Movie review by Scout The Statement Directed by Norman Jewison From Sony Picture Classics Released December/12/2003 Available on DVD Verdict: 4/5 Thumbs Up “The best part of the film, by far, is the performance of Michael Caine. His character is an unapologetic racist, a self-serving, violent, manipulative, pathetic, despicable whiny bitch. And you can’t take your eyes off him.”
Valve Software, lovable koala bear of a game producer that it is, has released interesting stats on who has achieved what, Achievement-wise, in their zombiriffic cooperative shooter Left 4 Dead. That’s… really all I’ve got for you. My take on Left 4 Dead, having now actually played it: it’s another win for Valve, whose commitment to quality and finely tuned gameplay are again on display here. And it achieves the heretofore impossible goal of structuring …
From the Department of WTF comes word of a panel of British teenagers who – lacking, apparently, the capacity to recognize that grown-ups do not comprehend sarcasm when it comes from kids – claim that the the UK’s recent spate of knife crime is fueled by violent video games. I don’t… even know where to start with this.
Fresh on the heels of Fallout 3’s release, Bethesda Softworks is announcing the official editor for Fallout 3 – G.E.C.K. (Garden of Eden Creation Kit) – will be available for free download in December. G.E.C.K. will allow Games for Windows users to create and add their own content to the game. Additionally, Bethesda will offer its first downloadable content – Operation: Anchorage – exclusively for both Xbox 360 and Games for Windows players in January, …
Review by Scout Fallout 3 Developer Bethesda Game Studios Publisher Bethesda Softworks LLC Released October 28, 2008 Available for Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 Verdict: 5/5 Gold Star “Play Fallout 3 and you’ll not only be treated to what might turn out to be one of the best Bethesda games ever to come down the pike but you’ll also experience echoes of Deus Ex, Half Life 2, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., and Bioshock. In the end this game …
A few slices of Portal cake to celebrate some big birthdays this week, with Penny Arcade turning ten yesterday and the original Half Life reaching its tenth today. Valve is celebrating by putting the game on sale for $0.98 over Steam, though if you haven’t played it by this point even that price probably isn’t enough to woo you. Neither the game nor the cartoon could be reached for comment regarding birthday wishes, but I …
Autumn Moon Entertainment has released a demo of their much-anticipated comic adventure A Vampyre Story; which chronicles the adventures of opera starlet, Mona De Lafitte and her batty side-kick, Froderick. The demo offers a short look of Mona as she attempts to find graveyard dirt for her coffin in preparation for some travelling. A Vampyre Story is scheduled for a UK release on November 24th; while the word on a US release is listed as …
So the Left 4 Dead demo is now available over the Steam network for normal humans like me who didn’t pre-order the game. With Valve’s highly anticipated online cooperative zombie shooter shambling into retail in a week, the demo servers are already packed with smack-talking, team-fragging, headset-wearing eleven year olds eager to describe in appalling detail what they did with your mother last night.
I bought Gears of War 2 on launch day and took it over to my friend Pete’s house, where me, he, and yet another Pete played through the entire thing splitscreen over a period of 48 frenzied alcohol- and Red Bull-fueled hours. As one Pete put it, “it was like a day and a half of chainsawing aliens, broken up by a nap and a walk.” So, the verdict? Gears 2 is excellent. I recommend …
Ethereal Darkness Interactive, developers of the adventure/RPG hybrid Morning’s Wrath, have finally released their second game – The Lost City of Malathedra – a PC graphic adventure heavily inspired by classics such as The Dig and the King’s Quest series. Players will take on the role of Rebecca Wolfe as she searches for her historian father, Jonathan. Malathedra is available as a DRM-free web-only download for the paltry sum of $19.95. A demo of the …
Ubisoft, France-and-Canada based developer/publisher behind such mongo franchises as Prince of Persia, Splinter Cell, and Rainbow Six, has acquired Swedish Massive Entertainment, the highly-regarded RTS maker responsible for the much-loved World in Conflict. Originally published by Sierra, Massive lost its home when the Activision/Blizzard merger resulted in Sierra’s closure. Some other big name titles also got the axe, and we’re slowly hearing of their resurrection at other publishers. Atari, for example, will be handling the …
Review by Toger Time Hollow Developer Konami Publisher Konami Released September, 2008 Available for Nintendo DS Verdict: 4/5 Thumbs Up “.muunitnoc emit-ecaps eht retla nac ,oot ,uoY* Kirk and Picard did it. Doc Brown did it. So did Doug and Tony from the TV show, Time Tunnel. You know you’ve always wanted to do it; but, beware the Butterfly Effect because as we well know, things will go awry.”
It’s actually kind of old news now, but Turner Broadcasting Systems has sold its GameTap service to France-based Metaboli and it will live on in some incarnation through that company. As a long and vocal supporter of GameTap (and a paid freelancer), I was an outsider who saw in through the window. Know that I don’t mean this as an exposé. I was working a thousand miles away from GameTap High Command and communicating with just a handful of actual Turner employees, and them by email. So it’s not like I was privy to anything big. What you read here is a reflection on my experiences, peppered with what I know or believe to be true, but authoritative it ain’t. I can’t claim to provide even a remotely comprehensive description of what happened to the service, but I can share the observations of one who’d been on GameTap’s periphery since before it had even been named.