Obligatory Oblivion GOY, PS3 Price-Cut & Booth Babes gone? – Welcome to the column that believes you can never get enough hot women promoting video games known as Dare to Play the Game.
Welcome to another edition of Dare to Play the Game. This week I give you a little insight into my soul (be afraid). For those of you who might not believe it, I am a pretty quiet person in real life. Sure if you are a friend or loved one and I’ve known you…a while, I’ll talk your ear off. But for the most part, I am quiet; too quiet. As such, I tend to let things pass by and not say something when I should have. Currently in my life, I am being presented with that situation. There is a special girl I have come to know and the time is quickly coming where I need to say something about how I feel or based on circumstances beyond my control that chance will be most likely gone (or have any meaningful impact). 99 times out of a 100 in the past I would have just let it go. Somehow I’m tired of sitting around waiting for fate to catch up. I’ll let you know next week on the outcome.
Ode To Morgan Webb
Cause sometimes you just need a thumb of Morgan Webb to survive. Besides for the creative people in the audience, they might have something we call imagination. See we can imagine Morgan unlike what the picture really is. I mean for all we know she could be wearing camo pants or juggling three bowling pins with her feet. The power of imagination. (*rainbow flows across the screen followed by the words* “The More You Know”)
News of All Types
Bethesda Softworks Announces the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Game of the Year Edition (from Press Release)
Bethesda Softworks®, a ZeniMax Media company, announced today that it will release The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion® Game of the Year Edition (GotY) for Xbox 360™ video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system from Sony, and Windows this September. Oblivion GotY will include the original version of the award-winning RPG Oblivion along with the official expansion, The Elder Scrolls® IV: Shivering Isles™, and the downloadable content, Knights of the Nine™.
This new product will allow players who have never played the 2006 Game of the Year to experience Oblivion for the first time with additional content. In addition, gamers can continue their existing games of Oblivion and experience the new quests and areas offered by the expansion and downloadable content.
Released in March 2006 for Windows and Xbox 360™ video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and in March 2007 for PLAYSTATION®3 system, Oblivion has already earned countless awards from publications around the world and won numerous Game of the Year and RPG of the Year awards. Gamerankings.com and MetaCritic.com list Oblivion as the highest rated game of all time on both Xbox 360 and PLAYSTATION®3 system.
Oblivion features a powerful combination of free-form gameplay, unprecedented graphics, cutting edge AI, character voices by acting legends Patrick Stewart, Sean Bean, Terrance Stamp, and Lynda Carter, and an award-winning soundtrack. Gamers can choose to unravel Oblivion’s epic narrative at their own pace or explore the vast world in search of their own unique challenges.
With more than 30 hours of new gameplay, Shivering Isles allows you to explore an entirely new plane of Oblivion – the realm of Sheogorath, the Daedric Prince of Madness. Shivering Isles features a bizarre landscape split between the two sides – Mania and Dementia -filled with vast, twisting dungeons mirroring the roots of the trees they are buried within. Sheogorath himself looks to you to be his champion and defend his realm and its inhabitants from destruction as you discover all new items, ingredients, spells, and much more.
Knights of the Nine features an all-new faction and quests for noble characters and answers many of the questions surrounding the Ayleid ruins found throughout Oblivion. Players can join a new faction and found their own order of holy knights – leading them into battle against a sorcerer-king and his demonic minions while exploring massive dungeons and searching for legendary relics – the holy armor and weapons of the Divine Crusader.
I knew it was coming, it was just a question of when. It happened with Call of Duty 2, 3, Marvel Ultimate Alliance and now Oblivion. The RPG juggernaut which will take half your life to get through is getting the GOY treatment (COD 3 and MUA called it the Gold treatment just to be different) which essentially means that we wanted to get you all of DLC and the game and repackage it for some more dough. I’m hoping I find some deal that puts it at $40-$50 because with the extra content; it’s worth it and then some. Very nice, and for anybody like myself who enjoys a well done RPG, here is a chance to give this amazing piece of software a whirl.
PS3
Sony Confirms PS3 Price-Cut, 80GB Bundle (from Kotaku.com)
Sony Corp. announced a revised PlayStation 3 console Monday with a bigger hard drive for storing downloaded content such as video games and high-definition movies.
The new $599 PS3 increases the system’s storage capacity from 60 to 80 gigabytes and also includes a retail copy of the online racing title “MotorStorm,” a company spokesman said.
Starting Monday, the current 60 gigabyte model will cost $499 _ a $100 price drop.
The larger capacity machine won’t be available in the United States and Canada until August.
It plays into the company’s upcoming strategy of eventually offering downloaded high-definition movies, video games, movie trailers and demos, Sony spokesman David Karraker said.
