As a group of people with brain functions higher than that of your average chimpanzee, I think we can all agree that Justin Bieber is a blight upon the Earth equal to Jersey Shore or some other MTV reality show garbage. Adding insult to injury is the fact that he hails from my fair country of Canada, making yet another terrible music sensation we have to apologize for (Nickleback, Cher, Avril Levine and a few more being the others). On the other hand, such musical abortions are ripe for parody. Enter Husky of StarCraft 2 fame and KurtHugo who have cooked up a little ditty about the worst unit for the Zerg, the detestable Banelings. It features a sweet car, hot babes, and yes, plenty of StarCraft jargon. Take a look!
Mitch has written a total of 335,654 words on this site.
Pirate Witcher 2 and Pay a Fine
So, Witcher 2 is coming out soon. If you’re thinking of pirating it to save a few pennies, think again, because CD Projekt, the developers of Witcher 2 and owners of GOG.com, have a nasty surprise for you. Apparently the European company is tired of people snatching their games off of torrents (an presumably through windows as well), so they’ve teamed up with some big law firms to bring the full might of the court against PC pirates.
The game, which is set to launch in March of 2011, will be DRM-free from the outset, allowing legitimate purchasers to install the game as many times as they want on any PC. For those out there who choose less-than-legal methods to obtain their game, they should expect a cease-and-desist letter from one of the firms that have teamed up with CD Projekt.
In case you are wondering, the way that a torrenter is tracked is by having the law firm send a request to the torrent sites to get a list of IP addresses that have used the site. From there it goes to the IP provider, who then needs to cough up the name of the end user. It’s a time consuming and imperfect process, as I’m sure we all remember the claims of fraud from the few who were persecuted by the music industry a while back for illegally downloading songs. Since there’s no actual way to prove that the IP owner was the one who downloaded the game, just that it was from their address, this has lead some to believe that this method of piracy protection is a violation of personal privacy.
While DRM methods are usually stringent and are a pain in the rear, this is the first time in my memory that a game company is standing ready to take legal action against pirates. What do you guys think of CD Projekt’s plan? Is it too heavy-handed, or is a trip to the district court just what the pirates deserve?
Source – Eurogamer
Halo Wars Says “GG”, Shuts Down Forum and Stat Tracking
Halo Wars, the Real Time Strategy spin-off of the popular shooter series, is getting a little downgrade to better integrate itself into Microsoft’s future plans for the franchise. In a recent post on the Halo Wars forum, moderator Cocopjojo announced that, after Title Update 5, the game will lose its forums and the online stat tracking on the dedicated site so it can be merged with the Halo Waypoint site.
While Halo Wars wasn’t exactly the most celebrated of the Halo games, it was still relatively well received and had a dedicated fan base to back it up. Most of the forum goers are naturally butt-hurt about the proceedings, and the very first comment after Cocopjojo pretty much sums up the sense of entitlement the Internet bestows upon people in one short snippet.
While this may not seem like a big deal since most of us probably don’t play Halo Wars anymore, online stats tracking has been a huge deal for Halo ever since Halo 2. For a series to get rid of one of the most successful community tools in the history of gaming, even if it’s a spin-off, is a pretty big blow. While Halo Wars will continue getting support for things like patches, it will be a bit more neutered going forward.
Any opinion on Microsoft dumping Halo Wars’ community on their collective butts? Even if Halo Wars gets rolled into Waypoint, it is a little bit of a slap in the face for the fans. Since Halo Wars lost its stat tracking, will future Halo games under the Microsoft umbrella even feature this?
Source – Halo Wars Forum
Be Warned: Gran Turismo 5 Takes 50 Minutes to Install
Gran Turismo 5 is finally coming next week, and I’m seriously considering picking it up. On the podcast we recorded this past week (which will hopefully be up this weekend) I mention that my PS3 hasn’t seen use since Heavy Rain. I didn’t get around to playing Heavy Rain until April, but even so, that’s still a large amount of time.
