Category Archives: Gaming News

News stuff

There’s always lots of gaming news but I don’t make much of an effort to talk much about it unless it particularly interests me. Hell, E3 came and went a few weeks ago unnoticed by this blog for that matter. Lately though there’s been a stack of stories that I’ve wanted to comment on all hitting the gaming news aggregation sites at around the same time.

It turns out that EA’s merging Bioware’s Old Republic and Mythic’s Warhammer Online (and, I’m assuming other) teams. Mark Jacobs of Mythic has also stepped down though it isn’t clear under what circumstances. It’s understandable that EA might want Mythic to lend its considerable MMO experience to the Bioware since this will be Bioware’s first MMO but given Jacob’s departure the opposite scenario could be true as well – perhaps EA wants Bioware to help save Warhammer Online?

Mark leaving is also a bit surprising to me as he’s been the voice of Warhammer Online and Mythic as a whole to some degree for a while now and, while I admit I haven’t been keeping up on Warhammer Online news after unsubscribing, he didn’t seem to be receiving too much credit for any of the game’s shortcomings. Perhaps EA feels differently about it though. For what it’s worth I liked Warhammer Online quite a lot and will probably check it out again someday. I can only imagine the recent changes such as the addition of the Land of The Dead are only improvements. As a bit of a Bioware fan I also hope that Old Republic turns out to be the World of Warcraft killer that so many people think it might be.

Two games I was interested in, ArmA II and Battlefield 1943 have both been released. ArmA II is, unsurprisingly, apparently chalk full of bugs. The first ArmA game was much the same way though in my experience much was fixed in post release patches. I’ve got it on order but don’t plan on jumping into it too soon. The XBLA and PS3 Battlefield 1943, however, is quite good according to most reports I’ve read. It has been having major server problems since launch, however. I definitely plan on checking that one out quite soon. Battlefield Heroes is also officially live now and I don’t know how I’ve not yet tried it.

Seemingly out of nowhere Piranha Games officially confirmed that it is working on MechWarrior 5. Battletech/MechWarrior lovers rejoice! Fans of the series have been pining for a sequel to simulation heavy MechWarrior PC series for quite sometime now and the closest they’ve gotten recently were the two MechAssault games on the original Xbox… which is to say not very close. Sadly I predict that MechWarrior fans will freak out even more than Fallout fans did over Fallout 3 when this is finally released and isn’t exactly what they wanted it to be down to the last detail. Check out this trailer.

Bethesda’s parent company Zenimax has bought Id software. I guess Bethesda wasn’t screwing around about wanting to get more into publishing games. John Carmack has done a few interviews and whatnot and seems generally quite pleased with the deal though as an oldschool Wolfenstein 3D and Doom fan it still stings a little. Still, this makes the total gaming geek in me wonder about the possibility of the next Elder Scrolls or Fallout game running in an Id engine or even a Doom open world RPG. 😛

Finally, and these ones are a bit older than the rest but well worth the wait. First of all LucasArts is releasing a remake of the original Secret of Monkey Island on PC and XBLA in a special edition format with remade graphics and voice acting. Soooo bought. Telltale Games, responsible for the Sam and Max episodic games, has also announced it’s working on an episodic Monkey Island series called Tales of Monkey Island. Again, bought… Well, eventually. It’s only coming to WiiWare and PC at first so I might hold off for a XBLA release.

Finally, LucasArts announced that it’ll be releasing some of its back catalog on Steam. The first round isn’t amazing exciting though it features some games I’d definitely consider classics such as The Dig and the Indian Jones adventure games. I’m sure they’ll be more than this released down the line and there’s a high possibility that I’ll be buying it all. I wish LucasArts would release these old games in a retail format as well, just for safe keeping, but Steam is better than nothing!

Sheesh. All of these announcements are making me think that the original The Secret of Monkey Island may be the next game I review.

1UP Theirs?

Some slightly depressing news dropped yesterday. Straight from the source it looks like UGO has bought 1UP, killed 1UP’s remaining print magazine EGM, and apparently canned most of the staff including almost all of our beloved podcast personalities. They say the intend to keep the site up and there are vague whispers from some of the few people that remain there about the possible return of some of the 1UP podcasts but, even if that is true, they won’t be at all the same without the same people being involved.

I had been listening to the 1UP Yours podcast on and off for a long time and catching it every week for more than a couple of years now and it was almost certainly my favorite podcast. Sure, it had it’s ups and downs with staff coming and going but as a whole I liked it a lot. Eventually, after hearing Jeff Green on it a few times and being familiar with him from CGW I supplemented my weekly 1UP Yours digests with GFW Radio/Lan Party, and later 1UP FM and the occasional 1UP Show as well.

This may sound pretty silly to some of you but after listening to the same guys for so long discussing a topic I love and given the casual atmosphere of all of the 1UP podcasts I really felt like I knew some of them almost as well as I know some of my other online gaming friends. It is definitely a blow to suddenly lose contact with them all at once like this and I of course feel for all of them losing their jobs, especially during these economically rough times. On the bright side I’m sure many of them be hired on by competitors or even start up their own ventures much like the guys at Giant Bomb did. In fact we’re already hearing rumors of a new podcast hosted by Nick Suttner, Philip Kollar, and Anthony Gallegos (the core of 1UP FM) called Rebel FM.

