I want a robot. I want one to do the dishes, clean the bathroom, and fold my laundry, but consumer level robots are a way off from being able to do this kind of stuff. On the bright side, there are consumer level robots! You can even buy this one!
This is the DARwIn-OP by Robotis. Little bit of bad news though, this little guy will set you back about 12 grand. Even worse, he's currently sold out. Anyway, he can do some cool stuff (for a robot) and I've got a couple of short clips beneath the jump of him in action.
So the Wall Street Journal decided to, for some reason, break embargo and release info on Activision/Blizzard's new plan to wring even more money out of the Call of Duty series. Of course, as we have come to expect from Acti/Blizz, it sounds like a terrible, money grubbing idea.
Penny-Arcade is spot on.
What they have done is taken the FREE Halo stat tracking offered at Bungie.net and combined it with the FREE community and social features of Valve's Steam Community. The service, dubbed Call of Duty Elite, will also feature some sort of video capturing/uploading service. A service similar to one just implemented into Valve game, Team Fortress 2... for FREE.
Bungie and Valve created and offered these services for FREE as a way to extend the value of their products. Activision/Blizzard recreated these services for use with their own game and wants you to pay for it. This service appears to offer very little in addition to these once FREE services. They are, however, bundling in access to Map Packs with the subscription. Map Packs, for the record, USED TO BE FUCKING FREE!!!
Anyway, there's also a video detailing (selling) the service on youtube. Here it is:
Activision/Blizzard: "Taking what used to be free, and making you to pay for it!" ™
The video I had originally posted mysteriously disappeared. The replacement I found is an extended version of the original video and does not feature developer commentary. This actually ends up giving a better idea of what the game will be like.
I've had my eye on this game for a while now (like since 2007), and we are finally getting to see how this game will actually play. Let me just say it still looks quite intriguing, but might not be exactly what everyone was expecting. Dead Island is an open world zombie game, based on a tropical island, and focusing on melee combat. This much we already knew. The gameplay footage below goes into more detail.
They are focusing a lot on melee combat, but their reasoning for it annoys me. They're all like "Oh we don't want to have too many guns or too much ammo because this is an island resort and they wouldn't have very much firepower lying around... it wouldn't be realistic!" But then they are like "Also, we have electric machetes and throwing knives with C4 attached them that explode on impact." ... wtf. Is this game supposed to be realistic or wacky?
So my one main complaint about this game at this point is it can't quite seem to decide what kind of game it wants to be. Even the trailers are sending mixed messages. The recent CGI re-announcement trailer focused on characters and drama. As one would expect, this lead many to speculate that Dead Island was going to be extremely story driven and character focused. Now they come out with some gameplay footage and it looks to be your more standard action RPG style game. Sure there are characters and a story, but the focus seems to be on slicing off the heads of zombies and slowly becoming better at it over time.
Which is fine by me. Action RPGs are one of my favorite genres, and this is what the game appears to be shaping into. Despite all this contradicting itself making the game feel all over the place it still sounds pretty good to me, which is surprising, because with every new zombie movie, zombie video game, and zombie TV show released, I keep expecting to not give a shit about zombies anymore.
If it hasn't already been hard enough to not give Steam your money with their regular offerings of price slashed games, Valve has come up with a new idea: Daily Deals!!! Every day Steam will be offering up a new deeply discounted game. The deal appears to change around 1PM EST each day. For some reason they decided to kick off this newfangled deal with a decidedly lackluster title (according to the internet) Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising. But still, it's 75% off! Only five bucks!
I assume some more sought after games will be offered up as a daily deal at some point. Or maybe they will use this as a way to help move lesser titles. Either way I'll be keeping my eyes peeled for some good deals.
And, in case you don't already know what it is, SpyParty is a two player game where you either play as a Spy at a party attempting to achieve some espionage style objective, or as a Sniper trying to figure out which one of the many characters on screen is the Spy, and snipe them.
Yes it is. Very much like Minecraft actually. Except in two dimensions.
Despite, on the surface, seeming a lot like a 2D ripoff of Minecraft, it does have it's charm. This could be due to it's Super Nintendo style graphics and, from the looks of it, 16-bit era gameplay. But it could also be the wealth of content it already appears to have... before it's even released! And it's only been in development for about four months! It has jetpacks, flying eyeball monsters, guns, and throw-able bombs! Minecraft doesn't have any of that.
Terraria is "coming soon!" I am assuming for PC. Wait. I found it. It's definitely for the PC. Maybe eventually Xbox and/or iPhone. So they say.
Capsized is out. I am sorry to say that I was misled and, in turn, misled you. Capsized, while looking like it could have been a game similar to Metroid/Castlevaina/Shadow Complex, is missing core gameplay features that keep it from being that sort of game. You do not explore one huge map, slowly gaining abilities that eventually let you unlock the entire thing. It's just a bunch of levels that you play though.
That being said, I haven't played more than a few levels. The experience wasn't bad but definitely wasn't what I was expecting, so I'm going to put this game on the back burner for just a little bit before I give it another go.
