Top Stories
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The World's Coolest Iron Man Game Is Still GTA IV — And It's Even Better
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The 360 Figures To Hang Around A Lot Longer Than The Original Xbox Did
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The Xbox One Uncertainty Principle
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Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Review: The Titan Descendant
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Surprise! Dying Light Is A New Free-Running First-Person Zombie Game
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Xbox One's Live TV Will Not Be Available In Australia At Launch, Requires A Separate Device
Regulars
Rant: There’s No Such Thing As A Free-to-Play Game
I’ve tried to be fair to the concept of free-to-play games, which you see a lot of in mobile gaming. Yes, it all seems a bit cynical — it trades a single price for a potentially unlimited revenue stream, but there’s nothing necessarily illegal or unethical about that. It does depend on making some substantive portion of the experience, you know, free to play, as kind of a good faith gesture.
Rant: Crazy Expectations Of A Console That Didn’t Deserve Its Third Chance To Fail
If you never saw Crazy People, a 1990 film starring Dudley Moore, I highly recommend it. Basically, an advertising agency is taken over by the insane, who decide that honesty — the anathema of marketing — is now the best policy. Volvos are sold as “boxy, but they’re good.” Another stunt offers “a free plant for fat slobs”. And a poster featuring an attractive couple frolicking on the beach invites the viewer to “Come in the Bahamas”.
Actually, It Is Kinda BS That Bayonetta 2 Is A Wii U Exclusive
It’s funny when anyone on the internet flips out, but no one does it better than the video gamer. When the issue involves someone not getting what they want, when they want it, at the price they want it — and you yourself don’t want it — it’s entertaining as hell watching someone break into a Rumplestiltskenian fit on the way to a total meltdown and an Internet petition or two. It’s like going to a dunking booth and seeing actual hate in the clown’s eyes. Boy, that guy is unhinged.
Customer Service Sucks For Those Inside The Gaming Industry, Too
Console failures don’t just happen to the little people. No, they happen to gaming industry professionals, too, and we’re happy to report they don’t get a customer service batphone and valet replacement service just because they happen to work for a major publisher, as “Frank” does here. He gets to suffer through the same tale of woe as thousands of frustrated Xbox 360 gamers.
Piling On: Four Hundred Games I’ll Never Finish, And Counting
Tuesday afternoon I got the Internet connected in my new home. From Wednesday morning until Thursday afternoon, my PlayStation 3 was downloading every free title due to me as a PlayStation Plus subscriber. Since I moved, that console has literally spent more time acquiring games than I will likely spend playing them, or any game on that console for at least the next month.
The Lazy Security Patrolling Apple’s App Store
This past weekend, readers alerted us to an absolutely contemptible ripoff on the iTunes App Store. Someone had submitted a straight-up copy of the Canabalt flash game, called it Canabalt HD — which doesn’t exist on the iOS. Once again, some unscrupulous dick managed to slide Adam Saltsman’s game past Apple’s mall security. The fact it happened on Memorial Day weekend in the States, when a takedown might take longer to enact, stunk of a deliberate scam.
Rant: Even If No One Listens, Let The Diablo III Review Bombs Fall
It’s easy to sit back and scoff at “review bombing”, as we saw last week when Blizzard released a broken Diablo III. Flooding Amazon to give zero stars to something others have called 10/10, sure, that’s not a legitimate review. And people staging a sit-in aren’t there to legitimately patronize a public accommodation, either. But a sit-in is a legitimate form of protest. And I think a review bomb is, too.
Rant: A Mass Effect Raffle That Made Everyone Look Like Losers
The attempted raffle of an early copy of Mass Effect 3 this week still bothers me, even though its owners apologised and pulled back the gimmick when they realised it would run afoul of anti-gambling laws. The raffle or its legality isn’t what really bothers me, however.
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