‘Star Wars: The Old Republic’ loses 400,000 subscribers
"The Force is, well, a little tepid with Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Electronic Arts' much ballyhooed massively-multiplayer game set in
George Lucas's celebrated universe is bleeding customers, losing some
400,000 in the fourth quarter -- a number much worse than anyone was
expecting.
The news has sent EA stock plunging to a level it hasn't seen since 1999,
but company executives tried to downplay the numbers in an earnings
call with analysts Monday, saying the exodus was tied to casual and
trial players canceling their subscriptions.
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Achtung!!!
Play legendary shooter ‘Wolfenstein 3D’ in your browser
Twenty years after revolutionizing gaming, the iconic Wolfenstein 3D is back.
And it won't cost you a dime to enjoy it.
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the first first-person shooter,
id Software and its parent company Bethesda Softworks have released a free-to-play web version
of the game that runs right out of your web browser. For folks who
prefer their gaming on the go, the developer will also offer Wolfenstein 3D Classic Platinum free to iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch owners for a limited time.
Well, either Alduin's Apocalypse is upon us, or it's solar flares, or it's just plain ol' good luck, but we're experiencing an early spring this year. My little corner of Skyrim continues to melt.
Dragons don't attack you when you're in the river. They don't like their meals marinated.
Man, those abandoned cabins always have angry killer bears in them. I'm gonna just go around this one. I don't need grilled leeks THAT badly.
Animal tracks - man... this undoubtedly means I'm going to have to buy YET another horse very shortly. Stupid horse is made of glass or something....
Early spring is great! Soon, the Jazbay grapes will be in season, although I'm going to really miss Snowberry pie. :/ Oh well! Winter is always just around the corner.
Literally. It's like.. right over there.
Actual Google Satellite Image of the area.
Brace yourselves... winter is a huge wall of terrifying whiteness. And it's comin'.
I'm not a great gamer.
I mean, I'm okay, but not 'The Best'.
I don't have high scores. Sometimes, I can't even complete the game.
I don't know when those 'high score' boards lost fashion in games. Probably about the same time as games stopped keeping score, actually.
I remember usually being midway down on those ol' scoreboards. I was never #1. But I was okay with that. I had my place in life. It was midway. Neither winner nor loser. There was a balance in the force.
Somebody is good at Solitaire (and it ain't me). (source)
Things are different now. I thought I knew where I stood, but no. The waters are muddy. The answers aren't clear. The world is askew.
I have been playing the cyberpunk themed "stealth/science fiction action role-playing video game" Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
It's pretty beast. I'm enjoying it, and I should probably do a 'My
Take' on it, even though there's volumes already written on the subject
by better analysts than myself (I bet they're at the top of the
scoreboards).
Knowing that I was a 'midway' gamer, I wanted to play the game on a normal difficulty setting. So..
WHOA there hoss! Not so fast. You have some choices to make here before you go selecting a difficulty! This ain't any ordinary game. This is modern! Hip! Dynamic! You don't just PLAY this game, you 'experience it'! You don't PLAY ruggedly handsome Adam Jensen - you ARE ruggedly handsome Adam Jensen.
There's a phenomenon in the fashion industry known as 'vanity sizing'. Basically, it's the idea that as the western world gets fatter, the clothing industry has to make clothes that are larger, but they realize that if they want to make the western consumer happy, they should label the clothes as smaller than they really measure to make us all feel good about ourselves and our outrageous avarice.
So some guy that was waist size 36" in high school can still boast that he wears a size 36" when he's in mid-life, not because he could actually ever squeeze back into his high school pants, but because the industry labels the now 38"-41" as a 36". You liars flatterers, you, fashion industry!
And that was what I felt as I selected the difficulty level in Deus Ex: Human Revolution - that I was being pandered to (just a little) and patronized to (just a tad).
Most video games have adjustable Difficulty Levels
so as to provide more of a challenge to good players while allowing
poor players the satisfaction of finishing and finding out how the story
ends. Traditionally, they would just be called Easy, Medium, and Hard
(and possibly Expert). However, a recurring clever idea is to name them
in a way reflecting of your game's style or plot.
