RAGE Console Installation Information September 27, 2011

id Software has officially announced what it will take to install the beast known as RAGE onto your console.

The final game has been confirmed to be on three Xbox 360 discs, making it’s installation footprint for all three discs over 20GB.  This is a pretty hefty amount, but id assures everyone that you can get away with just installing one disc at a time as you play.  When you make it to the next disc you can delete the previous installation and just install the next.  Still, people without hard drives might be in some serious pain over this one.

The PS3 version of the game will require an 8GB installation.  I haven’t seen an installation that big since Metal Gear Solid 4, and that was only after downloading and updating all the optional files and Metal Gear Online updates!  This is a required installation, so it sounds like you better start clearing up some hard drive space for this one, or consider installing a bigger drive..

RAGE is coming in October, 2011 for PC, Xbox 360, and PS3.

The Darkness II What is The Darkness Trailer September 27, 2011

2K has done it again, and released a very stylish new trailer for the upcoming game, The Darkness II.  This trailer is comprised of more than just prerendered or in-game graphics, it features a good look at their actor capture technology as we see just how someone with this technology can narrate the story of the very first game.

The narrator’s fear and paranoia while telling the story really impresses me a lot, and it looks extremely natural, as if the actor’s performance was translated perfectly to the game character.  I also really liked the comic style panels that flashed scenes from the first game, I wonder if the final version of the game is going to use them.

The Darkness II was recently delayed and is now coming Feb 7th, 2012 to PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.

Max Payne 3 Has a Release Date September 8, 2011

The second writing gig I had for GameSpy was for The Deep Six, GameSpy’s former Max Payne site.  I joined up just after the announcement of the second Max Payne game, and posted editorials, fanfiction and news before the game came out.  It was a great time.  I got to work with some amazing people, expand my creative muscles, and I got to go to E3 in 2003 and 2004.

Max Payne and Max Payne 2 are beloved classic games from the early 2000s that hold up even today as staples of story-based action gaming.  Its original developer has since gone on to do Alan Wake, but Rockstar now owned the Max Payne property, and they were planning on releasing a new game themselves when they felt the time would be right.

Last year, Max Payne 3 was unveiled, but had you not known in advance what you were seeing, you never would have known it based upon the screenshots and synopsis that was released.  The game was taking place in Brazil, even though New York City was the setting of both previous games, and served almost as its own character in the game.  Max Payne looked and sounded like nothing we had previously seen.  He was now a fat, balding man, and no longer the fit adult with a constipated grimace.  After the initial announcement it was clear, the internet was universally disappointed.

Pretty soon after showing the initial previews of the game, the internet immediately backlashed against it.  I cannot even think about one positive comment I read about this game, or at the very least a hopeful one.  The game that previously had a set release date went dark.  Over the last few months a screenshot or two has been released of Max Payne as we had remembered him, and I started to get hopeful Rockstar had taken the internet backlash to heart and forced their developers to make an actual Max Payne game instead of whatever game it was they were making that had the Max Payne license attached to it.

Well today it was announced that Max Payne 3 is back, and the fat, bald Max is back front and center.  Along with this has come the game’s release date.  The important thing to note with the announcement is that Max Payne 3 will be the first Max Payne game to feature multiplayer (yes, you read that right).

Max Payne 3 is coming March 2012.  Should still be releasing multiplatform.

GameStop Openly Admits Policy that May Be Violating US Anti Trust Laws August 24, 2011

Say what you will about GameStop’s policy of opening all new games, scratching the discs as they move them into paper sleeves, then having to pay full retail price for these damaged discs when you can pay the same price for a still sealed and working copy of a new game anywhere else. You can also say whatever you want about them refusing to stock new copies of games and instead only keeping stock of used products so as to maximize profits, cutting out potential sales from game developers and publishers. But today, various news organizations have uncovered an official GameStop policy, (which has been openly confirmed by GameStop as official policy to various organizations) regarding the new Deus Ex game which may be a violation of US law.

New copies of the PC Version of Deus Ex: Human Revolution include download codes for a free copy of the game to be played through OnLive. This kind of practice is not unheard of, new copies of the PS3 version of Portal 2 came with free codes to a full copy of the PC version through Steam. Well, GameStop has decided they don’t like their customers are getting OnLive codes and are telling all their retailers to open the new copies of the game and discard the OnLive download codes. Their defense is that OnLive is a competition and they have the right to prevent their customers from having access to them.

