Diablo III Releases on May 15th!
Diablo III is to be released on May 15th.. a global release (or at least nearly global) with both retail and digital being made available at the same time. You can pre-purchase the game now from Blizzard, for £44.99.
Those who have signed up for the World of Warcraft Annual Pass will get the game for free, along with the Tyrael’s Charger mount and beta access to the next expansion: Mists of Pandaria.
I’m really looking forward to the game. Two months to clear my backlog first, though? Unlikely to happen! 😀
Avoiding The Indie Face Kick
Another indie bundle is due to launch soon: the Indie Face Kick, which has been put together by the guys at Gaming: All The Time. This bundle contains eight games: Booster Trooper, Dead Horde, Sol Survivor, Avencast, Runespell, Still Life 2, PAM and Greed Black Border.
I wouldn’t mind looking at the games.. but this bundle, or more specifically, the organisation of this bundle, feels far too unprofessional.. I’m unimpressed with the organisers’ attitude towards customers’ concerns and criticism.
Update: BacklogJourney has done a little more digging.. the organisers are, or were, more heavily involved with their Russian Steam Key advertiser than they were letting on, with this advertiser providing keys for their competitions, too. (more…)
Grim Times
It’s really not looking good for GAME. Yesterday’s news showed that they were looking for a buyer.. a few options such as a partial GameStop buyout were being outed in the press, with the latest possible buyers being Hilco and OpCapita.
Share prices, which started the week at 3.5p, fell to below 1p yesterday morning, and only just made it back over the penny mark. This may put buyers off. It may be that buyers are waiting until GAME goes into administration, as they can then negotiate around store liabilities.
GAME has also failed to secure stocks of Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, which is due on March 23rd, and a press release from Tecmo Koei states that neither Ninja Gaiden 3 or Warriors Orochi 3 will be available through GAME or GameStation in the UK and Ireland, with alternative stores listed as HMV, ASDA, Blockbuster, or online.
Other bad news, or bad press at least, came for EA and BioWare.. there was a large backlash against Mass Effect 3’s ending, which apparently doesn’t take into account players’ choices in the game.
Fans discovered that the Day 1 DLC character can be unlocked from the disc; EA stepped forward to say that From Ashes is not on the disc, but is a 600MB+ download; but that some “framework elements and character models needed to be put on disc”.
The latest news is that a multiplayer DLC for the game has been spotted, by somebody using a development kit. No pricing or release date has been mentioned as yet, but this news doesn’t seem to be getting a good reception from fans. At this rate, we’ll be waiting for the GOTY edition.
Borderlands Completed!
I’ve had many false starts with Borderlands.. starting way back around Sept 2010, when we picked up a four-pack in a Steam sale, when I felt I was holding friends back and being confused by the guns.. a later attempt with a friend which I think ended in a lost savegame due to a Windows reinstall.. an attempt to play on lunchbreaks at work.. and finally, this one!
Seeing details coming out for Borderlands 2 gave me another nudge to get back to it.. it’s been a few months since we played last. This isn’t to do with the quality of the game.. the game is great.. it’s to do with a variety of distractions, including the arrival of Skyrim 😉
When we played last time, we’d got ourselves killed over and over again in the Circle of Slaughter.
We returned to this after completing another mission or two, with a bit more determination to beat it. We were killed again.. you really do need to use cover.. but went back in and beat it seemingly by glitch: far fewer enemies spawned and it seemed that it had just carried on from the point we’d reached in our last attempt, instead of returning to the start.
There were more ..interesting-looking enemies to fight.. the Rakk Hive in particular. She spawned Rakks as well as poisonous clouds, so we had to move around a little while shooting.. we both had a sniper rifle, so aimed for the eyes to cause most damage!
I was glad my friend had recommended taking the left path on the approach to this fight, because it made aiming easier.. and we’d have been standing underneath it.. the Rakk Hive’s body remained as a solid object when it died, blocking us from getting at the chests! I guess if we’d been fighting from underneath, it might have landed on us and trapped or killed us.
The last big fight of the game was at the Vault.. the contents of the Vault not being weapons or loot, but a huge beast called The Destroyer, which was imprisoned here! Ammo was a bit of a problem, as The Destroyer has quite a lot of health.. and again, co-op wins out as there were a few instances where we needed to revive each other. In single-player, this would have meant starting again, making a much harder fight!
Some of the DLC was on offer a while ago, so I still have that to play through.. but as the main story is done, I’m putting this one down as another game completed! 🙂
Something for the Weekend
Diablo III will apparently not have PvP at launch, as the systems aren’t up to scratch yet. Instead, they’ll be patched in when they are ready. In the meantime, Blizzard are apparently putting the finishing touches on the game.. for which there is still no confirmed release date.
CryEngine 3 is now available for free non-commercial use! AI, animations, dynamic lighting.. check out the preview from IGN:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TtgW20IEm0] (more…)
Minecraft – Super Pirate Battle Royale
A friend linked me to Rock Paper Shotgun’s article about Super Pirate Battle Royale for Minecraft.. two huge battleships with working cannons firing TNT!
I thought this was some kind of a mod, but it’s actually a map, which you can download from Planet Minecraft. If, like me, you wanted to take a look around but don’t have access to a server, it does work in singleplayer! To add the map into your game, just copy the folder into your .minecraftsaves folder (mine is C:UsersKristineAppDataRoaming.minecraftsaves).
Used Vs New
The Mass Effect Day 1 DLC debate got me thinking about some of the issues in the games industry. Are customers being exploited? Are customers losing out while stuck in the middle of the publishers’ fight against used games? My thoughts on DLC can be found here.
I can see why publishers and developers might not like used games.
New games go into the shops, with the retailer paying a fee for the product and then selling it on, making the initial outlay back plus profits. That in itself, is fair. However, when it comes to used games, the retailer pays the customer a small trade in fee and then re-sells the game, keeping all the income from that sale to themselves. Although multiple customers will buy the game, often exchanging the same copy, the developer only receives payment on the first sale. (more…)
Quantic Dream’s Kara and Other Videos
Quantic Dream have created an amazing demo video, featuring an android called Kara. The video shows off new development tech and some fantastic writing too..
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtbDDqU3dVI] (more…)
The Resurrected Scroll of Resurrection, and Other News
Blizzard are encouraging WoW players to bring their friends back to the game, with the latest version of their Scroll of Resurrection. The player referring their friend gets a Spectral Mount, while the returning player gets a free upgrade to Cataclysm, a boost to level 80 for one character, and free character move if required, so they can join their friend’s realm and faction.
Metacritic Drama with Mass Effect 3
Mass Effect 3 launched today in the US with UK gamers forced to wait until Friday. The game has scored high ratings from the press, as expected, and has a Metacritic score of 93, but the user score is currently down at 2.5, based on 562 votes.
Sounds familiar.. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 also took an initial battering on their user score: one of the devs asked for help on Twitter, noting that the score was “suspiciously low”. Indeed, there were a large number of 0 ratings across the three platforms.
While I’m sure there are plenty of honest ratings being submitted for the game, and here for Mass Effect 3, the political voters have certainly been out in force. Are people downvoting the game out of spite at the Day 1 DLC? Or is it rage at the latest revelation that the multiplayer will have an effect on the ending of your singleplayer game? (more…)