Of course, if you use more than one word, everyone will call them
"Easy", "Medium" and "Hard", but it does help establish continuity...
There are three difficulty settings in Deus Ex: Human Revolution:
"Tell Me A Story", "Give Me A Challenge", "Give Me Deus Ex".
I must have hovered my mouse over the three selections for a good 10 minutes. Tell me a story? What, like a bed-time story? Are you calling me a baby? Is this sissy setting? Should I be ashamed of this one? PASS. Give me a challenge? Of course I want to be challenged. Why else would I play a game? Is this going to be a challenge like finding two matching socks in the morning? Like talking to women? Or like actually winning the QWOP race? Challenging how? Give me Deus Ex? I bought the game. Give it to me. I paid good money for it. You want a breach-of-contract suit? Hand the damn game over.
I figured the three descriptions meant, in effect, Easy, Normal, and Hard, but they surely don't say that. As surely as that guy isn't going to fit into his highschool bellbottoms, the fatty.
Why did they vanity size the game?
We all KNOW what the three settings represent, but I felt a little condescended to while deciding. I KNOW that "Tell Me a Story" means I'm on the 'easiest' setting - so just call it 'easy'. Don't pretend I'm still hardcore, but just need some alone time, and perhaps a bubble bath.
On this setting, I'm not hardcore. I'm a pansy.
In ancient times, games were straight up. They let you KNOW you were a pussy:
In all, I felt the difficulty setting descriptions in Human Revolution were a little too vague, flowery, and not mutually exclusive. When playing this much-anticipated game I wanted not only to be told a story, and to be challenged, but also to get the real 'Deus Ex' that was promised.
If this complaint seems nit-picky, it's because it is.
But, my argument is that if you're trying to establish continuity or reflect your plot, using vague, inclusive, placating, soft language in a game where you're supposed to cripple, injure, maim, gouge, chop, slice, and potentially massacre human beings, I think you've erred somewhere.
Why not make the choices as gritty as Adam's voice?
'Tell me a story'. JEEZ.
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PS: If one wants to know what exactly the different selections really represent, one should go here. PPS: The settings themselves varied the gameplay to a satisfying and sensible degree. It is the descriptions that are the fail, to me.
Never before has such an historical pairing of ancient Greek mythology and retro-style video gaming come together in such a clash of titans!
Until now...
"How is anyone supposed to know whose “gang” they belong to or who
they’re going to be jovially disparaging towards on any given day? What
about if you’re given a label by the industry (or the community) which
you dislike or don’t really feel encompasses everything about gaming you
love? Take heart dear friend. At least you’re not a “female gamer”."
"Kara, a disturbing short film about a self-aware robot, was
made by games studio Quantic Dream to demonstrate the "expressive power"
of the PS3's graphics. In order to sidestep the limitations of
animating human characters (the so-called, contentious "uncanny valley"),
the creators made a story about a newborn, intelligent robot -- a
character that is supposed to be subtly unconvincing in its humanity." (BoingBoing.net)
"Rise of Nightmares is a survival horror video game developed and published by Sega for the Xbox 360 [...] and is designed specifically for Kinect. It is the first M-rated Kinect game released."
(link)
I was gifted Rise of Nightmares for Christmas (after demanding it loudly and greedily) and have only now gotten around to playing it.
I actually don't mind using the Kinect. While the 'we track your every movement' thing is a little disconcerting, especially with facial and body recognition, I, for one, welcome my robot overlords because the Kinect is actually something that people have been dreaming of since video games began.
No controller? Body movements? Physical interaction in the game world? Swinging swords and throwing knives? YES YES YES!
I've used the Wii-mote controller before and found it very 'meh'. It doesn't really do exactly what I want it to do, and I preferred the Kinect's 'hands free' feeling. And anything is certainly preferable to being seen with a Playstation Move controller - "Hi, I'm going to stand here holding an 8 inch shaft in my hand which I'll be waggling at people. Don't be put off by the swollen knob at the end. That's very normal."
