2gays1joystick.com

If you’re like me and don’t want to unsubscribe from a blog just based on hearsay (unsubscribing from a blog is a serious matter!), here’s the placeholder post on Ubergizmo.

Kudos to them, I guess, for leaving a (non-)apology on the site instead of sweeping the post under the rug like many other blogs would, but since the rest is true I have no reason to doubt this part of the 2 Gays 1 Joystick writeup:

The version that’s up today simply states that Edwin’s rant was not in line with the editorial goals of the site. However, when the post first went up, there was a note from the editor that stated, “We realize that this post can be controversial, and while we let our writers express their opinion, they remain their personal view on the subject.”, which indicates that Ubergizmo editors were fine with what Edwin originally wrote.

That’s too bad, Ubergizmo was a semi-good news source.

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

arstechnica.com

I can’t play [the original] Portal at night. The game has this pervasive, soul-destroying feeling of solitude. The Aperture Science Enrichment Center is incomprehensibly enormous, and yet moving through it we meet not a single living thing.

Many good points in this article. Portal 2 still gets a 9 out of 10 from me, but it did lose some of the qualities of the original. (Oh, hey, I just remembered that I used to write game reviews. Ah well.) Thing is, it had to — nobody would finish the game if all eight hours of it were as angst-inducing as the original Portal’s couple of hours. And one of the primary metrics of good game design, especially at a company that relies as much on playtesting as Valve, is how many people actually finish the game. Hence the less solitary experience, and the lack of reflex-based puzzles.

But I’m confident that the free DLC announced for this summer will ramp up the difficulty. We’re done with the game, we’ve seen the entirety of the story; it’s time to set those level designers free.

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

toucharcade.com

[…] brand new magazine-style app called “The Final Hours Of Portal 2.” [$1.99] It’s essentially an interactive article — with loads of text, some videos, and even pictures — that tells the story of the creation of Portal 2 and brings to light a lot of cool, previously unknown information.

Seriously? Is this gonna become a thing — have a topic for an article, launch a new app?

I’m not sure I like this.

I’m not sure I don’t.

And the main reason I blog this is so that I have a chance to see it again in a few days and decide if I do want to buy it.

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

engadget.com

I don’t really like the design but, with a 5-inch 960x544 and (finally) two actual analog sticks, that’s a nice gaming device. Though with such power, 3G, GPS, and a touchscreen plus touchpad (whaaa?), it’s not gonna be cheap. I’m sure Sony was happy when Nintendo finally announced the price point for the 3DS — no coincidence that they waited until that info was released.

That first video shows an interesting — if gimmicky — use for the rear-touchpad, but it also demonstrates how awkward it’s going to be, holding and using the device with games that support it. Do you ever hold your iPhone in landscape orientation without supporting the back of the screen with your fingers? And the third video, showing how you climb vines in Uncharted with the touchpad, is a very good example of how most games forced to use it will make it cumbersome and silly as hell. (Remember Sixaxis?)

I wonder how it integrates with Android. It has to run it, if it’s compatible with PlayStation Suite games, but I’m not sure if it’s a dual-boot situation or the native games will actually be developed on Android.

And they didn’t mention battery life, did they?

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

en.wikipedia.org

While it is unusual for deaths to occur during sanctioned races, there are many accidents and several deaths each year during public sessions. It is common for the track to be closed several times a day for cleanup, repair, and medical intervention. While track management does not publish any official figures, several regular visitors to the track have used police reports to estimate the number of fatalities at somewhere between 3 and 12 in a full year.

Emphasis mine. Niiice. (No wonder, when you see the track.)

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

arstechnica.com

Imagine a restaurant where you wait for your table in a dirty room. The hostess is rude to you, and the process of ordering food or even getting a reservation is confusing. You’re having a bad experience well before you’re eating, and now the chef is going to have to work much harder to satisfy a grumpy customer. Like all metaphors, this is imperfect, but the lesson remains: a great game is a great experience, and the interface is a large part of creating that experience.

I was very impressed by Forza 3’s menu system when it came out, by how streamlined it had become (when the previous game was a bit cumbersome). In fact, Forza 3 is a better game in a lot of ways, and its developers must be suicidal when they compare it to Gran Turismo 5 and realize that what is really holding them back is that there is no remotely decent wheel for the Xbox 360.

