July 20, 2011

Marvel vs. Capcom 3 Gets New Characters!

This Novem­ber Cap­com will re-release Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 3 with twelve new char­ac­ters. Not all have been revealed but four have been announced. The four are Ghost Rider, Hawk­eye, Fire­brand, and yes finally Strider. They are call­ing this re-release “Ulti­mate” Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 3. The updated ver­sion will also have a few new modes, one of which being spec­ta­tor mode. It will retail for 39.99 when it hits shelves in Novem­ber. The only down­side is so far is there is no word on whether you must pur­chase this new ver­sion to get all the new good­ies or if you already have MVC3 you can just down­load the update for a smaller price. I am guess­ing they will have a disc ver­sion as well as a down­load­able ver­sion much like Red Dead Redemp­tion did with Undead Nightmare.

What char­ac­ters are you hop­ing for?

July 16, 2011

Uncharted 3 Beta Stats

It came, it saw, it blew our minds. The Uncharted 3 beta has wrapped up and now we have to wait until Novem­ber to get to the fun again. Playsta­tion posted some num­bers on the beta say­ing it was the largest beta on the Playsta­tion net­work to date. Here’s some food for thought:

–Total unique Beta play­ers: 1.53 mil­lion people

–Total kills: 1.9 billion

–Total Cash col­lected: 1.4 TRILLION dol­lars (that’s greater than the gross domes­tic prod­uct of Spain, the eleventh high­est GDP in the world!)

–Total shots fired: 48 billion

–Total matches com­pleted: 22 million

–Total time played: More than 362 years worth of matches

Yea pretty insane it what I thought too.

July 9, 2011

Mass Effect 3 to be an Origin Exclusive

We now know that Mass Effect 3 will be an ori­gin exclu­sive on the PC along with The Old Repub­li­cand will not be avail­able on any of the other DD plat­forms such as Steam, Direct2Drive and Impulse.  This will most likely be one in sev­eral upcom­ing exclu­sives to the Ori­gin plat­form.  Other title that are expected to be Ori­gin exclu­sives are Bat­tle­field 3, Cry­sis 3 and any future AAA title releases that will come from EA.  

Mass Effect 3 will of course be avail­able on PS3 and Xbox 360 for those of you who do not wish to play on the PC.  What do you PC  guys think about Mass Effect 3 being Ori­gin exclu­sive?  Will this be bad for busi­ness?  Good or bad?

June 28, 2011

Crysis 2 DX11 Patch Released and Comparison

Today Cry­tec released it’s long awaited DX11 patch for Cry­sis II.  The DX11 con­tent, high res tex­tures, and updated visu­als have been a source of much debate within the PC and even con­sole com­mu­ni­ties.  PC gamers argue that the con­tent should of been released with the game instead of wait­ing sev­eral months after it’s release to be put out.  Many PC gamers claim that the DX11 patch is to lit­tle to late and that by “alien­at­ing” their core audi­ence, the PC com­mu­nity, that they have lost the fol­low­ing that they might of oth­er­wise had. 

Regard­less of where you stand on the mat­ter the DX11 patch is avail­able for you to down­load here and it is a free down­load to those who have pur­chased the game.  There are sev­eral dif­fer­ent con­tent packs that you can down­load depend­ing on what you want.  Each one has dif­fer­ent sys­tem require­ments so be sure to check them before you down­load them. 

What do you guys think to lit­tle to late?  Or just a great addi­tion to a good game?  Let us know! We want to know!

The patch fea­tures are listed below:

Cry­sis 2 Patch 1.9

• Added Con­tact Shad­ows
• Added DX11 sup­port for Cry­sis 2 (the fol­low­ing fea­tures only work when down­load­ing the optional DX11 pack­age here):
• — Tes­sel­la­tion + Dis­place­ment Map­ping
• — High Qual­ity HDR Motion Blur
• — Real­is­tic Shad­ows with Vari­able Penum­bra
• — Sprite Based Bokeh Depth of Field
• — Par­al­lax Occlu­sion Map­ping
• — Par­ti­cles Motion Blur, Shad­ows and Art Updates
• — Water Ren­der­ing improve­ments and using Tes­sel­la­tion + Dis­place­ment Map­ping
• Added Real­time Local Reflec­tions
• Added sup­port for Higher Res Tex­tures Pack­age
• Added var­i­ous new con­sole vari­ables to whitelist
• Fixed bul­let pen­e­tra­tion, which had been bro­ken by a bug intro­duced with the DLC 2 patch
• Fixed issue in MP where player stats weren’t always saved at the end of a game
• Fixed issue in MP where player stats would some­times ran­domly reset
• Fixed issue with MP time played sta­tis­tic, which would some­times be too low on leader­boards and in stats
• Fixed issue with JAW rocket not fir­ing through window’s con­tain­ing bro­ken glass
• Fixed rare issue where a user could not access MP with a valid CD key if they had pre­vi­ously used an invalid CD key
• Improved advanced graph­ics options menu
• Improved anti-cheat mea­sure­ments: fixed exploit which could pre­vent vote kick­ing work­ing against a user
• Improved multi-GPU sup­port
• Improved Tone Map­ping
• Re-added pos­si­bil­ity to enable r_StereoSupportAMD via con­fig file (unsupported)

