Mitch has written a total of 335,654 words on this site.

mitch@gamersushi.com Twitter: @mi7ch Gamertag: Lubeius PSN ID: Lubeius SteamID: Mister_L Origin/EA:Lube182 Currently Playing: PUBG, Rainbow 6: Siege, Assassin's Creed: Origins, Total War: Warhammer 2

Call of Duty: Black Ops Will Have Post-Launch Support, No Online Passes

Call-of-Duty-Black-Ops-DLC

EA recently launched a new initiative a while back in which a unique code (such as Bad Company 2’s VIP or Mass Effect 2’s Cerberus Network) would incentivize purchasers not to trade their games back in by offering exclusive access to downloadable content (used game buyers would have to pay a fifteen dollar fee to access such a service). EA Sports also branched out with their own version of this program with the Online Pass, a one-time use token that would allow gamers to play the online portions of upcoming sports titles like Tiger Woods and Madden. Naturally, there was a bit of a backlash, but EA is just trying to protect itself from the ravenous jaws of the used game industry. So far, this is the only solution put forward by a publisher to actively combat trade ins, but is it the best one?

Enter Mark Lamia of Treyarch Studios, currently the developer of the upcoming Black Ops and potential savior of the Call of Duty series’ image amongst gamers. He maintains that a strong multiplayer segment and good post-launch support is the key to keep people playing your game long past the point of considering a trade-in. Teryarch still has a section of their studio working on keeping World at War fun, and they expect to dish out a lot of content for Black Ops. Instead of moving on immediately to the next project, they will be focusing on keeping fans engaged in the hopes that they’ll continue playing without gimmicks like VIP passes and online access codes, even if you bought the game used. With the new additions to multiplayer features like Wager Matches, replays and bringing back dedicated servers on the PC, Black Ops looks like it’s shaping up to be a proper title.

What do you guys think about his statement? What incentives would keep you from trading a game in? Online codes for first time purchasers, or a lot of DLC regardless of how you came by the title?

Source: MCV

FireFall, the Free-To-Play Sci-Fi MMO

Somehow I missed this game during my time and PAX, and now I am made to rue my mistake. I think I might have glanced the booth for this title once or twice, but I passed it over in favor of games that were of a known quantity. What a fool I was. Apparently, in my ignorance, I was missing out on a fantastic demo for a free (our favorite word) sci-fi MMO. Not just free to play online, or what have you, but costing a total of zero dollars to download and install. Made by veterans of both World of Warcraft and Tribes, this MMO hopes to lure you in with its appealing price tag and then gain its profit back through microtransactions. While this model works well in Asia, it has yet to really take hold here in North America (with a few exceptions). This game may be the one to do it though. Take a look at the video and see for yourself:

>

For a game that’s being dished out for free, this is looking pretty fantastic. It’s a combination first and third person shooter with the requisite RPG elements. You can fly around in your ship, upgrade your ridiculous looking suit, and take part in randomly generated quests (the village siege at the end was an example of that). What do you guys think of FireFall? Does it catch your fancy? Any reservations about the microtransaction aspect? You’ve got a while to think about it, as the release date is set for Fall 2011. Tell us your thoughts!

Valve Regrets Love Affair With 360, Moves to Open Development

team fortress valve heavy
A few years back, around the release of The Orange Box and Left 4 Dead, Valve was really going hard for Microsoft. They were trotting out quotes left and right saying how LIVE was the wave of the future and that the PS3 wasn’t really a good choice for developers. Fast forward to 2010, and opinions are changing. Back in July, Valve head honcho Gabe Newell swaggered out on stage at Sony’s E3 presser and announced that not only would Portal 2 be coming to the PlayStation 3, but it would be the premier version of the game. Naturally, some hyperbole is expected at E3, but Valve seems to be doing a neat about-face in regards to their console preferences.

Part of what caused Valve to change their mind about the X-Box 360 is that the development cycle for the system is very closed off. If you’re not familiar with Microsoft’s certification process, it is a very stringent battery of tests that need to be done internally by Microsoft before anything gets released to LIVE. This adds to the time needed to get patches out, even the critical ones. Microsoft also has a habit of insisting that downloadable content costs money, something Valve has preferred to avoid. The PS3, on the other hand, presents a much more open development platform for Valve, something they’re eager to utilize.
Continue reading Valve Regrets Love Affair With 360, Moves to Open Development

Bungie Tempts Us With Halo: Reach Campaign Walkthrough

I think I’ve mentioned this little factoid on here before, but I am kind of a spoiler hound. There are very few occasions where I manage to keep myself totally in the dark about a story for any book, movie or game. Case in point, I was playing through the new Mass Effect 2 DLC last night, Lair of the Shadow Broker, and I looked up the end of the level while I was playing it. If that isn’t crazy behavior, I don’t know what is. Just to make the wait for Halo: Reach even more unbareable, Bungie has seen fit to release a walkthrough of one of the campaign’s levels called Tip of the Spear, complete with commentary straight from the developers. I’m going to try and avoid watching this, but if you’re so inclined, I’ve embedded the video below:

If you did watch the video, what did you think? Pretty interesting, or are you trying to keep yourself squeaky clean for the next six days?

