Not many to speak of but still a few good ones.
Fry's
360 - Too Human $50
360 - Forza 2 $18
360/PS3 - Civilization Revolution $50
Wii - Sonic and the Secret Rings $18
PC - Shattered Suns $35
GameStop
PS3 - Def Jam: Icon $13
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As a preemptive strike against an announcement from Microsoft regarding a motion controller during E3 that never came, Nintendo announced yet another accessory for #1 selling system.
This would come in handy/gimmicky for light saber duels or...baseball bat movement maybe?
It looks like it has another sleeve on it. Does this mean they will be giving us more free sleeves? I don't think so. Or will there be two different models of the motion plus peripheral? It might just be bad art but you see the curve of the sleeve near the bottom of the standard Wii Remote? How is that supposed to work exactly?
You know how you play certain games and it won't allow you to continue until you remove the nun-chuck? Are we going to have to remove it for certain games? Are we going to have to keep a box of accessories and their respective sleeves for every controller option?
The Wii-mote + Analog stick makes it the most expensive controller out there. Now they are breaking it into three parts?
$80 gets you Guitar Hero AND a guitar!
If this add-on costs $20 it will bring the total of a Wii Remote and nun-chuck to $80.
Here's a thought, how about some more games Nintendo? If I were them I would be paying dividends towards Lucas Arts for the rights to publish the old SCUMM games on the VC at least!
Sam & Max, Full Throttle, Day of the Tentacle, Indiana Jones, hell even Dig!
Or another lazy idea - Best Of: Mario Party? I know Mario Party has had some great little multi-player games that they have retired. I would love to see a collection of the classics.
GoGamer
XBox 360
Guitar Hero: Aerosmith $40
Alone in the Dark $30
Soul Calibur IV $55
PS3
Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit $40
PC
Devil May Cry 4 $35
Wii
Guitar Hero: Aerosmith $35
PS2
Guitar Hero: Aerosmith $34
T-Shirt (Yeah that's right, but its freakin' cool!)
$30 for a T-Shirt that flashes to the beat of music playing in your surroundings. I'm thinking of you Farhan have you seen these?
GameStop
XBox 360
Halo 3: Legendary Edition $70! That's almost 50%! (You also get some crappy magnets.)
Dark Sector $30
PS3
Used NBA Street Homecourt $13
Dark Sector $30
Nintendo DS
Final Fantasy IV $40
PS2
Rock Band Track Pack: Volume 1 $30
Wii
Rock Band Track Pack: Volume 1 $30
GoGamer.com
Windows
Age of Conan w/ guidebook $40
Alone in the Dark $25
Unreal Tournament III $16
Devil May Cry 4 $35
XBox 360
Guitar Hero: Aerosmith $40
PS3
Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit $40
GameStop
PC
Guild Wars Factions: Platinum Edition w/ Prophecies $30
Guild Wars: Nightfall $30
XBox 360
Call of Duty 4 $50
Army of Two $40
PS3
Haze $40
Call of Duty 4 $50
Monster Madness: Grave Danger $40
Game Politics reports that a rare metal required for the Playstation 2 helped fuel a bloody, decade-long conflict in Africa's Democratic Republic of Congo, according to an investigative report on Toward Freedom.
Talk about not being "green."
The article is a bit sensationalist in my opinion. The Playstation 2 isn't the ONLY electronic equipment that required that metal but I guess they figure they are in the clear because they said "helped."
Still an interesting read.
President of Silicon Knights and most recently outspoken proponent of video game media industry revolution, recently to the 1Up Yours podcast to mouth off once more.
He is pushing a game that his been in development for over a decade that received some harsh previews from mostly everyone who has seen and played the work in progress. Most notably were the terrible opinions shared after the admittedly, by everyone at Silicon Knights, not ready to be shown crap fest that was the 2006 E3 demonstration.
One thing that strikes me as interesting is how he continues to defend his game and some of the more questionable development directions they have taken. Hard on all negative opinions of his game, instead of taking the comments as advice or forewarning, he points the finger at the rest of the world and calls for a complete restructuring of the video game review scoring system and desires preview restrictions if not outright banning.
In laymen's terms this sounds like he believes that it is not his game that sucks, but everyone else's opinion of it and taste in electronic entertainment.