I’ve also snagged some side by side com­par­isons of DX9 vs DX11:

June 27, 2011

Sound The Alarm

Hey guys I have a friend who also has a nerd site. His name is Adam and he does up the geek­ness over at http://stashow.net/. Sound The Alarm brings you news in gam­ing and other fun things as well. They also do weekly pod­casts chat­ting about any­thing going on in gam­ing, sports, or ran­dom stuff around the house. They just hit the 25^th episode mark so gratz to them. So give them a check­ing out and tell them Ace­Of­Nades sent ya. Oh and be nice.

June 27, 2011

Supreme Court Rules In Favor of Video Game Industry

In a mile­stone event today, the Supreme Court ruled today against the Vio­lent Video Game law pre­sented by Cal­i­for­nia law makers.

“Like pro­tected books, plays, and movies, [video games] com­mu­ni­cate ideas through famil­iar lit­er­ary devices and fea­tures dis­tinc­tive to the medium. And ‘the basic prin­ci­ples of free­dom of speech … do not vary’ with a new and dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ca­tion medium,” said the court.

“This coun­try has no tra­di­tion of spe­cially restrict­ing children’s access to depic­tions of vio­lence. And California’s claim that ‘inter­ac­tive’ video games present spe­cial prob­lems, in that the player par­tic­i­pates in the vio­lent action on screen and deter­mines its out– come, is unpersuasive.”

This is land­mark event in that it sets a prece­dent for any future enter­tain­ment indus­try laws.  This rul­ing pro­tects video games under first amend­ment rights thus extend­ing them the pro­tect­ing that the Lit­er­a­ture, Music and Video indus­try already have.

“Esthetic and moral judg­ments about art  and lit­er­a­ture… are for the indi­vid­ual to make, not for the gov­ern­ment to decree even with man­date or approval of majority”

While it may be true that chil­dren should not be play­ing Vio­lent or sex­u­ally explicit games it is most defi­nately not the respon­si­bil­ity of the courts to decide this.  The respon­si­bil­ity of pro­tect­ing chil­dren falls on the hands of their par­ents.  Par­ents and law­mak­ers that are angry with what chil­dren are view­ing should not be tar­get­ing the indus­try but per­haps tar­get­ing them­selves or par­ents of these chil­dren who are fail­ing to pro­tect the chil­dren from such content?

What does TGB think?  Do think the court made the cor­rect deci­sion?  Does any­one here think it should of gone the other way?  Should the gov­ern­ment reg­u­late the video game industry?

June 26, 2011

Subscriptions VS Microtransactions

With advance­ments in gam­ing come new ways for the indus­try to get our money. How­ever with EA giv­ing way to the “online pass” codes trend we see gam­ing head­ing in a new direc­tion. Now we see free to play, pay to play, and all thats in between pop­ping up all over.

Sub­scrip­tions — Ahh the famil­iar feel­ings. Pay for a month? Three months? A year? Two years? Hope­fully this game lasts that long. Sub­scrip­tion based games rode the MMO wagon to become a stan­dard for a lot of games and gam­ing ser­vices. I am sure the first guy to see a pay to play game said, “Ha! That will never work.” Now that same guy does his best to scrape together enough money to get another month of WoW access like a crack­head get­ting his fix. Suc­cess in the MMO world led Micr­soft to charge a sub­scrip­tion for its Xbox Live con­tent. Even Playsta­tion Net­work finally  jumped on the bus when they saw how suc­cess­ful it was. More and more we are start­ing to see new games released with pass codes or codes for add-ons. Now whis­pers are being heard of pos­si­bly charg­ing a flat sub­scrip­tion fee and get­ting access to all the new con­tent as it comes. Will you want to pay for Xbox Live, a new game, and a sub­scrip­tion for play­ing that game? Seems a bit much to me.

Micro­trans­ac­tions — The other side of the coin. Micro­trans­ac­tions are the newest fad in the gam­ing world but they actu­ally aren’t as new as you think. Xbox Live charges micro­trans­ac­tions every­time a user buys Microsoft points. What is newer is the way these trans­ac­tions are pre­sented. They are wrapped secretly in a “free to play” game. A per­fect exam­ple is League of Leg­ends, a top down action real time strat­egy tower defense game. It is absolutely free to down­load and play. Every­thing can be unlocked in game by sim­ply putting in time to the game. How­ever for a few dol­lars here and there you can speed up the process to get ahead. The suc­cess this in PC games like League of Leg­ends has got­ten Steams atten­tion. Steam announced a new direc­tion of free to play games using the micro­trans­ac­tion method. Even Xbox is rumored to be get­ting new games as well.

