Posted in Uncategorized on June 13, 2009 by subrandom
GET BACK YE CURSED FANBOYS!
Here are you happy now? Valve pretty much came out and said what anyone with two braincells in their brain thought they
would say. In fact down the road it wouldn’t surprise me if they just imported every single thing from L4D 1 in to it’s sequel. Valve doesn’t always do what is best but they sure as hell know what their community likes and doesn’t like and those are not people they want to lose.
Enjoy your slight victory zombie fans! You deserve nothing from these people.
Clouds sure are pretty think I'll go outside today.
During this last week Atlas released its first MMO under the Atlas brand name. I was one of the many who jumped at the chance of playing around with the beta. Unfortunately for me and apparently anyone running a 64 bit OS (windows 7 in this case) the live games security software wont launch the game. There is a sizable thread on the Atlus online forums about this issue located here.
The error that people are getting is not the fault of the Atlus developers but the fault of their awful third party security program. This is far from the first time a security program has prevented legitimate users from playing a game. In fact, this is probably the 10th time this year I personally have been prevented from playing a game legitimately. If the Neosteam beta were a lot better this would be a bigger tragedy.
Although I won’t ever be playing the released game now I would have liked to give it a shot. Maybe I can find someone out there not running windows 7 because everyone I know is using that RC with no problems. Maybe someday Atlus online will get it’s act together and until them I’ll just have to play better MMOs.
Posted in E3, New Games on June 9, 2009 by subrandom
In case you haven’t heard over 17,000 steam users are vowing to boycott the release of left4dead 2. Yes indeed less than 1% of the people who purchased Left4Dead at retail are vowing to not buy the game. Besides the fact that the gesture is relatively pointless and won’t do anything to impact the release this is dumb for other reasons. Sure, no one likes the idea in this DLC rich world of someone releasing a sequel to a game within 6 months. But this wasn’t shown or announced as content that would make a lot of sense for just DLC. There are huge engine and mechanic changes coming in the next game.
There is always this mentality among people that when they purchase a game the developer owes them something. While it is true that developers have a certain amount of responsibility for providing a functional product they by no means owe anyone anything. I can certainly agree that Valve has not been anywhere near perfect with their handling of Left4Dead. Certainly the first game lacked as much content as it should have had for a full priced game. But all they would have released in the whole of this products life would have been a couple map packs. So what is valve doing instead of making maps? Why they are making a full sequel to the game.
Melee weapons, huge changes to the AI director and its functions, new classes and game types. To me these things all sound like what is included in any sequel. I would probably be a little pissed if I had just purchased Left4Dead this week only to find out a newer better version is coming, or maybe I’d be pumped. I think everyone should know by now that Internet petitions are largely absurd and this is no exception. People were slamming valve the moment they announced the title without knowing anything about the game. Is it too much to ask for a little bit of reason and patients? Apparently from ye olde internet it is far too much a request.
All of this being said it still doesn’t matter when there are at the very least over 3 million people who purchased Left4Dead. In fact people are still buying the game knowing exactly how much content is and will be in the game. Does that make Valve guilt free? Of course not, but bitching because a company is delivering a sequal too quickly? That is a little nuts.
So blah blah blah people sign silly petitions, I complain about those people and everything keeps rolling on just like it would had no one said anything. See, the thing about having a cause is that if the issue truely resonates with people in a meanful way then your vocal minority can turn in to a very vocal majority. But, like most reactionary statements this one won’t go any farther than a over infalted forum post.
Posted in E3, Site News on June 5, 2009 by subrandom
Yup, I am officially one of those awful people who writes a blog and then just abandons it when things get busy. Should this really matter? Of course not, Ihad important shipping a game business and now that is over and i can continue to prater on about awesome games.
In case you were living under a rock there has been this whole E3 thing going on and well, now over. The coverage this year was pretty amazing and so were the announcements. The Giantbomb video coverage was pretty good as long as you want a pretty selective (their taste is pretty good) view of the show. Otherwise the IGN or gamespot coverage is of course excellent for all around newsieness.
So what was super impressive? Well other than the motion control extravaganza that went on between Sony and Microsoft I have to say I’m shocked that Sony finally made me want to play the PS3. Of course after the Sony event I went to check out FF7 from the playstation store, nothing. Apparently they didn’t the FF7 download until 10pm PST which is a pretty loose defenition of “available today”. However, Sony did an amazing job considering how little I have cared about them over these last three years.
Yes that is correct the fine folks at Atlus have officially announced a US release date for Persona 4! Many have been waiting for yet another delightful Persona game to show up and on December 9th for $39.99 you can pick up your very own copy. Not many details as the Atlus website doesn’t mention any of the info they just sent out about the title. Regardless the details from Atuls themselves are as follows:
It will be in stores THIS holiday season, December 9th, in a deluxe 2-disc release. Each and every copy of Persona 4 will include a soundtrack CD with select music from the game.
Experience a thrilling murder mystery RPG set in the Japanese countryside. A mysterious chain of deaths remains unanswered and only you and your team of gifted supernatural sleuths can uncover the truth.
Develop strong friendships to aid you in battle, take direct control of your party in combat, acquire and fuse Personas, craft weapons, sign up for part-time jobs… You’ll never be short of something to do in Persona 4.
The wikipedia page for Persona 4 has been updated with some information harvested from various screen shots and videos. Most likely this will be more of the same out of it’s mind JRPG stuff that was present in Persona 3. Hopefully the Atlus website will get updated in the following days with more information but until then you can just keep hitting refresh on their website.
