Friday, October 19, 2012

The Midaged Gamer Report for 10-19-2012


This week...

Money from EA!, Release information for BF3 Aftermath DLC, ID shoots squarely at its own foot, again Valve's privates are showing and more!

I got an interesting email the other day...

Apparently I've got a whole $1.95 coming to me.  Why?  Because EA's trying to pull a Microsoft in sports games...

From the notice...

The lawsuit claims that Electronic Arts violated federal and California antitrust laws, as well as California consumer protection laws, by signing exclusive licensing agreements with the Arena Football League (“AFL”), the Collegiate Licensing Company (“CLC”) (on behalf of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (“NCAA”)), the National Football League (“NFL”), the National Football League Players Association (“NFLPA”) and ESPN. The lawsuit claims that these agreements gave Electronic Arts a monopoly over an alleged market for league-branded, simulation football videogames, and allowed it to charge higher prices than it would have in a competitive environment
MADDEN NFL, NCAA FOOTBALL, OR ARENA FOOTBALL VIDEOGAME FOR XBOX, XBOX 360, PLAYSTATION 2, PLAYSTATION 3, GAMECUBE, PC, OR WII, WITH A RELEASE DATE OF JANUARY 1, 2005 TO JUNE 21, 2012

Get your dime store satisfaction now!


Nvidia released a new notebook video driver for their discrete GPU's.
A new laptop video driver update from Nvidia version 306.97 for notebook pc's came out this week.  This driver is said to be the best option for Windows 8 compatibility and offers updated Profiles for 3D Vision but no major enhancements over the previous notebook driver release.  AKA, not critical unless your 3D specs are getting dusty...


Battlefield 3 Aftermath release announced.

The newest expansion pack set in a post earthquake Iran appears to be set in the same post-Earthquake Iran seen in the cooperative missions.  The DLC pack introduces a new play mode called Scavenger that starts the player out with just a knife, sidearm and grenade.  All other equipment has to be found on the map. 
Aftermath is due out November 27th  for PS3 (premium subscription) and December 4th for PC and XBOX360 (Premium)  Everyone else has to wait till December 4th (PS3 ) and December 18th (XBOX360, PC).   Just in time for Christmas at only $14.99.  Now the question is whether or not non-premium customers with the new DLC will be able to find a server.


If you're an Xbox360 gamer and were looking forward to scratching your Space Marine itch with Doom 3 BFG until Doom 4 comes out don't expect much.  In fact, expect less.  In a release Thursday Bethesda, Id's parent, said that there was no performance advantage to installing BFG to the XBOX360 hard drive and in fact would disable play for the classic Doom and Doom 2. 

When is ID going to stop shooting itself in the foot?


And in the dumbest move of the week department...

 Team Fortress 2 will now punish you for abandoning a game in the cooperative Mann Vs. Machine mode.  Players who repeatedly rage quit risk being put in a low priority queue.  Considering the average 10 minute wait for a game and poor matchmaking  on what seems to be scores of empty servers this is a dumb move.  Let alone the regular game crashes and lockups that effectively knock you out of the game.  Does a crash count as a quit? 

Way to overreact Valve, you're making Team Fortress 2 and it's players write the proverbial check they can't cash.


Like Burnout Paradise and the latest Need For Speed racers?   Well Criterion has said that another Burnout game is in the offing  "at a later date".  Criterion has done a good job capturing the gameplay and spirit of the classic NFS titles Hot Pursuit, and Most Wanted in their remakes but there's a reason Burnout has  always come up a bit short.  One word or rather acronym, DLC...

Burnout Paradise was a great game that got ruined with endless DLC.  It wasn't enough to pay triple A prices only to find out that half the game assets were only available via DLC.  Burnout was one of the few arcade drivers that could have given NFS a run for its money or at the least been another NFS for EA.   if only it wasn't so hobbled by an overly aggressive profit motive. 

With DLC and subscriptions the norm these days expect the next Burnout to follow suit.  Gaming pay per view has come to pass and Burnout was made for it.


Steams's got leaks!

A security research firm has found vulnerabilities in the Steam browser protocol used in the Steam Client that could allow "3rd party silent Steam browser protocol calls."  They've also found vulnerabilities in the Unreal and Source engines but have not yet documented any known exploits.

Ok, whatever.


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