Gamefront: Weekly Network Update 43 (week 43, 2011) - News - FileFront News Posted by: Danny on 11-01-2011 @ 14:38
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Here it is the 43rd 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 trailers, as well as reviews and more. This week brings even more news from Battlefield 3, Call of Duty, as well as reviews, trailers and a few more bits from Blizzcon 2011, as well as Lots more news can be found from Gamefront News - Here
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 apologise for the lack of an update last few week unfortunately I didn't have enough time to make one due to personal reasons as well as moving and all the fun that brings!. 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
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Gamefront News: 5 Tips for CoD Players Jumping into Battlefield 3′s Multiplayer
Pick up a copy of Battlefield 3 with no experience in the franchise, as many players are likely to do this week, and you might have some problems. For those who have grown up in the wilderness of Call of Duty multiplayer on consoles, entering the world of DICE’s military shooter for the first time can be somewhat jarring.
It’s mostly tough to reconcile because Battlefield looks and feels a lot like the Modern Warfare series, at least on the surface. The controls and mechanics are similar. But anybody who drops into a couple of Battlefield 3 games will quickly get a lesson in humility as they try to navigate the game’s huge maps or attempt to fly a plane for the first time. Don’t expect awesome kill-death ratios your first time out in BF3 if you’re a Call of Duty player.
We’re here to tell you, Modern Warfare players, one simple truth: You’re doing it wrong. Please excuse the following language, but you need a bit of a slap in the face. Consider this an intervention that should put you on the path to playing Battlefield 3 properly.
And for God’s sake, stop hopping when you fight people. You look like an idiot.
Game: Batman: Arkham City
Platforms: Xbox 360, Playstation 3 (Reviewed), PC
Developer: Rocksteady Studios
Publisher: Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment
Released: October 18th, 2011
MSRP: $59.99
Batman: Arkham City is a game of contradictions, capable of the highest highs and lowest lows. Though filled with an immense variety of things to do, it often feels repetitive. Though many publications were quick to award it perfect scores, the game is far from perfect.
When Arkham City gets things right, it is a joy to play. The game’s hand-to-hand combat system, refined and augmented since the series’ previous installment, Batman: Arkham Asylum, is one of the most impressive pieces of game design currently on the market. Rejecting the intricate combos and twitch-based counters that plague many action games, developers Rocksteady Studios ground the fighting in a contradiction: in the midst of rapidly flying fists and slashing knives, players must exhibit patience, grace, and careful timing.
This counter-intuitive emphasis works thanks to the masterful efforts of the studios’ animators, who have crafted an incredible range of fluid, context-sensitive animations. Though you’ll rely two buttons more than 90% of the time — one to attack and another to counter an enemy’s attack — the fisticuffs never seem to get stale. Players will guide the Caped Crusader through an impressive array of deft dodges and meaty kicks, linking one to another as they master the combat’s rhythmic flow. The improved game engine can now render nearly twice the number of adversaries as its Arkham Asylum equivalent, ensuring that the odds always seem heroically hopeless.
The Battlefield 3 vs. Modern Warfare 3 internet fight is on, and Battlefield 3 has landed the first blow, selling 5 million copies in its first week on shelves, according to internal EA estimates.
They’re calling that the biggest launch in EA history, and it’s no small amount, but it’s also no Call of Duty, as 5 million is roughly the amount of copies Black Ops sold on its first day of release.
Still, that’s a good effort.The question now becomes: will that affect Modern Warfare 3?I can’t wait to find out next week.
For months, gamers have been treated to the PR battle of the year as EA and Activision promote their two flagship titles, Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. We’ve even compared the two. Now, the first shot in that war has been fired, as Battlefield 3 is available in stores and through EA’s Origin download service. But will it live up to the hype?
Game: Battlefield 3
Platforms: PC (Reviewed), Playstation 3, XBox 360
Developer: DICE
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Released: October 25th, 2011
MSRP: $59.99
Battlefield 3 is the successor to 2005′s Battlefield 2. There were those Bad Company games and Battlefield 2142 in the middle, but DICE has proclaimed BF3 to be the next game in their much heralded core Battlefield line. Like its predecessor, BF3 is a modern war game. Unlike BF2, the newest title also incorporates a full single player campaign experience.
BF3′s single player campaign shows a lot of influences from the current king of the genre, Call of Duty. There are huge set pieces, Russians, terrorists and stolen nukes galore. Unfortunately, it also apes the negative side of CoD campaigns by having a plot so convoluted it makes little sense even at its most coherent. You’re a Marine Sergeant (or a Navy pilot, or a Russian special ops guy) who’s apparently being questioned harshly by two civilians.
Let’s stop right there. This isn’t even believable, as under no circumstances I can conceive of would civilians question a serving NCO of the military about military operations without a JAG rep present, or at the very least a senior officer. To make matters worse, the entire campaign is presented as a series of flashbacks to events that you’re being questioned about (sound familiar?). Admittedly, it’s not necessarily worse than the campaigns offered by the competition, but there’s very little character development here, turning what could be compelling into a disjointed series of missions that really don’t tie together well. It also incorporates far too many quick time events. I’m sorry DICE, but PC gamers aren’t interested in these console-based sequences, and they really need to stop.
