May 18, 2012

Dump Bin Diving: Darksiders

In the lull of excit­ing new releases, how­ever I am look­ing for­ward to this month (Drag­ons Dogma, Max Payne 3, TC: GR Future Sol­dier oh my!) but I have been doing a lot of scour­ing in bar­gain bins and scout­ing sales to pick up some games that I may have missed or thought about pick­ing up at the right price. Recently I picked up Dark­siders, an action/adventure game that took on the badge of “a mature Zelda”. While some of that moniker is cor­rect, the vast open map, you get a horse to ride, you scour dun­geons, find maps for said dun­geons, and gain a heart to progress fur­ther; there are how­ever dif­fer­ences, there is actual plat form­ing, the com­bat is more rep­e­ti­tious and feels like God of War, but that is as far as it devi­ates. The game was released back in Jan­u­ary of 2010 and was met with warm crit­i­cal praise. The game is great if you like the Zelda for­mula but crave some­thing dif­fer­ent and want to trade in Green tights for what can only be described as garbage can armor and a red hood. You play as War, one of the four horse­men of the apoc­a­lypse. The story starts as what seems like the apoc­a­lypse is hap­pen­ing, War jumps the gun and comes down to earth to play medi­a­tor and finds out the sev­enth seal has not been bro­ken, Whops! War is then striped of his pow­ers as pun­ish­ment and must go on a jour­ney to fig­ure out who sum­moned him in the first place. The story is kind of thin, but some great voice act­ing by Mark Hamill, who plays the watcher (the one sent with war to make sure he does things as he is told) and the remain­ing cast does a good job as well enough though War comes off as a bit whiny and fake at times.  The games com­bat, boss fights, great art direc­tion (out­side of War’s armor), and weaponry are some of the points that really shine. Some of the plat form­ing, con­stant back­track­ing, and annoy­ing chal­lenge rooms are what could pry you out of the expe­ri­ence. The game can be found in almost any retailer for around $20. I got mine at a Best Buy on sale for $10, but I would have eas­ily paid $20 for it. There is a lot of game here for your dol­lar and in a time where mil­i­tary FPS are a dime a dozen, it’s nice to have some­thing come along that is dif­fer­ent. There is a sequel that has been in the works for some time and will fea­ture Death, another horse­man, as the main pro­tag­o­nist. Dark­siders 2 is sched­uled for release this August.

+ Cool art style

+ The story has a cool premise

+ Fun boss battles

+ Knows it steals idea’s from other games but wears them well

+ Com­bat has its awe­some moments

-  But it can grow tiresome

- see about bul­let point about the plat form­ing sections

- Back­track­ing, back­track­ing, and more backtracking

Final ver­dict: Worth you burger money!

May 15, 2012

My beef with online authentication DRM measures and Diablo III

After months of delays Dia­blo III has made a per­fect exam­ple of why online authen­ti­ca­tion for a sin­gle player game sim­ply shouldnt hap­pen. Yes I get that piracy has become a huge issue and Bliz­zard is just try­ing to pro­tect is prop­erty. How­ever after dri­ving my happy ass to Gamestop, trad­ing in some games and com­ing home with D3 I expect to be able to play it, at least the sin­gle player. Unfor­tu­nately Bliz­zards servers are down leav­ing many gamers with­out game on release day. Again I get it but sadly this form of DRM is becom­ing main­stream and most any game you play is required to have an inter­net con­nec­tion and/or online acct to just play the sin­gle player cam­paign. I miss the good ol days when if you bought a game you sim­ply installed off of ten discs and played your damn game. It was awe­some. How­ever due to ass­hats who love noth­ing more than to fuck with the rest of us this online authen­ti­ca­tion has been imple­mented and usu­ally it works fine, not many issues really, but when some­one who just forked out $60 hard earned dol­lars cant play due to server issues for a sin­gle player game the down side of this really shines.

Any­who, I am aware that this was more rant than news but to inform every­one, if you are hav­ing issues play­ing D3 it is very likely due to Bliz­zard servers being either down or launch day glitches being worked out, Another thing to be aware if is this

Error 3006

While play­ing a Demon Hunter, if a shield is equipped to the Tem­plar fol­lower, you may be dis­con­nected from Battle.net.  You may be unable to login, receiv­ing the mes­sage “Error 3006″

These issues are of course being aggres­sively looked into but it may be some time before things are run­ning smooth.

May 15, 2012

And yet another game slides into 2013, but Pikmin 2 will make it?

