Our very own Finkbug, making hearty use of the intertubes and Steam Chat, alerts the Tap Newsroom that Good Old Games has shut itself down. Run by a branch of The Witcher creator CD Projekt, GoG offered, well, good old games re-optimized to run on modern machines. At a bargain price. Without DRM. A number of Tappers were great fans of the service, while others – including myself – supported it philosophically but never found …
Review by Lewis B Warhammer Online Developer Mythic Entertainment Publisher EA Released July 2009 Available for PC Time Played: over 150 hours. Verdict: 3/5 Middlin’ “Warhammer Online still has promise, but the licence is tragically underused. Mythic has tried to emulate World of Warcraft in so many ways they have lost their identity and reputation in the process. Despite innovation, Warhammer Online falls far short of what could have been something truly special.”
Rock, Paper, Shotgun beat me to this story, but our friend Bobby Kotick (the man we all love here at Tap), has been delivering speeches at the (Bank of America) Merrill Lynch Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference in California. Evidently not happy enough with the gazllions of pounds Activision already makes, he’s now touting the idea to sell pre-rendered cut-scenes to fans as feature length videogame cinematics…
1UP gives us a little more news on The Last Guardian, the third game from Team Ico, along with the 2010 TGS preview and some somewhat odd remarks by Fumito Ueda. Actually only one of his remarks was odd.
On the heels of Bungie’s soon to be smash hit comes sad news that Arcen Games — developers of the superb AI War: Fleet Command and more recently the deceptively clever puzzler Tidalis — are struggling to make ends meet. Chris Park, Arcen Games founder, lead developer and all-round nice guy posted the bleak news yesterday afternoon: “To put it bluntly and briefly, at present we’re only bringing in about one half of the minimum …
Free speech doesn’t mean what it used to here in the United States, but we’ve so far been able to maintain reasonable confidence that at least our choice of entertainment won’t be silenced or penned. Now, however, with Terminator vs. EMA wending its way toward the country’s Supreme Court, everyone who harbors even a smidgen of faithlessness in the process is getting… well, not panicky, but concerned. It is conceivable, despite massive precedent, that videogames will be denied the level of retail protection afforded to most other entertainment media: that the industry will, in essence, be confined high on a shelf behind the counter, naughty bits covered in cardboard, while Maxim magazine and Hostel III titillate below.
If you’ve been living under a rock, or simply choose to ignore MMO news, it’s highly likely you won’t have heard anything about ArenaNet’s sequel to the highly successful Guild Wars. Having touched upon Guild Wars 2 several months ago when news first began to trickle out, the developers have now finally begun to reveal a great deal about what Guild Wars 2 has to offer…
Well it’s launch day for Halo: Reach, and the geeks were out in force (more like dozens) in the wee small hours, jostling in late night lines, eagerly anticipating getting their clammy hands on the latest must-have sequel. If your like me and felt nothing but embarrassment as you watched BBC News this morning, then I thought for those of you who missed it, might like to watch the video of it. Keep an eye out for …
Review by Jason Dobry Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty Developer Blizzard Publisher Activision/Blizzard Released June 27, 2010 Available for PC (version played), Macintosh Time Played Finished (single player) – about 30 hours Verdict: 3/5 Middlin’ “In the end, I liked the game, but I doubt I will ever play it again or buy the expansions or mini-sequels or whatever the hell they’re doing with it. In a way, it makes me sad, like in the way one tunes into an old favorite show …
I waited specifically for today to do that title even if it is getting a little late. It’s a timed rhyme yo. Actually that’s a lie, today is the first chance I’ve had to mention that Frictional Games, developers of the much lauded Penumbra trilogy, are tomorrow releasing their much anticipated next title Amnesia: The Dark Descent. If you haven’t heard of it then I heartily recommend you go and take a look at the …
UPDATE: the consequences referred to below have begun. A round a layoffs at Stardock, alongside the termination of an upcoming (unannounced) game project, may just be the beginning.
UPDATE UPDATE: Mr. Wardell has posted a “final” remark on the Elemental flap here at the Elemental forums. One of the things I appreciate most from him on this one is that he recognizes how hard it can be for journalists to harshly criticize a game created by developers they consider friends. But it has to be done sometimes.
For those who’ve followed the 24-hour firestorm that erupted in the wake of Elemental: War of Magic’s botched Day Zero release, you’ll know that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stranger.
“A guy at work created this using facebook images of people from work… me included! Its epic!” I’ve got a friend. A very tall and lanky friend. That friend is called Simon, and he’s awesome. But yesterday he somehow became more awesome thanks to a certain Steve Cutts who has created the rather special Shoreditch of the Dead using Adobe After Effects and a load of his work mates’ Facebook photos to render the characters. …
In joy, that is. As part of my wake-up ritual, I was slogging through the Internet when I bumbled onto a piece of news so exciting it caused me to call my wife into the room. The conversation went something like this: JASON: OHMYGOD! COURTNEY (from the bathroom): What? JASON: Oh my God, Oh my God…come in here! COURTNEY enters the living room with a make up brush in hand: What. JASON: Look at this! …
When was the last time you heard anything about the PSP Go? Introduced last year, Sony’s digital only experiment has been conspicuously absent from monthly sales reports and the mainstream media’s attention pretty much ever since. Even Sony themselves have kept quiet, barely mustering the courage to dare show the doomed device amongst its promotional materials at this year’s game shows. Not even bundling it with 10 – yes TEN free games in the UK …