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Read: Battlefield 3 Review (PC) Gamefront News: BioWare: The First Two Mass Effect Games Are ‘Just a Preamble’ to Mass Effect 3
BioWare’s Aaryn Flynn is pretty pumped for Mass Effect 3, calling it the Super Bowl. He told Eurogamer that it’s the biggest of the biggest deals.
Certainly it’s a very polished experience. In the story it starts at a time with a very singular focus and purpose in the galaxy. You could say the previous games were just a preamble to this moment. Everything has been building to this. It’s like the Super Bowl. Who cares what happened in the regular season? Now’s the one that matters.
Well, I still care about the first two and the effect they have on this game. This quote makes me worry that the decisions I’ve made already won’t matter as much as they should. Sigh.
Who can forget the Warcraft 2 menu music? The StarCraft Terran theme? Or, most memorable of all, Diablo’s melancholy Tristram guitar riff? Blizzard has created some unforgettable soundtracks over the years, and at the BlizzCon 2011 Diablo 3 Sound panel, we received special insight on the creation of Blizzard’s iconic music, visceral sound effects, and loriffic voice acting. That’s right — loriffic: adjective; possessing or invoking lore.
Voice Acting: Heroes and Horrors
One way in which Diablo 3 stands apart from any other game Blizzard has made is with the staggering number of lines of dialogue recorded: between 13,000 and 16,000, versus StarCraft 2′s and World of Warcraft’s 3000 lines. Each of D3′s heroes has 1200 lines of dialogue — factor in male and female variants of the five classes, and that’s 12,000 lines right there. Further, the development team worked hard to populate the world with bit characters with speaking roles to make Sanctuary come alive.
On the more monstrous side of things, Sanctuary is home to sixteen unique creature types, each with its own sound palette. Specialized voice actors were hired to perform creature vocalizations, and animal noises were often mixed in with human vocals to produce a final monstrous sound board.
During BlizzCon 2011, I got to sit down with Julian Love, lead technical artist for Diablo 3, and chat about the game’s art direction, its future in the eSports scene, the possibility of mods, and more. Diablo 3′s player-versus-player elements are far different from Diablo 2′s — more structured, and more conducive to competitive eSports matches — yet in this interview excerpt, Love affirms that there is no intention to make D3 into an eSport.
GF: Will Diablo 3 compete with League of Legends, DOTA 2, and other MOBA titles in the eSports scene?
Julian Love: Absolutely not. There is no intention to make D3 into an eSport, and we are actively making design decisions to prevent it as being perceived as or even accidentally falling into the area of eSports. It’s something we’re very aware of. The intention is to recognize that players want to beat the crap out of each other, and to find a better way for them to do so than what D2 offered.
PvP of the past wasn’t so much a feature as it was an afterthought, or at least that’s the way it felt. So the way people tended to beat each other up was by socially engineering them into a situation in which they could quickly die. And that wasn’t very fun.
So by creating its own space for PvP, we could keep the element of fun, but do it in a place where it’s fair.
Among the announcements of features coming to World of Warcraft with the next expansion, Mists of Pandaria, is a new pet battle system that sounds a whole lot like Pokemon.
When I got a chance to sit down with Dave Kosak, lead quest designer for the game, I asked him about pet battles and whether they were cribbed from Nintendo’s incredibly popular turn-based cockfighting animal battle sim. Kosak pointed out that Pokemon isn’t the only game that uses the Pokemon formula, but more than that, he said pet battles are a good fit for WoW.
“There’s a whole genre of turn-based pet battle systems out there, so the real inspiration for that is players wanted to do more with their pets, and a major theme of this expansion is we just wanted more content for all types of players,” Kosak said. “We really like the idea that that’s the kind of content you can participate in at any level. Like, if you’re not a raider, this is something you can do. We also like the idea that it gets you all around the world. We have this huge, gorgeous, cool world to explore, so we love the idea of you finding all these nooks and crannies exploring it and finding thesse cool pets.”
Players have been asking for ways to utilize their non-combat pets for a while, which exist in WoW more for vanity than for any practical purpose. This gives players a reason to care about their pets, beyond just simple bragging rights.
Origin is doing something cool for Halloween in lieu of a Halloween sale. They’re sending out unique promo codes to everybody with an Origin account that will give them some unknown discount, either 10%, 20%, 30%, 40% or even 100% off. You don’t find out what the discount is until you apply the code to your cart, but you do get to look before buying.
The code works on everything in the store aside from pre-orders and games released in the past month, so, sorry, no Battlefield 3.
The cynic in you is probably saying that most everybody will only get 10% off codes, but I don’t think that’s the case; my code was good for 30%. I picked up Command & Conquer 4 since that game came out when I didn’t have a PC capable of running it. Stop booing me.
