The Gaming News Thread

[Martok]

The game is also likely to be as addictive as cocaine.

And for that reason alone, I shall be avoiding it like the plague that it's likely to be. Although alh_p also had a valid point in that the quality of the game could be greatly lowered, simply because anyone & everyone will be able to play it.

[Crandaeolon]

Dominions 3 Wiki released, game available at a $10 discount until October 25:

http://www.shrapnelgames.com/

One of the best turn-based strategies ever, IMO.

[TinCow]

!

Planescape: Torment is being re-released. Can we possibly be lucky enough to have all the bugs fixed and have the resolution increased?

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009...nt-re-release/

[econ21]

Planescape: Torment is being re-released.

That news gives me an excuse to link to the trailer to the game, which was quite possibly the most memorable trailer to any game I've seen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s2Q...eature=related

I read somewhere the weirdness of the trailer helped account for the disappointing sales of the game, but I found it mesmerising.

[Lemur]

Planescape: Torment is being re-released.

Yeah, I read that it's being converted into a FPS by Bethesda, complete with level-scaling creatures from the planes. Cool, huh?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Just kidding. You're laughing now, correct?

[Ferret]

Happy 10,000th post Lemur

[frogbeastegg]

Planescape: Torment is being re-released. Can we possibly be lucky enough to have all the bugs fixed and have the resolution increased?

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009...nt-re-release/

I wouldn't get your hopes up. Interplay lost the rights years ago; no one seems to know who owns them. Amazon are famous for making up release dates for things which don't exist or which got cancelled. The only thing which makes this even slightly believable is the PEGI rating.

A lot of the other games offered as supporting evidence on that link are old budget re-issues - I've got the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale compilation DVD's sat on a shlef next to me right now. I picked them up last year when I was pondering a replay and didn't fancy installing from 200,000 (only a slight exaggeration) CDs and playing disc jockey each time I changed areas. Others appear to be the original releases!

If it's true then I'm buying a copy! I still own my mint condition 4 CD UK release version of the game but I've always had a weird bug that no one else has reported in the Undersigil area. It makes the game totally unplayable as it permanently drops the FPS to less than 1 per second for all areas in the game, so in many attempted playthroughs I have never once completed the game.

:continues to pray for Good Old Games versions of all the old Bioware/Black Isle RPGs:

[TinCow]

I wouldn't get your hopes up. Interplay lost the rights years ago; no one seems to know who owns them. Amazon are famous for making up release dates for things which don't exist or which got cancelled. The only thing which makes this even slightly believable is the PEGI rating.

The rumors I read were that it was actually Atari who was doing the re-release, and that they had acquired the license a while ago in some sale or another. The rumors also said it was updated to work with XP/Vista, though no word on bug fixes beyond that.

[Ser Clegane]

That news gives me an excuse to link to the trailer to the game, which was quite possibly the most memorable trailer to any game I've seen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s2Q...eature=related

I read somewhere the weirdness of the trailer helped account for the disappointing sales of the game, but I found it mesmerising.

That was really a great trailer (probably the "most-watched" game trailer for me) - it made me actually buy the game

[frogbeastegg]

The rumors I read were that it was actually Atari who was doing the re-release, and that they had acquired the license a while ago in some sale or another. The rumors also said it was updated to work with XP/Vista, though no word on bug fixes beyond that.

:considers holding breath: Hmm, no, I shall believe it when people are holding freshly pressed copies. Planescape re-releases have been rumoured for years, and surely there'd be some kind of press release to announce this?

[Meneldil]

Various Bioshock 2 multiplayer videos have been released. Though it doesn't look as bad as expected (the "capture the sister" mod even looks interesting), it still looks way to shooty.
People are blowing up all over the place, shooting everywhere. Doesn't look really bioshock-ish to me. That wouldn't be too worrying in itself if it was limited to multiplayer (after all, it's taking place during a civil war), but singler player also look pretty similar as well (which isn't really surprising given that we'll play as a Big Daddy).

Oh well, even if the single player is only half as good as it was for Bioshock 1, I'll buy it.

[Monk]

Interesting news for all fans of Indie games. EPIC just released the Unreal Developer Kit, essentially making the Unreal Engine public to anyone who wants a go at it.

Considering how many games these days are powered by it, this can only be good news.

[Krusader]

http://kotaku.com/5398259/online-ret...dern-warfare-2

Only Steam will sell Modern Warfare 2 through digital distribution.

[Monk]

http://kotaku.com/5398259/online-ret...dern-warfare-2

Only Steam will sell Modern Warfare 2 through digital distribution.