Today’s WTF: Microsoft Bans a Man for Living in Fort Gay

x-box live fort gayMicrosoft, Microsoft, Microsoft. What, are we playing catch-up to our former WTF King Blizzard now? If you’re not putting down your fanbase or trying to disguise your fairy leanings, then you’re banning people from your online service based on the name of their home town.

While this might not be an issue for most people (unless you have the misfortune to live near Lake Titicaca), an X-Box LIVE gamer recently ran afoul of Microsoft’s stringent “no bad words” policy. Typically these types of epithets are wielded on the internet with the expressed purpose of hurting someone’s feelings, but what if you’re just trying to tell people where you live. Fort Gay resident Josh Moore was kicked off of X-Box LIVE for adding the name of his town, a small 1,000 person hamlet in West Virginia, to his bio. Playing the devil’s advocate for Microsoft, they probably have a program that scours their user base looking for offensive language and auto-bans them without delving into specifics. Surely a phone call to X-Box LIVE’s customer service center could fix the issue? Unfortunately, that was not the case.

Mr. Moore was informed by Microsoft that the word gay was unacceptable in any context, and if he persisted in keeping the name of his town on his account, then his subscription would be canceled without a refund. Fort Gay’s mayor David Thompson got involved at this point, and through a series of interviews with local TV stations and the Associated Press, X-Box LIVE’s Director of Policy and Enforcement Stephen Toulouse stepped in and solved the issue. He reasons that, without context, the words Fort Gay, WV could be misconstrued as an insult. Mr. Toulouse promised to get in touch with Mr. Moore and remedy the situation. He said that keeping a lid on improper conduct on LIVE is a challenge, but he will work to set this particular incident right.

What do you guys think of this latest slip up? Microsoft is no stranger to backlash from heavy-handed maneuvers on LIVE, so this is just one more unfortunate incident. Obviously they were wrong in this instance, but is it better to be safe than sorry?

Source:CSB News

Today’s WTF: Rare’s Kameo Had Fairies?

Kameo Remember MeBack when the X-Box 360 launched in 2005, one of the the titles it came with was called Kameo: Elements of Power. At this point, the game has mostly slipped the collective memory of the 360’s user base, but the game’s developer, Rare, remembers. Rare just recently celebrated its 25 anniversary, and it spent a little time reminiscing about a game that is apparently a “painful” memory for the developer.

Rare initially started making Kameo for the GameCube back in 2002, but it was bought up by Microsoft shortly thereafter and transferred the game over to the then-upcoming 360. By that point, Kameo was mostly finished, so they just made a few tweaks to bring it up to next-gen standards. According to Creative Director George Andreas, the studio wished that they had scrapped it and started all over again. The game was originally aimed at the Nintendo audience, and Rare thought that the main character’s race wouldn’t fly with the 360’s shooter-centric crowd, so they fibbed. Here’s the word from Rare’s George Andreas on Kameo’s dirty secret:

“We changed direction slightly because of the new audience we were trying to aim at. We called Kameo an elf, but really she was a fairy. We tried to disguise that a few times, but it didn’t really work out. It was a game with a fairy for an audience that likes shooting and killing things. In hindsight, it probably would have been best to scrap everything and start again. And then we jumped on 360 as a launch title. We weren’t far off finishing [when that happened].”

Well there you have it, folks. We’ve been lied to all these years. This is kind of a funny thing to finally reveal after all this time, but carrying a burden such as this can be hard on people. While this is more of a amusing WTF than a puzzling one, I thought you guys would get a kick out of this. Do you have anything to say on this? Maybe it’s an over-all comment on the difficulty of breaching the X-Box audience with a new, more kid friendly IP?

