The Gaming News Thread

[Husar]

Yeah, the only real difference I see for Age of Empires is the fire, at least from the video I don't see how any other textures were visibly improved. It has widescreen and some other nice features but 18€ or what they ask for it seems a bit much for these changes and such an old game IMO.

[Veho Nex]

So this is kind of big news. EA has been lying through its teeth about Sim City and its always online requirements.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013...not-necessary/

Finally a source from inside Maxis confirms the lies. Lets hope this kind of backlash hurts EA in a way that bleeds.

[drone]

EA has been lying through its teeth about Sim City and its always online requirements.

In other news, water is wet and the sky is blue.

The online requirement is straight up DRM coupled with planned obsolescence.

[Fragony]

Failpad version is pretty good

[Veho Nex]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013...art-after-all/

I like the crosswalk trap.

[Lemur]

Memo to EA Execs: When caught in a lie, 'fess up and stop lying. [Known corollary: When in a hole, stop digging.]

Latest info:

Our source, who we have verified worked directly on the project but obviously wishes to remain anonymous, has first-hand knowledge of how the game works. He has made it absolutely clear to us that this repeated claim of server-side calculations is at odds with the reality of the project he worked on. Our source explains:

"The servers are not handling any of the computation done to simulate the city you are playing. They are still acting as servers, doing some amount of computation to route messages of various types between both players and cities. As well, they're doing cloud storage of save games, interfacing with Origin, and all of that. But for the game itself? No, they're not doing anything. I have no idea why they're claiming otherwise. It's possible that Bradshaw misunderstood or was misinformed, but otherwise I'm clueless." [...]

Players elsewhere are also discovering what Kluwe had: that the game runs, at least temporarily, without an internet connection, something that shouldn't be possible, according to EA's claims that its servers handle a "significant amount of the calculations."

Kotaku ran a series of tests today, seeing how the game could run without an internet connection, finding it was happy for around 20 minutes before it realised it wasn't syncing to the servers. Something which would surely be impossible were the servers co-running the game itself. Markus "Notch" Persson just tweeted to his million followers that he managed to play offline too, despite EA's claims.

The Maxis insider points out that the Glassbox engine running SimCity processes the actual simulation client-side, before sending out updates to EA's servers. These updates are then queued in the regional server until they can be processed, which (depending on server load) may take several minutes. This helps explain why gamers are able to run for a limited amount of time without a connection.

EA has remained adamant that a single-player SimCity is logistically impossible

[Monk]

Just to counter all the EA hate in this thread (which i think they truly deserve by the way) something a little different, something a bit positive that's been making the rounds.

Dad hacks classic Donkey Kong ROM to allow daughter to play as girl.

[Papewaio]

After reading all the SimCity reviews, I have bought Tropico 4 at Steam (75% off) ... seems it actually does model every citizen... and it fits with the Backroom themes at the moment.

[Fragony]

People are a bit too harsh on EA on this one, most of the issues have been resolved by now, Blizzard gets nothing but love for Diablo 3 despite doing the same thing, people lve hating EA. They handled this really poorly though. That doesn't mean I like them, I am boycotting Dead Space 3 just as many do because of microtransactions in a fully priced game. Hope they learn from it.

[Papewaio]

I played DIII and it got slammed. Poor replay ability and always on makes it too restrictive.

As for SimCity a lot of the features advertised don't exist or are fudged or are purely there as a DRM and to market.

[TinCow]

Blizzard gets nothing but love for Diablo 3 despite doing the same thing, people lve hating EA

What Internet do you live in? Diablo 3 has turned a profit for Blizzard, but it's been a PR disaster for them and has essentially eliminated excitement for an entire franchise. It has firmly shattered the notion that Blizzard make flawless games and has done damage to their reputation which will take many years to recover from.

[Veho Nex]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013...emains-silent/

[Fragony]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...ore-mainstream

Oh noes. Thief 4 is going to ruin everything Thief 3 allready set in motion. You cannot build a game based on Thief you can only build a Thief-game. Back to fanmissions. Screw you.

[Monk]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013...emains-silent/

[drone]

I'm not sure why EA keeps pushing this line (and I'm sure it's EA, not Maxis). Anyone with half a brain can do the math, it's not economically feasible to create a popular mainstream game where significant portions of the engine computations have to be done on company servers. The raw distributed computing power of thousands of gamers' PCs is much higher than what could be built and maintained by the developer/publisher at a profitable cost.

