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Uncovered Vehicle List in Max Payne 3 Reads a Lot Like a Grand Theft Auto Fleet
Someone on GTAForums.com pried apart the files inside Max Payne 3 and found a vehicle list shot through with callbacks to past makes and models from the Grand Theft Auto series. There is an enormous thread going on both there and on NeoGAF, about the subject. Noting that this isn’t the first time Rockstar Games…
By Owen Good -
Activision’s “Sphere”: The Most-Used Unusable Piece of Video Game Music Ever
In the middle 1980s, my brother and I both had Commodore 64s. Our next-door neighbor was the electronics buyer for a catalog showroom—a breed of variety store brought to its knees by Walmart before Best Buy and e-commerce finished the job. Our neighbor was in charge of buying computer hardware, and software. That meant we…
By Owen Good -
All-Star Pitcher Schilling’s Video Game Studio Can’t Pay Its Employees, Either
It is looking dire for 38 Studios, the Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning studio set up with a huge hunk of public funding from a Rhode Island jobs creation program. So now, we’re talking about an operation that took taxpayer money with the intent of creating jobs and can’t pay the employees working in them. That’s…
By Owen Good -
Wounded Galatian: Max Payne 3‘s Soccer Mission, and the Meaning Behind its Fictitious Team
This only marginally qualifies as a spoiler alert because, if you’ve played Max Payne 3 longer than 20 minutes, you’ve encountered this mission already. It revolves around a shootout in the locker room of the Galatians FC in Sao Paulo, Brazil which, as a quick Internet search plus common sense reveals, ain’t a real team.…
By Owen Good -
Diablo Widows Get Dildos in French Sex Shop Stunt
Ladies, have you gone lonely as your lovers have spent hours trying to penetrate the secrets of Diablo III (or, more probably, penetrate the game’s login screen). Well then, the French sex shop Absoloo wishes to soothe your frustrations—with a free vibrator. It helps if you read this in your best Hollywood-affected French voice, but…
By Owen Good -
Free-to-Play Football Title Loses Its NFL License
News and notes from around the world of sports video gaming: • QuickHit Football had a solid debut year in 2009 and won an NFL license a year later. Then it lost its director of design, a veteran of the beloved NFL 2K5, and was bought up by Majesco around E3 last year. Now it’s…
By Owen Good -
EsportsLeague of Legends World Championship Promises ‘The Biggest Payday in eSports History’
League of Legends will put $5 million up for grabs this summer and fall in its second annual world championship series, pitting the winners of six regional championships against one another at the University of Southern California’s Galen Center on Oct. 13. The world champion will take home what Riot Games is billing as “the…
By Owen Good -
Two Fitness MMOs Go Mano a Mano with Their PvP Plans
Last year I profiled Fitocracy, which isn’t a video game per se but a gamified fitness regimen that draws from concepts familiar to role-playing video games. One MMO analogue it lacked, however, was the idea of player-vs.-player combat. Well, that’s no longer the case. While Fitocracy on Monday revealed its system for PvP duels, it…
By Owen Good -
Madden Hopes Its New Theme Will Be Music to Your Ears
Madden NFL 13 will sound a lot different this year. Some quarterbacks will call audibles in their own voice. Bone-crunching hits have been mixed in from NFL Films audio. The crowd is going to explode on big plays and go stoic on drive-killing turnovers. But where the game will sound most different is in the…
By Owen Good -
Diablo III Server Maintenance to Last Another Hour, Says Blizzard
Diablo III‘s servers in the Americas are still undergoing emergency maintenance, meaning some players are unable to connect. Blizzard has twice moved its time for restoring the servers. Now they say it’ll be 6:30 p.m. EDT. Don’t hold your breath.
By Owen Good -
Here is Eli Manning’s Saturday Night Live Skit—as Seen in Madden NFL 13
Hosting Saturday Night Live a couple weeks ago the New York Giants’ Eli Manning implied his “ideal” celebration in Madden NFL 13 would be throwing a touchdown, making a sandwich, accidentally dropping the sandwich on the floor, making sure no one is looking, and then eating it anyway. It was part of a motion-capture skit…
By Owen Good -
Can We Interrupt This Video Game for a Studio Update?
One of the few broadcast features in Madden NFL 12 that I didn’t punch away with a quick button press was the official league bumper video at the end. You know, when the smooth narrator puffs up and says “This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL,” and lays down the law of the league’s expressed…
By Owen Good -
Sure Looks Like Steam Wallet Cards Are Coming to GameStop This Week [Update]
The pictures looked good, but we couldn’t get confirmation back when Luke broke the news a week ago that GameStop would begin selling Steam cash vouchers. Well, a second tipster’s sent us another couple of pictures of the cards and their display, basically confirming that the games retailer will start selling them. Though the picture…
By Owen Good -
Culture
Choose Your Payne
Diablo III is this week’s long-anticipated release, but it is not the only one. Max Payne 3 also arrives on consoles, as does the Game of Thrones adaptation. It’s a busy mid-May for both physical releases and downloadable titles. Tuesday • Diablo III (PC, Mac) • Max Payne 3 (360, PS3) • Game of Thrones…
By Owen Good -
Star Trek Online Developer Admits the Game’s PvP Sucks
While being forthright with his community about the woeful state of Star Trek Online‘s player-vs-player combat, a developer at Cryptic Studios also admitted to something of a self-fulfilling prophecy: PvP in the game is so bad, no one’s participating in it. Participation is so low, the studio has seriously considered removing PvP altogether. “Something has…
By Owen Good -
You Can’t Judge Dragon’s Dogma by It’s Launch Trailer. But It Is Nice to Look At
We’ve been circumspect about Dragon’s Dogma, coming May 22 from Capcom. Totilo and Chris Person, the site’s video editor, have grown attached to it despite also calling it “one very messy, clumsy game, full of bad dialogue, cumbersome menus and annoying supporting characters.” But there are legitimately good qualities, they insist; this simply isn’t so-bad-it’s-good…
By Owen Good -
Skyrim YouTube Parody has Big Plans—Like Bringing Gregethor Back from the Dead
When last seen, he looked like he was done for. Gregethor, the scene-stealing bearded shopkeeper from the enormously successful parody Skyrim 2012, was getting blasted in the stomach by his own Staff of Lightning. It appeared to be a fatal blow. I was so distraught I re-rolled a Breton in Gregethor’s honor. Well, the Grosjean…
By Owen Good -
Zynga’s Next Big Game Sounds Like … a Farmville Sequel
Zynga’s next big Facebook game is an improved version of FarmVille currently beta testing under the name Big Harvest, reports TechCrunch. Their source says the game is being tested out in the Phillippines. Zynga replied to TechCrunch’s inquiry with a standard no comment that neither confirmed nor denied the project. The game, according to screenshots…
By Owen Good
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