I don't really do/follow twitter but since the whole Aliens Colonial Marines fiasco, I've been eyeballing Mr. Bold Face Liar aka Randy Bitchford's twitter to see how smug or arrogant this prick can get. If you haven't heard/seen anything about the whole Alien: CM fiasco here's a video contrasting the preview in E3 and the final shitty product.
This my friend is one hell of a bait and switch, and they are getting away with it. In their video development diaries (video here) Randy Bitchford and his team say they're big aliens fans and that this was their dream project. Yet they outsourced most of the work to Timegate studios, Demiurge studios, and Nerve Software.
Anyways, back to the whole twitter thing. Randy Bitchford has been getting messages from angry fans and he's either been blocking them or making smug snarky remarks that just makes him even more douche bag by the minute.
At first I thought Sergei Titov from Hammerpoint Interactive (War Z) was the worst. Then comes Randy Bitchford who makes hims look like Jesus. At least Sergei had the common decency to apologize to the gamers. Apparently there's a huge mess where Sega and 2K games are in a legal battle between Gearbox over the outsourcing and I hope Gearbox learns from this whole thing.
On a side note, Mr. Bitchford has always wanted to be a magician. I guess his greatest trick was to make that awesome E3 preview disappear along with Sega and the fan's money.
Making a MMO(Massive Multiplayer Online) for the console has always been one of those great white buffaloes. Only a few have been successful at doing it, and some were questionable at best. Just to name a few were Final Fantasy Online, DC Universe and Phantasy Star Online. Now I know some of you might dispute what "MMO" means for console gaming, saying that Battlefield and Call of Duty are Massive Multiplayer Online games. That's kind of taking the word a bit to literally, what most people think of when someone mentions 'MMO' is a Massive Multiplayer Online game with a 'persistent world'. Persistent world meaning that every player is logged into the game world/server and not have to go through a match making search like most shooter games. MMO's also consist of a looting system to upgrade your gear, and a sense of progression through quest/missions while in the online world with other players.
This is where Trion Worlds(the makers of Rift Online, End of Nations, and Warface) comes in with their latest game Defiance.
Not to be confused with the 'forest wives' of the famous movie starring James Bond and Sabertooth, Defiance. This one is more futuristic complete with a post apocalyptic worlds and aliens. The story goes like this; In the year 2046 a bunch of aliens come to earth looking for a home not realizing that humans were already here. Kind of like how Europeans came to America and tried to make a 'deal' with the Native Americans. Stuff went down, humans and aliens were waving their guns around shooting them in the air like intergalactic rednecks, and a war broke out.
In the game you play as Space Jesus and have to use your magical unicorn blood to save everyone. Okie, maybe not that extreme, but you play as a Ark Hunter who has to hunt for relics to earn a profit or to fix your spaceship(the Ark) so your race can leave this shit hole of a planet. Much of the detail about the story is unknown and the awesome part about this game is it ties into a SyFy tv show! So whatever happens in the tv show, happens in the game and vice versa. I know this is a very ambitious project but if it does work it is going to be EPIC.
So far the gameplay seems to be your run of the mill third person shooter, but the MMO aspect of it is what separates it from your typical Gears of War. Hopefully it will be something like Planetside, with a little less emphasis on tanks and chaotic combat. They were also talking about doing micro-transactions but mostly for xp boost and cosmetic rather than a 'Pay-to-win' model. There is no subscription fee (thank God), but I haven't heard if there will be an offline mode either. Assuming it's a full on MMO, you will probably need to be constantly connected to the server to play the game. I also don't know if this will be cross-platform (meaning Xbox players will be able to play with PS3 or PC players).
Check out this full on XBox 360 gameplay video from IGN for more info.
I'm probably going to pick this up since I love SyFy shows, and I like shooting aliens in the face with their own plasma canons (a la Mass Effect, Halo, Crysis, Gears of War etc).
Check it out coming out, April 2, 2013 for the XBox 360, PS3, and PC
It seems to me that whenever something bad happens to a community, people seem to always point their fingers at video games (circa 1997 Jack ThompsonHeath High School shooting and Doom,Quake, Castle Wolfenstien). The worst thing yet is the ones leading the charge a top their high horse and pearly white preacher suits. They're the ones so out of touch with the youths today and obviously not care enough of their kids to know what they're going through that they are just blatantly throwing the blame without any concrete evidence to back them up. Like all the blame games that came before it, video games are suddenly the new Twisted Sisters (Dee Snider eats the Congress).
Anyways, since the Sandy Hook Shooting, people have been pointing their fingers every which way. First the NRA, banning certain guns and only allowing a hand full of bullets. Okay, fine by me I don't really care since I don't own a gun, but some of my friends do so they're pretty ticked about that.
The short of it, Connecticut lawmaker DeBralee Hovey is proposing a 10% increase sales tax on Mature rated games (this includes Fable, sorry Nikki), which will be donated to the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services to cause an "educational awareness" to families on the warning signs of when they're going to start shooting people. Okay, it was worded more like "to educate families on the "warning signs" of video game addiction and antisocial behavior. (antisocial behavior, ha! Wtf is the point of multiplayer?)
Look, it's great that the tax would be donated for "The Greater Good", but seriously why aren't the other medias being blamed too? The beginning of Game of Thrones, one of the best tv series starts with a decapitation. Cartoon episodes of Batman where the Joker's goons start shooting up the place. Should we really blame them? HYELL NO! So why are we still persistent that video games are the cause of all these shootings? Now I know you might be thinking, well video games help you act out your fantasies, well sheeeeeeeiit, if your fantasies are to go around shooting children then I believe you were fucked up even before you ever laid your hairy hands on the controller. That's not the games fault, that's your fault. As the famous saying goes, guns don't kill people, people kill people. 90% of the games always portray you as the hero trying to save the world. Now if you're the kind to go around killing helpless villagers, then that's all you.
Anyways, it seems to me it's only the white young kids that go on a shooting sprees. I have cousins that were in the military who have tons of guns, and play Call of Duty as a favorite past time and not once did they go on a killing spree. Now I know you might be like "But Nick, what about that Virginia tech shooting" (in your husky yet alluring voice). Nah ah ah! He was Korean, we're Philippinos, wrong type of Asians.
Jack Thompson tried it and failed miserably, and here's to hoping this won't fly. Video games at $60 are already expensive, adding a 10% increase would just kill the industry (why, because companies will be forced to make more Barbies horse adventure since people won't be buying M games as much).
So as Dee Snider said "People can interpret it in many ways, Ms. Gore was looking for sadomasochism and bondage, and she found it.
Someone looking for surgical references would have found it as well."
"Gibs, short for giblets (pronounced "jiblets"),[1] is a humorous term referring to the variably-sized body parts ("guts"), fragments, and offal produced when non-player characters or game players are damaged or killed in video games."