There has been a lot of complaint recently about these big game sites giving out perfect 10s to GTA4 and MGS4 and I’d like to get some answers. Although i understand the reasoning for most of these places giving out top scores to these big titles but i want to do a bit of profiling of those in the industry. Although nothing is set in stone most of these will be text (IM or email) interviews and hopefully they will be soon coming but who knows. Just keep checking back for more news on up and coming features.
During my morning Craigslist crawl i happened upon a QA position for a “world-renowned software company”. None of that is really unusual except for the fact that the posting is also asking for testers who love to sing. At this point with the massive leaks the cat is pretty much out of the bag about Lips but this ad may be indicative of a later stage of development. Or of course this could be some other crummy Singstar clone but honestly i don’t know of any other Redmond based software company that might be producing a karaoke game.
Check out the brief hint at Lips testing over here and perhaps even get yourself a job!
UPDATE: it appears there are also listings for german testers who love to sing. This all makes sense because when you publish a game usually you provide a ton of QA staff for it so there you go sing your heart out.
Yes it has finally come Atlus has started to make games for the next current gen consoles. This oh so miraculous 2nd coming was foretold months ago with a splendid demo handed down from on high to the gracious hands of the Xbox Live marketplace. Yes, everyone can rejoice because finally the current round of consoles has been made relevant. Sure you could get your strange Anime women fix from various Id@lmaster themes and airplane skins but no system can be complete until the insane overlords at Atlus have graced them with a bounty of demon penises and strange cameos from Dante.
If anyone could possibly be unfamiliar with Atlus they are the fine makers of the Persona series (the one where you shoot yourself in the head to summon demons) and a ton of other over the top Japanese RPG games. Atlus has still been making PS2 titles well in to the twilight of the system and with plenty of good reason. Atlus generally makes short run titles for a very small group of dedicated fans and why not keep making them for a system with 112 million consoles deployed. So if you haven’t purchased Odin Sphere I suggest grabbing it now before it vanishes, or perhaps you could find a copy on Goozex
So in case no one out there in the void has picked up the demo for Operation Darkness let me explain a few things. Yes this is a WWII game and yes it is a strategy game like Final Fantasy Tactics (A2 comes out tomorrow as well). The important part that blows all that out of the water is the fact that there are, for whatever reason werewolves that you control to fight Nazis. Also, it is important to note that Atlus has exposed an important note in history glossed over by the other historical shooters: all the SS women are super hot busty anime chicks.
If this doesn’t sound excellent to anyone out there then go ahead and get Final Fantasy Tactics A2 or something but when you are playing with your bunny women I will be fending off Panzer tanks with a FUCKING WEREWOLF!
Check out the Operation Darkness Homepage and learn about trying to assassinate Adolf Hitler with werewolves.
Capcom has decided that the moldy old Capcom-unity website wasn’t enough like MySpace for the throngs of Street Fighter fans. It is generally nice when these large game companies try to foster a better community. The company gets a good idea of what the fans want and can directly respond to criticism. This type of direct communication isn’t uncommon (bungie.net, world of warcraft forums) but Capcom has taken it in a fairly new direction.
Now when you visit Capcom-unity you can make an adorable little profile with a fantastic Zack & Wiki portrait (as I did) and of course you can also upload your real life picture. The new site features all the things you would expect form a Facebook/MySpace clone: Personal Blogs, Picture/video Sharing, groups, friends lists and “brands”.
The strangest part of the whole thing is the Brands section which is what it sounds like, a list of Capcom brands (titles) that you can associate with your account. The Brands are an official set of groups for people to discuss the core Capcom titles, much like the regular group’s but not about Cosplay. It’s really strange that they went with such a marketing centric title for those specific groups, but hey whatever fits right? right.
Capcom-unity is just another way for a big company to poll the audience and build a community. It is nice to see them put something more in to their community activity than simply throwing together some random forums. I’m not big on social networking but the Capcom-unity site looks good, responds quickly and you won’t find the same trappings of the others; users can’t create horrible java heavy profiles that crash most reasonable web browsers.
Here it is, another one of those fantastic games blogs that the kids love so much nowadays. This isn’t going to be another Kotaku or anything like that, there is no possible way I have the time needed for such an endeavor. Instead, I or maybe I should say we, want to share opinions about games, the people who play them, where they are or should be headed and anything else that is deemed important.
Of course, it is quite likely that one might find reviews here and there and the odd bit of news but rest assured gentle reader there will be more in store for you. In fact the first real bit of content that will most likely be posted is a little review we have been toying around with around these parts.
So, lets get down to the nitty gritty of what is to be expected from the site and who we all are. Although right now I can only speak for myself, the other people who make this blog work will become more well known over the next few months. As for myself, I am employed at a successful game company doing QA (that means testing stuff). Although I am not at liberty to say where I work or what i work on, that just so happens to be what I spend at least 8 hours of my day doing. The reason I mention any of that is simple to stress the fact that we want to have some voices from inside the industry and that I actually know a couple.
What shape will all of this take? Well that is undecided as of yet, but for the moment there are a number of features planed, hopefully a couple interviews down the pipe and whatever else we can scrape together. Anything else we come up with for the direction we are taking you can expect to be shoved neatly in to the About page. Hopefully you will enjoy the things we do here at Thumb Jockey as much as we enjoy putting them together.
Here it is, another one of those fantastic games blogs that the kids love so much nowadays. This isn’t going to be another 