Destructoid makes a few observations on the death-toll of video-games (murders, suicides and so forth) [thanks for the link, Tigro].
I’m going to add a couple extra data points here.
Monthly Archives: August 2009
Well, finally!
After what seems like a significant fraction of forever 2007 video game, Mass Effect has finally got an update which allows it to run on nvidia/geforce systems without requiring an increasingly archaic and unsupported version of the video drivers to prevent the game from crashing (or from crashing your whole system).
When is an act not an act?
In the USA, measures to outlaw sales of mature-rated games to minors have failed repeatedly on constitutional grounds (maybe someone needs to seek a constitutional amendment for that, rather than just wasting money on laws that will be overturned as unlawful).
Over in the UK, though, the Video Recordings Act(1984) restricts the sales of mature-rated videos and video games to minors. Except… whoops! It doesn’t!
Impressions: Champions Online beta
Cryptic’s new MMOG, Champions Online, has had a rather interesting round of betas so far. Lots of systems got overhauled, and what’s there now has been changed quite a bit from what was there before. Interesting times, for sure. Since the NDA went down, impressions have been springing up like mushrooms, and here’s mine.
First off, what’s nice is that – assorted glitches aside – the game is a whole lot of fun. With the City of Heroes Powerset-Proliferation and Power-Spectrum changes, it’s starting to feel like the two are in a determined contest.
Play it now – Improbable Island
“You’ve been drafted into a war against a machine called the Improbability Drive. It lives somewhere in the jungle, over there. Improbability is leaking out of this bloody thing like radiation, so we’ve got to blow it up. The whole war is being televised, you’ve noticed the cameras already, so try not to do anything stupid while the world watches.”
“Your head hurts because the guys who burst into your living room with sticks and a great big sack probably hit you a bit too hard, and you might have landed badly when they tossed you out of the plane. You survived the fall without a parachute because of the Improbability Bubble surrounding the island, which makes the air notably denser about forty feet above sea level.”
“You’re naked and unarmed because everything that penetrates the Improbability Bubble gets changed in rather amusing ways, and we didn’t want to take that risk. There’s blood on my boots because I came across some monsters on the way over here – yes, monsters, stop gawping, you’ll get used to them – and you’ll either pick up the rest as you go along, or you’ll die in a very entertaining fashion.” She smiles. “Either way, it’ll make for great television.”
Play it now – Ghostbusters
I’ve got a bit of a history with Ghostbusters, the film by Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Bill Murray.
I was working in film marketing and PR at the time, wrestling a startup towards commercial viability. The cinema-release was staggered across some months, in various Australian locations, and I must have sat down and seen the film, in the cinemas, at least 60 or 70 times as a result.
The 1980s were a pretty good era for films that didn’t take themselves too seriously, and the film resonated rather strongly with audiences of the time. Off a 30 million dollar budget in 1984, the film raked in an easy 290 million dollars in cinemas, and another 132 million in rentals, never mind network syndication later on, DVD sales and all of that. The second film, Ghostbusters II, while considered by some to be something of a disappointment, still managed to do almost as well.
After more than 20 years, there’s talk of a third film – a changing-of-the-guard piece, with strong hopes of landing Eliza Dushku (Buffy/Angel/Dollhouse/etc) in a major role – but in the meantime, Aykroyd and Ramis have put together a new part to the story, in the form of a video game, developed in conjunction with Terminal Reality.