As you all by now surely know, PSN is down. It went and got itself hacked. And there’s no telling when it’s coming back up. Now Sony has admitted that as many as 70 million user accounts have been compromised, with personal information and encrypted credit card numbers in the paws of some script kiddie. A few analysts are speculating that this little fiasco could cost Sony upwards of $20 billion.
Bits ‘n’ Bytes Gaming Overlord Martin Watts has penned a great article about the inherent flaws in game ratings and how both readers and outlets tend to interpret them. This is a longstanding issue, one that everyone seems to hate but for which no one seems able to impose a fix. Check out Martin’s view and ask yourself: how many times have you seen a score of “seven” and considered the game mediocre? I know …
My schedule over at the IGDA has been a complete mystery. I used to stick very rigidly to a next-month’s-column-is-due-by-the-30th-of-the-previous-and-earlier-if-possible approach, but in the last year it’s been getting harder to do that. Responsibilities pile up and I’m not good at fulfilling them. So it’s nearly the end of April (and entirely my fault), that the April installment of the series is now online. As promised in the previous one, I skip morbid subjects and go for something a little more easy to stomach.
Review by Jason Dobry Total War: Shogun 2 Developer Creative Assembly Publisher Sega Released March 15, 2011 Available for PC (Windows XP, Vista, 7) Time Played – 55 hours and counting Verdict: 5/5 Gold Star “CA learned from its mistakes and made a masterpiece of strategy gaming…Everything is better, and most importantly, not so much because it’s ‘bigger,’ but because they refined and streamlined in all of the right places..” My last experience with Total War was the regrettably mediocre …
There are few things that I am willing to buy immediately — Portal 2, the VVVVVV soundtrack, half price Ben & Jerry’s, a cling film dispenser — even Steam sales have trouble seducing me into their vortexes of spending. Well, add something else to that swelling list of insta-buys: XOC’s rendition of the Super Mario Bros. 3 soundtrack. I saw it, I bought it.
If you haven’t been keeping up with Charr Week over at the official ArenaNet blog, the grand event erupted yesterday with the release of “The Domain of the Charr” video. It’s loud, it’s industrial and it’s bombastic, conjuring feelings of Isengard. Hit the jump to view the video at the bottom of the page, as well as some delicious new wallpapers. Email the author of this post at lewisb@tap-repeatedly.com
There’s something bothering me about Guild Wars 2 and it’s a stumbling block many game developers trip over, and one which is undoubtedly a very expensive problem to rectify…
From the Land of Ill-Advised comes a report that the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, the official games rating system in North America, has decided to stop doing its job. Because its job is hard. Thus in what I deeply hope is an elaborate and belated April Fool’s trick, the ESRB is switching to a computer-based system with little or no human intervention. Games will now be rated by algorithm and, apparently, a questionnaire that draws …
Mortals, behold the Alliance of Awesome! Tap-Repeatedly. Bits ‘n’ Bytes Gaming. Electron Dance. We three have joined forces to be ever more awesome! Three great sites that share community and ideals, and eventually world domination, piped now into your home via the interwebs. What does it mean? We’re going to share content from time to time, pimp our respective sites, and we’re recording podcasts and stuff. Our first podcast lurks below. Highlights: Armand of BnB …
ArenaNet, after what felt like a lifetime, have just announced Charr Week will be the third installment to their ongoing series dedicated to the races featured in Guild Wars 2. Beginning Monday, ArenaNet will take a closer look (as they have with Human and Norn Weeks) at the feline-like Charr and highlight how they came to be. Charr week, according to the press release, will provide an insight on writing and developing them as a race, …
Via Steam. First with Armand, then with Dobry. Who still owes me a Shogun 2 review.
Given that speculation has been rife about a potential HD successor to the Wii for some time now, news of Nintendo’s next home console may or may not come as much of a surprise. Taking into account the absolute drought of first party Wii support recently, it might not be a surprise at all. Even so, the internet is currently exploding at the news that Nintendo may be preparing to announce it’s next system as …
The International Game Developers Association has published an open letter to developers warning them of potential pitfalls in Amazon.com’s new Android App store. It would seem that Amazon’s Distribution Terms, which seem innocuous on the surface, have some hidden language that could seriously impact a developer’s freedom and income potential. Fine-tune your content and keywords with seo tools online.
Yeah, it’s me with another post about zombies. Yawn, yawn bloody yawn. I just can’t get enough of the buggers, you see. Shambling about as they do, hunting for the next trace of human flesh to gnaw on.. aren’t they just adorable? Aww.. Fellow zombie enthusiasts can today feast their eyes on some new footage of Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City. First revealed last month alongside a slew of other new announcements, REORC (I know, …
Fans of doing awesome stuff for charity and having a great time doing it, take note. The third installment of the phenomenally successful and fantastically good willed Humble Indie Bundle is now live. For fifteen days only, charitable gamers can once again pay what they like for a selection of indie gaming goodness, with each of the latest offerings coming courtesy of Finnish developers Frozenbyte. In return for your generosity, you’ll bag highly rated action-platformer …