And now, instead of a good wheel, they have to support Kinect for their next version. Argh.

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

youtube.com

Prettyyy. But no wonder that it doesn’t work properly in direct sunlight.

I’m honestly surprised that they need to do this, instead of just using the 3D vision of several full-color cameras. Guess it’s less computationally intensive, though, if you reduce the environment to an array of motion-capture dots.

Wonder if that’s how they reduced the cost of Kinect when they removed the on-board CPUs — maybe the first prototypes did use regular vision, then Microsoft found the dot grid as a cheaper alternative?

via daringfireball.net

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

eurogamer.net

"The problem arose when SCE mandated SDK 350 on all games releasing after October [because the anti-piracy measures of older SDKs have been compromised]," reads the post. "GT5 was about to go gold running on SDK 341, but it has been delayed by around a week so that they can update to SDK 350.

"This has caused a big headache for the manufacturing side, given how big this game is missing the gold date by even a week can cause a months worth of delay as slots are already taken up at this time of year for Blu-ray movies and such. So Sony had to find a three week slot big enough to make seven million+ copies of this and get them shipped out."

That makes a lot more sense than a random “we absolutely need two more weeks to polish this game we’ve been working on for ten years.” And it brings insight into the headaches of manufacturing a multi-million seller.

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

multiplayerblog.mtv.com

The friends list in "LEGO Universe" acts similarly to Wii Friend Codes. In order for players to become friends, they have to communicate outside of the game world, share eachother’s "LEGO Universe" IDs and then send invites to one another. You’re not even notified if you receive an invite, which means the only way you’d be able to accept it is if you communicated with your real-life friend outside of the game and worked everything out.

Emphasis mine. That’s clever. (For the audience they’re targeting.)

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

joystiq.com

I’d probably call this an in-engine scripted demo rather than actual gameplay, but the point is that it shows the universe, characters, and weapons, and it looks fucking amazing. And if you’re gonna buy the game you should probably not watch this video, nor read any coverage of the game, to get as little of the discovery spoiled for yourself as possible.

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

gametrailers.com

That walkthrough is really well done, and makes me want to try and play it. Which is quite an achievement for a strategy game. (And, damn, I just got a computer that is actually capable of playing it.)

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

gametrailers.com

Oh, wow. Can’t wait. (To finally, completely justify my PS3 purchase.)

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

Let’s get this out of the way: Limbo is a terrific artistic achievement and, like Braid a year ago wow two years ago time flies, you absolutely ought to buy it, both for the exceptional experience and to reward the developers’ talent and originality.

It’s just that you couldn’t be blamed for not finishing the game. (But then I didn’t finish Braid either.)

The first third, or half, of the game, is an absolute masterpiece. The atmosphere is just fantastic — visuals, sounds, the universe, everything fits, and the controls are perfectly tight (and devilishly simple). I’m not sure I’ve ever been as scared playing a game before (well, I don’t play the Resident Evil games et al. because I don’t like them — but this is a simple monochrome 2D platformer, so it’s not really making it easy for itself to immerse and freak the player out). The first part has one of the most unnerving enemies I’ve ever encountered; the second part has the best non-speaking secondary characters; then… it all kinda goes to shit.

Some people don’t seem to mind that the puzzles become punishingly complicated, and maybe I’m a lazy casual gamer at heart, but what’s inarguable is that the environments become unoriginal, boring, pointless, and it definitely feels like they’ve been padding the game a lot to justify the price.

Limbo would be much better — it would probably be perfect, in fact — if it was half as long and $5 cheaper. But, as it stands, it’s still a must-buy; you can just use an online guide to power through to the end (that’s what I did and I have no regrets). Or you could stop playing, but you’ll want to see the end. Even though it’s short and, uh, doesn’t show much of anything. (That’s just a warning, not a spoiler.)

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

The first game had two problems: outdated graphics and muddy controls. I really like what they’ve done to the sequel’s visuals (you’re basically looking at the game through a cheap camcorder, or poorly encoded news clips on YouTube, or something like that, the point isn’t clear but it works, although I’m not sure how annoying that gets after a while), but instead of fixing the poor controls they’ve worked around them in a pretty cheap and lousy way: tuning auto-aim to the max.