Imagine my surprise when I get around to checking the Internet this morning and see that GT5 will take a whopping 50 minutes to install on my poor launch-day PS3. Not only that, but the game will take up 10 GB in your hard drive; 6.4 GB at first, and the remainder unpacks as you play.
In a bit of damage control, Sony came out and said that the big original install will not be mandatory, and that the game will handle it on the back end, should you choose that method. Basically, you can either load it all up front or have the game do some maintenance as you play.
This isn’t a Today’s WTF per se, rather more of a warning so you don’t freak out come Wednesday when you get the disc in your hot little hands. Now that you know about this, how are you feeling about GT5? Still excited?
Poll: What Would it Take For You to Play an MMO?
With The Old Republic on the horizon and World of Warcraft: Cataclysm just around the bend, it seems that the MMO train will keep rolling forward for years to come. Since WoW has established its dominance in that arena, there are many, many contenders trying to vie for your attention. At first, they tried to “out-WoW WoW” but that backfired.
Now publishers are realizing that you have to strike Warcraft where it’s weak, not by going toe-to-toe with it in its own domain. A lot of gimmicks have been thrown around to try and tap into this vast, lucrative market, although this site does seem to be a bastion against MMOs. I know that we do have a couple players here, and I’m a recovering WoW player myself, but what about the rest of you? What would it take for you to tuck into an MMO?
To save you the trouble of typing a bothersome reply, I’ve created a handy dandy poll which you can click on to answer. If I’ve neglected something, though, feel free to comment. Vote away!
Loading ...BioWare Drops a Teaser for the 2010 VGAs
Mass Effect 3. I want it. You want it. BioWare hasn’t said much about it, aside from the fact that it’s coming. While the third chapter in the series I affectionately dubbed “nerd crack” exists somewhere, we haven’t seen much from it. With Spike’s Video Game Awards swiftly approaching on December 11, BioWare dropped a new video teasing…well, something. It doesn’t look quite like Mass Effect, and it certainly isn’t Dragon Age. Take a look:
Very cryptic, as a teaser has every right to be. Personally I’m leaning towards a Mass Effect-themed shooter, but what do you guys think? Is it something else entierly, or is it that rumored Mass Effect MMO I wrote about a while ago? Hit us with your thoughts and speculations!
Spike Video Game Awards 2010 Nominations Go Live
Boom, sucker! Coming at you like a whole week’s worth of cliched masculine programming, it’s the list of nominees for the 2010 edition of the Spike Video Game Awards. All joking about Spike TV’s lineup aside, the VGAs are gaming’s only legitimate awards show and we need to lavish it with our praise, hoping that it will one day become less of a gong show. Hopefully this year they won’t troop out the troglodytes from the Jersey Shore again.
This year’s list of contenders is actually very solid, with some impressive choices filling out each category. While the big names fill in most of the lists, Spike gave due attention to all walks of gaming from the big Triple-A titles to the indie darlings that captured our cold, jaded hearts.
If you want to see the full list, hit the jump.
Continue reading Spike Video Game Awards 2010 Nominations Go Live
GamerSushi Asks: Strategy Guides
I just got back from my local GameStop after picking up a copy of today’s hot new release, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. As I was presenting my receipt to the clerk, he asked if I would like to purchase a strategy guide (for 20% off, no less). I was prepared to offer him a snarky reply, but since the guy is just doing his job, I resorted to a simple “no thanks”.
The reply I had prepared was “who needs guides when I have the Internet?”. Honestly, I haven’t purchased a strategy guide since Halo 2. Yes, I know, a guide for an FPS. I bought it because I was at my first midnight release and wanted to get as many pieces of memorabilia as possible. That, and for the tips and tricks for dominating online.
That was four years ago, and even before that I was looking stuff up online. While strategy guides used to be the go-to solution for those tricky puzzles and hidden collectibles, it’s just easier to boot up GameFaqs and do a quick search. How about you guys? When’s the last time you used a printed guide? Are you too hardcore for that? Let us know!
