Can you feel it? The warming of the air? The slightly less frequent rain storms? Have you got your air conditioners or evaporative coolers tuned up and ready? It may not feel like it everywhere, but summer is officially here today. Well, at least in the northern hemisphere. Happy solstice, friends.
But what does summer mean for gamers? For those that consider their gaming to be more of a lifestyle than a habit, E3 tends to be just the start of epic time wasting. Summer is when we refuse to get tanned, or even step outside longer than the 30 seconds required to grab the newest envelope from Gamefly. Saving princesses (even if they are in another castle), violating the laws of physics, firing millions of rounds, taking down mob bosses in fake or real versions of New York City, racking up 42 hit aerial combos. But before you can do that, you need to know everything you can learn about those games before they come out. That’s not why I’m here. I’m here to give you bite-sized pieces of that gaming news in something little more than overly editorial headlines. That means you can save time by reading these quick hits and learning quickly what games you need to research further – instead of poring over pages and pages of crap on other sites, trying to sort the generic FPS nonsense from the glorious hack and slashing news. Or vice-versa.
Let’s get started:
If you’ve been craving new content for Killzone 3, look no further than today’s PSN update. The third expansion for the game, titled “From the Ashes,” comes with four new maps (two guerilla, two warzone). The maps offer action for as little as 16 players, or as many as 32. The standalone pack is $4.99. But wait, there’s more! If you haven’t picked up the prior two packs, “Retro” and “Steel Rain,” you may be more interested in the new bundle coming today as well. This includes all three DLC packs for the incredible, money-saving cost of only $9.99!
I hate to give you reasons to look forward to winter when summer is just dawning, but Telltale Games has a good reason for you to bundle up later this year. Details are starting to surface about their plans for a video game version of The Walking Dead. If you were excited to play as Rick Grimes, sorry. You’ll actually be taking control of Everett, a convict who escaped when his transport bus turned over in the zombocalypse. Joined by Clementine, a seven-year old girl, Everett tries to leave zombie-infested Atlanta. Even without Rick, the game will still follow the theme of the comics and television series, that of people losing their humanity in the face of its own extinction. Familiar people and places, like Lilly and Herschel’s farm, will make an appearance. Just be careful who you trust. Double-crosses happen to convicts and cops alike.
I don’t tend to focus too much on the technical aspects behind gaming, but I know it’s important to some. Johan Andersson of DICE has answered a few questions, via Twitter, about Battlefield 3‘s rendering on Frostbite 2.0. The game will be running in 720p at 30fps. In response to the immediate complaints he clarified, “name a single FPS game that runs at 1080p on any of the consoles? Would have to do huge gameplay cuts… 99.9% of PS3 and Xbox 360 games are 720p. And a lot of them, including MW2 is way lower than that.” He went on to say “we always do 30fps on consoles, not possible to fit in vehicles, fx, scale and all players otherwise. We think huge levels, lots of players, great fx, destruction, vehicles & varied gameplay is more important than 1080p.” While Modern Warfare 3 is planned for 60fps, it also doesn’t have the vehicles and destruction of this game. Ultimately, I think he has a great point. It’s probably not a popular idea with whoever signs his paycheck, but it’s okay for consumers to be split. If you want top end graphics at a high framerate, there’s a game for you. If you’d rather have 30fps and destructible environments, there’s a game for you too. For my money, I don’t care how many frames per second I get as long as it’s stable. Nothing irks me more than a glitchy framerate at a critical juncture. It’s so 8 bit.
In other shooter news, Ghost Recon Future Soldier has gotten a date for multiplayer beta. The game was originally scheduled for release this summer but has been delayed. The beta is planned for January 2012. Based on that date, my guess for full release is April 2012. That’s just my guess. Don’t hold me to it. Unless I’m right. Then you should give me money.
And now for your latest hacking news, SEGA is the newest victim. Wonderbot has a wonderfully sarcastic story on it. I think the best detail is the number of people affected, 1.3 million. I’m actually a little shocked it was that many. I had no idea SEGA could still generate a community that size. My guess is that about half of those are spammers who created accounts on their forum just to sell third world prescription drugs and mail order brides. Kind of like our forum.
Best news for last:
1. Grand Theft Auto V is “well underway” and “pretty likely” for release next year. This is according to an anonymous source from Rockstar, as told to Gamespot. I have varying levels of trust in this information so I’m technically putting into my rumor file. I have no doubt they’re developing it, I just don’t necessarily trust it’s as far along as this source claims.
2. I mentioned in a previous VGQH that Best Buy is including a playable Robin in Batman: Arkham City when you preorder from them. But what the hell is Robin going to look like in this visually powerful version of Bat-lore? Well, something like this apparently:
Okay, seriously. Why didnt’ someone make Robin cool years ago? I can’t top that so I’m ending this edition here. Check back on Friday and we’ll see if the gaming industry has come up with something even better than Robin as a badass.