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Play. Die. Respawn
King's Bounty: Princess
An expansion to bury Heroes V deeper still
An expansion to bury Heroes V deeper still
    | I was going to begin this piece by wishing a late "Happy Birthday!" to Shigeru Miyamoto (who turned 54 last week on November 16), and by talking about how the Wii was originally intended to cost under $100 and stuff. But instead, I'm affraid that a more important message is in order: according to numerous reports received by IGN, there is a really nasty problem with some of the Wii consoles that ran the initial WiiConnect 24 update. And the problem is that, well, the update in question pretty much killed the affected Wiis! There are two common error codes shown by the console in this case: 110213 and 32002. So should you encounter any such problem, you can either get a replacement Wii from Nintendo, or you can send them the faulty unit and receive it back in good shape along with your saved data - which is a pretty lenghty process. You can get more info on this matter (and on several others, unfortunately it seems there's more of them) by visiting Nintendo's customer service website. And I'm affraid the bad news don't stop here. As you probably know by now, after the console's North American release, the Wii is still missing some of its most attractive online features: the Wii Opera browser, the Wii News Channel and the Wii Forecast Channel. Nintendo says that the Forecast Channel will be activated on December 20, the News Channel will start airing on January 27, and we may have to wait even longer for the Opera browser! More information about its availability should be revealed in the coming weeks, which doesn't sound too encouraging at all. Despite all these problems, it looks like the Wii is doing great when it comes to pure gaming. A few days ago I wrote about the console's launch line-up and upcoming Wii games, but only briefly mentioned some classic titles downloadable via the Virtual Console. Well, the VC has been up and running even the day before the launch, so now users can buy Wii Points and download some of their old favorites. And here is the pricing for each game from the classic formats:
Judging by the stats from GameRankings, the Wii games are doing a lot better than the PS3 games so far. The absolute best is, predictably enough, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - with an average score of 96.5% (as opposed to PS3's top title, Resistance: Fall of Man, which only managed to score an average of 88.9%). So despite my earlier hunch that the Wii launch line-up was looking diluted, it actually turns out that the PlayStation 3 "scored" the most appalling games at launch. In the end, neither Sony nor Nintendo can claim to have achieved a perfect launch. But despite my slight disappointment with the Wii's aforementioned problems, I'm still just as excited about getting one when it launches in Europe early next month. If all goes well for Nintendo from here on, they are hoping to sell 1 million Wii units in North America within the next two to three weeks, and another million by the second week of January. But even so, they are still expecting the console to sell out this Christmas, and supply issues are going to be inevitable in the first few weeks. However, it's not the console itself that's having a hard time meeting the demand, and it's not the extra Wii remotes either: it's the Nunchuks! Apparently, Nintedo expected people to buy more Wiimotes, and they under-estimated the demand for extra Nunchuk controllers - which are rather hard to find for sale these days, it seems. Or perhaps they had a good reason for supplying plenty more Wii remotes. Such as... domestic accidents, which are more likely to happen through the frantic use of a Wiimote. One such alleged accident involved a Wii Sports game of bowling, a pair of sweaty hands and a fragile Wiimote strap, and resulted in one cracked TV screen. Quite concerning! But while some brake their household items by mistake, others smash their Wii on purpose. Here, take a look for yourself. The horror... The horror... (N.B. Archive text, links removed) Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix In 2007 // UPDATE Shame on EA for missing out a whole year withough milking another Harry Potter game in 2006! That's right, we're off the hook this time, after five years of non-stop pottering. But the book-to-film-to-game series will be reborn in July 2007, when Electronic Arts plans to release Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The game was just announced today for all next generation consoles, and then some: Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, PSP, Nintendo DS, Game Boy Advance, PC - they're all going to receive this new Harry Potter game, currently in development at EA's UK Studio (the same one that handled the previous titles in the franchise). The release of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is set to coincide with the premiere of Warner Bros. Pictures' film based on J.K. Rowling's fifth book of the same title, all the while marking the series' debut on next-gen consoles. In it, players will be able to explore the many key locations within Hogwarts in minute detail, each one a visual match to its film equivalent, while being engrossed in the thrilling adventures outlined in the rich narrative of the book. Or so they say...
