Sports games that aren’t FIFA can go die in a fire. That said, I hope they rip this non-FIFA sports game a new one.
Black Friday jokes? Neato. “Celebrate family by murdering family” is a bit too violent of a thought to be funny, in my view. I’d have gone with “Celebrate family by lining up outside a retail establishment for days on end without them.”
A new free-to-play Soul Calibur game? Now this could be a real step forward for fighting games. Their previous titles had weak stories to combine with a campaign-style mode that made playing a fighting game alone a reasonable notion. The depth of the character creation tools in previous titles in the series would allow players to completely customize the move set. If anything like this is on the horizon for the next Soul Calibur, I think it’s time for CAPCOM and other fighting game publishers to take notice.
With the cameras being shipped (or promoted) with the next-gen consoles, Sony’s approach to outsourcing photo content verification to Facebook seems like a pretty good call. Not only does the third-party integration strengthen how connected the Sony service feels, but it adds more and more value to having a Facebook account (along with a real name which is verified by the Facebook account) associated with your gaming profile. For consoles, the trend of moving away from anonymity doesn’t seem to be slowing down.
The football management genre of simulation games has finally come to American sports simulations in such a way as to finally be noticed. It’s not groundbreaking. It’s not even newsworthy to explain how it works further than “it’s fantasy basketball in your fantasy basketball based on how fantasy basketball works with other meta bullshit”.
“I hope senpai makes it to the Final Four.” OH DEAR GOD GRAHAM PLEASE LET’S NOT MIX COLLEGE BASKETBALL REFERENCES WITH JAPANESE DATING SIM-SPEAK.
A “recursive Xbox setup” is exactly how I’ll be using my systems when I decide to pull the trigger on the Xbox One purchase, provided the display lag isn’t terribly game-shattering.
A short reference to Sony’s “WE OWN YOUR X” clause in relation to communication over the Playstation network stuff. But it does kind of make sense, don’t use a gaming console to facilitate drug deals. Do it on the street corner like everybody else.
Graham’s delayed enjoyment of Halo 4 is a lot like mine. I didn’t pick the game up at launch and decided to wait until the game came out on the download store thing, whatever it’s called. this was a good call, because it seems that the copy only came with the campaign and the multiplayer bits had to be downloaded. I’m also enjoying the Infinity missions co-op campaign.
Kathleen makes the obvious point about the Aussies rejecting games from classification to stop them from being sold in their country, but this makes me wonder how morals fit into the typical Aussie view. Maybe I’ll do some looking into this.
Molyjam is dumb. It might have some cool indies developed in the competition, but it’s still dumb.
Routine is basically Doom 3 on steroids, as far as I can tell. It’ll doubtlessly fare better than Doom 3, but with the bells and whistles they’re adding on, you’d think that the horror genre would develop specifically for elements like Oculus Rift support or force-feedback controllers.
BamFu is the tablet/smartphone gimmick game that I swear has already been done before, but is getting the polish and refinement that warrants marketing attention. Therefore, CheckPoint covers it as well. Odd.
Some actual news: free-to-play games will be exempt from PlayStation Plus fees on the PS4, while Xbox One owners must have the Xbox Gold subscription. Therefore, free-to-play will actually not be free-to-play on the Xbox. Pretty lame, but considering anyone who owns games with DLC has to pay the Gold fee for access to them in the first place, it’s probably a non-starter for more arguments against the Xbox One.
No Xbox news for next week? Oh man. I might pay for that.
The Kinect mic is bad and the Xbox One’s Kinect mic can’t replace a headset, as MSFT claims. I hope my headset will continue to work with the Xbox One I’ll probably end up pre-ordering.
Graham is totally Canadian. That’s not the worst thing ever, but it’s apparent in the opening splash.
Kathleen’s takedown of EA Sports’ Ignite engine missing the PC market is pretty well summed up. EA, of course, is oblivious to the sports titles that fall under the genre of simulations rather than sports titles such as Football Manager. Also, the FIFA franchise was a PC title as well, right?
DayZ ripoff couldn’t secure a trademark for its horrible, horrible game so they’ve renamed it? Why not just throw in the towel at the same time? Graham realizes the truth: that this was the whole point of the game and they should really give up at the same time. JUST STOP.
An iPad game that skirts past the censor as a ‘spiritual’ orgasm simulator. Seriously. I felt bad hearing that sentence Kathleen.
Prey 2 absent from E3. Bethesda has barred it from releasing any news because it’s just not ‘up to snuff’ according to Graham. I wish it were. There are a lot of folks that I know of who would be purchasing a Prey 2 day-one sight-unseen because of the experience they had with the first title.
Vlambeer is sick of getting their games ripped off in a medium where games are ripped off on a normal basis, so they’re livestreaming development of the title. You can watch over a guy code over his shoulder so you can have the satisfaction that the mobile development company thought of a game first before it was ripped off. But when they make higher quality games than their competitors, aren’t they going to win anyway? Kathleen seems about as excited about it as I am.
Don Mattrick is a moron, but he did announce the Xbox 180, where the Xbox One’s ‘groundbreaking’ DRM and feature set were being removed in favor of retaining the current model of disc-based games. Graham points out that MSFT’s lack of communication is what started the whole mess and that going back on its word hasn’t changed the fact that MSFT’s communication, led by Don Morontrick, is still not as clear as it should be.
Kathleen brings up Sony’s ruined, pending and probably already shot viral video campaign that basically demeans the Xbox One’s DRM restrictions as a reason to consider a PlayStation 4. But with a required bundled Kinect, there’s still the sticking point that will drive some consumers to the PS4 over the Xbox One. And the price, too.
Free-to-play fighting game with premium character selection sounds like the worst thing ever. I wish the Killer Instinct reboot wouldn’t exist if I had to pay multiples of dollars for a character like Riptor. (Seriously, though: Fulgore it where it’s at.)