We found out a cou­ple of days ago that Bioshock: Infi­nite was being post­poned into 2013; now yet another game has caught the breeze of delay, Crys­tal Dynam­ics Tomb Raider Reboot. Accord­ing to Dar­rell Gal­lagher, Head of Crys­tal Dynam­ics, the game will be pushed back to the first quar­ter of 2013 to make sure there is an extra coat of spit shine on the game. From what we saw last year at E3 the game is shap­ing up very nicely and looks to take some cues from the male tomb raider him­self Nathan Drake.

On a good note today, Kotaku reported that Pik­min 2 and Mario Power Ten­nis will be com­ing to North Amer­ica as part of the Nin­tendo Selects lineup. These games will include the enhanced Wii con­trols and will be avail­able June 10^th for a mere $20 bucks. Pik­min 2 was one of the Pur­ple Lunch­boxes great­est games and one of their great­est fran­chises that play sec­ond fid­dle to all that is Mario. If you have a Wii do your­self a favor and pick up Pik­min 2, also the blue Pikmin’s face is priceless.

May 14, 2012

Ghost Recon: Alpha

As live action trail­ers become com­mon place for major game releases I have to say this one takes the cake!!! Alpha is almost 30 min­utes of non-stop awe­some, AND it actu­ally is a pre­quel to the cam­paign story in Future Solider!  The high pro­duc­tion value Ubisoft put into this “film” proves that video games have huge poten­tial in being made into qual­ity full length movies!

If you don’t know what Ghost Recon Future Solider is here’s the skinny:

Part of the Group for Spe­cial­ized Tactics, a Spe­cial Mis­sion Unit under the direct com­mand of the Joint Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Com­mand, the elite of the mod­ern US Spe­cial Forces is bet­ter known by their bat­tle­field leg­end. They are the untrace­able sol­diers called the Ghosts.
Only the best of the best, sol­diers with a unique mix of skills on and off the bat­tle­field, ever get to wear the cov­eted Ghost insignia.  Equipped with the most advanced com­bat tech­nol­ogy, the Ghosts track down the highest-value tar­gets in the highest-risk con­flict areas around the world, fight­ing from the shad­ows in any cli­mate or ter­rain.
In the near future, four of these elite sol­diers serve as the tip of the spear in a hid­den war rag­ing across the globe.  But even as Ghost Lead, Pep­per, 30K, and Kozak accom­plish their objec­tives, they dis­cover the threat they face is greater than they ever imag­ined — one that could alter the inter­na­tional bal­ance of power for­ever.

Need more info on this game releas­ing May 22^nd  check out the source:

Ghost Recon: Future Solider

May 11, 2012

Legend of Grimrock’s Editor Shapes Up.

From the moment you click on “New Game” in Leg­end of Grim­rock, it’s obvi­ous the devel­oper intended to have cus­tom dun­geons made by other fans. Today they’ve made a news post with a work in progress shot of the edi­tor they’re plan­ning on releas­ing, as well as a link to a thread to fol­low progress.

There’s no actual release date so far, but judg­ing by the list of “done” and “todo” on the forum post, it’s look­ing like it will be in the com­ing month or two.

For any­one unde­cided on Leg­end of Grim­rock, you can read our review right here.

May 10, 2012

Free Tropico!

This week­end on Steam, Trop­ico 4 and all its DLCis 66% off, AS WELL AS FREE UNTIL SUNDAY!

That means you can play Trop­ico 4 sans DLC with­out pay­ing a cent until 1PM PST on Sun­day. Trop­ico 4 is free in both the mon­e­tary sense, and the eth­i­cal one so you chose. Heck, for all I care you can make a com­mu­nist dic­ta­tor­ship in which free will is not only dis­cour­aged but pun­ished. And you can do it for free this weekend.

You can check out the deal here. You can get the free week­end under way by sim­ply restart­ing your Steam client and down­load­ing it if you don’t already see it in your games list.

May 9, 2012

Bioshock Infinite wont hit shelves till 2013

Bioshock Infi­nite has been delayed to 2013 some­time, likely early 2013. Ken Levine, the games cre­ative direc­tor, com­mented that the extra time is being taken for devel­op­ment, specif­i­cally to explore new game ideas.

“When we announced the release date of BioShock Infi­nite in March, we felt pretty good about the tim­ing,” he said. “Since then, we’ve uncov­ered oppor­tu­ni­ties to make Infi­nite into some­thing even more extra­or­di­nary. There­fore, to give our tal­ented team the time they need to deliver the best Infi­nite pos­si­ble, we’ve decided to move the game’s release to February.”