Oh, and if you don’t have an Origin account you can still take advantage of this deal by signing up now. The folks in the CAG forums are posting their codes for your enjoyment.
Remember in September when we brought word that DC Universe Online was going free to play in October? Well, you may have noticed that it’s already October 29th and still no DCUO f2p. That’s because in the DC Universe, November is the new October. The F2P version of DCUO begins 1/1/11. The news was confirmed in a now-archived Sony Podcast (listed here).
As we mentioned, the new version of DCUO will have 3 tiers: Free, allowing players access to the current locales in DCUO (Gotham City, Metropolis and so forth), plus the ability to create 2 characters and access other content; Premium players, anyone who has already spent $5.00 or more on DCUO, which get them more benefits; and Legendary, which for $14.99 a month gets you everything other tiers get and more, plus total freedom from having to make microtransactions.
Of course, none of us will actually be playing DCUO, because Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception comes out the same day.
Last year, DICE put out half a game — Medal of Honor — alongside EA Danger Close. This year, they put out an entire game — Battlefield 3 — by themselves. This is a good thing, producer Patrick Liu says to MTV:
It’s a world of difference to work together at one location. The whole game is made at DICE in Stockholm. It’s great having the guys running around, talking to each other. Co-op, for example, is actually based on a lot of the philosophy behind multiplayer. Teamwork is never forced, but we have different gadgets and mechanics that help you work together. Just the co-op and the multiplayer guys talking to each other, what you should be doing, it’s a much more coherent and better product overall.
I can certainly see how that would make for a more cohesive game, yes. Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeessssssss.
John Carmack promised at QuakeCon that id would release Doom 3‘s source code this year after they released Rage, and it looks like that move is just about to happen. Here’s what Carmack tweeted:
doom 3 source is packaged and tested, we are waiting on final lawyer clearance for release.
So the bloodsucking lawyers are all that stand between the source code and the light of day. So it may be a while, or it may not. We’ll get it when we get it, I guess.
I really wanted to love Dungeon Siege 3. Sadly, I just didn’t. Rather than the promising game I saw at E3 2010, I found a confused mishmash that tried and failed to split the difference between casual gaming and RPGs. Oh well, it was still somewhat fun, and if you’re still hanging on to your copy, it might get a little bit more fun. Welcome the Treasures Of The Sun DLC into the world. (From the Press Release):
TREASURES OF THE SUN, extends the journey beyond the borders of Ehb to an all-new environment: the Aranoi Desert. On their search for a lost Legion hero, players will fight through hordes of new villains only to find a forgotten abbey hiding a long-lost secret: the greatest treasure of the Azunite faith.
Treasures Of The Sun is available right now. So go buy that now. Unless, like me, you’re getting Uncharted 3 early. In which case you should just sit tight and brag about that. Like I just did.
Read: Dungeon Siege 3 DLC Is Coming Gamefront News: EA on Battlefield 3′s Single Player And Multiplayer: ‘You Have To Have Both’
Battlefield 3′s single player campaign hasn’t exactly been praised to the stars. Our own review of the game singled out aspects of the Single Player story as barely believable. (I actually like it quite a bit, The general consensus seems to be that the single player features are superfluous at best. If so, why bother making it a part of the game at all?
EA’s Frank Gibeau addressed that very question in an investor call yesterday:
The single play experience is important. It’s a great way to get fans into the experience, have them train up and get ready for multiplayer. And a lot of fans just enjoy having that single player experience. So I think you have to have both.
What’s interesting is that despite that statement of support, he confirmed that Multiplayer is the bigger priority for Battlefield games.
We consider Battlefield an online service…
Clearly the multiplayer is the richer opportunity for us because of the services opportunity in keeping customers engaged 365. Fortunately, Battlefield, as a franchise, since the late ’90s has been configured around multiplayer and I think that’s why you’re seeing such popularity around the design.
Much has been made about Star Wars: The Old Republic‘s “limited launch,” but maybe it’s not something you’ll have to worry to much about. Says EA boss Frank Gibeau:
We’re using our beta test to inform us of what scale that we can handle. Our pre-order campaign is tailored towards how we’re going to do that.
We’re looking at a rollout plan that is fairly ambitious. We don’t feel like we’re going to be leaving too much demand behind at launch but we definitely are going to be very cautious and thoughtful about how many people we bring on and in what order.
So I wouldn’t worry too much about being left behind if you’ve already pre-ordered; they will probably fit you in. And if you haven’t pre-ordered yet, then you probably aren’t too worried anyway. The point is you should just chill out already. Aight?
Electronic Arts is reporting that after a launch week fraught with problems for all three platforms, it’s finally getting the online issues with Battlefield 3 under control.
