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This Shooter Was Lost, But Now Is Found
It’s a messy, sad tale, so we’ll give you the brief version: In 2001 there was an awesome game called Operation Flashpoint. After release, its developers and publisher split up, leaving the series in creative limbo. Codemasters, the company publishing the game, retained the rights to it, and has gone on to release several new…
By Luke Plunkett Published June 24, 2011 -
BioWare Sending Out Hack Emails (Maybe You Got One!)
Last week Kotaku reported that BioWare was hacked. The company has been active on company forums and is sending out emails today to BioWare account holders. More info here. [Thanks to all who sent this in!]
By Brian Ashcraft Published June 24, 2011 -
8-bit Chiptune Cover Art Cost This Man $32,500
Chiptune connoisseur and tech guru Andy Baio released an album last year called Kind of Bloop, an 8-bit tribute to Miles Davis’ jazz masterpiece Kind of Blue. Yet despite receiving permission to cover the songs, Baio still found himself in court. What gives? While Baio got the blessing of Davis’ publisher to cover the songs,…
By Luke Plunkett Published June 24, 2011 -
Crytek Boss Says Crysis 2 “Backfired a Little Bit”
The first Crysis was tailored directly towards the glorious PC master race. So the fact the sequel pared back the hardware demands in favour of something that would run on a console did not go down well. The game’s reception reflects this, and has perhaps led to a reassessment of the decision, Crytek boss Cevat…
By Luke Plunkett Published June 24, 2011 -
Infamous 2 Waits a Whole Two Weeks Before Hitting PSN
Two weeks after its release, Infamous 2 is already available as a full download over PlayStation Network, in what seems like a big ol’ middle-fanger to retail. Seriously, a whole two weeks? That’s nice for impulse buyers, although, as a 15 GB download, I bet you could drive to the store, buy it, bring it…
By Owen Good Published June 23, 2011 -
Annihilation Map Adds Five More Achievements to Black Ops
“Shangri-La” is the new zombies map in Call of Duty: Black Ops, and it is far from paradise, as that anthropomorphic s’more (above) will attest. Available in Annihilation, releasing next Tuesday for Xbox 360, it offers five more achievements worth a cool 150 Gamerscore. They are: • Time Travel Will Tell (75G)—In Shangri-La, acquire the…
By Owen Good Published June 23, 2011 -
Lawsuit Says Sony Laid Off Security Workers Before PSN Cyberattack
A new lawsuit alleges that Sony fired workers in its network security operations two weeks before a cyberattack brought down the PlayStation Network. Additionally, the suit charges that Sony paid millions to secure sensitive information online—its own corporate secrets. Customer data didn’t receive the same level of treatment, says the suit, brought by PSN customers,…
By Owen Good Published June 23, 2011 -
Team Fortress 2‘s ‘Meet The Medic’ Will See You Now
Ending a two year hiatus since the last Team Fortress 2 “Meet the Team” video, Valve unleashes “Meet the Medic,” an introduction to the man behind the Übercharge. It was worth the wait. There are sneak peeks at some of the new content promised in this week’s “Über Update” amidst this insane medical action drama,…
By Michael McWhertor Published June 23, 2011 -
Team Fortress 2 Is Now Free. Free Forever.
If you’ve waited this long to finally play a game of Team Fortress 2, now may be the best time. Or at least the cheapest, as Valve is giving Team Fortress 2 away for free—forever—with the team-based first-person shooter now solely supported by microtransactions. Valve’s Robin Walker tells Develop that Team Fortress 2 won’t fund…
By Michael McWhertor Published June 23, 2011 -
Please Stand By
It appears that video hosting service Viddler lost some data centers this evening just in time to knock our premiere of Retro Game Master offline. We’re standing by to see how quickly they can get the service back up an will return RGM to our front page as soon as the video goes live. Sorry…
By Brian Crecente Published June 23, 2011 -
YouTube Bans Indie Dev’s Trailer Account as “Scams, Spam and Commercially Deceptive”
Whomever at YouTube banned Crosse Studios’ account might want to reconsider that action. Inexplicably, the entire collection of trailers for the independent sports video game developer was taken out of commission yesterday, on the grounds that the videos violate YouTube’s policy against “scams, spam and commercially deceptive content.” Well, NLL 11 (above) is an actual…
By Owen Good Published June 23, 2011 -
Xbox Live Chief: “We Don’t Want to Appear to Even be Looking to be Taking Advantage” of PSN Outage
In the throes of the 23-day PlayStation Network Outage, when people were vowing they’d sell their PS3s and go join Xbox Live, Microsoft’s most provocative comment was a low-key prediction that it would see more traffic on its service. Yesterday, though, Xbox’s senior executive finally said what’s bad for the goose is bad for the…
By Owen Good Published June 23, 2011 -
Happy Birthday, Sonic, and Thanks for the Cupcakes!
FALLOUT NEW YORK | I was going to include a photo of the Sonic cupcakes someone left at the front door of Gawker’s NY offices. But I ate them before taking a picture, because I’m sort of like a dog when it comes to food. Sorry! (Photo by Jentern the Intern) Wuthering Heights, Other Classics…
By Brian Crecente Published June 23, 2011 -
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Has A Cloth Map, Naturally
It’s not really a fantasy role-playing game unless it ships with a map, preferably cloth, charting the mystical, magical regions of such and such. Thankfully, Bethesda Softworks won’t leave aficionados of the cloth map wanting with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim That is, if they pre-order. Bethesda has confirmed today that anyone who pre-orders Skyrim…
By Michael McWhertor Published June 23, 2011 -
William Gibson says cyberspace was inspired by 8-bit videogames
Over at the Paris Review, William Gibson has finally told the full story of how he invented the term cyberspace — partly by scribbling on notepads, and partly by watching kids playing videogames in early-1980s arcades. Here’s a really fascinating excerpt from a much longer interview with Gibson: INTERVIEWER Where did cyberspace come from? GIBSON…
By Annalee Newitz Published June 23, 2011 -
E3’s Booth Babes Fail a Simple Trivia Quiz With Flying Colors
About a year ago, PAX sought to ban booth babes (pardon me, “costumed booth representatives,”) using a number of tests to determine booth babe-iness (as opposed to garden-variety sexy cosplay). One of them was a lack of familiarity with the product represented. At E3, Bitmob’s 5HP put that standard to the test with a five-question…
By Owen Good Published June 23, 2011 -
How I Learned to be the Bad Guy in Video Games
I suck at being the bad guy in video games. I always get all invested, and then I’m hardly ever able to commit to being evil. But for some reason, Infamous 2 has become that game that’s made it so much fun for me to be bad–-and I have those annoying guys that drum on…
Leigh Alexander Published June 23, 2011 -
Video Game Ships Used to Train Australian Navy
The Royal Australian Navy is teaming up with Invenio Engineering Solutions on a huge undertaking, to train sailors almost exclusively with video games of a sort. While using video game technology to train is not a new concept, Invenio and the RAN are using their software to go more in-depth and interactive than previous software…
By Jen Schiller Published June 23, 2011