He quoted select parts of Neil Postman's writings to defend his point. Neil Postman wrote a book called "Amusing Ourselves to Death" which warned about the potential downfall of humanity due to the lack of intellectual discourse and cross cultural melding. (This is admittedly a Kindergarten summary of a great book you should all read.)
I am in no way claiming that forum posts qualify as intellectual discourse, but since the internet has grown in popularity, public discourse in general has increased tremendously. No longer are we forced to trust the opinions of retail clerks and accept the attempted brainwashing's of the occasionally misleading marketing campaigns. Now we can choose where to spend our money using more than just the few opinions of our friends. We can scour the internet for information and after sifting through the occasional pile of filth and garbage, we can find truth.
Metacritic is the root of all evil?
I disagree. I don't see the harm in it. A high score doesn't guarantee fun. A high score promise's basic function. Scores usually only go down if there are serious problems with the game design or functionality. In my experience I have found totally boring and uninspired games will receive higher scores than those that have good intentions but are completely broken. Scores are a starting point. You take that into account then research the game to see if it is one you would like to play.
Denis, please stop doing all this other research into how you can change the world and instead concentrate on making a good game. We all want to eat crow and have you develop a good game but if you don't heed the warnings of the same people who will guarantee your continued salary, then you are destined to a similar FASA fate. (See Shadowrun.)
It is very expensive to play video games. It was hard enough to have to grow up in a two console industry back in the 90's with the Sega Genesis and the Super Nintendo.
Now we have three major competitors, entry level prices and additional fee's for accessories and add-on functions. I used to think, "When I am an adult and I have a job I could buy any game I wanted."
Well technically, I COULD do that but not without some serious damage to my bank account, not to mention the damage to the relationship with my spouse. ;) (She is actually very supportive but I do also know how to limit myself which every gamer should do.)
So what are the alternatives? Borrowing? I don't know any local gamers personally. All my true gaming friends are online. Most of them are 30+ miles away if even in the same state or country.
I used to ALWAYS buy used games. It was my only option. I would miss out on the newest releases but I would save $20 - $30 per title. When you are averaging 1-2 games a month, that really adds up!
Enter XBox Live. Its great to play with friends but it is hard to keep up with them. I guess I met and associated myself with a rich group of guys because there isn't a day that I am online that I don't see my group playing the newest game out there. If I don't get the game when it comes out I will miss that short window of popularity and I will not get to play with my friends online. I have been in one too many empty lobbies waiting for someone to play Puzzle Quest with.
There are also a lot of games that I would like to play, but I wouldn't like to own. A single play through type of game. Assassin's Creed met with luke warm response from both critics and gamers alike. I still want to try it. It looks like it might be fun for a few hours but I definitely wouldn't want to buy it.
I take a trip to my local Blockbuster however and am dismayed at the fact that it costs $10 to rent games for 2 days. Two freakin' days! I am not a teenager anymore. I can't rip through a game in that amount of time. If I rent it, I wouldn't have time to finish it. I wouldn't want to rent it if I wasn't going to complete the primary storyline either. This means a minimum of two rentals, $20.
At this moment, Assassin's Creed for the XBox 360 is $18 from GameFly.
Video games are my favorite hobby. They relax me and I get to burn off work and life related stresses. It is my intention to support the industry spend so much time with. But this pricing really makes the right choice difficult to make.
Do I...
1. Wait until the price goes down and potentially lose the opportunity to play with friends and possibly find the game at all.
2. Buy the game used and screw the developers by not giving them any money from my purchase.
Or
3. Rent the game and pay more than it would cost to buy the title used?
This is the reason I have a huge game collection. I don't want them all, but its just so much cheaper to buy them.
Renting with GameFly is cheaper I guess but working full-time makes it difficult to agree to any monthly contract like that. $16 for one game out at a time per month whether you play or not!?!
Below is a short list of SOME of the games I want to play, but don't want to buy. There are many more.
| XBox 360 | Playstation 3 |
|---|---|
| LOST (Hey, I really like the show!) | Unreal Tournament III |
| King Kong | Folklore |
| Assassin's Creed | Ratchet & Clank: FTOD |
| Bully | Uncharted |
| Devil May Cry 4 | GRID |
Do you have any games that you would like to play but can't?