The default (at least in normal difficulty) is GTA IV-level aim assist, which is probably fine for the more casual audience (can the casual audience really be that interested in a game like Kane & Lynch?) but ridiculous in a game whose sole point is shooting enemies; worse, even if you turn auto-aim off, it’s still there — just weaker. And for me to notice auto-aim in a shooter, it’s got to be really conspicuous.

(Unlike, say, Halo — where I’ve never perceived aim assist but I’ve heard often enough that it’s there — the game doesn’t actually help you much at actually following a target while you, or it, is moving; it just snaps violently to the nearest target when you squeeze the aiming trigger, then leaves you on your own. Not that it would be very usable either if you could really turn aim assist, though, because aiming doesn’t zoom the view at all.)

It’s a pity that they’re wasting such nice visual and atmospheric effort with poor controls. On the other hand, that game seems to be much, much better than you could ever have expected of a sequel to the first Kane & Lynch, so it’s not really all negative.

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

gametrailers.com

This confirms my feeling when I played the demo: they screwed it up. Except for co-op, they didn’t improve on what should be improved, and made it a bit worse in other aspects.

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

Have you ever wondered what a GTA game would be like if it took its story seriously? If it had human characters, a realistic atmosphere, desolate brown trees with a ten-mile draw distance, and goddamn motherfucking cougars?

Well, a masterpiece is what it would be.

I don’t like westerns, so I didn’t expect to enjoy myself that much — but I couldn’t resist the universal praise and, more importantly, the splendidly animated fauna in the videos. And, as a matter of fact, I didn’t enjoy myself so much in the first half-dozen hours. Yet I could tell that the universe was great, the characters were more believable than I’d ever seen in a Rockstar game, and the game mechanics were sound. (Not to mention that the animals were, indeed, gorgeous. And horse riding felt like riding a horse, which is not such a given when you’re coming back from Assassin’s Creed.)

Then I really got into the story, and I really got depressed. Because that’s a damn depressing universe, the Old West in the early 1900s, wouldn’t you know. The graphics are bleak (but gorgeous), the story is bleak, every single character is miserable and the side missions make you want to shoot yourself in the head. Like I said, it’s a realistic story that takes itself seriously — and the fact of the matter is, that wasn’t a nice place and a nice time to be.

Where I felt closer to giving up, though, was around the midway point of the game, when you unlock Mexico and the story essentially reboots — new characters, new quests, and the same arc starting over in the most predictable way. But it just takes a few hours to realize that Mexico actually provides a breath of fresh air: the story is still cynical and disillusioned, but the dialogue is funnier, the environments look less murky, and they’re even less dangerous. A welcome respite, before you go back to America and get that grim story over with. (Sorry if you consider this a spoiler, but I figured out that structure as soon as I realized the boundaries of the — huge — area you’re restricted to as you start the game.)

And what an ending you get then. That’s about all I’ll say about it, because I don’t want to give out hints, and I don’t want you to think too much about it either, because in retrospect it’s not all that hard to guess what might happen. You just don’t see it coming. At least, I didn’t. And, if other people had seen it coming, the review scores wouldn’t have been so good.

There are two things Red Dead Redemption does splendidly, that you don’t expect from a GTA-like game. You know it’s gonna be superb, and immersive, and basically a state-of-the-art sandbox, but you don’t expect these: human characters brought to life with subtle hints (yes: subtlety), and fantastic pacing of the story, both the main arc and the sidequests.

I still can’t get over how well-designed, well-rounded that experience is — those perfectly weaved together forty hours of gameplay. There are adrenaline highs and there are slow trudges, but it’s all part of a plan to make you inhabit the world and bring you to that ending. And I realize some people could say the same thing about games that I found boring, but the bottomline is those people would be wrong, and I’m right about Red Dead Redemption. Because, beyond technical excellence (I know, not the right term considering all the glitches, but they don’t matter) and pitch-perfect voice acting (except for Junior — though that might as well be intentional, because it ultimately serves the buildup), what this game displays first and foremost is a fantastic mastery of interactive storytelling. Move over, Heavy Rain. This is how you tell a story in a game.

Westerns are clichés. And they’re dirty. And so heterosexual. This game is all of those things, absolutely all of them, unabashedly — and I love it for that, and it makes me appreciate a genre I never thought I could.

