The latest iteration of the Xbox 360 dashboard was demoed by Microsoft at the Nokia World event, and according to rumor siteWin Rumors, the dashboard will be released sometime within the next week, despite it previously rumored to launch on November 15.
Owners of the Xbox 360 version of Battlefield 3 hoping to frag each other
out over Xbox Live have been severely disappointed, as frustrated gamers have
reported on EA’s forums and elsewhere of frequent server crashes. EA has
responded via Twitter that the issues have been resolved, yet ongoing
maintenance is still occurring. Gamers, however, are still reporting issues
with servers and the Battlelog service. A user posted on the rllmuk gaming forum that only 10 servers
were running worldwide. EA has announced that they shipped 10 million Battlefield 3 units worldwide.
Activision’s latest Call of Duty game, Modern Warfare 3, is already suffering from piracy. A disc of the PC version of the game was stolen from a warehouse in Fresno, California. According to the original story posted by VentureBeat, the disc stolen was the second of a two disc set. The data on the disc has already been copied and circulated on the internet, but Activision is not sitting by idly.
One pirate that was allegedly caught and facing a fine of $5,000 and a permanent online ban posted a message on Craigslist, “Do not buy MW3 before release date. They will come get you. I already went through it.” Investigators are showing up at suspected pirates’ homes and asking them to return the copy of the disc and delete the pirated data from their hard drives in lieu of fines.
With the rise of independent developers, more and more mods are being turned into full fledged games. Titles like Red Orchestra, Killing Floor and the very recent Dungeon Defenders are all great examples of how a mod can make a successful transition to a full game. Others like Damnation have turned out less successful. The Haunted: Hell’s Reach was originally the winning mod of the 2010 Make Something Unreal competition and the full version of the cooperative demon slaying third person shooter has finally been released. It will be interesting to see which category The Haunted: Hells’ Reach falls into.
In The Haunted: Hell’s Reach, up to four players take control of four playable characters who must fight off a demonic invasion using a variety of weapons. There isn’t much story to it and this is clearly one of the game’s biggest shortcomings, another being the lack of any sort of single player campaign. The closest thing the game has to single player is a solo play mode across the game’s two modes.
In the spirit of Halloween, I’m going to air some of my wishes for a game that I really hope comes out at some point, and nothing says Halloween like zombies! I am talking about Dead Rising 3, or whatever they decide to call the next game in that series. My time with Off the Record a couple of weeks ago really allowed me to narrow down what exactly the next game simply needs to have in order for me to carry on buying them.
One of my favorite things to do in Dead Rising (as of 2) is build the combo weapons and hunt for new ones. This system is really fun, but can get annoyingly particular at times with what it actually lets you bind together with the magical powers of duck tape. A couple of examples that always bug me, you can attach hunting knives to boxing gloves, but not machetes or butcher knives. You can attach chainsaws to paddles, but not plain old power saws or just a bunch of swords for that matter. Any sense of realism has always been left at the door with Dead Rising, and I really wish they would ease up on how exact these combo weapons are when there are other combinations that would yield the exact same effect. If there were, say, at least two variants on some of the rarer combo weapons it would be a huge improvement. If this is asking too much, then there at least needs to be a way to store or repair your combo weapons for future use. Repairing would be simple enough: find a work bench, which fortunately there are tons of in Dead Rising, and pay money to fully repair it. Allowing the player to do this three times per creation would really encourage them to build the more (for lack of a better word) interesting combo weapons.
I’m back this week for more talk onBatman: Arkham City and why waiting for the PC version turned out to be a bad idea. We can finally discuss what playing Battlefield 3 is like, and if you’re interested in the multiplayer, turns out it’s pretty darn good.
In other news, Grand Theft Auto 5 has been confirmed, but not announced, because who actually needed confirmation that another GTA game was in the works? Those of you hoping to get Battlefield 1943 with your copy of BF3 are probably pretty annoyed, the Co-op DLC for Warhammer has been released, Arkham City sales are very not bad, RAAM orientated campaign DLC is on the way for Gears of War 3 (yay!) and Soul Calibur 5’s exclusive character has been revealed. Don’t forget to send us your questions in for next week.
A posting put up earlier on a site called Creative Heads (a
site used for recruitment to specific jobs) could have lead to the
unintentional leak of a new God of War game. The posting was put up by Sony Computer Entertainment
America – Santa Monica, the company who made the first three GoW games, and the
posting lists the start date as “immediately”. Fingers point to the project being God of War IV, as the
first paragraph in the description says “Join the GOW Team!” and “Join us as we
embark on our next project.”
If the project is true, could this mark the fact that the
next generation of consoles is coming sooner rather than later? While three games is not necessarily
enough to make generalizations about how the GoW series works, God of War 2 did
come out on the PS2 after the PS3 had already been released. Because the job posting was set as
immediately, could they be looking for a 2013 release with the new PS3 coming
out sometime in the widely assumed 2014 range? It doesn’t necessarily say which specific platform the game
will be developed on, so could it also reveal that the company is making the
game on both systems simultaneously?
While the last statement is much more of a long shot, the fact remains
that there will be a new God of War game, and it will be coming to you much
sooner than you may have imagined.
