Time to finish this article that I posted prior to my trip to China.
So let me preface this by saying Steam has a MASSIVE sale on right now, lasting until July 4! Save up to 80% on games like Borderlands, Bioshock, The Witcher and Trine (which will be reviewed below)! You only have a few hours before the 50% savings on Bioshock 2, 80% savings on Trine and 50% savings on Aion expire! Buy 13 Star Wars games for US$75! Get most of the Call of Duty series for US$20!
There’s only a few hours, as I said, for some of these sales, which I why I’m rushing this article half-finished. It’ll be finished later, hopefully.
Ezio's repertoire of death has increased more than threefold.
I know that some of you didn’t like the first Assassin’s Creed, even if it was based on a half-hour playthrough of Leona’s copy (Leona, do a bit more research before you buy games, my recommendations are not typically suited for you). Well, almost anything you didn’t like in the first game is fixed in the second game.
The long derided vaporware game of all time, Duke Nukem Forever, has not died with the collapse of 3D Realms. After much rumour and speculation, Gearbox have confirmed that they will be taking over the development of this cursed game. Not only that, they had a playable demo at PAX!
PlayStation’s new motion controller, which looks more like a microphone with the top part being a coloured ball. I really don’t quite like the thing looks, it doesn’t fit in with the other PlayStation products at all.
That aside, I’m not a huge fan of motion gaming using a general peripheral, so I don’t really see the point of this and Xbox’s Natal (Kinect, whatever it is called now). That said, Nintendo Wii seemed to have gained a huge following despite having less advanced motion controls than this.
For one, I doubt that this PlayStation Move in a shooter could be as good as say a dedicated gun in Time Crisis 4. Another thing is Xbox’s Natal and driving games. Touching air is not going to be quite the same as turning a wheel with force feedback. And the Nintendo Wii got things right for motion gaming if you ask me. Since the motion detection isn’t super precise, it makes the games easy to play, and with widespread appeal. If I need to do the correct motion in the PlayStation Move to hit a tennis ball for example, I don’t think it would appeal to as wide a range of players, although it would cater for certain players better.
At $98 for the PlayStation Eye and a Move controller, I think it’s reasonably priced. I won’t be getting it however.
The MMO of the Year, the WoW-killer, the game of the century: Hello Kitty Online is a serious contender for all of these. We’ll now know, because it just went out of beta and is available as a free-to-play MMO now!
Shiny AND pink!
What’s more, if you import this fine box from the States, you get not only the game, but $15 worth of Sanrio points, one of four in-game pets, a full-colour manual and some Hello Kitty Online postcards!
While few people would doubt Gran Turismo for its visuals (at least for the cars, the environments could still use a bit of work), I thought to look into the accuracy of Gran Turismo’s tracks. Now I should have just looked at some of the real tracks in the world, such as Suzuka or Fuji or Indianapolis, but I decided to look at one of Gran Turismo’s fictional tracks.
By fictional, I mean a track, I mean a track that actually exists in real life, but one that actually isn’t a racetrack. For those who are confused, simply put, the roads for this city circuit exist in real life, but the roads have never been used as a racetrack.
The track I picked as comparison is called Tokyo Route 246. This is a track based on some roads (presumably in Tokyo) next to an off/on-ramp for the highway of Japan Route 246. Inside for the comparison videos.
It appears that the trendy thing to do in game publishing is to delay your game to 2011, leaving a somewhat sparse final quarter of 2010 for game releases. Here’s just a small list of the games coming out next year:
Portal 2
Torchlight 2
Test Drive Unlimited 2
Crysis 2
Dragon Age II
Dead Space 2
Sequel-mania! And Diablo III and Guild Wars 2 are also tenaciously set for release next year, though that’s still unconfirmed.
Well, it was rumoured for some time, and is now confirmed to be true. I don’t like the addition of this though, I’m sorry, but go karts are just not part of a car racing game. Now, I’ve never driven a real go kart before, so I can’t tell how accurate the physics are, but the physics are clearly a lot different to driving a car, and I just don’t like what I’m seeing. I hope this go karting feature isn’t fully fledged and is just put in as a bit of an extra afterthought, that you can play around with when you’re bored.
The reason why I’m so against this is that I’d rather more development time be spent on the core bits of the game. I heard that around 4/5ths of Gran Turismo 5′s cars won’t have an interior view (200 premium cars and 800 standard cars), and if true, that’s a bit disappointing. There is certainly a lot more things that can be done rather than chucking in go karts.