Oh, and it’s also a great hunting simulator. And just an altogether pretty place to visit. But, damnit, does it give me late-night frights when I see our cat move in the dark while I’m crossing the long, dusty, weedy hallway that separates my room from the toilet. Fucking cougars.

This is a must-buy. By which I mean, it’s an I won’t talk to you anymore if you have a console and you don’t buy this game.

And I haven’t even started multiplayer yet.

(You might just want to turn to Wikia to learn how the minigames work, though, because they’re as complex and poorly explained as ever — including the duel mechanics. Seriously: the inline help encourages you to disarm your opponent instead of killing them, but most of the story duels will kill you if you try to do that, because the story needs your opponent dead. Ah, and I can’t cheat at poker without being detected, because the goddamn help only begins to show up after you’ve started, and failed. These things need real tutorials, not just inline help. Damnit, I hate Texas hold’em, and I need to win one game if I’m gonna reach 100% completion.)

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

gamevideos.1up.com:80

You know how every reviewer said the actors sounded like they spoke English as a second language? Turns out they were not French actors speaking English, but actually British actors faking an American accent with no American coach within earshot. It’s still pretty stupid, but I can see how that would happen.

(Warning: Some parts of the video seem very spoilery.)

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

gametrailers.com

gametrailers.com

The videos that came out a couple weeks back already surprised me (I never expected anything good from that game, for some reason — mostly because I’ve never been very interested in WWII), but this demo of open-world gameplay really puts this game on the map for me.

I like the way you can climb everything (in a more realistic way than in every other game that lets you climb buildings), and I can only acknowledge a soft spot for playing in this alternate-reality Paris where all the landmarks are gonna be in the wrong place. At least, unlike The Crossing, that’s one game taking place in Paris that will actually be released.

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

I was all prepared to bury this game, despite the mostly good reviews that I’d seen, and here I am having to rewrite it all from scratch: this game should really be called I Can’t Believe It’s Need For Speed.™

It’s getting pretty hard at this point to decide which is prettier, of Forza 3 or Shift, but here’s something I can tell: for whatever reason(s), the new Need for Speed feels much more immersive than its direct competitor, and gives a better sense of speed (although that one’s hard to say for sure, because the Forza demo offers a slower track). I still think blurring the inside view’s dashboard when you’re driving fast is stupid (turns out that it doesn’t actually bother you while you’re focusing on your driving, but it makes the dials unusable and forces you to rely on the HUD, which proves that it’s an absurd gimmick), but everything else works better, and I’m not sure why — there’s some video effects there (does Forza even have motion blur at all? maybe that’s why it feels so sterile), and the camera placement is clearly much better, both in cockpit and outside views. That may only be a case of Shift handling my 1280x1024 aspect ratio better than Forza, and maybe they’re more similar in widescreen, but that wouldn’t make the point any less relevant for my personal case.

But Forza never really won on its visuals. The real surprise is, I can’t particularly fault Need for Speed’s physics model — it all seems perfectly realistic. And the assists work as well as, or possibly better than, in Forza, although it pains me that, in both games, auto-braking is enabled by default — what the hell happened to racing games? But here’s where Forza gets the advantage back, and ultimately wins the match for me: when you’re playing with a pad (and Microsoft’s wheel is crap, so I wouldn’t buy it even if I could afford to), Forza does some magic on the stick’s input to smoothen it out — because that thing is physically imprecise and hard to control exactly with your thumb, when twisting it a few degrees is supposed to emulate a whole turn or two of a car’s wheel. In Need for Speed, however, you’ve got a choice between enabling steering assist, which is insufferable because you can actually feel it driving for you, or disabling it and having each little nudge of the left stick be transmitted live to your front wheels, making the car much harder to control than it should. It may be that Shift is the better game of the two when you have a wheel, I don’t know — but if you’re going to get a cross-platform game with a wheel, you’d be much better off playing it on the PS3 with a Logitech wheel anyway, instead of going with the Xbox version.