Rumor: Diablo 3 Coming to Consoles?
The Sundering has begun, people! One of the surest signs of the apocalypse, as foretold in the forbidden tome the Necronomicon, is the debut of a Blizzard title on home consoles. Long has the realm of this developer been the PC world, but according to a recent uncovering by Gamasutra, the winds of change are blowing.
While it’s safe to say that this is firmly in the rumor category, job postings by Blizzard point pretty strongly towards a console version of the upcoming hack-and-slash RPG Diablo 3. Normally these sorts of things are kind of ambiguous, but the phrase “prior experience in console game development” with an “extensive knowledge of Diablo” is kind of specific. Blizzard has never confirmed nor denied the possibility of Diablo 3 showing up on the Xbox 360 or the PS3, so keep that in mind when you pick up the torches and pitch forks on your way to California.
To editorialize a bit here, I’m sure that the fervent PC-playing masses are going to blow this thing out of proportion and claim that Diablo 3 will be “dumbed down” for the console players, but the more people who get to play Diablo, the better. I played the junk out of Diablo 2, and in this day and age, it’s more economically viable for people to have a console than an up-to-date gaming rig. I’m sure that the PC version of Diablo will be handled with due care by Blizzard. They know which side their bread is buttered on.
What do you guys think? Of all of Blizzard’s franchises, isn’t Diablo 3 the best suited for a console transition? If it came out on the Xbox 360 or PS3, would you get it? Doesn’t Gamasutra sound like a dirty word?
Source – Gamasutra
Review: Call of Duty: Black Ops
Call of Duty is something of a phenomenon, a strange black hole that gamers throw their money into year after year. No matter how tired we get of the previous entry, there’s something that keeps us coming back to the franchise even when we swear that we’re done. It used to be the tight, focused single player mode, but that’s given way to the addictive multiplayer component. Now that Modern Warfare 2 has bruised our fragile psyche in that respect, it’s fallen to the underdog, Treyarch Studios, to breath life back into the franchise.
Even though Treyarch is pegged as the B-team for Call of Duty, churning out sequels in the off years, they’ve never really had a chance to strike out on their own. Seemingly forced to make games based on World War 2 after their audience had moved on, every Call of Duty that didn’t have the Modern Warfare moniker was almost destined to fail. Something different happened this time, though, and this new Call of Duty is set on the sidelines, focusing on the deadly Black Ops special forces soldiers who went behind enemy lines and did the dirty deeds no one would know about. With a new era and a new focus, does Call of Duty: Black Ops deliver the goods?
The Kanto Region of Pokemon Red & Blue Done in Minecraft
Happy Saturday to you, Gamersushi visitors. As we unwind from the week, I thought I would dip back into the endless font of insane Minecraft videos and bring you something completely different. While we’ve seen some intense stuff, never before have I witnessed dedication on this level. Some poor, lonely soul has taken it upon himself to recreate the Kanto region of Pokemon Red & Blue in Minecraft and he did a really excellent job. For those of us whose younger years were formed by a Pokemon addiction, this video may bring back misty-eyed memories of that once simple pastime. Take a look:
It’s amazing what this little indie runaway has inspired people to do. This is a perfect facsimile of the levels from Pokemon, complete with a Power Plant hiding a certain Legendary bird inside. Pretty nuts, if you ask me. Anyone else impressed by this recreation?
Review: Fable 3
If any game series in the history of our pastime has a penchant for over-promising and under-delivering, it’s definitely Peter Molyneux’s prized creation Fable. From its first inception, Fable promised to bring us a fully realized world that would change according to our actions, where trees would grow from tiny acorns to mighty oaks in real time. Of course, since the original game debuted on the Xbox, the console’s processing power couldn’t harness the time-warping ambition of Molyneux’s design so the final product was somewhat neutered. It was still a fun, addictive game, but nevertheless far from what we were promised.
