Peoww News

Fans of the pretty-but-punishing off-roader Pure and the straight-to-bargain-bin Split/Second will be dismayed to learn that Black Rock Studio, the Brighton-based developers of arcadey racing games is being shut by Disney Interactive.

We’re sure they’ll resurface with yet another racing game somewhere else but, for now, we mourn yet another UK dev team.  Even if we never really liked their games.  Rich

Peoww News

Call us cynical but something’s making us uneasy about Square Enix’s new undead-’em-up Dead Island.  The review embargo ends on the release date, retailers are already slashing the price of it for pre-orders and the one review to come out, courtesy of IGN, gives it an apologetic 8 out of 10 write-up whilst the entire site carries adverts for the game in the background.

Also, a quick bit of research on the devs, Quick Silver, reveals a less than stellar softography that includes Risen and the annoying-as-fuck Sacred 2.  Amusingly Quick Silver is the UK arm of parent company Koch Media.  Chortle! 

We’ll be reviewing the game soon and you can be sure we won’t be swayed by the pressures of Koch.  Rich

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Seasoned gamers will be no strangers to the effective high-street monopoly of Game and the like, those not living in a large town being subject to their extortionate prices for both new and pre-owned games. Case in point, Winchester where I work has an HMV, Game & Lacklustre Video.

Madden NFL 12 was released today, so it wouldn’t be entirely unreasonable to expect maybe a slight reduction in the cost of the 2011 edition. Definitely not the case. They had no new copies (natch), so pre-owned it was. £17.99. Given they probably paid the poor sap that traded it in about £7, that’s £11 clear profit into their coffers. The same £17.99 was the price last week, prior to the release of the sequel.

It’s currently no better when it comes to the FIFA series, FIFA 10 pre-owned is a fiver. Fair enough, but FIFA 11 is still £25 new in their stores, with pre-owned a only a little less. I’ll bet even money that it drops a lot when FIFA 12 comes out later this month.

The sales droid said “FIFA pre-owned drops quickly ’cause loads of people trade it in! We don’t get that many copies of Madden traded in, that’s why the price is high”. No, the price is high ’cause you’re money grabbing profiteering bastards.

Shopto are doing Madden 11 brand new for £14.86 so if a canny ebay bid doesn’t pan out, they have my business.

I’ll stick to Game for the (very) occasional pre-owned bargain, ta.  Ian

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Oh dear. After such lofty expectations, Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s spiritual Rez sequel tanked horribly at retail, garnering only 34,000 US sales in the first month.

Ubisoft have clearly cut their losses as from hereon in, CoE will be a bundled downloadable game packed in with Kinect in addition to Kinect Adventures. Except if you live in Japan, as somewhat oddly the game hasn’t been released there yet. Que?  Ian

Peoww News

As mentioned in our previous news story, Hogrocket’s first release is out today for iThings. It’s called Tiny Invaders and is available now on the App Store.

£2.49 ($3.99) may seem a little steep but that’s less than a pint or your sandwich at lunchtime (hold the onions!). 

Don’t procrastinate and hold off buying it until it shows up for free on Free App Hero or somesuch, small devs like Hogrocket need our support!  Ian

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Satoru Iwata has openly admitted that Wii didn’t reach the hardcore gamers that previously made up the core of Nintendo’s audience.

I quote Nintendo’s Iwata Asks news trumpet:

“…shortly after the Wii console was released, people in the gaming media and game enthusiasts started recognising the Wii console as a casual machine aimed toward families, and placed game consoles by Microsoft and Sony in a very similar light with each other, saying these are machines aimed towards those who passionately play games.

It was a categorisation between games that were aimed towards core, and casual. I’ve been having a sense of disagreement as I personally think the definition of a core gamer is much wider, namely, someone who has a much wider range of interests, someone who enthusiastically plays many types of games that challenge different creative directions.

On the other hand, I certainly do not think that Wii was able to cater to every gamer’s needs, so that’s also something I wanted to resolve.“

Speaking as a lapsed Nintendo enthusiast (NES, Gameboy, SNES, GB Pocket, N64, GB Color, GBA, Gamecube, DS, DS lite, Wii, DSi [gotta catch 'em all!]), I can certainly attest to Wii not really doing it for me. 

Flawed launch title Zelda: Twilight Princess didn’t help matters. The non-HD output and (officially at least) inability to connect to a VGA monitor didn’t either.  Maybe it was the lack of achievements. The Wii-mote and proliferation of controllers (balance board, classic controller, motionplus etc.) were contributory factors. It certainly wasn’t later games as I was back on Mario Galaxy at the weekend.  

Either way, if Wii-U can capture some of the delights that the Gamecube gave us, wanky controller or not, it’s to be applauded. Ian

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The Forza games have always struck us as being tedious finicky bullshit for people who know too much about cars but the new one, Forza 4, is pulling out all sorts of cunt’s tricks for those of you who like achievements and know what a carbureta does.

Aside from such hateful gems as ‘own the five most expensive cars in the game’ and ‘have the winning bid for a Unicorn car’ (both of which are apparently fucking next to impossible in the previous games) they’ve also added this particular gem…

Yep, that’s right.  It’s fucking begun.  Rich

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In welcome news, the All Formats UK Games Chart has a new game at the top. Not entirely unexpectedly, the first big game of the silly season, Deus Ex (3): Human Revolution is now top of the charts toppling the casual gaming leviathan that is Zumba Fitness. Thank the maker.

Hopefully this is the last we’ll see of this accursed game as we head into triple-A release territory. Although whether FIFA & Call of Duty really deserve that tag is a matter of debate. Expect our review of Deus Ex: HR in the not too distant future.  Ian

Peoww News

In what is already probably old news, Microsoft announced last week that the first two Skyrim DLC packs will be 360 exclusives for 30 days after release. Quite how this’ll have any bearing on multi-format owning gamers buying decision remains unclear.

30 days is hardly the year’s delay that PS3 owners were subjected to waiting for Mass Effect 2 now is it?

As long as it’s not bloody horse armour and has no gamerscore associated with it, great!  Ian

Peoww News

In an entry on their developer blog, the ex-Bizarre staffers that comprise micro-dev Hogrocket have announced that their first, as yet un-named, release is due to hit iThings on September 1st.

Rather than reflect the negative view held by one commenter on their blog, we hope that it’s good. By that we mean as addictive as honey roasted crack nuggets. If it’s even half as good as the Geometry Wars games were, it’ll be bloody amazing. 

Expect a  day one purchase and subsequent review. Ian