Before I finish, two quick observations since I’m not going to buy the game and write a review: The pre-race briefing is definitely a fantastic idea that all racing games should implement (although Shift’s briefing isn’t linear enough to properly memorize the advice; they should just show a run of the whole track rather than a fancy highlight reel… that’s certainly more fun to watch, but less efficient for learning). And the game does the rather common, but increasingly unacceptable mistake of going straight from a longish load screen to the race start — where Forza inserts a confirmation screen so that you can go pee while the track loads.

EA was really close to a miracle here — it’s both a pity, and an impressive feat in itself that they came so close to an actually great racing game — but, despite its advantages, I just can’t put Need for Speed: Shift ahead of Forza 3. It’s a little less precise for simulation drivers, and not that much more approachable for the general public (the assits work very much the same way, and they don’t make Shift a Project Gotham Racing replacement any more than they do on Forza — they’re just driving in your place, instead of “just” simplifying the physics). And it obviously wouldn’t make much sense for anyone to buy both. (Although I’m sure some car fanatics will.)

On the PS3 however, if you’ve got a wheel and can’t wait for Gran Turismo, I’d say it’s an acceptable purchase.

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

Well, I don’t know quite what to think about this one. To be sure, the writing and acting is gonna be worth the price of the game, and there’s no contest that you’ll mostly be enjoying going through the game, so that’s not where the question lies.

What I’m not sure about, though, is gameplay. The God of War clone parts are more competent and pleasant than I expected (although the enemies feel a little too easy in medium difficulty — even for a first level) but the vehicle part felt superfluous and pointless, and the boss fight was really more annoying than anything else. Then, there’s the Overlord/Pikmin bits that seems to take a lot of importance later in the game, and isn’t in the demo at all, so it’s hard to get an idea of how it all really plays. Ah, and it feels a little too linear, but that may be because it’s the beginning of the game (although I’m not so sure — the feeling mostly stems from the fact that it all takes place in narrow corridors through wide open spaces, instead of God of War’s closed kill-rooms, which aren’t conceptually much better but feel more natural). Finally, the graphics would for the most part look better on a standard-definition TV.

And yet I think it’s a buy. Well, probably. Maybe a pool-with-a-couple-friends buy. (I don’t expect much replayability, and I can’t believe the multiplayer mode will have so much legs — but I could be completely wrong on that one.)

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

gametrailers.com

gametrailers.com

It took me a while to decide what I really thought of this DLC for Red Dead, but now I’m certain I’m offended. I realize that many people (including me, for that matter) miss playing as John Marston, and I would have accepted the premise if it only involved him, but bringing his family and other supporting characters (most especially B., seen in an earlier trailer) into this is tasteless, cruel, incoherent, disrespectful and a lot of other adjectives.

I’d have been quite curious to play a zombie game in the Red Dead engine and environment, but absolutely not under those conditions. Do not mess, even “ironically,” with the tragic story and characters you had so well established. (GTA IV introduced entirely new characters for its DLCs, and that worked perfectly fine.)

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

majornelson.com

The problem with the existing D-pad is that it tries to do too much (four directions plus push down), ending up not doing any of it right. I seriously doubt that adding a pinch of Decepticon functionality on top of that will make it perform better.

At least the new pad (which will apparently be only available separately, at least for a while — huh?) looks pretty. Mostly. I’m not sure about the black accents.

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

next-gen.biz

Rare updates Xbox 360 Avatars as unrealistic proportions affect hand-eye coordination when using Kinect.

That sounds a little stupid, but (a) the whole point of Kinect is to target morons with no sense of abstraction, and (b) I’m not gonna mourn the bobbleheads. I don’t like PlayStation Home, but at least my avatar there is somewhat sexy.

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

gizmodo.com

The Kinect’s size and shape is dictated almost entirely by the 4 microphones located along the bottom. It has to be precisely that large to accommodate the mics and the exact positions they need to be in.

Interesting. Also, there’s a fan instead the Kinect — it’s just made of three cameras and four microphones, and there’s a fan (which only kicks in when needed). Probably because Gizmodo says it uses a freaking laser to illuminate your living room.

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

engadget.com

Meanwhile, the hard-drive-less new Xbox is gonna be $200. One is a supercomputer; the other is two webcams on a motorized stick. One is sold at a loss, or at cost, subsidized by games sales; the other… well, it would sell games, too, if it weren’t so damn expensive, wouldn’t it?

