The next Living World update for Guild Wars 2 will invite players to take part in the country-wide celebrations for Quenn Jennah’s 10th anniversary of being crowned. Hot air ballon rides, ceremonies, the Queen’s Gauntlet, and other attractions will await players on August 6th when the Queen’s Jubilee goes live. As with previous Living World installments, the update comes with a host of permanent in-game improvements.
– A shared Account Wallet for all your characters’ currency
– PvP Solo Queue for solo arena matches
– Bonus in-game monetary rewards for dungeons
– Champion loot drops will get an upgrade
– A new level of detail system for effects will clear up large battles
– Supply Master ability line will be added to World vs World
– Permanent Finishers
The current Living World event is Cutthroat Politics and Tom is still trying to gather every bit of lore he can find.
That’s the trailer for the long-awaited first DLC for Bioshock Infinite called Clash in the Clouds. Remember when Irrational said their DLC was going to be substantial single player stuff?
This pack features 60 challenges in four brand-new maps. Complete Blue Ribbon Challenges and unlock concept art, Voxophones, Kinetoscopes, and more in The Columbian Archeological Society. Climb the Leaderboards and earn new achievements.
You get challenge maps. Congratulations. At least it’s cheap at $4.99 or 400 Microsoft points.
The next DLC looks a little better. Burial at Sea promises some actual story.
Zombies!!! (punctuation theirs) is a competitive zombie apocalypse boardgame in which players set up a city one tile and one turn at a time. Eventually a helipad appears and everyone scrambles to reach it. Until then, the objective is staying alive with very limited ammo, very limited health, a handful of cards to tweak the action, and the brutality of six-sided die rolls. Now Zombies!!! is also a terrible iOS port.
Gertrude Stein famously said of Oakland “there’s no there there”. Fruitvale Station begs to differ. The movie from first-time director Ryan Coogler tells the story of an Oakland man restrained by BART police and then shot in the ensuing scuffle. This happened back in 2009 and it’s been a piece of the city’s identity ever since. Coogler’s movie is partly a portrait of Oakland as he follows his main character around town, unfolding his day and his neighborhood with the warm grainy glow that only filmstock can afford.
But the genius of Fruitvale Station is that it’s not preoccupied with the particular. This isn’t a biopic. It isn’t the politically charged cause celebre you might expect. Of course, you can’t help but think of Trayvon Martin’s shooting as the movie unfolds, but what you’re thinking of isn’t the controversy or the legal proceedings or the aftermath of Zimmerman’s acquittal. What you’re thinking of is the incontrovertible fact of a life needlessly lost. The pervasive sense in Fruitvale Station is sadness. Not anger. Not outrage. Not indignation or a call to action to fight the power. This is a heartachingly simple story about something that shouldn’t have happened, but did.
Fruitvale Station reminds me of Paul Greengrass’ first movie, Bloody Sunday, as a careful chronicle of mounting dread. It reminds me of John Singleton’s first movie, Boyz n the Hood, as a story of people whose stories aren’t often told. It reminds me of Taxi Driver in that it’s directed with a keen eye and acted with stunningly powerful insight into a fascinating frustrated character pulled between two worlds, struggling to make a decision, a victim of his own nature rather than society. In the lead role, Michael B. Jordan is nothing short of a revelation. The way anger and frustration play across his face and twist his mouth, the deep pools of his eyes, his transition to studied easy charm, the way he crumbles into a ball of vulnerability opposite his girlfriend, fiercely played by Melanie Diaz. If I see another scene this year as good as the prison visit with Octavia Spencer as his mother, it will be a very good year indeed.
Fruitvale Station opened last week in select cities.
I am Sir Hirshley, the first of my name. Unlike my mother, Lady Henrietta III, I do not wish to face the monstrosity Alexander. In fact, I don’t even want to venture into the treacherous forest where my mother died. My only desire is to spend my life wandering the castle and to perhaps delay my doom. I don’t trust this castle. In fact, I entered unwillingly through a necessity to do my duty to my family. The rooms seem to shift, and the demon at the gate, Charon, has stolen the remainder of my family’s money. Zombies and skeletons roam the halls, and haunted portraits hang on the walls. And the chickens. Charon take me, the chickens!
It’s another superhero movie, with Hugh Jackman going abroad for shenanigans. How does it hold up for this collection of sometime nerds with only minimal comic book cred? Listen to this week’s podcast and find out! At the 49-minute mark, we talk about those weird moments in movies when you should hear something, but you don’t.
Sony has confirmed that a Playstations Plus subscription will not be needed to use online apps such as Netflix or Hulu Plus on the PS4, and that party chat will also be free unlike Microsoft’s Xbox One which will require a Gold subscription to use. In a Playstation Access video, Sony says that the PS4 friends list can have up to 2000 members (twice as many as the Xbox One) and free-to-play games will not require a Playstation Plus subscription to play, unlike Microsoft’s current console rules.
Sony had revealed at E3 that playing online multiplayer games would require a Playstation Plus subscription, following in the footsteps of Microsoft’s Xbox Live Gold requirements. With today’s video, Sony separates themselves from many of the restrictions that the Xbox 360 and Xbox One will have without Gold access.
Phil Fish, creator of Fez, says he’s quit making games and canceled development of Fez II. The dramatic event occurred over the weekend when Fish abruptly posted his goodbye on his Polytron site.