Kotaku has the story, and received an email response to their questions about Battlefield’s troubles from EA:
‘We are happy to report that PS3 and PC players experienced server stability all weekend, and Xbox 360 servers are at 95 percent and climbing,’ an Electronic Arts spokesperson said in response to Kotaku’s emailed questions. ‘There were a number of different factors that impacted server connectivity across the platforms. Regardless of the cause or platform, our Online teams are standing by to identify the issues and addressed them as they arise. We will not rest until we’re at 100 percent.’
Punkbuster, anti-cheat software employed in many games including Battlefield 3, was one of the things creating problems for PC players. EA also acknowledged the activation issue players were having with Origin, which it says has since been fixed.
Meanwhile, the Xbox 360 version still seems to be having prooblems, which EA blames on “complex server architecture” over at Microsoft and is working with the company to fix.
As everybody knows, Origin is totally collecting data on you as you use it and sending it back to the mothership. Some folks in Germany even think it’s stealing cell phone data!
Or maybe it isn’t. I don’t know if it is, so I’m not saying it isn’t. I’m just saying maybe it isn’t. Maybe. Here’s what EA Germany had to say after folks carpetbombed Battlefield 3‘s Amazon.de customer rating and returned the game en masse in response to the spying allegations.
We have updated the End User License Agreement of Origin, in the interests of our players to create more clarity. Origin is not spyware. Neither do we use nor install spyware on the PCs of users.
We do not have access to information such as pictures, documents or personal data, which have nothing to do with the execution of the Origin program on the system of the player, neither will they be collected by us.
EA takes the privacy of its users very seriously. We have taken every precaution to protect the personal and anonymous user data collected.
For the last week or so, we’ve all been enjoying Battlefield 3 (when we could get it working) — but there’s another huge military shooter on the horizon, with another crazily popular multiplayer offering to come with it, just about eight days away from hitting shelves. In preparation for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and what promises to be another massive game launch, here’s a rundown of everything we know about Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer’s next series installment.
The Story
So far, information about the story of Modern Warfare 3 is a little sketchy. We have some details, but not a lot, and much of what we’ve heard has to do with the events of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2: Task Force 141, the group of British soldiers that includes Captain Price and Soap, is on the run after the conclusion of MW2, and is basically off the grid and wanted. Meanwhile, world war rages — Russian forces are still invading the U.S., and this time, they’re not trying to take over the local Hooters.
Were you planning on picking up the upcoming Jurassic Park game on PSN? If so, you might want to consider the deal I’m about to tell you about.
See, if you buy a year’s subscription to PlayStation Plus ($50) between 11/1 and 11/8, you get all four episodes of the Jurassic Park game ($30) free. So basically you get a year of PlayStation Plus for $20, which isn’t too bad, considering I just paid $17.99 for three months.
And if you, like me, are in the midst of Plus time that’s already paid for, you can still buy and it’ll stack. Time stacks, you know.
Vehicles are one of the big Battlefield 3 selling points when compared to Modern Warfare 3. There are lots of awesome, heavily-armed rides to choose from, but helicopters are among the most appealing — who hasn’t dreamed of flying with Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now and dropping a little “Death From Above” on unsuspecting server-mates?
As anyone who’s crashed a helicopter in Battlefield 3 can tell you, however, flying a chopper isn’t as easy as it looks. With all those dead soldiers, charred helos, and wasted tickets in mind, we present our guide to flying helicopters in Battlefield 3.
Practice Makes Perfect
Like we just pointed out, crashing helicopters in Battlefield is incredibly easy. In the early days after release, we saw fool after fool dash up to a helicopter, hop in, and immediately find himself on the one-way express train to Failville Junction.
Don’t be that guy! Crashing helos in competitive multiplayer matches will infuriate your teammates and cause you to lose. Like with many things in life, you’re better off practicing by yourself in a controlled environment before you attempt something risky.
Perhaps anticipating the difficulties that players would have with the helicopter controls, DICE ensured that one of the first two co-op missions, “Fire From the Sky,” is all about helicopter piloting. Try it out with a friend or a matchmaking partner, and you’ll get to practice flying to your heart’s content, without having to worry about losing the round or being called a n00b by 31 angry teammates. Get a feel for the control set. There are three inputs: throttle, pitch/roll, and yaw, and the way the three of them interact is not intuitive — it takes some serious getting used to.
Before I get excoriated in the comments, let me issue a disclaimer: Mouse/Keyboard controls are and will always be superior to controllers, and people who play FPS’ with their mouse and keyboard are playing the games as they are meant to be played, and they will pwn the living daylights out of any roflcoptar dickless CoD n00b who dares to step into their crosshairs while wielding a console controller.
Now that that’s out of the way, let me take this moment to point out that there are actually some good reasons to use a console controller while playing Battlefield. They’re good for flying helicopters, for example, and the game makes it easy to switch seamlessly back and forth between the two control methods. Keep reading as I explain how to make that happen.
The more I think about Dark Souls, the more I talk about Dark Souls, the more I see Dark Souls in action or hear how it is affecting other gamers, the more I appreciate it. I think it’s great.
But keep it away from me, because I’m not interested in playing it.