If you're going to cite examples of why not to have Steam in a game, then Empire: Total War is a perfect example. The two objects just don't feel like a good combo, like a round peg in a square hole. Sure it fits, but is it supposed to?

Despite being someone who likes Steam, I say good for D2D, Impulse and Gamersgate! Digital distribution is just one thing IW has fouled in the recent weeks with MW2. Maybe they will wake up a bit in light of this news.. and maybe tomorrow my breakfast will sprout wings and fly off the plate.

[drone]

Good for D2D and Impulse. I didn't really have any interest in E:TW, but I refused to get DoW2 because of the Steam requirement.

[Monk]

First with Modern Warfare 2, now with Assassin's Creed II and Left 4 Dead 2, Gamestop once again breaks the street date and sells early. And, once again, they blame local independent retailers as the cause, in true "They started it!" fashion.

This is getting out of hand, but it's the kind of out of hand I can deal with. If you live in New Jersey, take a trip to your Gamestop and see if they've been bad!

[pevergreen]

This is news:

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/11/17/pa...rand-lives-on/

Though the studio will physically close, and the majority of its staff (some 200 people) will be sacked, the brand and IPs (like Mercenaries, Star Wars: Battlefront and The Saboteur) will continue,

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Stay classy, EA.

[Decker]

This came out yesterday on the BBC:

Games 'permit' virtual war crimes
Video games depicting war have come under fire for flouting laws governing armed conflicts.
Human rights groups played various games to see if any broke humanitarian laws that govern what is a war crime.

The study condemned the games for violating laws by letting players kill civilians, torture captives and wantonly destroy homes and buildings.

It said game makers should work harder to remind players about the real world limits on their actions.

War without limits
The study was carried out by two Swiss human rights organisations - Trial and Pro Juventute. Staff played the games in the presence of lawyers skilled in the interpretation of humanitarian laws.

Twenty games were scrutinised to see if the conflicts they portrayed and what players can do in the virtual theatres of war were subject to the same limits as in the real world.

"The practically complete absence of rules or sanctions is... astonishing," said the study.

Army of Two, Call of Duty 5, Far Cry 2 and Conflict Desert Storm were among the games examined.

The games were analysed to see "whether certain scenes and acts committed by players would constitute violations of international law if they were real, rather than virtual".

The group chose games, rather than films, because of their interactivity.

"Thus," said the report, "the line between the virtual and real experience becomes blurred and the game becomes a simulation of real-life situations on the battlefield."

The testers looked for violations of the Geneva Conventions and its Additional Protocols which cover how war should be waged.

In particular, the testers looked for how combatants who surrendered were treated, what happened to citizens caught up in war zones and whether damage to buildings was proportionate.

Some games did punish the killing of civilians and reward strategies that tried to limit the damage done by the conflict, said the study.

However, it said, many others allowed "protected objects" such as churches and mosques to be attacked; some depicted interrogations that involved torture or degradation and a few permitted summary executions.

The authors acknowledged that the project was hard because it was not clear from many of the games the scale of the conflict being depicted. This made it hard to definitively determine which humanitarian laws should be enforced.

It also said that the games were so complex that it was difficult to be confident that its testers had seen all possible violations or, in games in which they found none, that no violations were possible.

It noted that, even though most players would never become real world combatants, the games could influence what people believe war is like and how soldiers conduct themselves in the real world.

It said games were sending an "erroneous" message that conflicts were waged without limits or that anything was acceptable in counter-terrorism operations.

"This is especially problematic in view of today's reality," said the study.

In particular, it said, few games it studied reflected the fact that those who "violate international humanitarian law end up as war criminals, not as winners".

The authors said they did not wish to make games less violent, instead, they wrote: "[We] call upon game producers to consequently and creatively incorporate rules of international humanitarian law and human rights into their games."

John Walker, one of the writers on the Rock, Paper, Shotgun games blog, said: "Games really are treated in a peculiar way."

He doubted that anyone would campaign for books to follow humanitarian laws or for James Bond to be denounced for machine-gunning his way through a supervillain's underground complex.

He said the authors did not understand that gamers could distinguish between fantasy and reality.

Said Mr Walker: "For all those who mowed down citizens in Modern Warfare 2's controversial airport level, I have the sneaking suspicion that not a great deal of them think this is lawful, nor appropriate, behaviour."

Jim Rossignol, who also writes on Rock, Paper, Shotgun, said there was scope to mix real-world rules of war into games.