I can’t believe there’s a valid engineering or manufacturing reason for this price point (most of the cost of Kinect has to be software, and with software you do make it up in volume), so this can’t be anything but a total failure of marketing and strategy — someone evidently believes they’ll never sell enough units to recoup the development costs, and priced the peripheral in accordance… with their self-fulfilling prophecy.

In other words, an eminently Microsoftian strategy.

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

joystiq.com

Yay!

I’ve missed helicopter sims.

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

gizmodo.com

I intended to be working this afternoon, but it’s gonna be very hard. This game is gorgeous and addictive — and quickly gets pretty difficult, but in a good way.

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

joystiq.com

It’s Mad Catz’s understanding that Microsoft are exiting the wheel market. So, Microsoft are no longer going to be producing their first-party wireless wheel for 360.

If true, this is great news — meaning that Forza Motorsport will not be restricted to using Microsoft’s crappy wheel anymore, and we should soon be able to get Logitech wheels. Just in time to counter Gran Turismo 5, but a little too late as it should have happened in time for the release of Forza 3.

If there isn’t a free update to version 3 to support third-party wheels, I’m definitely not going to buy Forza 4.

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

slashgear.com

That’s kinda-really cool. It nicely complements the controller’s design, and is a pretty good compromise between looking too threatening and looking too much like a toy. (But there’s gonna be some cognitive dissonance when you start playing Killzone 3 with this.)

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

gaygamer.net

Once you get close, you can use the information at the top right of your screen, which displays a portrait of whom you’re tracking […] The game is more about stealth and perception–keeping an eye for suspicious characters, hiding when being pursued, setting traps for your target, and not giving away your position.

I can’t see the Xbox Live crowd going for that, but it sounds like a very cool concept — going for more real stealth than the single-player can afford to, because the AI would cheat (or it would feel like it did).

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

arstechnica.com

No, it’s not, and I’m disappointed to see that headline on Ars Technica. Move “starts at $50” for people who only want the main controller (i.e., without the nunchuk), intend to play alone, and already own a PlayStation Eye. Who the hell does?

PlayStation Move starts at $99. Which is relatively reasonable, except that it still means it’s for only one player and doesn’t include the nunchuk. (Not to mention that some games, such as the bow simulator, seem to require two main controllers for a single player.)

At least now there’s no way Microsoft can launch Kinect at $150. (I hadn’t realized that the reason why they didn’t announce a price yesterday might just have been that they wanted to see what Sony would do.)

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

eurogamer.net

US retailer GameStop has whacked up pre-order offers for Kinect and various Kinect games, revealing that it intends to charge $149.99 for the add-on.

While its standalone Kinect for Xbox 360 listing carries that price tag, a separate "Kinect Arcade Bundle" - perhaps meaning an Xbox 360 and Kinect, or perhaps meaning a software package - is listed for $299.99.

I’m not sure that GameStop actually knows more than we do (I don’t think they’re above pulling the price out of thin air, and I’m somewhat surprised that they’d have gotten a definite price even though the thing will only launch in November) but the point is that Microsoft didn’t name a price during their keynote, and at this point in their media plan it can only mean that it won’t be cheap.

This is mind-boggling because, apart from the consultancy fees to imagine that dreadful name (which, to make matters worse, is apparently pronounced “connect”), the thing is just a couple of webcams and a tiny motor! (Okay, I know, the magic is in the software. But the thing with software is that you do make it up in volume.)

Chances are they’re counting on the $299 pack to seduce non-gamers who bought a Wii. That price point is indeed affordable, but there are two big mistakes here: First, those people have already bought a Wii, and I doubt they can easily be convinced to spend $299 again for another console they won’t use (much) either. Second, the Wii’s success was mostly viral, and existing 360 owners would love nothing more than demo Kinect to their relatives in order to convince them to buy one — if the standalone Kinect was cheap enough for them to be interested. At $150, a huge majority of them will not be.

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

arstechnica.com

I won’t be convinced by everyone on the show floor saying that they find it sexy when they see it in real life: I just don’t like the design. But a smaller console, with less noise, less heat, better connectivity and a 250GB hard drive for the same price as the existing model — all of that sounds pretty good, even in an awkward package.