The game servers are there for the following reasons (in ascending order of importance to EA):

• Region multiplayer interactions
• Chat/comms between players and cheevos
• DRM (and judging by the above link, not very robust)
• the ability to push people to the next SimCity version in a few years, by shutting these servers down

And Diablo III was the best possible advertisement for Torchlight II.

[Papewaio]

Torchlight II is another game on my wish list I should get.

I wish SimCity had been setup more like Spore which was single player with multiplayer input. The economy could hav been based on the macro trends and updated at a pace you choose ie first login, every login, every ten minutes or never.

$80 AU for a digital copy of a cut down version compared with the previous version. It is way to expensive for a game that has put itself in the FarmVille clique with its always on gameplay.

[Vladimir]

Read about it. Now I'm in.

I hope you guys like Planescape: Torment because we're getting a new game in its style:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...es-of-numenera

Not even a day after it went live the project has been fully funded. And it still has the full 30 days to go.

[Hooahguy]

EA CEO Riccitiello resigns.

[Monk]

EA CEO Riccitiello resigns.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[gaelic cowboy]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

legend

[johnhughthom]

I think that comparison is in pretty poor taste, the idea that Saddam was anywhere near as evil as Riccitiello...

[gaelic cowboy]

I think that comparison is in pretty poor taste, the idea that Saddam was anywhere near as evil as Riccitiello...

eurogamer So long, John Riccitiello

[Monk]

eurogamer So long, John Riccitiello

Interesting read, but I'm not sure I can fully agree with it. The best games that EA has published I have never once felt they were great because of EA's influence. I never stopped while I played through Dragon Age: Origins and said "Wow EA is really on the ball here." When i played the original BF1942 when I was still in high school, I never once said "EA's really got something exciting here!"

There's something to be said about the publisher-developer relationship from a player's perspective. When it's done right I don't notice it at all. I'm free to enjoy the creative direction of the developer and happy to support them and the publisher who stayed out of their way. When it's done wrong, well, you feel it everywhere, in every aspect of the game: From Mass Effect 3's limited dialogue system and obvious rushed nature to Dead Space 3 micro-transactions.

But just to bite on the article's premise, EA's track record doesn't start and End with SimCity, Mass Effect 3 or Dead Space 3. They've acted with cold business sense for decades and have never struck me as the greatest when it comes to consumer practice. Any old school gamer who hears the words "Ultima 9" will know what I mean. Games published by EA that were good, i've always felt, were in spite of EA's influence and not because of it. The rare exception I suppose would be the Sims franchise, but even those are built on a predatory business model..

I'm not saying Mr. Riccitiello should be held accountable for things his predecessors did, but he certainly didn't do much to reverse the trend. That's perhaps the biggest disappointment for me, if not completely unsurprising. As for where EA goes from here, well, that's the easiest question of all. In a couple weeks we'll all be saying "meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

[Veho Nex]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013...ons-via-steam/

This is good news, I for one thank our new Sega overlords for keeping one of my all time favorite games alive.

[Fragony]

New Bioshock is getting rave reviews, shame my ps3 doesn't read disks all of sudden

[easytarget]

Yeah, so over the top the bio reviews are just the latest example of how absurd the mainstream game press is when reviewing AAA games.

[Monk]

Yeah, so over the top the bio reviews are just the latest example of how absurd the mainstream game press is when reviewing AAA games.

Bioshock Infinite should be a case study in "How not to do Time Travel/Multiverse Plots." What a mess.

[Hooahguy]

Bioshock Infinite should be a case study in "How not to do Time Travel/Multiverse Plots." What a mess.

Mind explaining? I cant seem to find any articles on BI being a mess, all I see are rave reviews.

[Fragony]

Bioshock Infinite should be a case study in "How not to do Time Travel/Multiverse Plots." What a mess.

I'll see it when I do. Buying it for the setting alone, I didn't like the gameplay of Bioshock but Rapture as a setting was great. Expecting the same from Infinite

[Monk]

I'll see it when I do. Buying it for the setting alone, I didn't like the gameplay of Bioshock but Rapture as a setting was great. Expecting the same from Infinite

The art style and setting are definitely the best parts of the game by far. I'm not sure if I like it more than Rapture though, but that's gonna be personal preference. Underwater settings are almost second to none for me.

Mind explaining? I cant seem to find any articles on BI being a mess, all I see are rave reviews.

I really don't see how to be honest. It's an above average game certainly and the visuals can be quite stunning at times, but the perfect scores it's been pulling down are pretty laughable. When i said "What a mess" I was really referring to the plot. I'm not sure how much I can tell you without spoiling something, other than it made less sense than Highlander 2.