Actually, they don’t.

This policy sounded worse than just bad news for customers, this sounded illegal. So I started doing some research of US Anti-Trust laws and discovered that what GameStop is doing FITS THE EXACT DEFINITION. For those of you who don’t know what the specifics of the US Anti-Trust laws are, here’s some general information about it.

Antitrust laws protect competition. Free and open competition benefits consumers by ensuring lower prices and new and better products. In a freely competitive market, each competing business generally will try to attract consumers by cutting its prices and increasing the quality of its products or services. Competition and the profit opportunities it brings also stimulate businesses to find new, innovative and more efficient methods of production.

Consumers benefit from competition through lower prices and better products and services. Companies that fail to understand or react to consumer needs may soon find themselves losing out in the competitive battle.

When competitors agree to fix prices, rig bids or allocate (divide up) customers, consumers lose the benefits of competition. The prices that result when competitors agree in these ways are artificially high; such prices do not accurately reflect cost and therefore distort the allocation of society’s resources. The result is a loss not only to U.S. consumers and taxpayers, but also the U.S. economy.

–justice.gov

It would seem this confirmed policy is a textbook example of unfair business practices. Now, Anti-Trust laws are enforced by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the United States Department of Justice (Anti-Trust Division). If you bought the PC version of Deus Ex: Human Revolution from GameStop new and your game has been opened before you bought it and does not have an OnLive Code, the US Department of Justice does have reporting information on their official website for violations of the three major anti-trust laws. This is a federal law, but you can also contact your local state Attorney General and see what the laws are in your state to see what your rights are.

This is something that would be argued in court. While this is does seem to be a violation of the general spirit of the law specifics can be argued by various legal teams. However, citizens do have the right to report anything that may be in violation so the federal agencies can investigate it themselves and make a decision about if they wish to pursue it.

UPDATE: GameStop has ordered the recall of all regular PC copies of Deus Ex: Human Revolution from their shelves in agreement with the publisher.

UPDATE 2: GameStop is offering $50 gift cards and a coupon for affected customers that are unsatisfied.

Gears of War 3 Gold August 20, 2011

Ladies and gentelmen, Rod “I met him at E3” Fergusson.

Gone gold is a very long standing term, referring to the Gold Master of a game, the copy that all other mass produced copies come from.  The master disc will have a gold finish, so as not to degrade.  That means Gears of War 3 is done, and has been shipped for mass production.

And for those of you interested, here’s the game’s very awesome opening cinematic.

Gears of War 3 is coming September 20th, 2011 exclusive to the Xbox 360.

Do NOT Use Third Party Hard Drives in an Xbox 360 August 19, 2011

This is just a quick warning for everyone who visits this site for its technical information.  It turns out that since it’s so easy to build a hard drive for an Xbox 360 Slim, people have been selling third-party unofficial drives through methods like Amazon and eBay since they’re cheaper than what Microsoft is charging for them.

Recently, I got a comment on my Xbox 360 Slim Hard Drive installation video from an Xbox Slim user who could not play Halo 2 even though he had upgraded it with a Hard Drive.  I was troubleshooting for this poor guy for several days, and we could not get the game to run on his slim no matter what he did.

Finally I did some research into the problem and found the solution.  It turns out generic, homebrew and international drives are not properly formatted to Xbox 1 specifications.  Xbox had a specifically partitioned hard drive which its games made use of.  This was in lieu of having only 64MB of RAM, game developers created a pagefile in the hard drive to make up for it.  Since the 360 is backwards compatible, all Microsoft made drives have this partition in place so Xbox 1 games can make use of it.

If the drive is not properly partitioned and formatted the way an Xbox 1 game expects, the game will throw an error and refuse to load.  It turns out the idiots who are making these drives and selling them on the cheap are not aware of how to properly partition the drives they are selling, and while they are working fine for Xbox 360 storage, without the Xbox 1 partition in place in the hard drive you will not be able to play any of the Xbox 1 games that are backwards compatible.  This is a problem even if the game was downloaded through Xbox Live, it still will not play.