Funny that they didn’t announce the “Arcade” equivalent of the new model, yet did confirm that they’re not manufacturing the old console anymore, but waiting for stocks to wear out. It’s not like anyone can believe they would kill the lower price points and only keep the $299 option, so they’re really aiming the old consoles still on the shelves at suckers.

I’m quite impressed by their pulling a Google at the E3 conference, offering a brand new 360 to everyone in the audience; all in all, the keynote had a fairly uneventful lineup, but was really well done (except for the random hipster — loved when one of the devs he introduced thanked “Lorenzo Lamas” and the guy went, in the background, “what the f… fuck!”).

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

escapistmagazine.com

Heh, I forgot to mention: the very first thing I did as soon as I got to Armadillo was… shoot a dog. Bam, $5 bounty (with not a penny in my satchel), and I have no idea why I did that.

I also like how Yahtzee captures the satisfaction of shooting your first fucking cougar after you’ve been killed several times by its cousins.

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

gametrailers.com

The “advanced” water puzzles look absurdly annoying. And the vultures acting as prince magnets, ridiculous. The previous Prince of Persia failed in some parts, but at least it tried to do something interesting.

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

ubergizmo.com

Finally!

Of course it shouldn’t be patentable (but who cares, nobody else will need it), and the accompanying image ignores the existence of analog sticks, but that’s still such an overdue development.

I’m not sure if the date (April 1st) shows when Apple applied for the patent, or when it was registered by the USPTO. Do you think Apple would register frivolous patents it doesn’t intend to develop as an April’s Fools? (Okay, I think they would; but would it be that patent?)

Of course, I’m aware that just because they’re trying to patent it doesn’t mean they’re going to release it, sadly. But it’s at least an official acknowledgment that the iPhone lacks something button-shaped in the gaming department.

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

gametrailers.com

I can’t wait to play that game — it has so much potential to be the perfect multiplayer GTA experience.

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

gameinformer.com

Valve crafted a fictional history for Aperture while working on Portal 1 – a history filled with shower curtains, a foundation that steals wishes from terminally ill children, and the birth of the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System.

But, uh… that means Portal takes place in the present?!

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

arstechnica.com

What the Jedi call the Dark Side, and what came to be known as the Dark Side, these people believed that life should be about emotion. They believed you should be unrestrained, that the galaxy wants us to love and lust and kill and make art and cry and dream…" he trails off. I imagine him sitting on a throne, lightsaber under his right hand.

This little article is making the whole Star Wars universe ten times as interesting as Lucas ever did. Star Wars: The Old Republic might really be good.

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

g4tv.com

While C&C4 doesn’t include DRM restrictions, the game does require a constant internet connection in order to be played. And similar to the internet requirement applied by Ubisoft to their latest titles, if gamers are playing single-player or multiplayer, and the internet connection drops out, the player is kicked out of the game.

EA has defended this feature by pointing to the need to constantly update user stats.

Is it just me, or did EA manage to cram twice the amount of bullshit Ubisoft had in that explanation? “It’s not DRM.” Oh, that makes it all okay, then.

PC gaming was already dead enough, it really didn’t need all major publishers to actively fuck it deader.

{react on Twitter}   {share: Twitter / Facebook / Reader}

The demo for the Darkness II is just about totally awesome. {@}

Get my tweets as soon as I post them by following me on Twitter: @garoo, @ff00aa and @bewarethefrog.

Disappointed by the Amalur demo (yeah, I'm late). I liked everything they were going for, but they didn't quite get there. {@}

Get my tweets as soon as I post them by following me on Twitter: @garoo, @ff00aa and @bewarethefrog.

”Ten terrible things from Mass Effect 2: the awful characters”
Nine great points; I still like the final boss. {@}

Get my tweets as soon as I post them by following me on Twitter: @garoo, @ff00aa and @bewarethefrog.

“Is this the hack used to exploit Xbox Live accounts?”
Sounds like there's a bug there, but not a huge vulnerability. {@}

Get my tweets as soon as I post them by following me on Twitter: @garoo, @ff00aa and @bewarethefrog.

Mass Effect 3 DLC will require a mid-story save again
God damnit I still hate that concept so much. {@}

Get my tweets as soon as I post them by following me on Twitter: @garoo, @ff00aa and @bewarethefrog.