I mean, of course, I gave it a go. The purpose of our Aftershock features is to get a second opinion on a big game review, and that means playing it with an open mind. But after a solid, I dunno, six or seven hours with the game, I was pretty well done. And yes, I’m aware that Ben Richardson put in better than 70 to properly review the game. I knew how I felt about it much sooner than that, and frankly, I don’t have 70 hours to give to a game that I’m not going to enjoy. It’s not my job to properly review Dark Souls; it’s my job to judge it my way.
Don’t get me wrong: Dark Souls is everything you’ve heard. Phenomenally difficult but highly rewarding. Beautifully off-putting but strangely compelling. An exercise in intelligent game design. A recasting of every gaming convention you’ve ever dealt with. A punishing reminder of what video gaming can achieve. Dark Souls really does hit all those notes — on paper, at least — and on paper, I think it’s great. The gaming industry needs more titles like this one.
When Driver: San Francisco came out, some copies of the game were missing the UPlay Passport codes that enabled online play. What did Ubisoft do in response to this? They made it so you don’t need the code to play online. That’s called good customer service.
Battlefield 3 on Xbox 360 comes with a code that enables online play. For some people, that code doesn’t work. If you’re one of those people, this is what EA has to say to you:
We are aware of the invalid code issue and we apologize for the inconvenience. Since certain retailers are affected by this issue, please check with the retailer where you purchased Battlefield 3 in order to receive a replacement code.
That’s an interesting solution, I think, though it’s not the retailer who packages the game and prints the codes, right? Right? Hmmmm.
Karl Magnus Troedsson is being totally honest with us (and PSM3) when he tells us that, initially, the lead platform for Battlefield 3 was PC. And he’s still being honest when he tells us that at some point during production, lead development moved to consoles. He really said that.
We said originally that the PC was the lead SKU of the game, but in mid-production we switched to console as lead platform to make sure we could get all the versions done for release.
I don’t know why that was necessary, but I’m also not a game developer. But one wonders if the switch had anything to do with all the problems we’ve had with the PC version since launch. One would think so.
Almost no literary work seems as suitable for conversion into a video game as J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Over the years, we’ve had some great games based on the series, as well as some stinkers. The latest entry into the series is Lord of the Rings: War in the North, the new action RPG from from Snowblind Studios. Snowblind has had success in the this genre before, releasing titles like Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance and Champions of Norrath for the PlayStation 3, but how will they do in Middle Earth?
Game: Lord of the Rings: War in the North
Platforms: PC, Playstation 3, XBox 360 (Reviewed)
Developer: Snowblind Studios
Publisher: Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment
Released: November 1, 2011
MSRP: $59.99
Unlike many games based in Middle Earth, War in the North doesn’t have you playing as a member of the Fellowship escorting Frodo and the Ring to Mordor. Instead, you’re one of three heroes who are fighting the armies of Sauron elsewhere while the story of the Fellowship plays out. You’ll bump into the story of the Ring at times, but only in passing, and it really has no effect on the game’s events. Instead, your group of three heroes will combat the forces of Sauron in places like Fornost, the Ettenmoors, and Carn Dum. Many Lord of the Rings Online players will recognize those locales, but most casual fans of the films will not.
The Mechwarrior franchise has lain dormant for many years, until now. This proud series is coming back, and it’s coming back free-to-play. Called Mechwarrior Online, this new game will be out late next year.
I’m sure some will be disappointed that this new game isn’t more… “hardcore,” but you’re just going to have to deal with it. This is the game that we are going to be given, and we’re going to have to be happy with that. Sorry.
Though it’s going to be a while before the game will be officially released, you can probably safely bet that it will have a beta at some point next year, so you won’t have to wait so effing long to get your mech on. And we’ll be sure to let you know when that happens.
Men of War: Vietnam seems pretty cool, and a new update for the game makes it even cooler. This new update gives the game a new editor, which will allow gamers to “create their own scenarios and maps, opening virtually unlimited possibilities for customization and mod support. Players can also share their creations with others freely adding infinitely more ways to play the game.”
In addition, the game will now be easier on easy and normal modes, so there’s that, too. They’re doing that in the name of accessibility. If you don’t like it, just play on a higher difficulty, you loser
Epic’s Michael Capps gave an interesting interview to Develop this week discussing the Gears of War developer’s plans for the future. Among other things, he revealed how Epic is currently working on 5 projects – pleasepleaseplease let one of them be a sequel to Bulletstorm – and on Unreal Engine 4. All interesting stuff, but the thing we’ll all be talking about is yet another developer bitching about the high prices of AAA video games.
Regarding the next generation of consoles, Capps said “I think it’s very important that a gamer sees an Xbox Next or PlayStation Next and can clearly see the tech is not possible on current consoles. Otherwise they won’t be a success.” He added that “PS3 is still very bad-ass – Heavy Rain looks great. To blow that away we need the hardware to do it.” But he indicated that the tech is only half the equation. The prices of console games and DLC also need to be addressed:
Game revenue has moved to the service model and the microtransactions model. Consoles need to start being comfortable with that. They need to be able to do something where small virtual items can be sold and bought for 20¢ without a long certification process and a price approval process.
