the be all end all video game thread

So Amazon just sent me an email saying that my copy of Brink has an estimated delivery date of today. Is anyone else as excited as I am about this game? It looks like it has potential to be a seriously good FPS franchise.

 

Is anyone noticing some glitches with Portal 2? Yesterday I was playing the single player campaign and it would push my guy forward without the controller even being in my hand. Getting pushed off ledges is really fucking frustrating playing a game like Portal. Also, today I was playing the co-op campaign and there wasn't any sound.. wtf? Everything was connected properly and securely and the TV volume was on, just no game sound.

 

<a class="postlink" href="http://pc.ign.com/articles/116/1166962p1.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://pc.ign.com/articles/116/1166962p1.html</a>

Diablo 3 beta to begin Q3 2011. That is all.

 

After giving it a title of "PSN Restoration Timeline Update" today, this is the "update" given from Sony on their blog:

Awesome. Super helpful. Good thing they waited four days since their last update to post that.

 

It sure is great to be able to play on XBox Live.

 

Yup, probably also great not to have your personal info stolen, and lord knows whomever did it probably isn't done with Sony, cause fucking over all of Sony's customers once wasn't quite enough, so they'll try to hack it again once it gets back up and running.

Then again, Microsoft is Microsoft, so they'll find uses for that info you're giving them (selling region-specific in-game advertising, spying on you via Kinect to see how many people are in the room with you if you have Kinect, etc) AND you get to pay a yearly fee for them to do it!

Honestly, this whole PSN outage has given me some perspective. I rarely played online anyway, Netflix still works, I went through and changed any passwords that were even remotely similar to the one I used for PSN, and I am keeping a close eye on my credit score and credit card transactions just to be safe (which is honestly stuff I should probably be doing anyway). The fact is, hackers can get at you at pretty much any time they want, so the only real protection is to be extra vigilant. Besides that, the only games I am playing less are Mortal Kombat and You Don't Know Jack, as I'd prefer to play them online rather than by myself, and it has inspired me to play through some of my older games again.

It'd be nice of the PSN came back, just so I can get my two free games. Although, knowing my luck, it'll be inFamous (sequel coming out this year), Demon's Souls (sequel coming out this year), Uncharted and Uncharted 2 (again, sequel this year), and maybe some other PS exclusive that I already own, making it pretty much useless to me. I could easily see those being the games, based on the fact that they have sequels in the works or coming out soon, and releasing them free would allow players to play them and maybe inspire them to go out and pick up the new one. Turn it into free advertising for their new games.

 

Not totally related to gaming, but I'm curious why people have this perception. Any particular reason, or just the general "Microsoft is an evil monopoly" mentality?

By the way, after building their search engine, Microsoft was offered money by various sites to improve their respective ranks in their search results. (Not just the "sponsored ads", but in the actual algorithm itself) They refused.

Google, meanwhile, happily accepted those same offers.

 

I do not remember this and my Google Fu has failed me. Any links?

 

I don't know whether there's a link; I actually heard about this from some co-workers when I was an intern at Yahoo! Search roughly 4 years ago. Perhaps Microsoft has changed their policies now, but it's hardly out of character for Google, heh.

 

I played the Gears of War 3 (now scheduled to be released this September) beta tonight. They only have some online play available. It's fun I suppose. I just suck at it. I always bought them for the campaign mode. Nevertheless, the game looks good. I dig the graphics and the gameplay.

Also, I tried playing a King of the Hill match and it took me to a match that appeared to be in a small room that was nearly completely dark so it was basically just a shotgun free-for-all. Guessing it was some kind of bug b/c neither team was amassing points and I couldn't seem to exit the match. I just wound up leaving the game by going to the dashboard.

 

I've never played any of the games that are being thrown around here as probable free downloads due to PSN bending me over. What do you guys think would be the best bet? I'm not into FPS and tend to lean more towards adventure/rpg games (more Dragon's Age than Diablo). Thoughts?

I'm sure that statements from the competitors are totally non-biased. Not to say that it hasn't happened, but that is a suspect source.

 

Edit: Put it all in one post. Sorry for the double talk.

 

Actually, at the time, Yahoo's main competitor was Microsoft (with MSN Search), not Google. (Who had the lion's share of the market, and they weren't going to be able to beat) In fact, Yahoo! had a partnership where they used Google's search engine algorithm in the US before launching their own. So what you wrote above makes no sense, as usual.

Anyways, it's all tangential to my question; why do people expect evil from Microsoft, especially across XBox Live? Is there some news story I'm missing?

 

Main competitor is different than a competitor. For once respond to the point made.

 

8============================================================================D

 

I'm not sure why they'd expect evil from XBL outside of a fairly high pricing model, but evil from microsoft?
Who knows?
Maybe it's Ballmer's chairthrowing antics, the Embrace, extend and extinguish attitude, or the fact they're tacitly saying "Oh these *nix implementations, especially androids, violate our patents. We won't tell you where or how, but just, yknow, be afraid"

 

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