"Whether or not the rules of war are included in the game should be based entirely on whether that improves the experience for the player," he said.

Mr Rossignol said there was plenty of evidence that gaming violence is "fully processed" as fantasy by gamers. Studies of soldiers on the front line in Iraq showed that being a gamer did not desensitise them to what they witnessed.

He added: "Perhaps what this research demonstrates is that the researchers misunderstand what games are, and how they are treated, intellectually, by the people who play them."

The Report in PDF format: Playing by the Rules:
Applying International Humanitarian Law to Video and Computer Games

[Azathoth]

Woah, Pandemic is finished? That sucks.

This came out yesterday on the BBC

Basically they want us to play this game: http://www.cracked.com/article_15660...tion-game.html

[Decker]

Lol I remember that article. I read the report and it's pretty narrow in its view and just gives more "ammunition" to the people that blame violent video games for the failings. Their resources and energy could have been put into better use of studying the failings of parenting and the effects of bias media.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

To the BBC's credit, they had some of the RPS crew defending the industry. It's even better when you know the context that most of RPS thought that the new COD level was offensive for being dumb and out of context and not for killing civilians.

[TinCow]

FarCry 3 is in the works. Let's hope they remember to include some actual entertainment in this version...

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news...ry-3-Confirmed

[Decker]

To the BBC's credit, they had some of the RPS crew defending the industry. It's even better when you know the context that most of RPS thought that the new COD level was offensive for being dumb and out of context and not for killing civilians.

My thoughts exactly. I skimmed through the report myself and some of the games they nit-picked were rather silly imo.

John Walker made this comment at RPS: Our Rentaquote Future: Games As Warcrimes

Addressing some of the points that have been made, especially Teejay’s:

The problem with the report – a report that is thorough and detailed, and clearly written with fine intentions and respectable hopes – is not that those conducting it are foolish, or that they have conducted themselves improperly, lazily, with bias, etc etc. It’s that the core ideas behind the report are, in my opinion, very flawed.

I think it’s absurd to suggest that games – and games alone – should adhere to IHRL when depicting war. Games are under no obligation to reflect real life, and indeed should have the opportunity to violate any real-world laws they choose.

I think it’s even further absurd to begin such a report with the statement that games are uniquely in need of such intervention because they are interactive. It is *because* they are interactive that I believe the purpose behind the report is flawed. If anything it is the passivity of books, films, television (especially documentaries) and so on that underlines their authority in their depiction of reality. Your relationship with such media is one-way, fed to you, and if presented as authoratitive and “realistic”, then carries implications of accuracy. In a game you are often given choice. I can choose to shoot the injured, I can choose to turn my gun on civilians should the game let me (and so very few do).

My comments are born of this report’s peculiar (and I would contend inaccurate) assumptions that gaming is in any way more at risk of mis-educating people about IHR. If such ideas are valid at all, they might want to also begin with the novels of Tom Clancy, or as many have observed, the output of various TV shows, alongside gaming. Hence my statement that games are treated so very strangely.

I don’t think it is gaming’s place to educate. I believe it is education’s place to educate. Then when someone encounters a situation in a game that does not follow IHRL, the player can identify that themselves. Reports like this, while extremely well intentioned, very dangerously divert the responsibility for who should be educating, and where people should be receiving it.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

FarCry 3 is in the works. Let's hope they remember to include some actual entertainment in this version...

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news...ry-3-Confirmed

I'd be happy if they just killed the respawning checkpoint guards. I had a lot of fun despite that, up until the second half when I realized I'd have to do it all over again and stopped.

It would probably benefit from a STALKER-style system of wandering parties of one faction or another, possibly allowing you to try and pretend to be a civilian or join one of the factions temporarily to get past them.

[Krusader]

Steam comes pre-installed on newer Alienware computers now!

Now be serious...who is really surprised that this happened?

[Husar]

Steam comes pre-installed on newer Alienware computers now!

Now be serious...who is really surprised that this happened?

Well, my notebook came with Windows and Norton preinstalled, at least with Steam the client is free so it doesn't contribute anything to the price(the same would go for Norton I think as it was a 30 day test version).

[TinCow]

Dragon Age expansion is coming in March. Looks like additional content to be played after the main storyline is completed.

[pevergreen]

New Wii game announced....

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Zelda

to be released 2010.

also announced...

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Nintendo DS 2

http://au.wii.ign.com/articles/105/1058479p1.html

[Fragony]

yay to this http://ps3.ign.com/articles/106/1061376p1.html