Category: Gaming

In a recent interview with GameSpot, Cliff Bleszinski called on-disc bonus content an “ugly truth” of the gaming industry, adding “When you’re making a game, and you’re getting into a ship cycle, there’s often three or four months where the game is basically done. And you have an idle team that needs to be working on things.” Oh, CliffyB, how you’ve led us astray.

It’s because of events like this that people will continue to find ways to exploit that content (after all, their community did not take the news lightly). Charging $20 for some characters that were on the disc all along, as though you put in some additional hard work after the game released and then charged us for it seems absolutely insane. But was the precedent set long before video games and DLC became common place? Continue reading “20 things as bad as paying to unlock "DLC" that's already on a disc”

I’m downloading my latest GoG.com purchase as I write this. I realize I missed yesterday’s gaming post (with good reason), so I figured I would make for it by letting you know that one of the best games of all time is now available for a less-than-a-pizza $5.99.

What makes it even better? It’s big. It’s not just the version that originally had so much video content it had to span four CD-ROMs, it’s the version with DVD quality video, that had to span two DVDs. This was the first time, without a doubt, that you were literally playing a movie – you couldn’t blame pixelated video for your ability to suspend disbelief. Wing Commander IV is beautiful, and I would’ve paid any price for it from GoG – finding all of this hotness packaged into a six dollar download? Just makes it that much sweeter. So head on over to GOG and go blast some Border Worlders.

A fan project that ran for nearly ten years recently came to a close… or perhaps it’s only just begun. However you want to look at it, Wing Commander Saga is now available for download at multiple major gaming websites. There is even a torrent available for a no-waiting, download now kind of experience.

The game was made in the open sourced Free Space 2 engine, and has been polished more and more as the years went on. Since the root engine is so old, you can play it at max resolution on a current gen system and easily maintain an over-30-frames-per-second average. It’s now a full blown Wing Commander game in every sense of the word except legally. There is such strong fan support behind this that if EA, the current holders of the Wing Commander name, tries to shut these guys down, there will be an outcry from the fans. The projects been well publicized for the better part of a decade, they knew it was coming – if they try to step in now that it’s been released? It’s too late. But I won’t rain on anyone’s parade. Head on over to WCSaga.com and check out the details!

Last week, news broke that Xbox 365 (again, my name) will not be shown at E3 2012. I’m wondering if Microsoft is playing it safe. I fully believe that they are ready for the next generation – but if they give themselves an entire year of additional time, it’s going to make their next console unstoppable.

First, I believe they’re “hedging their bet” against the Wii U. Nintendo’s silly Wii console dominated / decimated / owned sales charts for well over 2 years afters it’s release. Lately, the Xbox 360 has become the top dog. But Microsoft doesn’t want to risk playing second fiddle again. The best way to prevent that? Don’t release head-to-head with what could be Nintendo’s most anticipated console ever. By “delaying” the unannounced launch, nobody feels shocked or too disappointed (we had HOPED to see something, but knew it wasn’t entirely likely). An added benefit of the delay, internally at Microsoft, will be time to polish. Even if the hardware specs are 100% finalized (which, at this stage in the process, I hope there’s still some flexibility), there will still be lots of time for optimization and enhancement – both on the back-end and the user interface.

So, I wouldn’t say that Microsoft is running scared from Nintendo, but rather playing it smart. By delaying your console launch by a year, it gives you more time to release a more polished, and genuinely better product than the competition (taking advantage of any advancements in the technology you’ll be using), learn from any mistakes they’ve made this generation (even “simple” things like number of games at launch, console price, online infrastructure, etcetera), and avoid the head to head sales contest for the consumer’s “holiday 2012 spending dollar.” It’s a smart move. We’ll all have to wait and see if it pays off. But the key word there was “wait.”