Battlefield 3 Review - Stop Playing With Yourself

Battlefield 3 is the last in the long line of modern day military shooters, which was popularized by Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.
It's been hyped as the new king of the hill, and EA has very deliberately positioned it up against Call of Duty, with the marketing tagline being "Go beyond the call" (Subtle, guys. Real subtle).

It's here!

Now the game is here, ready to impress us with gorgeous graphics, a compelling campaign and orgasmic multiplayer madness.
Or that is what the hype would have you believe at least. Read on to find out if Battlefield 3 is going to leave you with a warm fuzzy feeling of delight, or the unpleasant buzz of frustration.

Dancing Darth Weekend Fun Time!

What?

Well... This!

And now you're ready for the weekend!

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Steam holds Halloween "scary games" sales blowout - Get your 5 euro Bioshock now!

Never ones to miss any excuse for a crazy games sales bonanza, Steam is holding a Halloween themed sales fest, where a bunch of "scary" themed games are discounted to low low levels.

These happy pumpkins know the goodness that is the Steam Halloween sale!

I've had a looksie at what is available in this gut filled bucket of pumpkin festival related game titles, and here are a few fantastic games that you can pick up for cheap, if they have not already made their way into your gaming collection:

Nintendo reports $589 million loss for the last quarter - 3DS sales improving

Nintendo today announced that it came out of the last quarter with a net loss of $589 million, and lowered it's full year projections from a $260 million profit to a $260 million loss.

Nintendo says that the poor results are due to several different factors, among them are sales declines on software and hardware, as well as a hit on profit margins due to price cuts.

The color of the logo matches the color of the numbers on Nintendo's quarterly results

It is of course no secret that the 3DS handheld console has not done at all as well sales wise as Nintendo was hoping, but at least Nintendo are seeing increasing sales now that they have implemented a significant price reduction on the system.

Nintendo states that the decrease of game sales are due to lack of "hit titles", with the only exception being the 3DS version of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

So what to make of this?

I am not surprised that Nintendo is experiencing severe setbacks in their earnings.
The Wii seems to really be a "done" console by now. There are very few games of significance coming out for the system, and the general public seems to have tired of the novelty of motion controls, which the Wii really pioneered.

Furthermore, both Microsoft and Sony have by now tried to steal the motion controlling thunder from Nintendo, by bringing out their own versions of motion controls in the form of the Move and the Kinect (With Kinect itself adding a new novelty of controller free motion control gaming).

Will games ever be considered a "legitimate" pastime?

The other day I was skimming through one of my game forum watering holes, and I was struck by a post that was titled something along the lines of "Do you think you will still be gaming in 10 years?"

Wondering if this was a post about the death of all games or the coming of the end of the world in 2012, Mayan style, I clicked on it to find out.

It turned out to be a post about gaming when you "grow up".
The poster was a college kid and he was writing how he could not see himself still playing games in 10 years.
It just didn't seem "appropriate" to him that a 30 year old, probably with a family and job, would be playing video games.

This is still the kind of image that pops into many peoples head when they hear the words "video game"

This got me thinking about video games and their place in the culture of our modern day society (Because my brain likes to over think things like that).

X-COM Journal Day 1: This could all go very bad...

As I proclaimed yesterday, I have bought a copy of X-COM: UFO Defense and immediately jumped into the world of small grey aliens and flying saucers (brings back nostalgic memories of X-Files it does).

Yesterday I was bombastically bragging how my many years of gaming experience would easily enable me to subdue this old sci-fi gaming antiquity, and I launched the game with high hopes of easy battles against inferior computer enemies.

Approximately 45 minutes later I found myself alt+F4'ing out of the game with a sense of deep despair that would make an emo goth seem cheerful.

A fresh game of X-COM ready to be conquered!

There is no doubt that the last 17 years since X-COM's release has seen great leaps and bounds in terms of easing players into a game and helping them get a feeling for what the hell is going on.

I think the death of the big paper manual has probably helped with this, as back in 1994 you would still find a nice little book for you to read through, whenever you bought any game more complicated than Space Invaders.

However, without a manual (or the patience to read one, even if I could find a PDF document online somwhere) I threw myself headfirst into the game and hoped to figure it out as I went along.

Mistake number one came after around 20 seconds of having selected difficulty level and started the game.

Rockstar announces GTA V

In perhaps one of the least shocking pieces of gaming news to hit the web in a while, Rockstar has just announced the existance of GTA V.

Of more interest is the fact that we are going to be treated to a trailer of GTA V on the 2nd of November.
The GTA V website is up here, but is so far just a title screen and the promise of said trailer.

This is what you see at the official GTA V site at the moment

When we get our first peak into GTA V next week, it will be very interested in seeing if Rockstar will continue the rather sombre and serious story tone that they tried to set in GTA IV, or if we're going to to see a more crazy GTA that is more along the lines of the previous entries in the series.

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Sci-fi blast from the past: X-COM: UFO Defense

Following my own, rather fantastic, advice on cheap sci-fi games on Steam I just picked up a copy of X-COM: UFO Defense

Something strange in the neighborhood?
Who you gonna call?
X-COM!

I intend to deep dive into a pool of DOS powered gaming nostalgia and relive the magic of the strategy game that helped spark my love affair with sci-fi computer gaming.

Either that or I will run away screaming, horrified by the outdated graphics and cumbersome gameplay mechanics.
Either way, it should provide you with top quality entertainment!

X-COM was one of those games that I had a bit of a complicated relationship with, just like I do with Eve Online.
It continually kicked my ass every time I played it and I only managed to finally complete it by cheating (trainer programs and hex-editors for the win! "FFFFFF" for lots of money).

Blizzard releases new Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm trailer

Blizzcon 2011 happened over the weekend and brought with it a flood of new content.

Probably the most interesting to me was actually this new trailer for the next Starcraft 2 outing, which will be the Zerg centered "Heart of the Swarm".

Check out the trailer below:

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5 Video game phenomenons that we'd like in real life

The world of video games is a little microcosm of its own.

There are so many gameplay mechanisms that we as players have become so used to that we don't even think about them at all.

I have 3 lives?
Makes perfect sense to me!

Things such as a checkpointing system is an example of a mechanic that you would probably only really notice if it was absent.

These things all make playing games a more enjoyable and relaxing experience, but imagine if we could transfer them into the real world.

If you could pick 5 video game mechanics to transfer into reality, which would be the ones to pick?