It might not be surprising that EGM was laid to rest given that Ziff Davis killed off Games for Windows (AKA Computer Gaming World) last year and the general decline of print magazines (particularly tech related magazines) in the Internet age. I myself had been a CGW reader on and off for a long, long time and thought it was one of the more mature and well written gaming magazines out there. When CGW died I started getting copies of EGM in the mail as a replacement and thought it was a decent read from time to time as well though it definitely wasn’t as good as I remember it being in the past. Still, listening to the 1UP podcasts for a while and starting to associate some of the names with real people made reading the articles written by the same guys much more interesting.

Yes, I know a lot of people absolutely scoff a the idea of print magazines these days given all of the great material to be found online but personally I still enjoy flicking through a magazine from time to time particularly when my eyes have had enough of staring into a monitor all day long. I really hope they don’t all completely disappear anytime soon but at the very least I’m sure we’ll continue to see the selection slim.

I really have a hard time trying to figure out what UGO’s scheme is with this buyout. For one, I’m not a UGO fan in the slightest nor do I really use any of their sites, while 1UP’s website and again, particularly, their podcasts have gained quite a lot of recognition in recent years. I get the impression that many gamers, at least the ones in the circles I follow, feel the same way. So UGO buys 1UP and kills off their biggest attractions and then lays off all of the talent responsible for it. OK, they still have the website but who is even going to come to the site without the podcasts bringing them in now? That’d be like some other burger joint buying McDonalds and immediately getting rid of the Big Mac or something. What do they really get out of this deal? Not only will the popularity of the website seriously diminish without the podcasts and print magazine and of course particular popular staff writers bringing in visitors but this whole deal is surely going to hurt the reputations of both UGO and 1UP. Did they just plop down a huge sum of money for some seriously negative publicity or what? I’m sure there’s a lot more to it but for now it boggles the mind.

Diablo 3 Announced!

So Blizzard‘s mysterious mystery image mystery is no longer a mystery! Or something… Diablo 3!

In better fashion that most game announcements Blizzard has simultaneously released a great website with plenty of cool info, lore, screenshots, and a couple of videos including a 20 minute game play movie.

“Who knew you could set your camera like this in WoW?!”

A few quick impressions:

The game play movie looks awesome! Day 1, collector’s edition purchase for me.

It looks quite a bit like Diablo 2, only refined in some areas and using a much more modern 3D engine. The 3D engine, from what I can tell, actually reminds me quite a lot of Titan Quest‘s and doesn’t look to be all that advanced which hopefully means the game should have relatively low hardware requirements. One advantage of using a 3D engine is greater control over animation and many of the animations shown in this preview are fluid and much more expressive than those of the past games. So expressive, in fact, that I can’t help but wonder if the player avatars will be more fully fleshed out characters this time around. It does appear that the game has an overall slightly more cartoony, stylized, and less gritty look, with simpler looking models and a brighter, less dreary color palette than the previous two games. This is sure to irk some hardcore fans of the past games, especially those that despise World of Warcraft, but honestly it isn’t taken to WoW extremes and doesn’t stray too far from the previous two games.

“Apparently the world of Sanctuary is 80% bridges.”

There is apparently going to be a lot more randomization in dungeons and available quests and events this time around which should make replays a lot more entertaining and varied. This is definitely a good thing as the random elements of the Diablo series strike me as one of its appeals but not one that has been sufficiently explored considering its Rogue-like roots. Of the two classes shown in the preview the Barbarian looks to be very consistent with the design of the Barbarian class from Diablo 2 while the witchdoctor looks like he was put together to replace the Necromancer. The mini-boss they showed in the trailer is fuckin’ huge! This gives me hope that the bosses featured in Diablo 3 will be a lot more epic than those of Diablo 2 – I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who was amazingly unimpressed by The Lord of Terror himself. There were some other nifty things like destructible environments and both sexes available for every class as well but those seem like minor bullet points to me.

“Making undead corpses dead corpses.”

Beyond the videos I found the content on the new site to be quite awesome. The descriptions of the few released classes, monsters, and locations are all done in character with the renowned scholar Abd al-Hazir telling us of his research into these various topics. Pretty good reads and I loved the quip about the skeletons hiding in barrels for hundreds of years. Good stuff and I can’t wait to read more.

We’ve also got Deckard Cain’s journal. Anyone who played either of the previous two games should remember Cain and it appears as if he has a major role to play in Diablo 3 as well, maybe even larger than in previous games if some of the hints I’ve read are to be believed. Anyway, Cain’s journal sums up the plots of the first two games from his perspective, complete with his delightful Sean Connery-esque accented voiceovers and even all of the cut scenes from Diablo 2 thrown in as well. This stuff is a must for Diablo fans to dig through!

All of these screenshots are Blizzard’s and not mine. Of course, if they were mine this post would be much, much more interesting.