Thus the stage was set for the series where a new game would be accompanied by Peter Molyneux leading the hype train making all sorts of wild boasts that we knew would never, ever come true no matter how badly we wanted to believe. Fable 2 has come and gone and now we’re on the third title. As the old saying goes, is the third time really the charm?
Heavy Rain Deleted Scenes Show “The Secrets of the Scenario”
I actually liked Heavy Rain quite a bit. I thought it was a very fresh take on both game mechanics and narrative, even if the story did become really uneven in the second half. There was something strangely compelling about this game, even if I was just deciding whether my son would eat pizza or have a healthy meal. That said, there were certain parts of the game that left me with nagging doubts, like Ethan Mars’ unexplained blackouts. Fortunately, a new video expunging the deleted scenes of Heavy Rain shows the explanation for this and many more mysteries besides. I’ve embedded the video for your viewing pleasure. Obviously, this thing is chock-full of spoilers, so beware!
This is a pretty rare glimpse into the game design process, and it filled in a lot of the blanks in Heavy Rain. Personally, I feel that most of the stuff they cut was well deserving of it, but the missing parts of Madison’s story would have been cool to play. What do you guys think of Heavy Rain’s deleted scenes?
Super Mario Gets His Own Street in Spain
It’s taken a while, but Nintendo’s famous turtle-stomping plumber is finally getting his due. Although Lara Croft already beat Mario to the punch in this regard, the iconic video game character is finding a way to one-up her by having the inaugural road of a new suburb in Spain named in his honor as opposed to re-naming an existing road.
Avenida de Super Mario Bros was just christened in Zaragoza in Northern Spain this past weekend, marking the first in a series of streets named after famous video game franchises and characters. Expected to follow after Mario are roads named after Sonic the Hedgehog, Space Invaders and The Legend of Zelda, to name a few.
Arcosur, the housing zone inside the Zaragoza suburb (confusing, no?), is a project aimed at first time home buyers. The video game themed names came from an online poll where the future residents could pick the names of their streets. Besides having awesome road names, Arcosur residents hope that the media attention this is garnering will push the Spanish government to finish the project by June of 2012, its current projected completion date.
This isn’t really a huge story news wise, but I thought it was a pretty cool one to share. Most of the home owners in this neighborhood are around 20-35, so I’m not really surprised that they snuck a few video game references in there. Just for fun, what franchises would you name a street after?
Source and image – CNN
GamerSushi Roll Call: Call of Duty: Black Ops
Call of Duty: Black Ops is finally out my friends, and it’s getting good reviews across the board. From what I’ve seen, the praise is ranging from “best Call of Duty yet” to “It’s OK, but it’s Treyarch so it’s better than I expected”. Honestly, I think by this point that Treyarch have proven themselves to be a competent studio. Sure, Call of Duty 3 was a little rough, but for a franchise off-team, they’ve managed to turn things around pretty significantly (I mean, they’re no Obsidian).
In honor of this monumental release, I thought I’d get a little roll call going. Who has Black Ops, and what do you think of it? Have you tried the campaign, multiplayer or zombie mode? What do you think of all the new additions that Treyarch has made, and what about the omissions? I was a little disappointed to hear that Spec Ops mode isn’t making a return. Lastly, what platform are you gaming on? Personally, I’m going PC, but I’m tempted to pick up a 360 copy just for the achievements. I know, I know, I’m terrible. Alright, hit me!
Rumor: Metal Gear Rising to Strike in 2012?
Our podcasts are becoming strangely prescient, it seems. Only on our last show did we despair about the early announcement of games versus when they actually come out. While the target of our woe at that time was Gran Turismo 5, it can easily be applied to Konami’s up-coming Metal Gear themed hack and slasher Metal Gear Rising, which is apparently set for a 2012 release.
