In a move that can only be described as completely moronic (or evil, depending on your view, really), EA has essentially crippled Spore with a horrendous DRM. It is basically rewarding its customers the way a totalitarian regime might reward people who steal food: Chopping dicks.
Why EA would do this on the heels of the whole Mass Effect PC clusterflub when that game was released on PC is completely beyond me, and many other consumers for that matter.
Mike Vick can tell you about it. So can Marshall Faulk, Donovan McNabb and countless others. For years, talk has spread of a curse that haunts any athlete that graces the cover of the latest edition of Madden. Well, kids, I’m here to tell you that the curse you think is real is not the curse you should be worried about.
I don’t know about you guys, but almost every experience I’ve had with a GameStop store has been a negative one. At this point, between GameFly and MicroCenter across the street, I’ve pretty much been able to avoid stepping into a GameStop for months now, much to my delight.
Here’s a new video from a former GameStop employee, calling himself WhistleBlowerZero, done in the style of Zero Punctuation, the fast-talking game reviewer. It’s awesome.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byJSoWl476I[/youtube]
Back in the days of gaming glory, the 8 and 16-bit eras, we gamers didn’t have a whole lot of options when it came to saving games. Games were systematic and based on rote memorization, muscle memory, trial-and-error and the like.
Nowadays, the game saves for you every 10 seconds and even recharges your health and shines your shoes while you wait. Well, not really, but kind of.
That’s why Gamasutra recently posted an article about Save Systems, raising some interesting questions about how they affect gameplay.
All this talk about the Wii being the bastion of casual gamers is really starting to stick in my craw. And I didn’t even know I had a craw or that such a thing could get stuck in it, but whatever. What bothers me is that casual gaming has been around FOREVER and it has nothing to do with the Wii.
So this weekend my goal was to get through a couple of new XBLA games, Castle Crashers and Braid. I’ve been hearing a lot of great stuff about both of these games, and I wanted to check them out, with hopes of reviewing them sometime in the next week or so.
As of right now, I’m completely thrilled with and loving both of these titles. It’s funny, because they’re the exact opposite of one another in terms of their playing styles. Braid is a puzzle game and Castle Crashers is an old school arcade beat-em-up a la The Simpsons or Streets of Rage.
Tempted yet?
First there’s the price cut, now Amazon is offering a $60 gift card on all XBox 360 Elite purchases. Not to mention the fact that any purchases over $25 get free shipping, this certainly isn’t a bad deal. Just thought I’d throw this out there for any of you who are on the fence about getting an Xbox 360 and love to do some shopping around at Amazon.
Source- Amazon
I’ve never been one to do much homebrew action. But I know that some people out there are into violating their own electronics like a prison cellmate, so I thought I’d post this guide I came across over at DS Fanboy about playing NeoGeo games on your Nintendo DS through NeoDS.
Metal Slug X and King of Fighters, anyone? You can find the actual guide at RacketBoy. Video demo below.
I’m not sure how many of you guys that own 360s have had the RRoD (Red Ring of Death for those of you who, like ostriches, have buried your heads in the sand and missed the acronym), but I have experienced 2 myself. Yeah. Dos.
Being on my 3rd Microsoft XBox 360 has left kind of a sour taste in my mouth, and I wouldn’t tolerate it save that it’s probably the most played console I’ve had since the original Playstation. It’s kind of weird because out of all the consoles I’ve ever owned, only 3 have broken. All were Microsoft products.
Continue reading XBox 360: A Sordid History of a Broken Console
There’s an ongoing discussion around gaming media and the industry these days about the nature of gaming reviews, and whether or not they’re broken in their current state. We here at GamerSushi have been in a lengthy (pages of Facebook threads) discussion about what exactly makes a good game review.
Is it a percentage, a score out of 10, a letter grade, a thumbs up, or some other way of attributing a tangible rating to a product, like gold stars or smiley face stickers? Poop?
Looks like Sony is finally understanding some proper marketing these days after all those bizarre early PS3 commercials. Sure, it’s trying pretty hard to be hip off of commercials that are years old, but come on… It’s Sackboy!
Shaking what his SackMama gave him.
Looks like MS has accepted along with everybody else that Nintendo has won this round, and is now shooting for 2nd place in the console war over Sony’s Playstation 3. Essentially, they’ve figured out what everyone else knew almost a year ago.
Don Mattick, senior VP of Microsoft’s interactive entertainment division, recently told Business Week that even with the new Xbox 360 price drop, they don’t figure that they’re in any place to catch Nintendo at this point. And let’s face it, the Wii is essentially a Benjamin factory for Nintendo these days.
I know that this is the way of technology, but it was still a little shocking to hear Andy Griffiths (go ahead, whistle, you know you want to) of Samsung say that Blu-ray has 5 years left as a viable media format.
Really? All of that warring and hooting and hollering between Toshiba and Sony for what amounts to be 5 years? I guess we get to look forward to another Sony proprietary after that. Joy.
It’s Thursday! Time for another update to the PSN! This week brings a ton of video content and a new episode of Qore. If you have not subscribed to it, I highly recommend you do. It’s full of fun features and tons of info. And since I signed up for the first episode, I will be allowed into both the Resistance 2 and Socom: Confrontation betas! Eat your heart out! This month’s Qore features the Motorstorm: Pacific Rift demo.
Full list of new content after the jump:
Time to dust off that copy of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and kill some people online! According to Infinity Ward’s blog, IAMFOURZEROTWO, next weekend will be a double experience point frag fest for both PSN and Xbox Live.
Continue reading LEVEL UP! Call of Duty 4 Double XP Weekend 9/12-9/14!
A video of a new 3rd person action game in the Warhammer 40k universe titled “Space Marine” is starting to make its way around the web. This is an unconfirmed game, so it’s got “leak” written all over it. You might want to watch this one before it gets taken down!
Edit: The video we had posted was taken down, so this one appears courtesy of Kotaku.
Even though the rumors have been all over this for months, Microsoft finally confirmed that the 360 is dropping in price.
Here is the rundowns of the new pricing, as of September 5th:
Now you won’t feel quite as bad when you get RRoD-ified. Still not as cheap as the Wii, but this probably will make just a few buyers think twice when trying to choose between the two systems. Does this move any of you guys that don’t have one closer to buying?
Source- XBox
Killer Instinct has some of the greatest sound bytes of any game, fighting or otherwise, that I can remember (ultra! ultra! ultra!). In addition, it had some really wicked combos that were a joy to pull off, no matter how cheap they were.
So it’s with some giddiness that I post the story that’s been circling various gaming sites today, namely that a supposed picture has been snapped of Killer Instinct 3 sheet music for the upcoming game. I’m kind of deliriously enthused.
One thing that I hear non-gamers joke about constantly is the name “Final Fantasy”. They always laugh and think themselves very clever as they declare “Final Fantasy what? Guess it wasn’t the final one! Bwa ha!” And then they chortle more and eat ham or something.
But in the end, as clearly as they don’t get it, it does beg the interesting question: just how far are those crazy Square Enix kids going to milk this franchise? Surely, there’s got to be a point where you say “enough is enough”. Not so, according to producer Shinji Hashimoto.
More Halo 3 achievements are coming? Yes please.
It seems that someone snapped some screenshots of a menu during PAX that had new achievements listed as part of “Halo 3 Mythic”. What’s actually very interesting is I was told this very rumor at the show by someone who claimed to see it.
I chalked it up to crazy talk. Looks like I was wrong.