In short, they’re a plague, avoid them as such.  Be aware of what the Xbox 360 Slim HD packaging looks like, and be wary of any deals you might be getting on them.  If your drive is not able to play an Xbox 1 game, return it immediately and get a refund.

UPDATE:  This video might help.  This is what actual Xbox 360 Hard Drives look like.  If your drive does not look like what is featured in the video, you likely have a fraudulent drive.

Playstation 3 Price Drops to $249.99 August 17, 2011

Sony has made an unscheduled shift in the console war and dropped the price of the Playstation 3 by fifty dollars.

The Playstation 3 usually has two models out at any given time, one with a lower end hard drive capacity and another with a higher capacity hard drive.  These sizes will change on a regular basis as new models are continuously phased in and out, but the price has remained the same.  Today, that changes.  The lower end Playstation 3 currently at a capacity of 160GB will now cost you $249US, the premium model  PS3, which has a capacity of 320GB, is now $299US.

If you were on the fence about buying a PS3, now would be a good sign to buy one as the price drop is immediate and should be honored by all retailers.

This is not unheard of in the PS3 lifespan.  The first Playstation 3 price drop was done in order to phase out the initial 60GB launch models so they could sell new 80GB units at the 60GB launch price.  Once the 60GB model sold out, Sony replaced them with Playstations with smaller hard drives and less features, particularly they took out Playstation 2 compatibility (which still has not returned).

Currently the PS3 is in last place in this generation of the console war.  Nintendo, even though they are going to launch their next generation console first with the Wii U, has such a far lead ahead of Sony and Microsoft, nobody expects them to be overtaken.  However, Sony does has the chance to take second place from Microsoft before the console generation ends, and this could be a preemptive strike for them to overtake the Xbox 360 in sales by Christmas.  The PS3 is still the only console with a Blu-Ray player, and with HDTV’s market getting larger than it was at the console launch, could make it a good deal for new HDTV adopters.  Plus, a ton of PS3 exclusive major releases are coming this November, as well as third-party cross-platform releases.

With the Playstation Vita handheld coming just around that time, this could very well be the start of the most exciting holiday in the history of gaming.

Bungie App Updated August 16, 2011

Bungie has updated their iOS Application, which allows anyone who downloads it to track their statistics in Halo Reach, as well as gives away special in-game goodies from Bungie.

Bungie has announced that version 1.1 of the app has been released to iTunes, which adds in Private Messaging and allows you to access to your Xbox Live Friends Status, two features that will enhance the functionality of the program pretty well.

Also, you Android users will be happy to know that the app has just been announced for the Android, so you can expect to get some love from Bungie too.

The Bungie App is free and can be downloaded through iTunes Store.  An Android version is coming.

Borderlands 2 Announced August 16, 2011

The sequel to Gearbox Software’s highly popular sleeper hit of 2010 has been announced!

Borderlands took gameplay mechanics from other games that came before it, and put it’s own spin on those, with an art style all its own.  It’s popularity increased tenfold when the Game of the Year Edition of the game was released, which bundled together the four DLC packs of the game along with access to the Duke Nukem Forever First Access Club at a reduced price.

The teaser trailer for the game doesn’t show much, but Gearbox has said they plan to do away with the random gun pickups of the original, and instead will have guns with set statistics from various manufacteres in the sequel.

Borderlands 2 is coming in 2010.

Mr. Freeze is Coming to Batman: Arkham City August 16, 2011

Add another to the list of Batman’s rogue’s gallery!  Dr. Victor Fries is coming to Arkham City in the guise of his alter ego, Mr. Freeze!

The appearance they’re going for him this time around is different than any design I’ve seen for Mr. Freeze in the past.  Mr. Freeze has appeared in a few Batman video games in the past.  He appeared in Batman: Vengeance (multiplatform), voiced by his original voice actor from Batman: The Animated Series.  He also appeared in Batman: Dark Tomorrow (PS2 and GameCube), which is only worth playing for the cutscenes.

His suit almost has the appearance of a walking tank, instead of life support armor, as he normally wears.  This is not unheard of, if he intended to go into battle with Batman, he would wear something like this.  I also really like how he can turn on and off the infared light in his goggles, making him seem more human when he’s not ready to fight, and lose that humanity when he is ready to fight.

Batman: Arkham City is coming October 4th, 2011 for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.