Leave it to Valve founder Gabe Newell to eloquently say something totally obvious and thus legitimize a concept players have been touting for years.
Speaking at WTIA TechNW in Seattle last week, Newell said (rather brilliantly) that Steam has found piracy isn’t an issue if you just provide a better service than the pirates. Rather than slapping players with irritating digital rights management software that treats the user like the criminal, Valve is finding that all you have to do is make your service work well, and people will pay for the privilege of using it.
“One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue,” Newell said. “The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates. For example, Russia. You say, oh, we’re going to enter Russia, people say, you’re doomed, they’ll pirate everything in Russia. Russia now outside of Germany is our largest continental European market.
“…But the point was, the people who are telling you that Russians pirate everything are the people who wait six months to localize their product into Russia. … So that, as far as we’re concerned, is asked and answered. It doesn’t take much in terms of providing a better service to make pirates a non-issue.”
Are you feeling like maybe you need some Modern Warfare 3 in your life? Well, you aren’t alone, and in order to service you IGN is going to play some MW3 and stream it over the internet for you to enjoy. They’ll be playing from 12 to 4 Pacific today at this link. Go get ‘em, tiger.
You know, when I set out to write this edition of Retro Rewind, I realized I hadn’t touched Serious Sam in years, probably since 2002. Really, everything is kind of hazy after Civ III came out later that same year. At the time Serious Sam was a new thing, I was already losing interest in first person shooters due to their increasing realism. Serious Sam was, for me, a pleasant throwback to 90′s style shooters I still enjoyed.
In the 10 years since, I’ve been utterly borgified, having played everything from BioShock to Battlefield 3 to Bulletstorm. I LOVE modern shooters now. While I really enjoy the odd HD remake, it’s a purely nostalgia enjoyment, one I find significantly lacking compared to modern equivalents. Even Perfect Dark, a game I probably spent more time playing in 2000 than anything else, is only tolerable for about an hour at a time, and while I definitely enjoyed the hell out of Serious Sam, I didn’t love it as much as I loved Perfect Dark.
So consider me well surprised that digging back into Serious Sam: The First Encounter and Serious Sam: The Second Encounter for the first time since MP3 player storage capacity was still measured in megabytes, I really had a ball. Seriously, the things that were good about it 10 years ago are still good and the things that suck are simply due to age. Think of it like a beloved grandpa who occasionally freaks out about commies but also knows magic tricks and you get the idea.
Sony Santa Monica aka Santa Monica Studios aka The studio that makes God of War games on PS3 is apparently making a new God of War game. Shocking, I know. This tidbit comes from a job listing they’ve posted that says they’re hiring for a God of War project. Sometimes, you guys make my job really easy, you know that?
It is not in itself surprising that what we assume is God of War 4 is having work done, as that rumor came through many moons ago. I would probably say this is confirmation of said rumor.
There’s been some talk that Valve and Electronic Arts are trying to come up with a way to bring Battlefield 3 to Steam. Right now, the game is only available through EA’s Origin online portal, but it seems that the trouble holding back DICE’s monster military shooter is about dispensing DLC, rather than a marketing issue between the two companies.
So a Steam version of Battlefield 3 might be possible, and it seems that EA hasn’t closed the door altogether, and there might even be code in place for eventual Steam compatibility. Consider these files found in PBInstall.exe, the install file for PunkBuster, which was recently updated to include them and spotted by a user on the Steam forums. They make reference to Battlefield 3 files in Steam’s install folders:
Maybe nothing, maybe something. Those files weren’t there a few days ago, but covering bases doesn’t necessarily suggest that a deal is definitely going through between EA and Steam. Still, it’s nice to hope, and this seems like some decent evidence in favor of a deal.
The news that Grand Theft Auto V is definitely happening isn’t that surprising. It has been 3 and a half years since GTA IV after all. Sure, we’re happy to have played Red Dead Redemption and L.A. Noire in the interim, but we’re also used to getting a new GTA title every year and a half. Finally!
Of course, given how long it’s been, we’re going to have a lot of items on our GTA V wish lists. And at the top of mine? Hilarious interstitial dialogue. Sure, the story dialogue has to be strong too, but one of the best things about tooling around a fictionalized version of a real city (and killing everything in sight) is the brutally funny random lines from the protagonist, from NPCs, and especially from the radio stations.
We’ve still got a long way to go before GTA V arrives, so to tide you over, let’s look back on one of the series strongest features. Here’s the funniest dialogue from the Grand Theft Auto series.
For more please click below for top 5 (basically too much to put in here)
Official word of Grand Theft Auto V had us look back at the top 10 Grand Theft Auto mods across the series. Now, we’re looking back at the series itself.
In another one of our collaborative infographics, GameFront writer Phil Owen wrote up the text on his personal experience with the GTA series. Ah, the memories. I recall being blown away when GTA went 3d and barely being able to run the game on my system.