FEZ II is cancelled.
i am done.
i take the money and run.
this is as much as i can stomach.
this isn’t the result of any one thing, but the end of a long, bloody campaign.
you win.
The outspoken Fez developer canceled Fez II following an episode of Invisible Walls on GameTrailers in which host Marcus Beer called Fish names because he refused to comment on Microsoft’s Xbox One indie self-publishing program. After the broadcast, Fish went on Twitter and told Beer to “compare your life to mine and then kill yourself.” Fish was in turn attacked on Twitter by fans of GameTrailers and gamers that expressed outrage over his comment and for his past behavior.
For his part, Fish maintains that his quitting the industry was not motivated because one person “said something stupid” but so he can “get out of games.” He confirmed to Joystiq that Fez II is really canceled.
I am Lady Henrietta, the third of my name. Both Henriettas before me were slain viciously by the treacherous master of the forest, Alexander. The tales have been passed down for generations of a dark skull that lives somewhere in these woods, the bane of my family. I have come far through a castle of stone to find the entrance to the forest, and now I pray my luck holds out long enough for me to see Alexander’s lair. I want to restore honor to my family’s name, to bathe my blade in his blood. As I trek through the forest I see a large door flanked by statues. Alexander’s Lair. I clench my sword tightly, set my jaw, and enter.
By the way, did I mention that I’m really short?
After the jump, vengeance, humiliation, and/or new loot for later generations?Continue reading →
Love Letter is a ten dollar card game from AEG that only comes with sixteen cards. That’s right, just sixteen cards. What kind of game has only sixteen cards, especially when a whole bunch of them are identical? Among the sixteen actual cards, there are only eight cards types. For instance, there are five guards. But only one countess. You get a pair each of the barons, princes, and priests, and handmaids. What’s going on here? It’s like downloading a game that’s less than ten megabytes.
On Monday, we reported that Ouya’s first month of retail availability has resulted in generally low sales for developers’ games. Some of the studios complained about their performance on the console, while others like the folks behind TowerFall were positive about their 2,000 units sold. Ouya’s CEO Julie Uhrman defended her console’s ability to sell games by stating that 27% of Ouya owners have purchased a game so far. She told The Verge that 13 of the top 20 grossing titles in the console’s online store have experienced an 8% conversion rate from demo to full purchase.
“I think there are a lot of social and mobile app developers that would kill for an 8 percent attach rate on a platform that’s 30 days old,” Uhrman said. “These numbers will grow as more gamers pick up consoles, and as we attract more developers, and I believe that by the end of the year, we’ll see a few developers telling us they’ve made more than a million dollars on Ouya.”
Uhrman also dismissed the mixed reviews of the Ouya console itself by noting that the product is engaging players despite some negative critical reception.
Despite rumors to the contrary, Sony’s PS4 will not be using more than 5.5GB of its GDDR5 8GB RAM for gaming. According to Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry, the console is limited to 4.5GB allocated directly to games with another 1GB that can be used by developers depending on what the console OS needs to do.
Current PlayStation 4 dev kits have a “Game Memory Budget Mode” in the debug settings featuring two options: normal and large. The normal mode setting confirms that 4.5GB of memory is usable for game applications. The large mode increases this considerably to 5.25GB, but the docs are clear that the extra RAM here is only available for application development, presumably in order to house debugging data. From what we understand, the extra gig of flexible memory appears to work in addition to these allowances.
Unfortunately for fans of the PS4, this brings the specs closer to parity with the Xbox One. The difference of GDDR5 memory in Sony’s console versus the DDR3 in Microsoft’s could still be a key factor for developers.
Activision Blizzard is buying itself out from under Vivendi in a share aquisition deal for $8.17 billion. The details of the deal note that this will be a two-part buyout with $5.83 billion coming from 429 million company shares and another $2.34 billion from 172 million shares owned by CEO Bobby Kotick and Co-Chairman Brian Kelly. Kotick seemed excited by the opportunity to break away from their parent company.
“These transactions together represent a tremendous opportunity for Activision Blizzard and all its shareholders, including Vivendi. We should emerge even stronger – an independent company with a best-in-class franchise portfolio and the focus and flexibility to drive long-term shareholder value and expand our leadership position as one of the world’s most important entertainment companies. The transactions announced today will allow us to take advantage of attractive financing markets while still retaining more than $3 billion cash on hand to preserve financial stability.”
Activision Blizzard has been under Vivendi’s rule since mid-2008 when the companies merged with Vivendi claiming majority shareholder status. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Vivendi board had been considering extracting $3 billion from Activision Blizzard’s coffers after their stock hit a nine-year low following disappointing financial results for the media conglomerate.
The announcement of Activision Blizzard’s independence comes one day before StarCraft II’s third anniversary.
Torchlight 2 has sold over 2 million copies. Runic Games announced that the action RPG sequel to Torchlight has doubled the original’s sales in the ten months since its launch in September 2012. That’s a lot of mouse clicking and hotkeys pushed in a panic! Runic’s President Travis Baldree expressed gratitude for their loyal fans.
“I’d just like to say a big thank you to all the players who offered their suggestions on what we could improve, and who stuck with us and supported us during development. It wouldn’t have been possible without you, and we’re humbled and grateful at your response.”
Tom really liked Torchlight 2 in his review, but became disenchanted with the game when he discovered that the difficulty level did not influence the loot drops.