Source: CVG

PAX 2010 Photo Roll

PAX 2010So, if you’ve read my PAX 2010 round up, then you’d know that I visited a fair few booths over the past few days. Just like E3 before it, PAX was an opportunity for the developers of the various titles on display to overwhelm our senses with giant facades dedicated to the grandeur of the event. Since not everyone can go to PAX for various reasons, I thought I would bring my camera along and snap a few photos. Perhaps you might spot my photobomb. Hit the jump for shots of the exhibit! Click on the photos to enhugenate. Continue reading PAX 2010 Photo Roll

PAX 2010 Round Up

pax2010 So, PAX 2010 has come and gone, and I’m glad that I finally took this year to go down and experience it. I saw a lot of games before their release and some cosplay that I could have gone without. Of course, such a big event deserves a bigger write up, so steel yourselves and jump into my PAX 2010 Round-Up Spectacular! In this post I’m going to be covering the games that I saw with the pictures going up in a separate post once I sort out and re-size the photos.
Continue reading PAX 2010 Round Up

Batman: Arkham City has Beautiful Screen Shots

batman arkham city
Consider us blessed, fellow gamers, as some kind soul has posted screen shots for RockSteady Studio’s upcoming Batman: Arkham Asylum follow-up Arkham City. I don’t know what they’ve done to the engine this time around, but the screens are looking really good. If I had to guess, I’d say this is a capture from the PC version of the game running on a super-beefy rig, but with still images this good, I’m not complaining. The new pictures also give us a look at the redesigned Harley Quinn, Two-Face and a, I’m almost ashamed to say it, very sexy Catwoman. More delicious Bat-Screens after the jump! Continue reading Batman: Arkham City has Beautiful Screen Shots

Off to PAX Prime!

pax 2010
As we’re probably all aware, being fans of video game culture and what not, PAX Prime 2010 is set to kick off this Friday down in beautiful Seattle, Washington. Since I live about four hours and one country away from Seattle, I thought I would take this opportunity to finally go to the Penny Arcade Expo, something I’ve been dying to do for a few years now. It’s actually kind of funny that GamerSushi started off with Eddy and Smooth Few Film’s Daniel (who is not Anthony), going to PAX with Leet World DVDs in hand.

Since I’m going to be reporting diligently on all the news and cool stuff coming out of PAX, I thought I’d take this opportunity to ask you, the community, if there’s anything in particular you’d like me to keep an eye out for. Halo: Reach and The Old Republic are a given, but are there any other games you’d like me to try and get hands-on time with? I’m bringing down a camera as well, so I’ll try and upload pictures of the show floor and the various cosplayers. So, do you have any requests? Put them in the comment section below.

Today’s WTF: Xbox LIVE Prices Going Up

Subscriptions are a tricky thing, especially in the video game industry. Thanks to World of Warcraft, $15 a month is now the standard fee for MMOs, but the console market is a different story. As of right now, only Microsoft has a mandatory subscription service (the PS3’s PlayStation Plus is optional), so they can pretty much price it however they want. Ever since the service launched back in 2002, the average price for a yearly rate was $49.99 for Americans, but as of November 1, 2010, this price is going up. The prices and the plans they affect vary across the board, but the US, UK, Canada and Mexico are seeing increases in all areas. The breakdowns are as after the jump: Continue reading Today’s WTF: Xbox LIVE Prices Going Up

Half-Life Movie Would Come Direct From Valve

half_life_movieThe transition from a video game to a movie is a tricky one, a notion that we have explored in the past on our sweet podcast. It seems that the only people who are capable of making a movie based on games are the developers themselves, but they lack either the necessary components or the capital to make a feature film. Valve Software, who we all know as the studio behind Half-Life, Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead, has stated that they’d like to try their own hand at making a Half-Life movie, saying that they were approached by a bunch of Hollywood types with horrible interpretations of the Half-Life saga. Here’s part of the quote given by the man himself, Valve’s CEO Gabe Newell, on what happened with the Half-Life movie:

Where we got into this direction was after Half-Life 1 had shipped. There was a whole bunch of meetings with people from Hollywood. Directors down there wanted to make a Half-Life movie and stuff, so they’d bring in a writer or some talent agency would bring in writers, and they would pitch us on their story. And their stories were just so bad. I mean, brutally, the worst. Not understanding what made the game a good game, or what made the property an interesting thing for people to be a fan of.

Sound like typical Hollywood, doesn’t it? So, if Valve didn’t want Half-Life handed off to a big studio, they would just have to do it themselves. Gabe also explained that the Team Fortress 2 “Meet the Team” shorts were a small part of the build-up to a full-fledged film.

That’s when we started saying ‘Wow, the best thing we could ever do is to just not do this as a movie, or we’d have to make it ourselves.’ And I was like, ‘Make it ourselves? Well that’s impossible.’ But the Team Fortress 2 thing, the Meet The Team shorts, is us trying to explore that

Valve has been stating for a while that they would like to get into the business of comic books and movies, and recently they’re been taking a lot of steps in that directions. The Meet the Team shorts are getting longer and bolder, and almost every Team Fortress 2 update has had a comic associated with it. What’s your opinion on Valve’s stance towards the Half-Life movie? Do you think they could pull it off? What sort of stuff would you like to see come from Valve in the future?