You will of course get to play multiple characters in this latest installment, including Harry Potter, Dumbledore and Sirius Black, and experience "one of the most exciting and dangerous years in the life of the Boy Who Lived". But let's face it: aside from the next-gen graphics on the PS3 and Xbox 360, their single best shot at making a great Harry Potter game (for once) is to work miracles with the wand in the Wii version. UPDATE: And here are the first screenshots. [22.11.2006, 15:42] (N.B. Archive text, links removed) FBI And NCsoft Lockdown Illegal Lineage II Servers So much for playing Lineage II on L2Extreme servers, whoever was still using those! While most of the penny-less community has already shifted to using L2J emulated (yet supposedly legal) servers, there were still plenty of people hosting the MMORPG on fraudulent L2Extreme servers. And what's worse, the creators of L2Extreme were even making money from this operation, not to mention costing NCsoft "close to a million dollars in realized bandwidth costs". This was more than enough reason for developer and publisher NCsoft to take action, or in this case to have someone else do it for them. They chose... the FBI. After a year-long investigation during which multiple raids and interviews were conducted in various cities from California to Virginia, the Federal Bureau of Investigation finally closed down the L2Extreme operation - whose website, www.l2extreme.com, now directs visitors to a standard FBI warning page, bearing the following message:
With just one website down by force, it seems that several more voluntarily followed, according to this latest Wikipedia entry:
NCsoft's announcement mentions that the L2Extreme service was estimated to have up to 50,000 active users (according to FBI), while the website itself used to advertise that they had more than half million registered users. Either way, NCsoft claims to be losing millions of dollars per year because of such operations, and taking such a drastic measure against pirated servers is sure to make other "fans" think twice before ripping off something they should pay for (or they could just switch to Guild Wars). Further notes of interest about this ongoing case can be found on Gamasutra, who also manged to get in touch with Chris Thompson, the Austin-based FBI agent assigned to the case. I bet there's a lesson to be learned here, but I'm too busy leveling (in a non-fraudulent way) to care. (N.B. Archive text, links removed) Left 4 Dead, From The Makers Of Counter-Strike: Condition Zero I wonder, purely rhetorically (and maybe just a bit ironically), how many of you have already forgotten all about Counter-Strike: Condition Zero? You know, that MOD turned into a full-fledged game, developed for around three years, during which time it switched three studios (Rogue, Gearbox and Ritual), before the team from Turtle Rock Studios eventually managed to finalize the project in the glorious Spring of 2004. It's a pitty that the game went thorough such a troubled production and drowned in mediocrity by the time it was completed, because Turtle Rock seemed like a promising bunch, having split from the old Westwood / EA Pacific. It's been quite a while since 2004, however, and the devs didn't lose much time: from Valve's communique we received last night, it turns out that Turtle Rock have been busy working on a new game, called Left 4 Dead. Shortly put, it promises to do for co-op games, what Counter-Strike did for multiplayer action games. Even the title itself - along with the hordes of zombies from this first image - lead us to hope that Left 4 Dead will include a co-op mode for up to four players, which would be quite something indeed. But it remains to be seen if Valve will confirm our suspicion, because they didn't offer any other gameplay details so far (our request for further information on this matter still remains unanswered). The only other thing they mentioned was that Left 4 Dead is built atop the most advanced version of the Source Engine, and that it introduces version 2 of Turtle Rock's A.I. technology. The game's release is planned for the year 2007. (N.B. Archive text, links removed) Better late than never, we are now being offered the first game in Sid Meier's (and Bruce Shelley's) famous steaming tycoon series, free of charge, courtesy of some 2K Games marketing guys who figured out another way to promote the new Sid Meier's Railroads! game released last month. Actually, this is the second title in the series - Railroad Tycoon Deluxe - an extended version of the original Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon that was released back in 1990, at that time by MicroProse. The deluxe edition includes additional scenarios and settings, enhanced (but still highly pixelated) graphics, and of course several additional types of trains to work with. The 14 MB archive can be downloaded locally, and it includes the DOS version of the game, the DOSBox v0.65 emulator, the game manual in PDF format, as well as a list of "codes", so popular back in the days when "copy-protection" used