Maybe they’re all getting a week’s head start on July 4th celebrations, because all of the digital distributors are putting shooters on sale, so we can blow stuff up American style. There are also plenty of other extensive sales going on at the moment as well, but now’s your chance to grab your rifles and get ready to shoot some foreigners full of “Freedom Holes” this weekend!
City of Heroes: Freedom has recently emerged from the original City of Heroes and its expansions, bringing the massively multiplayer online game into the new free-to-play age. Existing customers of the online game will continue in the free-to-play version as VIP members, while new players will come in as free players who have the usual limitations applied. VIP players unlock a large quantity of content and items not available to the free players, and a lot of new content is being put into a store to be bought with “Paragon Points” (400 per month of which are given to VIP players continuing their normal City of Heroes subscription). Paragon Points will be the currency purchased for items and content on the “Paragon Market”, the new cash shop.
Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad, the surprisingly awesome World War 2 shooter from Tripwire Interactive, has been dated and given a retail price for their North American release. It has been in development for quite some time now, with preview builds being shown at multiple trade shows over the past two years. Tripwire is obviously very proud of the progress they have made, with a new first-person cover system, an enormous layer of realism, down to the way that the soldiers hold their guns while sprinting, and a host of other gameplay features and adjustments to progress the franchise into next generation territory. Many gamers were concerned with its status as a World War 2 shooter, but Red Orchestra’s general focus on the Russian/German front rather than the typical British or American fronts tends to set it apart from the rest. Its team-based class warfare gameplay also tends to stick out, giving it a unique gameplay style.
TF2 is an anomaly in the online gaming world. It came bundled with The Orange Box in 2007 and while other online shooters charge players money for additional maps and content, Valve have given owners of TF2 dozens of new maps, weapons and content at no additional cost. The game’s last update gave support for replays and challenged gamers to put together the best machinima they could to win a Saxxy Award.
I gotta hand it to CCP Games, they’re up there with developers like Valve in terms of giving players free content for their games. Since EVE Online launched in 2003, CCP has given players each expansion and major update to the game for the low cost of Free. While you do have to pay a subscription fee to play, there’s nothing stopping you from making a trial account to try out the new content.
The onslaught of hacking in the gaming industry continues, with both Bioware and Sega being infiltrated by hackers. The information compromised for both of these companies was once again personal information found on their respective websites.
Valve has been constantly updating their Steam digital download platform ever since it’s inception in 2004. One of the more recent updates for the service was the Steam “wallet”, allowing users to add money to their Steam profile so that later transactions would be easier and faster. This made micro-transactions for items in Team Fortress 2 quite easy, but it also fits quite well with a recent rumor that Valve is currently developing a free-to-play project.
It was hard to predict Steam’s success after their 2004 launch. Now with 25 million registered accounts, Steam’s service allows you to buy and download over 1100 games. Some would argue that Steam’s success is due to Valves’ solid support, great deals and non-intrusive DRM system.
Trust me, no one is more excited about Catwoman being playable in Batman: Arkham City than I am. But I just can’t see how anyone would get excited by the announcement that Robin will be a playable character too. I’m even more baffled as to how making Robin a pre-order bonus would drive consumers to choose Best Buy over the competition.
Settle down, eventually, it’s going to come out for PC and Playstation 3 too, but the new Call of Duty Black Ops DLC is going to start out as an Xbox exclusive. Which begs the question, is this sort of stunt actually going to sell more Xboxes? Are there Call of Duty fans so hardcore that they’ll ditch their Playstation 3 and run out and buy an Xbox just to get some DLC a couple of weeks early? Well, someone certainly hopes so, because the new pack, Annihilation will hit Xbox Live on June 28th leaving PC and Playstation owners pining away.