Share your GTA memories with us by leaving a comment!
One of the cooler things about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 are the new game types that will be available in the game. We ran down much of what will be new in our big MW3 feature earlier this week, but developers from Sledgehammer and Infinity Ward do it a little more succinctly in the trailer below.
Of note is the discussion about custom game modes you can create in MW3 and share through Call of Duty: Elite. The ability to create new game modes and try out your friends’ game modes is going to be pretty awesome for the CoD community.
Previously, we’d heard rumors that another Rainbow Six game was on the way, and that it’d be totally old school. Well, I still don’t know about that, but I can tell you that Ubisoft has registered the domain names rainbowsixpatriots.com and rainbow6patriots.com, which leads us to believe that a new Rainbow Six game is, in fact, happening. The registration of domain names is always the first step toward confirmation, we think.
So sit tight; we could have an announcement as soon as the VGAs in December, or at least that’s my most optimistic timeline. I guess they could just announce it in a press release any day now. But they’d need to build the website first. So I don’t know.
Eurogamer is reporting that Valve has delayed starting the closed beta for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive because of feedback received from professional counter-strikers who had been testing the game. The beta was supposed to begin his month, but now we just don’t know when it will begin, and here’s what Chet Faliszek says about what this means in regards to when you’ll get to play the game.
Eventually it will be open and everyone will be playing it; there will be no barrier to entry. We just need to keep building it slowly.
And then when does it end? When the community tells us. It ends when it’s ready. We have no mandate from anybody of when we have to ship this. So we’re more than happy to just keep working on this ’til it’s ready to ship.
So, yeah, they’re on Valve Time. You’ll get to play when you get to play and not a moment sooner!
Episode 4 of Dragon Age: Redemption, titled Nyree, is now live on Machinima. So… go watch it. Now.
If you have no idea what Dragon Age: Redemption is, then I’m afraid you’re going to have to turn in your Geek Badge. It’s a six-part web series set in the world of Dragon Age, starring Felicia Day, who reprises her role as Tallis, the elven assassin from the Dragon Age 2: Mark of the Assassin DLC. In the series, Tallis hunts down a rogue Qunari mage in a final bid for redemption — get it? That’s the subtitle. The production value of the series is remarkable, and it brings us what every DA2 player wanted after playing Mark of the Assassin: more Tallis.
Our moustache-infused Movember coverage continues with a look at a character that defined a generation of video gaming. Mario’s moustache is as iconic as the Microsoft Windows logo, and 74% less evil. But would Mario have become the cultural phenomenon he is today without his burly whiskers? We decided to rob our favorite plumber of his moustache to find out.
After careful analysis by a think tank of scienticians using state of the art statistical analyses, we have determined what Mario would look like without a moustache:
The Temple of the Five Dawns, shimmering gold, red and blue in the distance, rises out of the gently rolling hills as you step out into one of Mists of Pandaria’s more open areas, and it’s striking how bright, colorful and beautiful the world is.
This is World of Warcraft with something of a different light cast on it. Gentle, soft colors complement the Asian architecture of the Pandaren architecture. Already, it seems like the new starting zone for WoW’s next expansion wouldn’t be so bad a place to live.
What’s not immediately apparent is that you’re standing on the back of an immense turtle. Things in Pandaria are a bit weird.
Technically, when you start as a pandaren character after the release of Mists of Pandaria, you won’t be starting in Pandaria. In fact, you’ll (eventually) find yourself in either Azeroth or Kalimdor, as befits your faction. These pandarens, the ones who live on the back of a giant sea-going turtle, are those infected with something of a wanderlust. They’ve left their native, panda-begetting island in search of new places to explore – and they did so on the back of a huge turtle.
It is not a reviewer’s job to boost the Metacritic scoring average of your favorite game. It has never been, nor ever will be, the reviewer’s job to do that. You’d think that was a rather obvious statement, but I’ve seen enough forum threads where gamers agonize over what a new review score will do to a game’s Metacritic ranking to know that it’s still arcane and uncharted knowledge to some people. Speaking of Uncharted, it was not Eurogamer’s job to give it a good score. Threads on NeoGAF may call the outlet irresponsible and unprofessional for its 8/10 review, but that’s only if Eurogamer’s job was to ensure Uncharted got a 90+ Metacritic average. Once more for the dullards at the back of the class — it is NOT Eurogamer’s job to do that.
Same goes for those who posted in this thread and practically demanded high scores from outlets to ensure the average rating for Sonic Generations stayed high. Those who acted almost betrayed by anybody who dared give Sonic Generations anything below an 8.0 — even pre-emptively preparing to attack reviewers who displeased them. It is the job of no reviewer to please you. It is the task of no game writer to tell you only what you want to know. By all means, wring your hands over a game’s review scores if that’s so important to you, but don’t act like a reviewer let you down if he doesn’t agree with you. Unless he explicitly promised to score the game whatever you wanted it to score, he did not betray your trust. He did not fail at his job. If the opinion was an honest description of the game and the reviewer’s thoughts, then the job was completed in its entirety. You don’t really have justification to demand a higher score. That’s not your call to make, and it’s nobody’s job to supply the scores on demand, according to an audience’s direct specifications.
