Company of Heroes 2 First Trailer

The first trailer for Company of Heroes 2 has been released today, after taking away 7 awards at E3, including Best PC Game from G4 X-Play and Machinima, and being nominated for 18 more.

Watch Dogs ARG starting?

At E3 this year, Ubisoft showed off a new IP from out of nowhere. This game had everyone talking, and was arguably the biggest announcement to come out of E3. This game was, of course, Watch Dogs. In case you haven't seen it, here's one of the variations on the gameplay video shown:

Mass Effect 3 DLC Details leaked

About a day ago, Bioware released the much anticipated Extended Cut DLC for Mass Effect 3, in an attempt to make up for the original disappointing endings. However, it has been discovered that hidden away in this DLC was files related to an upcoming DLC pack, including a partial script. Spoilers follow.

Are Video Games a Suitable Medium for War Stories?

Note: This article contains spoilers for Red Dead Redemption and Gallipoli. But if you haven’t finished RDR or seen Gallipoli- REALLY!? Also, it’s talking mostly in regards to FPSes, as they are the most common genre for war games. I don’t play many FPSes, so if there’s anything factually wrong, feel free to tell me, I’d love to discuss this more.

I was watching the Gamespot Australia live stream on Tuesday, and there was a discussion there that really interested me, to the point where I’m actually writing something about it! This discussion was about war and video games, and whether video games really do war ‘justice’. I, myself, don’t play many shooters because I see them as pointless. It’s just mindless killing, with no real goal, no sense of co-ordination of teamwork, nothing. Just killing and more killing for a whole round. And that’s basically what war games are now that they’re focused on the multiplayer aspects rather than creating a singleplayer experience. The games (for the most part) present kills as a good thing you should be striving towards, for which you are rewarded with points, killstreaks or what have you. There’s a clear divide between good and evil. The other team, or the antagonists in the storyline are the enemy. In the case of multiplayer opponents, they have no reason they’re fighting other than it’s fun and they want to win. In the case of singleplayer antagonists, they’re hardly ever well thought out characters, they’re just plain evil, and you need to stop them. And the enemies you kill along the way are just characterless polygons who you have to kill to progress. Everyone in war is a living, breathing human being, enemy or ally.

E3 Conference Wrap-Up

So, the E3 presentations have come and gone, and I think we can all agree it was a pretty damn mediocre show. Not good, not bad, just plain mediocre. No-one really blew us away, in fact some managed to fail to even keep us content. It was easily one of the most disappointing E3's ever. For my live thoughts of what happened during the conferences (except EA's which I accidentaly slept through :3 ) check out this post.

Randomised Tweets

So someone showed me this site, which basically splices up your tweets and reassembles them in often legible, always hilarious ways. I gave it a try, and here's some of the ones I got. It's tempting to use purely these randomised tweets to sum up my thoughts of E3 XD

E3 Live Blog

Even though it requires me to pull an all nighter (Aussie time zone) I'm gonna try to watch as many of the E3 conferences as I can this year. I'll be posting what's happening and my thoughts as the night goes on, so be sure to keep checking back! :D

Nintendo Direct- Nintendo has grown up

Create something unique. It's the words Nintendo lives by, and it's why I like them so much. They don't concern themselves with what will sell as much as other companies do. They don't find something that works and stick to it. They're always searching for a way to bring a unique experience to gamers. Of course, it doesn't always work out, but when they do something wrong I feel like they genuinely thought it would be beneficial to us. Out of the Big 3, they're the company that looks out for gamers and tries to make them happy, rather than look out for themselves. They've even looking through people's reactions to the conference to see what the consensus is. And before E3 has even started, their Nintendo Direct conference has shown us just how much they've grown.