It’s microtransaction time for Destiny and Call of Duty: Black Ops III. Both games are adding new in-game purchasable items, just in time for Christmas.

In Bungie’s Destiny, players now have the opportunity to buy a consumable that instantly boosts one character to level 25. The Taken King expansion came with one free boost that did the same thing, but now players can apply this level-up to another character for $30 more. Sub-class experience will still need to be earned the old-fashioned way, but with this new offering players can bypass all that pesky low-level stuff and get right to the Taken King content. Who really wants to play through a game anyway?

In Treyarch’s Call of Duty: Black Ops III, cyber-soldiers can purchase Call of Duty Points a new in-game currency that can be traded for Black Market cosmetics for versus multiplayer and consumable boosts for the cooperative zombie mode. Unfortunately for fans of pay-to-win, it appears that the new system won’t allow you to unlock game-breaking advantages.

Star Citizen’s crowd-funding has passed the $100 million mark. Along with this milestone in funding, Cloud Imperium Games announced the release of Alpha 2.0 to their backers, featuring first-person shooter gameplay. The newest build of the game includes “open-world” combat interaction in the Crusader planetary system consisting of a gas giant surrounded by three moons and two orbital stations. The latest build offers more gameplay than has been present previously, but it is still barebones in comparison to the stated goals for the final product. According to the developers, the game “will evolve as development continues” towards a final release some time in the future.

While the funding for Star Citizen shows no signs of slowing down, critics of the project continue to level accusations at the company. Game designer Derek Smart maintains that the company is being financially mismanaged, including the possibility that the whole studio is a scam of epic proportions. In a less confrontational blog post, Cliff Harris, the creator of Gratuitous Space Battles and owner of Positech Games, sees Star Citizen funding and wonders if more government oversight is needed for games industry marketing and addiction manipulation.

“They just passed $100,000,000 in money raised. They can do this because individual ships in the game are for sale, even though you bought the game. I guess at this point we could just say ‘A fool and his money are soon parted’, but yet we do not do this with gambling addiction. In fact some countries have extremely strict laws on gambling, precisely because they know addiction is a thing, and that people need to be saved from themselves.”

Access to Star Citizen’s Alpha 2.0 release is available here beginning at $45, but you can spend tens of thousands on the game should you choose to do so.

This week, we discuss the latest historical drama from the director of The Da Vinci Code. At the sound of the Brittney at the 1:17 mark, we leave a message about our favorite voicemail messages.

Next week: Star Wars: The Force Awakens

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Matthew Fox and Jeffrey Donovan have earned a lot of goodwill lately. Fox with his efficiently ruthless Indian killer in Bone Tomahawk and Donovan with his treacherous elder son in the second season of Fargo. They’re not given nearly as much to work with in Extinction, but that’s hardly a fair comparison; Bone Tomahawk and the second season of Fargo are two of the most amazing things I’ve seen this year. Extinction, on the other hand, is just an occasionally clumsy zombie apocalypse yarn. So while they’re eminently watchable here, I can’t blame them for coming across a little flat in comparison to what else they’ve been doing lately. They’re each standing in tall shadows they partly cast themselves.

But Extinction is a unique entry in a genre that’s rarely unique. The first distinguishing feature is an unconventional love triangle. It’s Heather has two daddies…who went through an acrimonious divorce and are now the last survivors in a town called Harmony (subtle irony isn’t Extinction’s strong point). Simple and powerful relationships provide the structure, with Fox, Donovan, and the adorably Barrymore-esque Quinn McColgan as the fulcrum between them. Zombies provide the threat, but instead of shambling hordes, they’re lurking memories. They are a second distinguishing feature for how this isn’t your usual undead rot or rage virus. The final distinguishing feature is a crisp winter aesthetic, icy and colorless. The door to an abandoned house cracks open with that same gratifying ice sheet shatter as a car door opened after an overnight freeze. That cold glaze covers Extinction. This is where it lives. It is the opposite of fertility. Mother Nature has turned as harshly indifferent as a drunkenly numb parent.

Spanish director Miguel Angel Vivas’ previous movie, Kidnapped, was hollow home invasion trash with nothing to recommend it but its real-time split-screen gimmickry. Here Vivas shows that he doesn’t need a gimmick. He shows he can be heartfelt, exciting, and unpredictable, if a bit too earnest. Brace yourself for occasional clunkers like “you are so hellbent on surviving that you’ve forgotten how to live”. I can even sympathize with the zombies in that I sure do wish the music would let up. I’m trying to watch a movie here and the soundtrack keeps butting in to explain everything.

Extinction is available for VOD. Support Qt3 and watch it on Amazon.com.

