the FPS-ing of late, here's the newest trailer from Maxis' most ambitious undertaking to date - the universe sim Spore. This huge game has players starting off with single-cell organisms and playing out any path of evolution through tribal culture, global domination and onto galactic exploration. Think Black & White, only on a galactic scale. Release TBA.
Demonstration video of Valve's upcoming sequel to Half Life 2's Episode 1. Episode 2 is set for release on October 9th 2007.
At least for those with a 360 or a PC. PC demo should be out (soon) here, and the 360 demo should be out anytime on XBL...
And here is the rest of it
MyArcadePlanet has a list of things you might all wanna go back for in the excellent Stranglehold demo out now on Xbox Live for the 360. If you haven't played it, go get it. Then wait about 5 mins after initially playing it before telling me you "don't like it". Awesome.
And here is the rest of it
Seems like Mass Effect has again been pushed back from its oft-delayed release date to December 7th. Already 8 months late, what are the bets we won't be seeing this before 2008?
Mass Effect has been delayed for a total of over 8 months now, but the latest delay seems like a strategic move, opposed to the previous delays which required more time for the games development.
Mass Effect has not had a huge delay and will be released December 7th 2007. (source)
Click here to read more about Mass Effect, including trailers, screenshots and gameplay details.