Source: PC Gamer

Assassin’s Creed:Brotherhood Walkthrough Confirms Flag Collection

The closer we get to November, the more I know in my heart that I will not be able to refuse the siren’s call of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. While I do have my doubts about the quick turn around time, everything I’ve read about the game, from the single-player to the multiplayer, seems to paint it in a good light. I’m especially willing to give it a go after I watched this video, which details some of the single-player mechanics along with how you will be managing your Assassin’s Guild.

Pretty neat, no? Originally, I thought that confining the game to just Rome would severely limit the scale, but it turns out that I might be wrong. Sending my Assassins all over Europe to start riots and kill targets sounds like a lot of fun, and bossing people around is always a good time. What do you guys think of the video? Are you anticipating Brotherhood? Also, as you may notice by the title of the article and the little snippet in the video, the much maligned flag collecting is back. You may commence your complaining (or celebrating, if that’s more your thing.)

Two Years of GamerSushi

portal-cakeThere’s an old saw that I think we all know that goes “time flies when you’re having fun”, and I can’t think of anything more fun than video games. Seriously, it’s hard to believe that it’s been two years since GamerSushi started, because it doesn’t seem like it’s been that long. Granted, I’ve only been posting on the site since last year, starting with the Battlefield 1943 PC delay, but I was commenting on the site before that.

I’m sure most of us came here from Smooth Few Films, but I don’t think that any of us could have predicted the cool community that would have grown around a few dudes talking about games. Honestly, this site has had some of the best discussion on the theory around gaming that I can think of, mostly because we take the time to read each others thoughts and we don’t get buried in a sea of fanboy-centric comments. We may disagree at times, but we’re all united in a love of gaming.

So, thanks to you guys for sticking around for two years, and thanks to Eddy, Nick, Jeff and Anthony for starting this website and keeping it going. It’s been an awesome ride so far, and there are definitely cool things on the horizon!

What about you guys? Any awesome discussions you remember, or a post that you really liked? Keep in mind that this is our birthday, so you’re allowed to shower us with praise.

Final Fantasy XIV and the Experience Cap

Final_Fantasy_XIVOne of the problems plaguing MMOs (and indeed all level-bases online games) is that players who have more time to dedicate to the game will outpace those of us who can only spare a few hours a week. This leads to some disparaging situations where overpowered players wipe the floor with other users in Player versus Player servers since they have the best gear and the stats to match. While some may decide that this is unfair, there’s really nothing the players themselves can do about it. Final Fantasy XIV, the upcoming fantasy MMO for the PlayStation 3 and the PC, is hoping to address this issue with the idea of diminishing returns.

The main way you progress in a Role Playing Games is through experience points, or EXP for short. It’s been this way since the dawn of gaming, and it’s not going to change any time soon. The more time you spend playing, the quicker you get points and the quicker you level up. With Final Fantasy XIV, this is going to change somewhat by limiting the amount of hours each week that you can earn one hundred percent of your experience. Basically, for eight hours of the week, you’ll get the full amount of EXP for quests and killing monsters. After that, though, your gains will start decreasing, eventually reaching a grand total of zero at the fifteen hour mark. This is on a weekly timer, so the experience clock resets every seven days. According to Square Enix, the idea behind this is that, in real life, no one could train at something for hours on end without reaching a plateau. Imagine lifting weights for eight hours a day? Eventually you’d run out of steam, and probably hurt yourself.

Naturally, this sort of artificial barrier is annoying MMO players, most of whom are dedicated to the point of playing more than eight hours a week. Think about it, if you played two hours a night, you’d be at the eight hour threshold before your knew it. An average World of Warcraft dungeon can take upwards of four hours, so this might be a problem in the making. The good news is that the EXP earned during the extra hours are banked as a surplus, but as of yet the developers don’t know what to do with them.

What do you guys think about this? I know we don’t have a lot of MMO players on the site, but as a former Star Wars Galaxies/World of Warcraft player myself, this limiting of player progression seems like it could hurt the game in the long run. I feel that, if you’re paying a subscription, you should play as long as you like with full returns, other players be damned. What do you think?

Update: I’ve read that this only affects up to fifteen hours of each job class, so it’s not an account wide restriction. Definitely better than the heavy-handed maneuver it seemed to be.