Body stars two very good actresses and Alexandra Turshen. The best part of the movie is when Turshen lets loose with a full throated scream into someone else’s face and the movie just cuts to black. The intensity of her scream and the abruptness of the cut are chilling. They belong in a better movie.

Unfortunately, the talented, winsome, and frail Helen Rogers will duplicate the moment and it won’t work. Partly because Body doesn’t cut away. Mostly because Rogers isn’t up to the full-throated intensity of Turshen’s scream. Rogers’ strength is her expressiveness and, ironically, her vulnerability, both used to powerful effect in “The Sick Thing That Happened To Emily When She Was Younger”, one of the best shorts in the 2012 horror anthology V/H/S.

The problem with Body, one of those thrillers about otherwise reasonable people making bad decisions, is that the bad decisions make no sense. Body hopes you’ll believe that these bad decisions result from the force of Turshen’s personality as the alpha female. But being blandly pretty and merely loud don’t qualify you for alpha status. So the script makes its absurd leaps, while Rogers and Lauren Molina, the other very good actress, gamely do their best to bring you along. It isn’t enough. Some leaps are simply too far to make. Body disappears into a chasm of implausibility.

Body is currently in limited release and will be available for VOD on December 29.

Rockstar is updating Grand Theft Auto V next week with crew activities. The free Executives and Other Criminals patch for Grand Theft Auto Online will add ways for players to enforce their rule on underlings and the city. Along with the usual increase in opulent real estate and clothing, the update lets leaders “hire” other players to be their bodyguards and set incentives like regular pay, experience bonuses, and stat boosts. The boss will also be able to access exclusive co-op jobs and challenges to assign to their hirelings. Finally, these player-run organizations can then muscle in on each other in all-out gang warfare.

Organizations can go head to head in Freemode, with new missions that make full use of the latest executive defense options including new armored vehicle variants, the devastating Turreted Limo and the missile defense systems of the Super Yacht, which also comes with its own suite of supporting vehicle upgrades including the new SuperVolito Carbon helicopter and personal watercraft.

The Executives and Other Criminals update is launching on December 15th for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.

Blizzard deliberately makes new players use terrible Hearthstone cards. Ben Brode, senior game designer on Hearthstone, discusses some of the strategy behind basic card design in the above video. In the presentation, Brode argues that the really awful cards given to new players in the basic set serve to educate. In response to the common accusation that Blizzard handicaps the basic deck to motivate people to pay for the expansion sets, Brode argues that the real imbalance comes from the gap in skill. The expansion decks have weak cards as well, but a more knowledgeable player will know to either avoid using them, or they can turn a card’s weakness into a strength by using it with another card’s special power. The newer player will struggle with the underpowered cards until they learn more about the game through play. Beyond that, Brode argues that the basic deck has very powerful, competitive cards as well.

We give new players Truesilver Champion, Fireball, Frostbolt, Flamestrike, Consecrate. That’s definitely intentional. We want new players to have some great cards. We want high level decks to include basic cards also. Just because there are bad cards in the basic set, it doesn’t mean we’re trying to make sure we give players really bad cards to start out with. That’s not our intention, but we do also want them to feel a feeling of progression and to learn what cards to put in the deck. Some good choices, some bad choices.

Hearthstone, or Baby’s First CCG, is free-to-play and available to download here.

A lot of the Fallout 4 conversation is about how it compares to The Witcher 3. What an odd comparison. The Witcher 3 is high fantasy with a predetermined protagonist in a very specific story that focuses on character development and good writing. Fallout 4 is pretty much the opposite of all that.

The more appropriate comparison is to Xenoblade Chronicles X. They have a lot in common, including a blank slot where you plug in your own hero. They both have an open world, mechs, sidekicks, character customization, an unruly world for you to settle, carefully calculated landscapes, quest list gameplay, stranger-in-a-strange-land storylines that you can pursue at your leisure, crafting, stylized combat.

After the jump, which one is for you? Continue reading →

CD Projekt RED has released the first images of the Blood and Wine expansion for The Witcher 3. In the upcoming DLC, the wandering monster hunter leaves the muddy swamps and dark woods of the base game and travels south to the idyllic environs of Toussaint. It’s a nice change for the gloomy witcher. The Blood and Wine DLC is the second installment of the game’s season pass bundle and promises a substantial helping of new content in early 2016.

Blood and Wine is a 20-hour tale that will introduce the all-new in-game region of Toussaint, will take Geralt to a land untainted by war, where an atmosphere of carefree indulgence and knightly ritual masks an ancient, bloody secret.

Check out the (rather large) new images after the jump. Continue reading →

Join us for an exploration of Christmas horror/comedy. Then, if you have time, stick around for our 3X3 of watches and clocks. It starts at the 1:02 mark.