to mean opening the manual at page 5, line 3, word 12. For those of you who didn't get to play around with DOSBox yet, 2K Games also offers some basic advice in the included readme. Once installed, you will be able to launch the game either in full-screen, or in windowed-mode - the first one being less recommended from a technical point of view (on LCD monitors in particular it might act up), but of course it's a lot better playing the game in full-screen if you don't get any sort of problem. To change between the two display modes, the old Alt+Enter combo works wonders. If the game moves too slowly, or too fast, you can adjust the DOSBox emulator's speed with Ctrl+F12 (speed-up) and Ctrl+F11 (slow-down). And if you play it in windowed mode and can't get the mouse pointer out of the game's window, a simple Alt+Tab or Ctrl+F10 should do the trick. Now, enough theory. Go practice! (N.B. Archive text, links removed) What better way to prepare the fans for the 10th anniversary of the Dead or Alive series, than by announcing of a new Dead or Alive game? Said and done, master Tomonobu Itagaki from Team Ninja revealed that he already has a few things in mind for the future Dead or Alive 5, specifically regarding the battle modes. For instance, unlike the previous editions, it seems that the new game will not feature Tag Team Battles anymore. Or another example offered by Itagaki was that... umm... actually, that's all, no other details were given. Or at least they weren't reported by GameFront.de, as the German website only mentioned that Itagaki would also like to hear some suggestions from the fans, for the fifth part. The brief announcement was made during a press event organized by developer Team Ninja in Tokyo, celebrating ten years of hot, juicy, catfighting. And since they're trashing a game mode, maybe they'll also consider trashing more clothes from the female characters' wardrobe, and show us what next-gen physics and high-definition assets are all about. For conclusive reference, you can check out they newly released Dead or Alive: Xtreme 2 (albeit it's not as violent as the raw DoA series, but who cares, with such inviting... environments). I'm therefore shamelessly looking forward to the first Dead or Alive 5 screenshots and trailers, although I'm sure it's going to be a pretty long wait: for now, the game has not been confirmed for any platform (but everyone's guess is the Xbox 360, given the series' recent history), and there is no release date set as of yet. (N.B. Archive text, links removed) Gears of War Is The New 'King of the Hill' On Xbox Live The unchallenged king of Xbox Live multiplayer games was, up until last week, Halo 2 - ironically an Xbox title, but one that somehow managed to hold its ground well above all Xbox 360 multiplayer games. The only one to usurp it, at long last, is Epic Games' new Gears of War shooter. This, according to last week's Xbox Live statistics, supplied by Major Nelson on his famous blog. Released earlier this month, Gears of War leaped straight to the top of the most played XBL games, surpassing the likes of Halo 2 and the new Call of Duty 3. But it remains to be seen for how long it will keep its position, since this is only its first week of glory. The best scenario right now for Gears of War would be to keep its crown until the return of Halo 3 in late 2007. Or, even worse (for GoW), until the Halo 3 multiplayer beta begins next Spring. Although we don't have a unified top for both Xbox and Xbox 360 games, the segregated XBL lists offered by Major Nelson look like this:
Meanwhile, Microsoft are taking full advantage of Epic's shooter in order to promote their console, at the loss of its direct rival the PlayStation 3. In the UK, the Xbox 360 ads exploded these last few days, kicking off the start of a heated race between Microsoft and Sony for attracting customers, as the holiday season approaches. Merry Xmas is what they're wishing us. ... and a happ'wii nyuu wii'r! (N.B. Archive text, links removed) To Be Or Not To Be Banned From World of Warcraft On Cedega (Linux) Last week, a lot of players that used the Cedega platform in order to run World of Warcraft on Linux discovered that their accounts had been suspended out of the blue, and even as they were playing. Obviously, a torrent of complaints immediately flooded the TransGaming forums (Cedega's authors), accompanied by the notification e-mails sent by Blizzard, motivating that the accounts were closed as a result of using a "third party automation software" (or "bot") in their MMORPG. Us regular folks call such situations "bullshit" - unless Cedega itself was being identified as a "bot" by the Warden After days of tensed waiting for an official explanation, the guys at Blizzard Europe eventually offered a statement, reassuring in appearance, but utterly contrasting with the Cedega users' complaints:
