The Darkness II Limited Edition Announced October 4, 2011

The official Darkness II twitter feed has broken the announcement that the quad wielding comic book inspired game, The Darkness II, will have a Collector’s Edition for it’s February release, and it should not cost any extra.

The Darkness II Limited Edition will feature cover artwork by Mark Silvestri, and included in the package will be codes for digital versions of The Darkness Origins Volume 1 and 2.  Also, there will be some free DLC content included for the game, including the Gormet Hearts DLC, which gives a bonus for eating hearts (eating hearts leveled you up in the first game, or was the only way to put down some supernatural enemies).  The other DLC will help you find all the game’s collectables.  In the first game there was 100 collectables, all of which unlocked special content, and finding them all was very difficult without a hint guide.

The final DLC will be a special outfit for your Darkling, based upon one of the funniest stories of the first game.  In the first game, during level transitions, Jackie would make a small monologue to the player, either about what he was feeling in the game at that moment, or if you were backtracking, a small story about the area you were entering.  One of the funniest stories Jackie told in the first game involved a good friend of his and you can hear him say it occasionally when entering a subway station.

“Anybody who ever thought the subway was scary had never sat in the backseat of a midtown cab. driving in the wrong direction, up the midtown tunnel, by a guy who doesn’t speak a lick of English, my buddy, Crazy Abdul.”

Apparently Crazy Abdul is now a darkling, and Limited Edition buyers will be able to have their darkling look like him in their games.

For those of you intersted in how this new game is going to play, take a good look at the latest trailer for it, which features the game’s signature new feature, Quad Weilding.

The Darkness II is coming Feb 2nd, 2012 for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.

Portal 2 Peer Review Free DLC Out Today October 4, 2011

Those of you who have been aching for some new Portal 2 content finally have their wish granted today, as new downloadable content for Portal 2, called “Peer Review” has been released to the Xbox Live Marketplace, STEAM and the Playstation Network.  The best part is, this DLC is completely free of charge.

This content was initially promised to be out during the summer, but Valve is historially still on Valve Time, which means it came out in early October.  Included with the DLC is more co-op levels to play as Atlus and P-Body on, as well as new single-player and multi-player challenge maps.

On a seperate note, the third volume of the Portal 2 soundtrack has been released for free download.  You can download the whole album (or just sample a listen of it), as well as the other two released volumes free of charge on the official site.   Yes, “Want You Gone”, the end theme to Portal 2, is included in Volume 3.

Psychonauts Recieves Mac Version, Major Patch and iOS Companion Today September 29, 2011

Released in 2005, Psychonauts was considered to be one of the most beloved games of the last generation of gaming.  It was quirky and exciting, with a great sense of humor enjoyed by players and reviewers alike.  Initially released on the PC, Xbox and Playstation 2, it did not get the initial sales such a highly rated game deserved, but for the past five years reviewers across the internet (including myself) look back at the game as one of the staples of the last gaming generation.

If you want to hear more about my thoughts about the game, you can feel free to check out my Top 5 Psychonauts Cutscenes Video.

Today, a major patch was released for Psychonauts, the first in years.  Why the patch?  Well, ownership of the game has reverted back to its creator, Tim Schaffer, who was responsible for games like Grim Fandango and more recently Brutal Legend, and money from the sales of the game are now going directly to him.

Also, today marks the release of the game for the Mac platform, which you Mac users can purchase through either the Mac App Store or STEAM.  With the Mac Pscyhonauts release has come a bevy of new features that have come across the platform for the Psychonatus PC Steam users as well, including Steam Cloud Saves, minor tweaks to the Meat Circus difficulty, and most importantly, achievements!  PC owners of this game through Steam will have their games automatically patched with the new features, Mac users will get them upon install.

Finally, a Psychonauts companion program, dubbed the Vault Viewer, has been released free of charge for the iPhone and iPad, and it contains all of the images from the in game mental vaults, as well as developer commentary!

Now, there have been some pretty great reviews of this game over the years, but for those of you who haven’t played it, I would like to defer you to one of my personally favorite reviews of the game, done by Lindsey “Z” Briggs, who is better known as Little Miss Gamer.  Joined by Lee from Still Gaming (who seemed to be recovering from his condition where he was stuck in only two dimensions), this was one of the final reviews she did, and she went out with a bang.  Check it out!

Batman: Arkham City Joker Trailer September 28, 2011

With the lengthy list of Batman’s infamous rogues gallery being extended for pretty much every new trailer of Batman: Arkham City, this new trailer just serves to remind everyone that the very first villian shown in the very first trailer for the game is still in this game, and he’s got the voice to go along with it.

The Joker, the most famous of Batman’s villians, is coming back to Arkham City, and from the looks of it, he is not well, still in recovery from what Batman did to him at the end of Arkham Asylum.  Joining him is his very famous personal pep rally girl, Harley Quinn, sporting a brand new outfit this time around.  I guess a girl has to keep up her appearances.

For those keeping count, other than The Joker and Harley Quinn there have been confirmed reports of Catwoman (who will be playable), Dr. Hugo Strange, The Penguin, Two Face, The Riddler, and Mr. Freeze, just to name a few.  Also, Poison Ivy was mentioned in the E3 demo I witnessed.  While she herself didn’t appear in the E3 demo, some of her plants did, and I was told she was the one who gave the task to Catwoman.

Batman: Arkham City is coming in October, 2011 to Xbox 360 and PS3.  The PC version is coming in November.

Thoughts on the Halo Reach Title Update and Halo Anniversary September 27, 2011

At PAX’s HaloFest, 343 announced they were going to be doing a major title update to Halo Reach.  Their goal, was to bring Halo Reach as close to the feel of Halo: Combat Evolved as possible, and they believed their work on Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary (which is coming in November) was instrumental in helping them capture that feel.

From what I read, the title update is going to COMPLETELY revamp the whole game.  This means that there will be more than just bloom tweaking options (although that is coming), the gameplay is going to be altered.  Most of the stuff I’ve read involved tweaking to armor lock, but 343 did say that they were also making the pistol more in line with Halo 1’s (something that Halo developers have been saying they wanted to bring back since Halo 3: ODST).

I really don’t know how I feel about it.  I do think it’s a little unnecessary to do a title update THIS drastic to gameplay a little over a year after the game released (especially since the game has had no problem selling since it released).

Another cool announcement about Halo Anniversary is the game will feature firefight, and since the game is running it’s gameplay almost entirely on Halo 1 code, it will capture the Halo 1 feel exactly.  In my experience, having firefight in Halo 1 is a very smart move.  If there was one map that Halo 1 fans would want firefight on, it would be the entire Silent Cartographer level.  When Bungie did their hour-long documentary, hearing Bungie and press talk about the early test version of that level brought a lot of people to ask if it could become a firefight arena.

Me?  I’m just happy that developers answered my request to take some of my beloved games from the previous console generation and update them to run on modern widescreen HDTVs.

Also, there was something else to come out recently, and that is the first look at the new Warthog.  No longer the M12-LRV, this is a beast that has been upgraded with all new futuristic technology for the next generation of Halo.  I’m a huge fan of Top Gear, and for a car this awesome, the host of Top Gear just had to break it down.

It kinda looks like a puma.  The new Warthog is going to be first seen in the game Forza Motorsport 4.

Halo Reach is out now exclusive to the Xbox 360.  The title update is probably out by the time you read this.  Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary is coming in November, 2011, also exclusive to the Xbox 360.

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.