Games Cheats and Reviews

While Fallout: New Vegas is pretty much done (at the moment, the development team at Obsidian is focused purely on bugfixing, since all the content is complete), some recent news has come out about its definitive ending. Much like the original version of Fallout 3 (pre-Broken Steel DLC), New Vegas simply ends — the player won’t be able to go on to play the game some more after the ending. Destructoid has heard one reason from New Vegas senior producer Jason Bergman, and we got an additional explanation from project director Josh Sawyer reproduced below:

“We put a lot of effort into the ending slides — we know those slides are really popular with people so we want to make sure there’s a huge amount of variety and reactivity with that stuff. We weren’t really focused on new features so much as to add a really rich sense of reactivity to the players and the choices they make.”

We want to make it a definitive ending. Initially, we talked about trying to support post-game play, but because the changes that can happen at the end of the game are pretty major, this is what it basically came down to: either have the changes feel really major in the end slides and then have them not be very major after the end of the game, or make them really minor and not that impactful. And we feel it’s better to say, ‘you know what, we’re just going to end the game, and the changes you made can be minor or really really big, but because we can’t script all the changes to the Wasteland to let you keep playing, we’re just going to stop it there.’ But we do let the player know when that’s about to happen– a sort of, ‘the end of the game is coming, so we’re saving your game right now, so if you want to keep your game going, you can, otherwise, it’s about to be over.’”

22 items of DLC just became available for Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalkers via Steam. There are 11 new decks to unlock, plus you can convert certain cards in your decks to premium foils. Buy the Duels of the Planeswalkers Deck Collection and get all 22 items of DLC at once for more than [...]

Color us rhythmically enthused!

How many aliens must die for us to realize the injustice perpetrated against them?

We’ve heard about a premium aspect to the PlayStation Network for quite a long time now, and it seems we’ve finally gotten at least some official acknowledgement that it is something that Sony is working on. Over on the official U.K. PlayStation website, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe president Andrew House answered questions that were submitted from users on the official PlayStation forums, including one about the potential for PSN to become a paid service. House made it clear that the current PSN will continue to remain free, but did say that a directive by SCE chairman Kaz Hirai has had them looking into premium services that we’ll be learning more about “very soon.”

House said, “I can assure you that the current PSN as you know it will remain a free service. It is something that our competitors don?t offer and something that shows our loyalty to the PlayStation Community. However, Kaz Hirai stated a few months ago that we were looking at a premium service to sit alongside the current free service and that objective has not changed. You?ll learn more about it very soon.”

That sets up a potential announcement at E3 quite nicely, but even if that is what’s happening, we’re still fairly clueless right now as to what a premium service would offer. We’ve heard conflicting reports over what would be included (or what it would be called), with potential features including free access to a rotating list of PSP Minis and PS1 titles, exclusive in-game DLC, PlayStation Store discounts, and access to cross-game voice chat. Some of these have been refuted and all could be baseless speculation for all we know.

The grand retailer Gamestop has come out with open arms to embrace EA’s “Online Pass”.  For those uninitiated, this “Online Pass” will kick you in the balls and take your lunch if you buy a used game and have any desire to connect to Xbox LIVE or the PlayStation Network.

How will EA do this, you ask?  Any EA game that you save a few bucks on by purchasing it used will play just fine offline.  However, if you feel the need to follow along with where gaming is at today, and jump online to play with friends, well… your hosed.  That is, unless you pay $10 for the privilege to play online again.  Maybe you use a game trading service like Goozex or GameFly.  You will need to pay to play that game online with your friends.

Here is what GameStop CEO, Dan DeMatteo had to say about this:

“There have been some questions concerning first user only content and the effect on our used business,” said DeMatteo. “We have not seen an impact thus far and as a matter of fact, we will turn this into a positive with our ability to sell DLC through our investments made in technology to market and sell this content in our stores.” — Dan DeMatteo via GamesPolitics

So why is GameStop embracing this.  They feel that this will make the consumer more aware of DLC that is available as well.  DeMatteo even went as far as to say that people who buy used games don’t play online.  This situation further complicates things by being completely ridiculous and bat-shit crazy.

EA, and THQ, are introducing this pay to play online measure as a way to stop the used game trading/selling industry.  You see, developers get nothing when gamers buy a used game.  This little practice only hurts their bottom line while it fattens the wallets of the executives at GameStop.

Why buy a used game at GameStop for $45 and then have to go home and spend another $10 to play it online?  Why would any consumer spend $55 for a used game with a torn to shit case, and a disk that looks like it has been drug down a gravel road.  I can’t see why most consumers wouldn’t just spend the $5 extra, get a game brand new, and not worry about any of this junk.

What the hell are you smoking GameStop?

Sharing: It’s Win/Win

Like any fighting game after its initial release, extensive play of Super Street Fighter 4 has uncovered a few exploitable balance issues that can rob matches of their competitiveness. But Capcom’s already on the case as they’re planning to release a patch for the game on June 15.

The patch will be rolled into the previously revealed free Tournament Mode DLC that’s releasing June 15, and as you’d expect, it fixes various exploitable moves and reconfigures more finer issues like counter damage. The fixes in the patch were detailed on Capcom’s Japanese SSF4 blog, which Andriasang (via Event Hubs) has translated.

Here is a detailed (and fighting-game-jargon filled) listing of the fixes:

PlayStation Store for PSP

Downloadable Games (also available from PS3 Storefront)

• Fat Princess: Fistful Of Cake ($19.99)
• Armored Core Last Raven ($14.99)
• What Did I Do To Deserve This, My Lord!? 2 ($19.99)
• Iron Man 2 The Video Game ($29.99)

Game Demos (also available from PS3 Storefront) (free)

• Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Heroes 3 Demo

Add-on Game Content

• What Did I Do To Deserve This My Lord! 2 – Day Without Badman DLC ($1.99)
• What Did I Do To Deserve This My Lord! 2 – My Name is Shota DLC ($1.99)

PSP Minis (also available from PS3 Storefront)

• Sneezies ($2.99)
• One Two Boat Racing (PSP Only) ($1.99)
• Ramen Heaven (PSP Only) ($1.99)
• Finger Connection (PSP Only) ($1.99)

Game Videos (free)

• Pulse 5/4 Edition

PSP Themes (also available from PS3 Storefront)

• Drops PSP Theme 1 ($0.99)
• Drops PSP Theme 2 ($0.99)

Via Playstation Blog

Sharing: It’s Win/Win

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On this episode Scott and James talk about the Big story of the week: BungieVision, and how this will probably end badly! We also talk about games that we have been playing recently, and cover James’ views on franchises on the downward slope. The show is pretty mellow, it was a bit late and we didn’t want to blow the doors off this place on the first show.

Next episode we will discuss further the hate that James has inside of himself for all things DLC as well as a possibility of a guest interview and maybe someone else sitting in on the third chair. Big things are coming, stay tuned.

SHOW NOTES:

Article referred to in the show. Top Five Franchises On The Decline

Super Mario Cross Over

BungieVision

Intro – Mountain Range of Whirlwinds: Composed by – Ryuji Sasai & Yasuhiro Kawakami

Outro -Mario Paint Theme : Composed by – Koji Kondo

Sharing: It’s Win/Win

Valve has released Left 4 Dead 2’s The Passing DLC now available for free download on Steam. Additionally, the company has given discounts to L4D2 ($10 off), The L4D2 four pack ($30 off) and the Left 4 Dead Bundle ($16.50 off) which packs both the original and sequel in the zombie survival series.