Truth be told, there are also plenty of people who are still playing WoW on Cedega without having their accounts suspended (*cough* yet), so it's not that easy to point the finger exclusively at TransGaming, or at Blizzard... or at the players themselves. The investigations continue both on and off the record - the latter suggesting that the Warden software is to blame for producing dubious results when run under Linux / Cedega. The banned players have no choice but to wait for Blizzard's own conclusion in this matter, hoping that their WoW accounts will be reactivated. And even if, in theory, running the game on Linux / Cedega is perfectly legal, those of you who use this combo might want to consider taking a brake for a few days, until the situation clears up. (N.B. Archive text, links removed) Even before the actual launch of Nintendo's console in the US (morning is almost here), several Wii games could already be acquired this week in North American shops. In just a few hours, their number will reach 20, and they will be joined by another 13 by the end of this year, plus 30 classic Virtual Console games for the Wii, in the likes of Mario or Zelda. Clearly a richer collection than the one offered by Sony, but only in terms of quantity. The quality of the Wii launch line-up, on the other hand, looks more diluted than the PS3 one, as it includes plenty of shaky titles based on cinema and TV licenses. Like we did in our previous story with the PlayStation 3 games, we'll jump right to the point:
By Christmas, the list will strenghten with titles such as Elebits, Far Cry: Vengeance, Need for Speed Carbon or Splinter Cell Double Agent, as well as some other sub-par games. Midway and THQ are the main culprints for poluting these lists with all sorts of junk, while Ubisoft remains the third-party publisher with the most solid games catalogue for this launch. In the future, however, things could easily change, because Namco-Bandai recently announced that they will support the next-gen consoles with 10 PS3 / Xbox 360 games, and 30 Wii games! Some of them are listed on GoNintendo, but the vast majority are still shrouded in mystery. For those of you taking a keen interest in classic games, most of these have already been known for some time: Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Donkey Kong, Super Mario 64, Sonic the Hedgehog, Golden Axe any many more. A more complete list can be found on CVG. And speaking of which, the Wii manual (actually Joystiq) warns us that some Virtaul Console games can only be played using a classic controller, which is sold separately for the Wii console (even though Nintendo previously annouced that all retro games will be playable with a GameCube controller). And that's about it, for now, about the Wii games. But there's still plenty left to say about the new Wii and PlayStation 3 consoles... *yawn* maybe tomorrow... *yawn* or the day after tomorrow. (N.B. Archive text, links removed) We already talked about the queues and the consoles madness preceding the launch of the PlayStation 3 and Wii in the US, and now that Sony have released their console (Nintendo will follow in a few hours), the time has come to dwell upon the games that accompany the two consoles, more or less next-gen. Since they were the first ones to invade retail this week, I'll start with Sony. And I'll get right to the point, with the list of PlayStation 3 games currently available in North America, as it was meticulously put together by Shacknews (minus the developing companies and the other platforms on which they're available, since these trivial informations can be found in each title's local gamespace).
So 14 titles all in all, a more generous offer than the one given one week ago to Japanese customers. Aside from these, Electronic Arts announced that they will release more PlayStation 3 games in the weeks and months ahead, starting with Fight Night Round 3 on December 5, and early next year NBA Street Homecourt and Def Jam: Icon. 2K Games (Take-Two) also stepped forward with a list of games, claiming to have around 20 games currently in development for the PlayStation 3. The two already available in the above list, namely NBA 2K7 and NHL 2K7, will be followed by College Hoops 2K7 (in January 2007), Major League Baseball 2K7 (February), The Darkness (Spring), The Bigs (Summer), NBA 2K8 and NHL 2K8 (September), plus other 2K Sports titles. Grand Theft Auto IV is also expected in Autumn next year (on October 16, 2007), after which Rockstar Games will continue with another promising title - L.A. Noire, as well as other, unspecified games based on their franchises. Without entering into further details about PlayStation 3's capabilities, I will just point out that the console's online service already went live in the US, and with it came the first demo versions and presentation trailers for several games. Similar to Microsoft's Xbox Live service, PS3 users can now download four demos: Formula One Championship, NBA '07, Resistance: Fall of Man, and Motorstorm - one of the many games that missed the console's launch. P.S. Oh and I changed my mind: Ridge Racer 7 doesn't look that good after all. (N.B. Archive text, links removed) | Top stories Filter news Search news Latest comments
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