Karraker said further details on high-def movies for download would be released at a later date.
The announcement comes two days before the E3 Media & Business Summit in Santa Monica, Calif., where dozens of industry heavyweights including Sony rivals Microsoft Corp. and Nintendo Co. are expected to show off their latest games and related products.
Karraker said Sony would use the E3 show to focus on two areas: ways to increase the number of consumers who own PS3s and other products such as the PlayStation Portable handheld system, and expanding the system’s library of available games.
He said Sony would be releasing 100 new video games during the current fiscal year, including 15 titles that are exclusive to the PS3 such as the hack-and-slash action title “Heavenly Sword.
So it happens because it had to, Sony cuts the beef. I’m still scratching my head trying to figure out how an extra 20 gigs is a big deal. MS went from 20 to 120, that’s a jump. 60 to 80, not so much. At $499, I start raising eyebrows; however I’m far from interested. Mainly cause I still don’t see the software support I’m accustomed to when I hear Sony. 100 titles in the next year works out to a 2 a week. Not great, but not terrible either. But if you have looked at releases lately, they are lucky if they average 1 a week. It still feels like a whole lot of campaign promises and no real proof. Wake me when Sony makes another $100 drop or when they send this old fart a free console. I’m open to change :-P.
Wet Dreams
E3 Booth Babes gone? (from AP Wire)
The video game industry’s annual showcase is saying goodbye to scantily clad booth babes, extravagant multimillion dollar exhibits, blaring lights and pounding music. Celebrity appearances from the likes of Paris Hilton or Snoop Dogg are a thing of the past, too.
This year’s version of the Electronic Entertainment Expo, renamed the E3 Media & Business Summit, will be a toned-down affair as organizers hope to have a far less flashy discussion on new and upcoming video games.
The event, which starts Wednesday, looks to be more like a country club getaway, an invitation-only gathering complete with luxury beach-side hotels, sushi restaurants and meetings in private conference rooms.
To put it more diplomatically, “It’s about the quality of connection for leaders of the industry,” says Michael Gallagher, a former telecommunications policy adviser under the Bush administration who now heads up the Entertainment Software Association, the trade group that puts together the show.
After last year’s expo, organizers decided it had become too big for its own good. With more than 60,000 people cramming into the Los Angeles Convention Center, there was a feeling that the needs of no one — be it the media, retailers or video game publishers — were being addressed particularly well.
“It had gotten out of control and needed to die,” said Mike Wilson, chief executive of Austin, Texas-based game publisher Gamecock. “It was hot, techno was blasting everywhere, there was no place to sit and the microwave cheeseburgers were $8. It just wasn’t pleasant.”
Wilson’s company wasn’t invited to the new E3 that’s being held in a handful of hotels along the beach in Santa Monica, California. He isn’t the only one.
Only about 30 of the largest video game software and hardware companies are attending, down from the hundreds that packed the sprawling Los Angeles Convention Center in previous years. Also missing will be the army of small-time bloggers, zealous game fans and others who somehow managed to infiltrate the trade-only event.
As someone who was at the first E3 in 1995 and attended every one since, Dorothy Ferguson said she believes the new format will benefit the 3,000 or so people attending.
“It kind of got away from what was important, which is really the content,” said Ferguson, a vice president of sales and marketing for NCSoft Inc. “At the end you felt like a pinball in a pinball machine. It was sensory overload and it was really difficult to hear anything.”
Inside, I’m silently weeping. I mean just when finally in my journalistic side career I might get an one in a million chance of getting invited to one of these things they go and ruin it. Now a bunch of stuffy people get to sit around what sounds like a conference board room and discuss games like Pirates of the Caribbean or Cooking Mama. (we think that this demographic will benefit greatly if we slam this down their throats with a heavy dose of Drano) What will we do without hot Asian women dancing around in scantily clad outfits promoting the next Dead or Alive game? Just when we have gotten this society to a point where we might actually associate gaming with something besides a nerd with a pocket protector they go ahead and slam it back into geekdom. Now it sounds like an elitist affair that only the big boys attend and nobody else really cares about. BTW, Mike Wilson, you’re bitter and this didn’t need to die…at least before I attended one (awaiting the obligatory email that states I suck as a journalist and need to die too). I need loving, in the worst possible way.