As with every­thing it all has to do with money. How much can they get from us and how much are we will­ing to pay? Some like the idea some don’t. Prices will be the biggest issue. If I have to pay for a game, pay for a ser­vice to play it, or pay for in game con­tent to be able to con­tend in game, what will that cost me?

June 16, 2011

Crysis 2 Gone From Steam

Steam recently removed Cry­sis 2 from it’s online store.  This is rather supris­ing con­sid­er­ing that Cry­sis 2 is one of it’s top sell­ing titles.  The game was appar­ently removed a few days ago when some steam users who fre­quent the site real­ized that it was no longer avail­able for sale. 

EA released a state­ment saying ”

It’s unfor­tu­nate that Steam has removed Cry­sis II from their ser­vice. This was not an EA deci­sion or the result of any action by EA.

Steam has imposed a set of busi­ness terms for devel­op­ers hop­ing to sell con­tent on that ser­vice — many of which are not imposed by other online game ser­vices. Unfor­tu­nately, Cry­tek has an agree­ment with another down­load ser­vice which vio­lates the new rules from Steam and resulted in its expul­sion of Cry­sis II from Steam.

Cry­sis II con­tin­ues to be avail­able on sev­eral other down­load ser­vices includ­ing Ama­zon, GameStop and Origin.com.”

It’s inter­est­ing that Cry­sis 2 is also listed as an Ori­gin exclu­sive even though it is still avail­able on other DD ser­vices.  Recently EA has been push­ing their new Ori­gin ser­vice, Ori­gin, and for those of you who don’t know what that is it is a dig­i­tal dis­tri­b­u­tion ser­vice just like steam.  Whats most inter­est­ing is that not all EA titles were removed from Steams cat­a­log, only Cry­sis 2 was removed from the Steam catalog. 

Steam is by far the most pop­u­lar online dig­i­tal dis­tri­b­u­tion provider today.  With over 33 mil­lion accounts and ris­ing it has the largest user base and the largest num­ber of games cur­rently avail­able for down­load.  It’s the biggest rival to EA’s new ori­gin ser­vice which has very few titles avail­able to it.

Con­trary to EA’s state­ment this seems like a ploy to pull users from it’s biggest com­pe­ti­tior over to it’s Ori­gin ser­vice.  Using it’s top title such as Cry­sis 2 gives credit to that the­ory.  It will be inter­est­ing to see what they do with the next 2 biggest releases Bat­tle­field 3 and Mass Effect 3.  I sus­pect these will be Ori­gin exclu­sives as well because of a “undis­closed” Steam pol­icy.  What do you guys think? Do you think remov­ing their title from Steam was a good busi­ness deci­sion or a bad one?

June 6, 2011

E3 2011 — Sony

Well Day one of E3 is in the books and it ended with Sony. Now Sony had a ton of pres­sure to be great this year due to the PSN hack. Well lets just say I think they hit a home­run. They had to step it up and they did just that. After the apolo­gies and thanks for sup­port here’s what they gave us:

Uncharted 3 — Beta June 28 — Full game Nov 1 — We got a look at Uncharted 3 which looked amaz­ing. The game­play had Drake sneak­ing around a cruise ship dur­ing a ter­ri­ble storm. As you nav­i­gate the ship you and object around you con­tin­u­ously sway with the choppy seas out side. Even­tu­ally the ship gets a hole and starts flood­ing and then all of the sud­den the ship rolls onto its side adding a whole new level lay­out. It was a very impres­sive sneak peak.

Resis­tance 3 — Sept 6 - This install­ment takes place 4 years after the pre­vi­ous game and its all out war again. All new weapons and great graph­ics add to the lure. Also Resis­tance 3 will be capad­able with the PS Move. On Sept 6 there will be a spe­cial bun­dle that will include the game, the PS eye cam­era, Nav­i­ga­tion con­troller, PS move con­troller, and the sharp shooter con­troller all for $150.

God of War, Ico, and Shadow of Col­los­sus — All these games games are get­ting remas­terd col­lec­tions in 3D.

Playsta­tion will box a 24 inch 3D dis­play, 3D glasses, 6ft HDMI cord, and Resis­tance 3 for $499.

NBA2K12 — This title will include a new NBA on the Move fea­ture that uses the PS Move.

Medieval Moves: Deadmund’s Quest — Fall 2011 — This will be a PS Move game set in a fan­tasy world. There will be no inven­tory or weapon select. The ges­tures you make with the Move con­troller will select the weapon auto­mat­i­cally. The game will fea­ture dif­fer­ent branch­ing paths all filled with puz­zles to get through them.

