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Medal of Honor: Warfighter is Releasing a ‘Military-Only’ Edition
Active, reserve, and retired members of the U.S. armed forces (and government employees) can buy a “Military Edition” of Medal of Honor: Warfighter when the game releases in October, Electronic Arts said today. A news release announcing the “Military Edition” said it would be available exclusively through GovX—”a privileged e-commerce Web site where qualified members…
By Owen Good -
As Promised, Here I am Looking Like a Jackass Playing NBA Baller Beats
We saved my weirdest E3 appointment for last—checking out the rhythm/sports hybrid NBA Baller Beats from Majesco and HB Games about four hours before my flight last Thursday. The teaser videos may have looked ridiculous, but some of that can be attributed to overacting and over-editing. How does this Kinect game look when someone is…
By Owen Good -
What Exactly is Madden‘s New Career Mode Giving You—and What Is It Taking Away?
The debut of Madden NFL‘s new suite of career modes—called “Connected Careers”—seemed to be drowned out by the noise of E3 and by the announcement that same day of the game’s new real-time physics engine. That’s a gameplay enhancement gamers could easily understand. Connected Careers wasn’t so easily reduced, and as such, its debut sounded…
By Owen Good -
It’s In the Game—Take It Or Leave It
He’s a a fight promoter and a guy with an outsize personality, but however serious Dana White was when he said these things, he still said them. The president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship called EA Sports a joke. He threatened to blacklist fighters who appeared in its old mixed martial arts video game. He…
By Owen Good -
Culture
Chainsaw Reaction
Racy themes and racing games lead the lineup of the coming week of retail releases. Reissues of Metal Gear Solid and Pikmin 2 also come to stores. Today • Nintendo Selects: Pikmin 2 (Wii) Tuesday • Lollipop Chainsaw (PS3, 360) • DiRT Showdown (PS3, 360) • Gravity Rush (PS Vita) • Krater (PC) • Metal…
By Owen Good -
Security Tightens as Diablo III Prepares for Auction House Launch
When Diablo III‘s real-money auction house goes live, anyone wishing to add to their monetary balance in it will have to use an authenticator, Blizzard told its community on Friday. An authenticator, heretofore an optional security measure, is meant to address the claims and instances of hacking in which players’ accounts have been taken over…
By Owen Good -
Security Breach Turns DayZ‘s Servers into a Giant Botnet
In a month’s time, DayZ—the zombie-survival variant of Arma II— has quickly established itself as one of the most appealing mods of a PC game in recent history, if ever. That also makes it an appealing target to malefactors. One such person managed to get aboard the DayZ server admin team and, apparently, turn its…
By Owen Good -
Medal of Honor‘s Executive Producer Tangles with Critic Over Realism and Militainment
Give Tom McShea credit. At E3, the GameSpot writer penned an 800-word editorial ripping the tone of Medal of Honor: Warfighter‘s multiplayer, saying features like regenerating health and respawning teammates trivialize the sacrifice that the game professes to honor. In the tradition of a columnist showing up in the locker room after a particularly tough…
By Owen Good -
Forza Totilo
At last, we have a picture that just might get me in the bag-suit out of ‘Shop Contest jail. At E3 this week, our boss man went for a spin in a Ferrari, with an expression that suggested something less than all-out delight. Maybe it’s because he knew this would be fodder for our latest…
By Owen Good -
Weekend Talk Amongst Yourselves
Games. Know ’em, love ’em, live ’em. Talk about ’em here. Good morning, and welcome to Weekend Talk About Amongst Yourselves. Big thanks to Jamir, fresh off his triumph in yesterday’s ‘Shop Contest roundup, for supplying today’s TAYpic. Want a piece of the TAYpic action atop this six-day-a-week post? Grab the base image here, provide…
By Owen Good -
Neal Stephenson’s Very Special Guest Star Talks About His Appearance
If you have yet to watch Neal Stephenson’s pitch for CLANG, this story contains spoilers below. My first, briefly considered reaction at the 3:04 mark in Neal Stephenson’s excellent Kickstarter video, is that this celebrity guest star was an impersonator. That’s the nature of the Internet. I wasn’t aware these two had any kind of…
By Owen Good -
A Hell of a Cameo Helps Neal Stephenson Pitch His Sword-Fighting Video Game
A flood of video game projects on Kickstarter over the past four months has made it extremely difficult to rise out of the crowd or portray one’s concept as particularly unique or worth funding. But Neal Stephenson, the eminent science-fiction writer, has hauled off and done something next-level with this pitch video. Stephenson wants “to…
By Owen Good -
Culture
Sunday Comics: What’s My Motivation?
Welcome to your Sunday read of the week’s best in web comics. Make sure to click on the expand button in the bottom right to enlarge each comic. Penny Arcade by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik published June 6.—Read more of Penny Arcade Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich published June 3.—Read more of Awkward Zombie…
By Owen Good -
Wonder Nin Powers: The Winners
An E3 that began so promisingly for Nintendo ended with a shoulder shrug—no price, no release date for Wii U, and no real news out of the 3DS, either. It sure looked a lot more awesome in our smart shoppers’ retelling of the week in L.A. for the company’s big three. We’ve got 20 hilarious…
By Owen Good -
Once Crysis 3 is Done, Crytek will be Working on Nothing but Free-to-Play Games
Crytek is building Warface, the studio’s first freemium shooter, shown recently at E3. It’s also going to deliver Crysis 3, a more traditional FPS, sometime in 2013. Whenever the studio finishes off its current committments, CEO Cevat Yerli told VideoGamer.com, it will be developing free-to-play games only. Yerli considers DLC and premium gaming services, both…
By Owen Good -
Valve is Working on a Movie—but It’s Not What You Think
Curious item out of Hollywood—Valve is licensing its intellectual property to a science-fiction film, but it has nothing to do with Portal, Half-Life or any other title familiar to the publisher. Instead, its Source engine is being used to help animate Deep, a movie about mankind’s struggle to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. At the…
By Owen Good -
High Hope is Justified as Borderlands 2 Reopens Pandora
I loved Borderlands, the way you love memories of a summer or a semester when you first read a favorite book. Yet writing up impressions of a game like Borderlands 2 is quite difficult, actually. Where do you begin? “Hey, remember that game from October 2009 that inhaled 80 hours of your time? Well, get…
By Owen Good -
Strikingly Accurate Tipster Resurfaces with Info on Mass Effect 3‘s Alternate Ending DLC
While he offers no citation, the same Reddit tipster who absolutely nailed every detail of the Mass Effect: Rebellion Pack nearly three weeks before Sony’s Hong Kong website outed it, is back at it again with information on Mass Effect 3: Earth, the upcoming multiplayer extension and, more broadly, the “Extended Cut” DLC. Quoting derptemp6698:…
By Owen Good
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