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GRAW 2 demo assaults XBL Gold members
Ever since we told you that the GRAW 2 demo would arrive on the Xbox Live Marketplace "possibly by the end of the month," we have been shivering with anticipation, hoping our conjecture might side with truthiness. With over 12 hours left, we're happy to tell you that you can now enjoy Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter -- but only if you're an Xbox Live Gold member. The Silver member version, presumably, will arrive in a little while.The 650 MB download may not make up for XBLA's vacation, but we do have Frank Black asking for us to give him danger, little stranger. Let us know what you think of the demo.[Thanks, Jonah Falcon and Stephen W.]
Tom Clancy infiltrates Euro PS3 launch
Ubisoft's latest release schedule sees the publisher readying five titles for the European PS3 launch, more than half of them labeled with the esteemed Tom Clancy name. The cherished children's author will see some of his more popular works come to life in Rainbow Six: Vegas (which sees the six Color Rangers fight the addictive nature of gambling), Splinter Cell: Double Agent and the latest entry in the Ghost Recon franchise. The last is said to feature vastly improved ghost capturing mechanics. The rest of Ubi's launch lineup is comprised of Blazing Angels and a game you've never even heard of, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. It seems all good things really do come to those who wait. [Lego Sam: Planet of the Geeks]
Best of the rest: Ludwig's picks
Sam & Max Episode 1 : Culture Shock (PC)I never thought I'd actually be grateful to LucasArts for assassinating their sequel to Sam & Max: Freelance Police. Now residing in the capable hands of Telltale Games, the series is setting the standard for episodic content and adventure gaming. Complete failure to laugh at Culture Shock's absolutely brilliant writing, memorable characters and off-the-wall puzzles indicates one of two things: either you're a robot, or you've recently discovered a dead kitten in your lap. (See also: My reviews of Culture Shock and Situation: Comedy.)
Best of the rest: Ross' picks
Lumines Live! (XBLA) On a big screen with surround sound, Q Entertainment's Lumines Live was easily the most-played game in my library (if you stretch the definition of library to digitally distributed titles). Although I railed against how microtransactions were implemented in this title and still think the extent to which they disclosed the dearth of features was misleading, both the Basic and Advanced Pack got more than enough play time, as did the multiplayer. It is the best Xbox Live Arcade title since Geometry Wars.
South Korea loosens game censorship
Game censorship is a big news item in the past few months. Political types of all walks of life enjoy trying to stifle the medium by passing laws that don't hold up in court in the US and even get through without much of a hitch in Europe. On the other side of the world, one nation is going the opposite direction. South Korea, which recently proposed an anti-gold farming bill, has pulled censorship on games depicting military action against their northern neighbor. Under the ban, any game that was negative toward North Korea was not permitted for sale in the South, citing they would only inflame the existing tension. However, wiser South Korean lawmakers finally realized video games have little impact on the real world, cut the rule and games like Ghost Recon 2 can now be sold. Lawmakers from the West take note; South Korea has the right idea. When they're sitting right next to an unstable tin-pot dictator and decide that games aren't going to cause a mass invasion, we should start reassessing this whole "games make people violent" kick. Our only hope is wiser people end up in leadership positions who actually try to solve problems instead of deflecting the responsibility on an unrelated party.
Xbox cited in trial of child-slaying father
Xbox is in the news this week, again linked to tragedy. During the opening hearing for Tyrone Spellman's murder trial we were reminded how Spellman beat his 17-month-old daughter Alayiah to death after she allegedly knocked his Xbox off of the shelf while he was playing Ghost Recon. "I thought it was broken. I popped her in the face," Spellman told police.Alayiah's death is one of several child slayings, at the hands of parents, recently profiled by the Philadelphia Inquirer in an effort to expose the Department of Human Services' failings. DHS workers had visited Alayiah's home twice during the month before she was murdered.[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]See also:'Xbox Killers' get death
Loco Roco leads BAFTA nominations
BAFTA's British Academy Video Games Awards, to be held on October 5th, has announced their nominations. There were two games with the most nominations: Loco Roco for the PSP and Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter for Xbox 360, both earning eight nominations each. The only other PSP-exclusive title to be nominated was Daxter. Read after the cut to see the categories these two games are competing in.
Molyneux - "Apple needs to get behind games"
Last week I carried out an interview with Peter Molyneux (the founder of Lionhead Studios which has games like Black & White, Fable and The Movies to its name) over at TUAW sister site Joystiq. I made sure to ask him a question or two about the state of Mac gaming because one, I *used* to be a relatively hardcore Mac gamer and two, Lionhead has a track record of bringing all of its games to the Mac. That isn't changing with Microsoft's recent acquisition of the company (haven't we heard all this before?!).The relevant part of the interview:"There's this Catch 22 situation where not many people play games on the Mac and therefore developers don't want to make games for the Mac. Exactly. I think it would need Apple to get behind games. There's nothing in their operating system that panders to games at all and I take my hats off to Microsoft. I think they've realized that games are important."Macworld's Peter Cohen suggested that Molyneux was referring to Apple's lack of a unified application programming interface that would make the jobs of game programmers much easier. I think this suggestion is spot on, but not the only thing that Molyneux was referring to. One passive improvement could include getting Apple to kick its recent integrated graphics habit (Molyneux called my MacBook "a perfect thing" in the interview - pity it can't play games). Sure, we'd all like an iTunes Games Store, a mid-range upgradeable Mac with a decent graphics card and an Apple that publishes games, but it ain't gonna happen while you-know-who is still around.Unless Apple gets off its arse and gives game developers more than the bare minimum of support, Mac gaming is going to disappear thanks to the rapid emergence of easy access to Windows games via Boot Camp or GPU virtualization (when it finally appears). Only then will we see articles on Apple.com about how awesome Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter looks on the Mac, instead of long features about how the GRAW music was composed using a PowerMac G5.
"I believe I can fly!" GRAW glitch
Nope, this ain't a "R. Kelly just spawned as an enemy combatant" kinda glitch, this is the kind of glitch that gets right on our tits*. Christie sent us this link to a YouTube video showing a glitch that affects gameplay whilst prone on night maps in Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter. Also having experienced this bug we tried to reason with Major Scott Mitchell, telling him it was physically impossible to attempt to fly from a prone position, but he kept trying anyway.On a more serious note, this is a pretty blatant bug that should easily have been spotted by the QA (quality assurance) guys. SRSLY? Did not one of the testers go prone on a night level?* From the dictionary of slang - get on one's tits: To annoy, to get on one's nerves. The 'tits' in the phrase are metaphorical hence the idiom is used by both sexes. E.g."GRAW's glitch really gets on my tits."[Thanks, Christie Arnold. Random photo courtesy of Glasgow Survival]
HDTV Game of the Week: Fight Night Round 3
This is a game I've been waiting for since the impressive demo Sony used to advertise their PS3 at E3 last year, and EA's Fight Night Round 3 has not failed to impress. Every bone cracking punch, every drop of sweat and blood, almost every boxer you could ever want to fight is ready in glistening 720p. If you were waiting for the "next generation" feeling to hit you, put your gloves on and find your mouthguard because it is here.