Metal Gear Rising, announced in the summer of 2009 as a multiplatform title, apparently won’t be making an appearance for a couple of years if Kotaku is to be believed. While they don’t cite a source, they do say that they have been “told” that the game won’t be out until 2012. I’d chalk this up to rumor for now, but as Kotaku did point out, there are usually long waits between the announcement of an MGS game and its actual appearance on store shelves. Metal Gear Solid 4, as the given example, was announced in 2005 and didn’t come out until 2008.
While Metal Gear Rising never had a firm release date, many expected that the game would be out in 2011. However, given the lack of information on the game, this change in date isn’t exactly surprising. What do you guys think of Metal Gear Rising’s delay? Does this affect your perception of the title at all? Should game companies wait to announce games until they have a release date set in stone?
Source: Kotaku
Kinect Impressions
I got to try out Kinect over the weekend, and I had enough hands on time with Microsoft’s full-body motion controller to get a decent impression. This isn’t a review, per se, but it’s still going to be a decent summary of my thoughts on it.
Kinect, if you’ve somehow managed to avoid the copious amount of information about it over the last year, is a sensor bar that hooks up to your Xbox 360 and uses an infrared scan of your body as input in specific games as opposed to the remote-wand set up used by the Wii and the PlayStation Move. The major hook of Kinect is the lack of any extraneous methods of control: it’s just the game and your body. There are no complicated button combos to remember, no dual analog sticks to fumble around with. By making the game an extension of yourself, Microsoft hopes to tap into the casual market by removing arguably the largest obstruction for new gamers: controllers. Does Kinect work in this regard, or was Kevin Butler right about the need for buttons?
Call of Duty: Black Ops Ad Proves There’s a Soldier in All of Us
Call of Duty: Black Ops is fast approaching (it comes out next Tuesday, November 9) and the marketing machine is ramping into over-drive. If you weren’t sick of being bombarded by Reach and Kinect ads, then you can certainly withstand this latest barrage. This new trailer/commercial is pretty clever, so you’re missing our a little if you don’t watch it. If you’ve ever wanted to see Kobe Bryant in a shoot-out with Jimmy Kimmel and a couple office workers, I’m about to make your day:
This was a really great commercial, I feel, but as Eddy pointed out to me in gmail chat there’s a distinct lack of 12 year olds running around shouting out racial epithets. I probably watched this a couple of times just to see all the little touches the film company added like the custom insignias on the guns and the writing on Jimmy Kimmel’s RPG. Since Black Ops comes out next week, we want to know: is there a soldier in you?
Battlefield Goes Free to Play, Brings Back Best Map Ever
Strike at Karkand. If you didn’t start immediately salivating when you read those words, then you must have never played the greatest multiplayer map in the history of PC First Person Shooters (except de_dust of course). For everyone still trying to wipe drool from their desk, this news is for you. Battlefield is adding another notch on its free-to-play belt with the addition of Battlefield Play4Free, a new game combining the maps of Battlefield 2 with some measure of the Frostbite engine that powered the Bad Company games and 1943. Check out the trailer below:
No word on how “free” this game will remain once you want to start equipping your character with different weapons and skins, but I can’t pass up another opportunity to play on Karkand. If you go and sign up at the Battlefield Play4Free website, you have a chance to get into the closed Beta. See you on the battlefield, soldier! Also, jets.
Star Wars Arcade Turns Your iPhone Into the Millennium Falcon
I recently picked up an iPhone 4 and I’ve been loving the junk out of it. Most of my time is divided between Angry Birds and Plants vs Zombies and I’m kind of surprised at how versatile a gaming platform the device is (I guess it’s also a phone too, or something). I’ve been keeping my eye out for unique or bad-ass iPhone games, and Star Wars Arcade fits the bill perfectly. It uses your iPhone’s camera to produce the background and it throws waves of TIE Fighters at you, superimposed over whatever your phone is looking at.
That looks pretty awesome, and I for one can’t wait to shoot down the minions of the Empire while I’m on the can. IPhone gaming is starting to really take off, so how many of you are taking the plunge? Anyone going to pick this up when it hits the app store later this month?