Next week: In the Heart of the Sea

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That’s Eagle Flight, Ubisoft’s first game made for virtual reality systems. Assassin’s Creed’s eagle vision taken to the inevitable end. Now you can be the eagle, soaring over towers, racing, and collecting thingamajigs. No need to parkour about. Just fly using the magic of VR and a painfully contrived backstory.

Set 50 years after humanity’s complete disappearance from Earth, Eagle Flight will feature a single-player experience with diverse missions and collectibles to uncover, as well as multiplayer modes for up to six players.

Eagle Flight will be available in 2016 for PlayStation VR on PlayStation 4, and for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive on PC.

The Game Awards 2015, the Geoff Keighley produced industry awards show, was on last night. If you watched, you may have seen one of the most incredible spectacles that has occurred in a videogame promotion, but it wasn’t anything planned. Double Fine announcing the start of funding for Psychonauts 2 was a long-rumored reveal. CD Projekt RED taking home awards for Best Developer, Best RPG, and Game of the Year for The Witcher 3 was predictable. Even the news that Telltale was making a Batman game with Warner Bros. as well as a three-part series for The Walking Dead: Michonne was just okay. Rocket League finally coming to Xbox One was long overdue. Shadow Complex: Remastered being a free download on PC was a pleasant surprise. An extended preview of Rock Band VR by Harmonix and Oculus including an on-stage boost by Palmer Luckey was endearingly awkward. Repeated segments with back stage guests talking about Star Wars Battlefront were clumsy and annoying. The show as scripted was the usual collection of marketing and fluff. Mostly harmless.

If that’s all there had been to the show, you could easily dismiss it for its obvious commercial ties. Luckily, there was something better than the trailers, announcements, or thank you speeches. The big event was this amazing moment. After awarding Best Action/Adventure Game to Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, and letting Kiefer Sutherland accept the honor in designer Hideo Kojima’s place, host Geoff Keighley took a few moments to publicly chastise publisher Konami.

“Mr. Kojima had every intention of being with us tonight, but unfortunately he was informed by a lawyer representing Konami just recently that he would not be allowed to travel to tonight’s award ceremony to accept any awards. He’s still under an employment contract. It’s disappointing and it’s inconceivable to me that an artist like Hideo would not be allowed to come here and celebrate with his peers and his fellow teammates.”

This was followed with a live performance of “Quiet’s Theme” sung by Stefanie Joosten, the voice actor for the character in the game. The falling out between Konami and Hideo Kojima began shortly after the announcement of the now cancelled Silent Hills, and culminated in the studio head’s apparent dismissal and muzzling despite the publisher saying he is “on extended vacation.” Konami has declined to comment on The Game Awards 2015 dust-up.

The first free content package for Warhammer: Vermintide has launched. Sigmar’s Blessing comes to Fatshark’s fantasy take on Left 4 Dead today. New items, weapon traits, and a host of fixes and balance changes are part of the patch. A new loot altar will appear at the in-game inn, so players can try to influence what goodies they get at the end of a match. According to the developers, it’s the first of many updates planned for the game. Fatshark says they’re working on adding a private mode to the game, so solo players can attempt to take on the hordes alone, as well as a survival mode for endless waves of enemies. Never have rat-men been so generous.

Warhammer: End Times – Vermintide is available on Steam.

Leaving Earth is one of the reasons I have no desire to make games. Sometimes a game design comes along that’s smart, unique, and exciting. Sometimes a game design comes along that convinces me to leave it to the professionals to do the hard work of thinking up this stuff. Sometimes a game design comes along that makes me think, “Oh man, I never would have thought to do it that way!” Joe Fatula’s Leaving Earth, a boardgame about the race into space in the 60s and 70s, is one such game.

After the jump, we choose to leave Earth not because it is easy. Continue reading →

Way back in 1995, Bandai Namco’s Ridge Racer on the original PlayStation featured a Galaga-style arcade mini-game in its loading screen. It was a simple way to give players something to do during their wait. Unfortunately for gamers, Namco patented the idea of presenting an “auxiliary” game while the main game was being loaded, killing the concept for most developers. For the last twenty years, you’ve been staring at loading bars and little orbs filling up instead of playing something because no one wanted to pay Namco for the right to do something else. Some games like FIFA and Battlefront have skirted around the patent by presenting mini-games that were essentially small slices of the main game, but giving players a mini-game that was substantially different from the rest of the code during a loading screen would’ve infringed on the patent.

That patent has expired. As outlined by the Loading Screen Game Jam, developers are now free to get creative during their loading screens. The progress bar can be a game on its own. Loading screen achievements! Loading screen DLC! Loading screen season passes!