So, the Kinect is now out, and while we don’t have one, you do. However we all shared one thing. We all thought our TVs would be safe with the Kinect, and our TVs could sleep easy knowing we didn’t have controllers that could fly at them. Well, they be wrong!
Black Ops is out this Tuesday, and it seems a pair of gamers just couldn’t wait.Black Ops is out this Tuesday, and it seems a pair of gamers just couldn’t wait. This Saturday two men robbed a Game Stop at gun point giving Bel Air GameStop workers a scare Saturday. The two waited until the store was about to close when acted. Two unlucky customers happened to walk in right after this, but thankfully they were not harmed. The workers and customers were both put into a storage are while they ran off with 100 copies of Black Ops.
On Steam, discounts and new releases permeated the list. Call of Duty and Fallout stay near the top, and discounts on Grand Theft Auto and everything Supreme Commander 2 push down Civilization V. Left 4 Dead 2 is the only standard on this list. With the holiday season in full swing, maybe Civilization V will go off the top 10 sales list soon. Don’t expect Divinity II or Medal of Honor to stay on the list for long, though.
In the past, The Sims games were split into two distinct categories. In the first category were the hit PC games, which sold millions of copies and changed the way that people looked at simulation games as a whole. Then there were the console spin-offs, which mostly played like lackluster knockoffs of the real thing. Sure, they were still decent games, but it often felt like EA had to sacrifice some of the depth and flexibility of the PC games for a more “console oriented” approach. This created a large divide between the games, one which EA has finally filled in with the release of The Sims 3 on consoles. This is the closest you’ll get to a pure Sims experience without booting up a computer.
Call of Duty: Black Ops is coming soon, and most everyone will buy it, complaining bitterly or otherwise. That’s just the kind of status that the Call of Duty series has reached. This wasn’t the case in the beginning, though. Call of Duty used to be the up and coming World War II shooter, competing against the then popular Medal of Honor. Infinity Ward, the creators of Call of Duty, had been newly developed from departing members of the Medal of Honor development team, and everyone thought that Medal of Honorwould remain on top. This radical change from new kid on the block to multi-billion dollar franchise is remarkable, and something well worth looking at.
PC Gamers tend to be a little brighter than the average person; we have the brainpower to change a graphics card, we can Min/Max our stats in Online RPGs, and plan balanced strike forces in Real-Time Strategy games. We can even calculate the ideal trajectory for a grenade in our shooters. But how does our superior left-brain functionality deal with the idea of “Video Games As Art”?
Recent news regarding a Virtual Console service for the 3DS has caused some renewed interest and hope in the Wii’s own Virtual Console. However, seeing as how 3DS support will happen, given the announcement of Link’s Awakening: DX for the service, most developers are probably shifting their focus on porting old games over to Nintendo’s new handheld right now. Therefore, such hope and interest in Wii Virtual Console support is largely misplaced. Besides that, Wii Virtual Console support has dwindled exponentially over the past few years and has shown little sign of improving, particularly in North America.
Speaking of which, Virtual Console kicked things off wrong here on the first of November, releasing only one game: the little known Neo Geo NBA Jam clone, Street Slam. Meanwhile, Japan received four new old games, three of which are known in the West: Mario Party 2, Super Bonk, and Ghosts ‘n Goblins. Many North American gamers would love to be able to download these games to their Wii, but Nintendo of America has only seen fit to lock down bringing one of those titles over to North America for sure: Ghost ‘n Goblins. When it will arrive in the store is still an undetermined date in 2011. Meanwhile, Mario Party 2 is little more than a rumor for North American release, having no date attached to it whatsoever. Although, it is said to be coming over at some point. Perhaps it’s time for Nintendo of America to just end all Virtual Console support on this side of the Pacific rather than tease gamers what could but may never be.