If you're not familiar with the Kinect, here is a nauseating video of happy family play time.
Also, here's a video of all the really inspiring ways this technology will play a good role in our lives. (I'm being forced by the robot overlords to post this propaganda! SEND HELP!)
But enough selling Xbox! This is about my take on the first mature rated game they released for the dang thing. I was getting so sick of Kinectimals! X(
"Unashamedly mature" is how Nightmares is described. Think again, developers! You should be very ashamed. And 'mature' is not really how I'd describe the content. For adults? Not really. It seems to be aimed at the same group of slavering teenagers that flock to near-snuff films like Hostel or Saw.
I'm no puritan, but I do go for more suspenseful psychological horror like found in the works of Hitchcock, or especially the cult hit indie game Amnesia: The Dark Descent.
Plot: You're a drunken slob. You have a wife. She gets abducted by a hilarious monster. YOU MUST SAVE WIFE.
There is an attempt to weave in a spooky storyline with train wrecks and Romanian monsters and gypsy fortune tellers and marital strife and mad scientists and sexy nurses, but it all kind of falls flat after you meet the monster and the hordes of zombies that seem really out of place in the setting. It's like "Silent Hill" meets "Island of Dr. Moreau" meets the old arcade "House of the Dead" (not surprisingly, as Sega developed HotD as well).
As you can see here, Dr. Moreau is VASTLY scarier than anything in Rise of Nightmares.
Thankfully, the secondary characters don't last long. (source)
Oh, that reminds me. For some reason the game portrays all Europeans as assholes.
They shake their heads and mutter about 'f-ing Americans' continuously. AND they don't even speak American. How is he supposed to know what's going on? He's in Romania! Why are they speaking Romanian??
I'm starting to get the feeling that Sega writers have MAJOR inferiority complexes.
A monster sporting a silly cravat and stealing your wife. Understandably, those hideous soccer-mom capri pants made her a target to be eliminated. Learn from her fail, kids. (source)
The scary monster has tiny hydraulics that open his mask up like a dainty butterfly... (source)
I think having the main character be an alcoholic was probably a good choice. That nicely explains his staggering, lurching movements as you pilot the meat puppet around awkwardly.
Which leads us to the controls.
To walk you have to place your foot forward (only after standing nearly 100 yards away from the screen - Kinect keeps prompting you to get back. Futher! FURTHER!). To turn in game you have to move your shoulders in the direction you wish to go. It took me a few levels to really achieve a flow and stop face-planting into stone walls.
The best part (and the reason anyone buys the game) is the hacking and slashing. You do as you would imagine: raise your hands and hack and slash or punch and pummel. It's very satisfying. ^.^
Opening doors, picking up items and activating switches is fiddly, frustrating, and time consuming, and the novelty of kicking down doors in your cowboy boots wears off after the first few "I'M CHUCK NORRIS BITCHES" *BOOM*
From the playthroughs I've seen, and from my own experience, players often get stuck at one part of the game where you're required to run. Because, incredibly, there's no clear instructions on HOW to run in the game, most people just naturally stick their foot out further than the 'walking' gesture. But when no running occurs (and you die for the 10th time), you'll probably feel compelled to look up how to run on the internet.
The only way to run, or swim, in the game is not to actually make running or swimming motions as you might presume - but to flail around like a madman having a violent seizure during a horrific earthquake.
You could probably be in great danger of harming yourself if you're not normally the physical type.
It's as unintuitive and crazy as it is hilarious (especially when spectating).
To climb ladders in game, I'm forced to disco dance. Whatever works.
At the end of the day, I would have been happier were there simply more waves of things to hack and slash instead of attempts and failures at suspense and intrigue and lame puzzle solving. I think however, some leeway should be given to a game that seems to be largely an experiment in gaming and the Kinect tech as it is now.
I would call it a success. While rudimentary, I think this type of gaming holds much promise, and I'd like to see more adult/mature titles added to the Kinect menu.
One review called Rise of Nightmares "hackneyed at best and nonsensical at worst."
HA! Very true. But I'm still going to play it right now because it's fun! ;)
