Game Curmudgeons

If you haven’t played Beyond Good and Evil, download it RIGHT NOW off of Xbox Live Arcade, it’s in the originals. Or get it for 20 dollars some other way, it’s on every last gen platform, plus PC via Steam for 10 dollars. 10 dollars! Just make sure you have a proper control pad, it’s how the game works best.

For those who have played it, here are three shots from Ubidays, lifted from Gamersyde

Here’s the HD trailer.

What is, in my opinion, the greatest multiplayer game of all time is coming to Live Arcade.

Fucking WARLORDS. Warlords will be available for 400 points on May 28th, 1 am PST. Here’s hoping the devs figured out a good way to make it work without a paddle controller(say, using the analog stick to simply point at the place you need a shield).

Review to come ASAP, though it will likely be “THIS IS STILL AWESOME” or “THEY FUCKED IT UP.”

Sometimes, you just have to copy and paste. This is one of those times.

Universal Pictures to develop movie based on hit video game from 2K Games

Gore Verbinski, Director of Pirates of the Caribbean, to Direct/Produce

New York, NY – May 9, 2008 – 2K Games announced today that it has reached an agreement for BioShock®, the universally acclaimed smash-hit video game, to be developed as a feature film by Universal Pictures. 2K Games, whose 2K Boston and 2K Australia studios developed BioShock, is a video game publishing label of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTWO).

The prospect of bringing this blockbuster game to life has attracted not only a major studio, but top Hollywood talent. Gore Verbinski, director of the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, is slated to direct and produce the BioShock movie. John Logan, Academy Award-nominated writer of Gladiator, The Aviator and Sweeney Todd, is in talks to do the screenplay.

The expected release date and terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

An original property developed by 2K Games, BioShock is one of the most successful new interactive entertainment franchises to launch in recent years. A critical and consumer hit, BioShock has sold more than 2 million units worldwide since its release in August 2007. A sequel to the game, BioShock 2, is planned for a release in 2009.

“We are excited that 2K Games’ vision for BioShock will be carried forward in a new medium,” said Strauss Zelnick, Chairman of Take-Two. “BioShock has been hailed as one of the most highly cinematic and richly plotted titles in interactive entertainment, making it extremely well-suited to film. In partnering with Universal and Gore Verbinski, we have assembled a team that respects the uniqueness of BioShock and will translate it into a powerful movie experience.”

Mr. Zelnick added, “Our ability to attract a major studio and unparalleled creative team speaks volumes about the strength of our BioShock franchise. It also demonstrates how Take-Two is delivering value based on our strategy of creating and owning our industry’s most powerful intellectual property.”

Christoph Hartmann, President of 2K Games, noted, “BioShock fans appreciate the depth and complexity of the game, and our partnership with Gore Verbinski will introduce the world of Rapture to an even wider audience. In addition to his impressive body of work, Gore is an avid video gamer and true fan of BioShock. That was extremely important to us in deciding to move forward with this project.”

So here’s some stats from Microsoft regarding Grand Theft Auto IV. You can’t be surprised by any of them, can you? The game doesn’t even need reviewed, you just need to buy it. Even if you weren’t that into the last ones, like myself, this is a whole new level of gaming, and definitely raises several bars. All of these come straight from the Gamerscore team at MS, so when you find out it’s a lie, don’t blame me!

• Actual MS sales data from last week shows Xbox 360 console sales at retail went up 54% week-over-week as a result of GTA’s success
• According to retailers more than 60% of all GTA games sold in the first week were the Xbox 360 version
• Retailers are telling us that the game is attaching strongly to new console sales, with roughly 40% of new consoles selling with a copy of Grand Theft Auto IV
• In the first week, more than 2.3 million people played Grand Theft Auto IV on Xbox LIVE
• GTA IV is now the number one played game on Xbox LIVE
• Over the weekend, we saw the Xbox LIVE service reach 1 million concurrent users
• Gamers have unlocked more than 12 million achievements worth over 100 million gamerscore points in GTA
• Grand Theft Auto IV set a new record for time played, with the average gamer spending more than four hours playing the game on LIVE in the first week alone

Mass Effect comes out on PC in may, according to EA games. No more complaints from anti-console PC gamers!

Straight from the press release:

Optimized for the PC, Mass Effect for the PC incorporates the following features:
• Optimized controls designed specifically for the PC.
• High resolution visuals – Mass Effect for the PC features highly detailed textures, characters and environments.
• Fully customizable controls – PC gamers can re-map the control scheme any way they like.
• Run & Gun Control – Players can assign biotic powers or skills to ‘hot keys’ allowing them to play Mass Effect with a heavier focus on action.
• New decryption mini-game.
• New inventory screen GUI and functionality – The enhanced inventory system makes it easier for players to equip and modify their weapons and armor.