In addi­tion to this Bioshock Infi­nite wont be show­cased at this years E3 or GamesCom. Ken Levine explained that prepar­ing for such events takes time away from devel­op­ment and the stu­dio needs every minute to fin­ish up and pol­ish as much as they can before release. When Bioshock Infi­nite hits a shelf or down­load server near you it will be whats the team meant it to be and not early build shown off and then changed.

May 9, 2012

Enter to win a copy of The Witcher 2: Enhanced Edition for the 360!

Its con­test time here again at TheGamers­Blog and we are excited about this one. The Witcher 2: Assas­sins of Kings: Enhanced edi­tion has finally made its way o the con­sole crowd. The Xbox 360 ver­sion of the game is burst­ing at the seams with con­tent and we want to give you, our read­ers, and the chance to win a free copy from us here at TheGamers­Blog. As with our con­test in the past, the rules are sim­ple. One, like us on Face­book; Two, cre­ate a pro­file; and Three answer our really cool ques­tion. This time since we are giv­ing away one of the best action RPG’s to come along in a long time we thought we would gear the ques­tion toward the RPG genre; and the ques­tion is….

Who would be your ideal Hero vs. Vil­lain, but they must be from an RPG or RPG series. Ger­alt vs. Sephi­roth? Mario (yes he’s been in RPG’s) vs. Jack of Blades from Fable? Squall (FFVIII) vs. Gongora (Lost Odyssey)?

Who­ever your idea match up would involve we would like to hear it. This is the Xbox 360 ver­sion of The Witcher 2: Enhanced Edi­tion we are giv­ing away; new, sealed in the pack­age and comes with the fold out map, quest guide, and sound­track. So please like us on Face­book and cre­ate a pro­file and answer the ques­tion in the com­ments below. The con­test will start on May 9^th 2012 and will end on May 23^rd 2012. We hope to see some really inter­est­ing match ups!

May 3, 2012

Elder Scrolls MMO?

The Elder Scrolls online was just announced, and fea­tured in the June issue of Game Informer. Tomor­row will the first screen­shot and a teaser video will be released, so keep a look out for that. The MMO will sup­pos­edly have three fac­tions for pvp, and a large world for play­ers to explore.

Enough about the details of what. I want to know why. I am not excited for this, just like I was a lit­tle dis­ap­pointed when they made Star Wars: The Old Repub­lic an MMO. The genre is a tough one, and I have only really enjoyed one MMORPG for more than a few months. Yes, that was World of War­craft. After six years of play­ing that god-forsaken game I was done. I still have sub­scrip­tion for SWTOR but I haven’t logged in in over a month. It seems like every game that is largely suc­cess­ful that MIGHT have the poten­tial for being for more than one player online, just absolutely has to do it. Although SWTOR exceeded all of my expec­ta­tions, and in the­ory and most prac­tice is fun­da­men­tally bet­ter than WoW, I still don’t want to play it. I don’t see why I would jump on another sub­scrip­tion fee for yet another game that is just fol­low­ing in the shadow of WoW. Or maybe I don’t play well with others.

Regard­less to my inabil­ity to get along with other human beings, I will be on the look­out for the first screen­shots and more infor­ma­tion about this Elder Scrolls Online.

May 2, 2012

Xbox 360 + Kinects for $99! BUT There’s a Catch…

The rumor mill is a-buzzin on the ol inter­web today with a new bun­dle for the Xbox that maybe avail­able as soon as next week. The bun­dle will include the 4gig Xbox 360 plus the kinects for a mere $99! BUT, there’s a catch you have to agree to a Monthly sub­scrip­tion to Xbox live Gold at about 15 buck a month! There may also be extra stream­ing con­tent avail­able as well as a 2 year war­ranty. Cause you know Xbox’s’ like to brick on a reg­u­lar basis!

If you’re think­ing “well I’ll get the bun­dle then drop the sub­scrip­tion after a few months!” think again in an effort to keep you up to date and fully paid there is an early ter­mi­na­tion fee that you will have to pay to drop the ser­vice. Is it me or does this sound like oh I don’t know ah a cell phone contract!

So now if you’re won­der­ing if it’s worth it sit down and do some math the cost for buy­ing the sys­tem out right with Xbox Gold for two years is about $420 and if you go the sub­scrip­tion route it’ll set you back $459! Well, to me. This seems like a sham but if your short on cash and be needin so XBL this maybe the way to go… Just remem­ber that 4gig sys­tem will not hold all those Call of Duty Map­packs you been dyin to down­load and play online so a Hard drive will set you back about another $100 give or take Sooooo hhmm is it worth it? Why don’t you guys decide leave your thoughts below…

Source: Forbes

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