Infa­mous 2 — Gave us another trailer and later this year there will be an update to cus­tomize game­play and the addi­tion PS Move capability.

Lit­tle Big Planet 2 — Will get an update this year for the PS Move functionality

Star Hawk - this is the sequal to War Hawk and they gave us a trailer which looked fairly good.

Sly Cooper Theives in Time — 2012 - All we really got to see was a lit­tle trailer, hope­fully more to come

Dust 514 — closed beta late 2011 — full game spring 2012 — Dust will be a Playsta­tion exclu­sive. It’s a first per­son shooter that will be con­nected with the PC MMO Eve Online. It will also have a PS Move func­tion as well as PS Vita functionality.

Bioshock Infi­nite — Bioshocks new trailer looked fan­tas­tic and it will have uses for PS Move. The PS3 ver­sion of the game will come with Bioshock 1 on it.  Also as a side note there will be a game based in the Bioshock uni­verse for the PS Vita.

Saints Row — All we got was a release date of Nov 15

Star Trek — 2012 - This will be a co-op based game with PS Move func­tion­al­ity based on the J.J Abrams movie. It will also be in 3D. There will a pre­quel to the game as a dig­i­tal down­load. There will be a spe­cial phaser Move con­troller that you will be able to buy as well.

SSX — Playsta­tion 3 will have and exclu­sive Mt. Fugi course.

Need for Speed The Run — PS3 ver­sion will have seven extra cars to choose from.

Bat­tle­field 3 — PS3 ver­sion will include Bat­tle­field 1943.

NGP/ PS Vita — Hol­i­day 2011 — It has been offi­cially named the Playsta­tion Vita. Includes dual cam­eras, dual con­trol sticks, dual touch pads, axis con­trols, and a five inch touch screen. There will be two ver­sions. One with Wi-Fi and one with 3G capa­bil­ity. Playsta­tion will part­ner with AT&T for the 3G ver­sion. Wi-Fi ver­sion will cost $249.99 and the 3G will cost $299.99. There are 80 games in devel­op­ment and it will have cross play functionality.

Uncharted Golden Abyss — PS Vita game. Will use touch screen for more sim­ple con­trols. It had good visuals.

Ruin — Ruin is an action based rpg for the PS Vita. It will use a class sys­tem in a fan­tasy set­ting. It will use the cross play func­tion for the PS3 ver­sion. You can save on the Vita and then load from the same spot on the PS3.

Mod Nation Rac­ers — This will be a brand new Mod Nation Racer exclu­sively for the PS Vita. You will have a new track cus­tomiza­tion using its touch screen. Using the touch screen you can cre­ate banks for turns, jumps, moun­tains and lakes. There will 2 mil­lion cre­ated items already for use on day one.

Lit­tle Big Planet — There will be a PS Vita ver­sion with tons and tons of online/ com­mu­nity features.

Street Fighter X Tekken — We got to see a small trailer and found out Cole from Infa­mous will be a play­ble char­ac­ter. There will also be a PS Vita ver­sion with Cole as well.

We did not see Kevin But­ler which bummed me a lit­tle, but Sony did a great job in my opin­ion. Sony needed a good show­ing and I felt they did just that. We got dates and prices which is always good. I have a feel­ing they took a leap away from the PSN hack and now peo­ple will be get­ting back on board with Sony.

June 6, 2011

E3 2011 – Microsoft– Tomb Raider

Crys­tal Dynam­ics came out on to Microsoft’s stage to present their new reimag­in­ing of Tomb Raider. This is vastly dif­fer­ent than we have seen her last in TR: Under­world. Lara is 21 and just begin­ning her adven­tures, the tone is much darker and gritty to the point dur­ing the demo Lara pulled out a piece out metal out of a wound like a pro; albeit much whin­ing and moan­ing. The game play they showed looked like a mix of clas­sic Tomb Raider and Uncharted. There were scripted playable sequences that looked very rem­i­nis­cent of Uncharted 2. Not to say that Lara’s new makeover is a bad thing and all they did was copy and pasted from Naughty Dogs opus, there were some orig­i­nal ideas amongst the demo. Using Lara’s “sur­vivor skills” you can locate things in the envi­ron­ments to use to cre­ate a path to progress. On exam­ple they had was using fire to burn cer­tain things to lower a plat­form. The game did suf­fer unfor­tu­nately from the plague that is infect­ing most mod­ern games ad that is the quick time event. There were sev­eral though out the demo, but they did not seem to slow the pace of the game down. The games aes­thet­ics were beau­ti­ful and I think I can get use to a darker and grit­tier Tomb Raider. If it is any­thing like Uncharted 2 I will enjoy the game immensely and can’t wait to get my hands on it. The game will be out fall of 2012.  

For more on all our E3 cov­er­age head over to E3 tab and check out the lat­est and great­est news.