Source: FFXIV Core

Halo: Reach Live Action Trailer is a Blast

Halo 3 set a precedent for using live footage to pimp a game, and now it seems like every new title has a live-action commercial to go with it. Halo is still the king with the excellent short called “Landfall” by Neill Blomkamp for Halo 3 and the “We Are ODST” video for the half-expansion cum sequel Halo 3: ODST. By rights, Reach should have an awesome trailer depicting Spartans kicking ass and taking names. However, all we’ve had are people on the planet Reach standing around talking, but that changes right now. Take a look at Halo: Reach’s live action trailer:

While I did enjoy the video of civilians before the fall of Reach, something about Spartans in combat just gets me even more excited for the game (if that was possible). It also helped that the video reminded me a little of District 9, which might have been intentionally done to link it back in with the Blomkamp shorts. What did you guys think of the trailer? Actually, what do you think of the current trend of using live-action commercials for games?

GamerSushi Asks: Leaks and Spoilers

modern warfare 2It’s a sad fact, but the early theft of video games is becoming more and more common in the industry. Giant games such as Modern Warfare 2 and Halo: Reach are being picked apart and distributed far ahead of their street dates, with spoilers running rampant. For example, Modern Warfare 2’s “No Russian” level was leaked about a month in advance of people getting hold of the game, and many argued that the reveal of such a controversial mission spoiled the plot. Even larger gaming sites got in on the leak, making such videos a front-page deal, drawing even more attention.

So, we have a question for you, the community. When video games break their street date either through piracy or simple error, do you actively go hunting for spoilers? If you’re the sort of person who likes to stay pure, does it irk you to see gaming websites posting videos that give away elements of the game?

New DeathSpank Dropping in September

DeathSpank 2

Some developers take years to pump out a sequel, but we gamers are an impatient folk. We want it now, and Hothead Games is happy to oblige. Although the original DeathSpank only came out last month, September 21 sees the release of the sequel on the PlayStation network, followed by the X-Box LIVE Arcade version the next day. DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue is going to be about 50% longer than the original, which wasn’t that short to begin with (around 15 to 20 hours). The main difference in Thongs of Virtue is that the puzzle and questing aspects will be more pronounced, but the hack and slash combat that defined the original will still be present.

Since DeathSpank is the brainchild of Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert, gamers should expect more of the same hilarity that permeated the first game. Indeed, the point of Thongs of Virtue is to destroy magical undergarments that are possessing their wearers. Unfortunately, the short time span between the two games means that Thongs of Virtue won’t address any of the issues that were raised with the first title meaning that online co-op is still out. However, DeathSpank’s wizard friend returns for local co-op, along with Steve the Ninja. This new game will also feature a variety of exotic weapons, such as guns.

What do you guys think about this quick sequel turn around? Is it even worth putting something out if you can’t fix the complaints about the original? True, they were few and far between, with online co-op being the major sticking point, but I would have liked to see that included. Let us know!

Source and Image – Kotaku

The Rock Band 3 Team Reveals the Set List

While we’re on the topic of leaks, it seems that a couple of days ago some unscrupulous visitor to GameCom 2010 decided to grab a cell phone video of Rock Band 3’s set list and share it with the world. Well, Harmonix has decided to strike back with a rebuttal video, and…wait, in the background, is that what I think it is?

Rock Band 3 Setlist OFFICIAL Comment from Harmonix on Vimeo.

Well played, Harmonix, well played. Full set list is after the jump: Continue reading The Rock Band 3 Team Reveals the Set List

Avert Your Eyes: Halo: Reach Leaks Early

halo-reachSome people are persistent, there’s no doubt about that. Even when games are hidden inside Microsoft’s own fortress of code and priced at over $1250 on Xbox LIVE, pirates still find a way to get what they want. Halo: Reach, which is slated to come out in less than a month, has been grabbed from Microsoft via some skullduggery on their very own servers. The prohibitively expensive version of Reach (statue not included) was intended to be available to reviewers so Microsoft does not have to ship out box copies. Furthermore, even if you manage to scrounge up that many Microsoft Points, you still need a special download code to get it (Microsoft had done something similar with Crackdown 2, which is still not available publicly via LIVE).

While there’s been plenty of debate on this site about piracy and whether it’s good or bad, this is a pretty ballsy move even by Internet standards. Most games are pirated after their release or shortly before, but never from Microsoft’s own website. Spoiler-related threads are springing up all over the Web, so if you’d like to stay pure for September 14, batten down the hatches. Until the Cyber Police get this leak under control, there will be much chaos in the house of Xbox.

What do you guys think about this development? Are you going spoiler hunting or avoiding forums at all costs?

Source – Joystiq