Battle for Middle Earth: GameFront LotrO Kinship
Anyone playing this ? Ofcourse you are !!!
Ok so we have a Kinship on the Evernight server and all are welcome from here. There are a few familiar faces in there already including n0e, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., MrFancyPants, Ensign Rhiles, Digz, Giz and me. The game is free to play and now so is the PvP side.
So if you want to join us then start a character on Evernight and let us know the name so we can send you ainvite.
This weekend we are going to be playing some group PvP and hopefully a few group skirmishes and maybe a raid or 2 so what are you waiting for ? we can help you level up and get your crafting done so get the game now and if you have it already start a character on Evernight.
We here at Gamefront look forward to meeting you all ingame.
If you don't want to post your ingame name here then please email me at Ian@filefront.com with your ingame name and the best time to catch you ingame and one of us will pop you invite to the kinship.
We are rank 9 atm and have a house and all that.
Without question, one of the most anticipated games of the near future is Grand Theft Auto V. People keep a watch for news of this game like hawks, even though it had not officially been announced. Whether it was resumes, casting calls or even Gilbert Gottfried, any mention of GTA V brought scrutiny from gamers everywhere. Apparently Rockstar has had enough of this, as they have officially announced Grand Theft Auto V this morning.
There’s almost no information, just this page that shows off the logo (seen above) and the date of the first trailer, Nov. 2. All you GTA fans can go ahead and mark your calendars. We’ll have the trailer for you on Nov. 2, but until then, you can get yourself ready by trying out the Superman Mod for GTA IV, or watching The Brothers Mario.
According to Kotaku sources, GTA V will take gamers out to the friendly city known to us as Los Angeles and known in the world of Grand Theft Auto as Los Santos. That’s exciting, but it’s only part of the news Kotaku is reporting: they also say that the game will feature multiple playable characters. That’s a big twist on the formula, as previous titles only told one character’s story each. But it’s not much of a stretch to imagine, really. I can picture it now, in fact.
Take this with a grain of salt, though; we might find out for sure next week, when we see the trailer for this first time. Fingers crossed.
Spirits of the Sith is a massive Single Player mod that is currently in development by the 3D-Get team, if you want to find out more about the mod, you can visit the forum thread here .
You can also visit the Mod Teams home page here.
If you want to see some screenshots of their excellent work so far, then check out
their gallery!
If you want to help out, be sure to post in the above forum thread or contact Darth Arth and the team through their website.
Nozyspy
JKFiles Manager
Read: The Spirits of the Sith Mod Team needs your help!
More Jedi Knight III News: FileFront's Jedi Knight III Files Jedi Knight III: Farewell Map-Craft... Hello Map-Forge! The new destination for mappers!
As the mappers among us may already know, map-craft.com has met an untimely demise. I am not entirely clear myself on what happened, but it seems that the site went offline and the owner could not be hailed on any frequency. This is a big loss to the community as it was an excellent site with good forums and top notch tutorials.
The good news however is that Darth Arth has now founded a new site, http://map-forge.net/ which is now open for business!
Any mappers are encouraged to go register on the forums, don’t forget to show off any WIP's you have or any texture, modelling or mapping skills you can share with fellow mappers! I am sure the team there would also be grateful for any help compiling some new tutorials or any other resources. If you can help with any of those things, be sure to contact them and let them know!
Map Forge also has a link in our affiliates section on the bottom right side of the JKFiles main page, so do not delay, go check it out now!
Read: Mists of Pandaria Trailers
More World of Warcraft News: FileFront's World of Warcraft Files World of Warcraft: New Talent Systems - Blizzcon 2011
Blizzard has announced a new talent system for WoW in its new expansion 'Mists of Pandaria' Ben from GameFront explains the changes that they look to take put in:
Quote:In its forthcoming “Mists of Pandaria” expansion, World of Warcraft will debut “Talents 2.0,” a system that intends to right wrongs and a provide some actual variation going forward. The cookie-cutter builds, first of all, have been replaced by “specs.” Each class now has a choice between three specs that closely resemble the talent builds/trees of old — Warriors will still choose between Arms, Fury, and Protection for example.
Here’s where it gets interesting: instead of unlocking spells via talents, players will now be awarded them automatically. Some spells are class-specific — all warriors will be given Heroic Strike — but others are spec-specific — only Holy-specced Paladins will get Hammer of the Righteous.
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rogram Files (x86)Electronic ArtsBattlefield 3
11-06-2011 @ 11:26 - Gamefront: Weekly Network Update 44 (week 44, 2011) - News
10-25-2011 @ 14:41 - Gamefront: Weekly Network Update 42 (week 42, 2011) - News