Yes, that’s right, improved GUI. Let’s hope the PC release fixes one of the game’s two major issues(the shitty UI, and the infinite elevators, specifically), maybe both.

Previous coverage of Mass Effect can be found here and a review here.

It looks like the Big Daddies are out and about, so if you see a UPS package from Hidden Circle Drive that weighs about 5 pounds, don’t worry, it’s not from the Unabomber, nor does it contain anthrax. It contains friendship for everyone on your shelf! Our big daddy quickly befriended Wolverine on our dusty dusty top shelf.

News time! Remember when you were trying to play Call of Duty 4 last weekend, and sat for 35 minutes wiating for a game to start? Yeah, me too. So here’s Marc Whitten to tell us all about it!

 Dear Xbox LIVE Members:

During this past holiday season you helped us break a number of Xbox LIVE records.  This included our largest sign-up of new members to Xbox LIVE in our 5 year history and just yesterday you broke the record for the single biggest day of concurrent members ever on the service.

As a result of this massive increase in usage we know that some of you experienced intermittent Xbox LIVE issues over the holiday break.  While the service was not completely offline at any given time, we are disappointed in our performance.  I would like to take this moment to thank you each and every one of you for your patience and understanding as our team has worked around the clock to return the service to a stable state.

At the same time we would like to offer a token of our appreciation to all of you in celebration of record success for the service.  And as a thank you for your loyalty during this holiday period, we will be offering all of our Xbox LIVE members around the world access to a full Xbox LIVE Arcade game that will be available to download free of charge.  In the coming weeks we will be sharing the specific details of this offer with you.

Thank you again for helping make Xbox LIVE everything that it is today!

Sincerely,

Marc Whitten

General Manager, Xbox LIVE

Gamertag: Notwen

According to Official Xbox Magazine, the next update for the dashboard will include a hell of a feature.

Downloadable Xbox games, for 1200 points(aka, $15). The list as of now includes: Crimson Skies: High Road To Revenge, Fable, Burnout 3, Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath Of Cortex, Halo:Combat Evolved, and my personal favorite of the list, Indigo Prophecy.

If you haven’t played Indigo Prophecy(also known as Fahrenheit) yet, do it. It’s an amazing adventure game based on QTE action sequences, and interactions using the analog sticks to replicate motion. While the storytelling gets a touch disjointed or jumps once in a while, it, and the and characters, are sheer genius, making the game a must own.

It remains to be seen if Fable will be the original or director’s cut, but hopefully the latter.

Now if only they’d add Beyond Good and Evil to the list, and give me some software compatibility for Steel Battalion. I can buy the Xbox-USB adapter myself, but damn it, I spent $200 on that game!

Big update! The latest news release puts Psychonauts on the list for full games. Good stuff, that.

I just woke up to find a lot more mail than I normally would, failure notices, and spam blockers. Looks like someone’s been spoofing our public addresses for PayPal phishing attempts.

If you’ve come here that way, we’re sorry for the inconvenience, but there’s not much we can do about it yet. However, if you forward us the source of any e-mail you’ve gotten(headers in tact please!), maybe we can use that information to help track the culprit down, and, of course, sue the shit out of him.

Again, sorry for the problem. We hope you’ll stay and enjoy our site anyway, despite the poor introduction. And if you get anything else from them, please let us know.

It’s now official.

Sonic The Hedgehog is going to be in Super Smash Brothers Brawl for the Nintendo Wii, continuing the rivalry started in the 16-bit era and recently taken head to head in Sonic and Mario at The Olympic Games.

Solid Snake AND Sonic the Hedgehog? Nintendo, you’ve outdone yourself on this.

Mike Hayes, President and COO of SEGA Europe had the following to say:

“Its amazing that after all these years we get to see these two much loved characters compete against each other in another fantastic title. Bringing Mario and Sonic together again underlines the continuing partnerships between Nintendo and SEGA, and produces another industry first for our two companies.”

Super Smash Brothers Brawl is currently slated to hit the Wii sometime in early 2008.

For more information on this entry, visit Sonic’s entry, at the Super Smash Brothers Dojo. And for a bit more, here’s Sonic’s character trailer. Apparently, he’s brought his music along with him, and it looks like Super Sonic will be featured in the game. I’ll speculate it happens if he collect a star, but perhaps he’ll have some special conditions of his own with that. Chaos emeralds are visible around him in the trailer at transformation, and there’s a Sonic the Hedgehog spring-bumper shown as well. Hopefully they’ll bring more Sonic elements into the Nintendo world.