Releases for the week of July 10th, 2007
XBOX Live Arcade
Golden Axe (400 Points) & Sonic the Hedgehog (400 Points)
I looked up and down this week until I found a snippet this morning of what was coming out. The official MS XBOX site still hasn’t been updated so I really can’t even bring you screenshots like I want (free of crappy logos, sorry ign). Sonic the Hedgehog, most people know this game pretty well as it was the landmark game in the Sega Genesis days and brought the world a bright blue mascot that could go really fast. The XBLA version is supposed to be the High Speed remake which means it will probably move a little faster and be in HD. Meh. Seriously, we’ve played Sonic a million times before, if you don’t have one of the mega collections or the original game then get it. Else you probably aren’t missing much. The same could be logically said for Golden Axe, however I reserve that thought because of the differences between the Genesis and the Arcade. If it is the Genesis version, I might pass; mainly cause I’ve played that one too much. However, if Sega brings the rain in the form of the arcade version with updated graphics and multiplayer; this might be an extremely easy 400 point download. Though I did have a certain fondness for the Duel sub-game within the genesis copy. Probably explains why I bought the Golden Axe fighting game for the Sega Saturn. Boy, was I disappointed.
Wii Virtual Console
Mach Rider-NES-500 Points, Yoshi-NES-500 Points, & Air Zonk-TG-16-600 Points
A somewhat mixed week. Mach Rider is one of the first launch games that was released on the NES. The spiritual lead-in to the F-Zero series of games, this little racer had the high speeds and futuristic racing that was appealing to all fans of the genre. There is also a design mode which according to the information I have will be able to be saved on the Wii console. Similar to that of Excitebike. Yoshi is next on the list as one of the most obscure puzzle games of all time. The idea was that you controlled Mario or Luigi and tried to keep blocks with monsters from filling up the screen. This was done by placing yoshi eggs at strategic points in the rows enabling Yoshi to come out and clear the monsters. At least it was better than Dr. Mario which advertised the slogan of “Drugs are okay, okay?”. The last title is a great shooter from the minds of Hudson Soft for the Turbo system. Made by the same people who made the legendary Gates of Thunder series, this title borrowed concepts from the Bonk titles by giving the character a futuristic getup and putting him in space where he could shoot stuff. It was cute, it was addictive, it was just plain fun. With a large assortment of different weapons (decks of cards to metal mandibles), he took on cronies of King Drool before taking on the big boss himself through five stages. Personally, I’d skip both of the NES titles this week and go straight for Air Zonk. As long as you like shooters, you won’t be sorry.
PSP
Riviera: The Promised Land
Smash Court Tennis 3
Xbox 360
Project Sylpheed: Arc of Deception
Wii
Wii Blaster
DS
Cookie and Cream
Vegas Casino: High 5
GBA
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Another week with no PS2 releases, scary. Nobody else really felt like playing this week either. Some tennis action for your PSP might be an interesting call and a budget 360 ($40)shooter title might interest a few, but probably not too many. I’m not even going to mention the DS titles (sorry Cookie and Cream does not register a good time with me unless it is the ice cream or I’m spending the night with somebody special). This week, I would stick with something from your pre-existing collection like anything.
Some Final Thoughts and Mutterings
I haven’t had a chance to game much lately. In the silly achievement department, I picked up Rumble Roses again and won a singles title with a character I hadn’t. I climbed my leader board in Hexic to 2nd place behind my good friend Patrick (I have a measly 108k, he has 280k, but at least I’m ahead of everybody else now). I believe the Guitar Hero 80’s edition for PS2 comes out next week or the following so I’m pretty sure I’ll be glued to that. The only thing bothering me is that it is 30 songs but it is going for the same price as the 50 and 60 song monsters of GH1 and GH2. I hope there is some kinda deal surrounding it out there but probably won’t be so lucky. But I’ll still buy it, because 1)It’s Guitar Hero and 2)It has Skid Row and Ratt. I’m such the sucker. Have fun kiddoes and I will return next week with hopefully some good news or at least news that is a little uplifting to this old soul.
As Always,
Kedrix of Aldrianian
(*The Forgotten One*)
G Dub
07/11/2007 @ 8:19 am
WTH is Wii Blaster? Nice article this week Slacker!! Can’t wait for GH III I WANT GH III
Kedrix
07/11/2007 @ 10:33 am
It’s a gun that attaches to your Wii-Mote. Kinda like that brain that attaches to your head…soon coming your way for $49.95.
teedub
07/12/2007 @ 6:53 pm
Wii just seriously WANTS to drop the ball. Give me some AAA titles NOW, and PLEASE let me play VC titles online.
G Dub
07/13/2007 @ 8:15 am
Can you at least play multiplayer games online?I’ll be getting the gun if it actually comes out, sounds like it will be fun.
Kedrix
07/15/2007 @ 10:04 pm
That’s Wii’s problem, it has a great selling point…(read, gimmick) which has paved the way to millions of sales. But the online isn’t up to par (just a VC download center / no multiplayer). I have a feeling in a years time you will see a lot of used Wii’s up for sale. You can only play so much Wii Sports.