July Gaming News Wrap-up

The Midaged Gamer Monthly wrap-up for August  2013

The fireworks have come and gone and the heat of summer came on full force in the northern hemisphere.  So what happened in the gaming world?

Comic Con 2013 in San Diego brought more next gen console news, Steam's Summer sale was just as epic as ever and EA apparently thinks gamers are more interested in social networking about their games than actually playing them.

Before we get too deeply into the month that's passed, however, let's take a look at this week's news.

A few weeks back I went through my old PC game boxes and after looking at them spread all over the family room floor, decided I should do something other than just shove them back in the closet.  The resulting project turned into a video series called Gaming History by Game Box during which I held up two boxes from Lucasarts.

They were Star Wars: Battlefront and Battlefront 2 and at the time I described them  as being basically Battlefield 1942 set in the Star Wars universe.  So guess what, now that EA's been chosen by Disney, (who acquired Lucasarts) to develop the game properties it seems Battlefront will be coming back and developed by of course, Dice. 

All we know at this point is the game is due out in 2015 and development has just begun.  It's not a stretch to think that it will likely be powered by Dice's  Frostbite 3 engine which will be a bit long in the tooth by then.  Since Star Wars games rarely use the latest development platforms and are developed primarily for consoles, it's a good bet the new Battlefront (or Battlefront 3) will be no different.

Seems retro is a theme so far, so I'm going to go with it...

I've been waxing nostalgic lately.  So much so that I dragged out my old Atari 8-bit computers and did some Retro gaming.  Pac-Man, Zazzon and Castle Wolfenstein set fire to my Plasma TV screen and made it's speakers sound like a misbehaving R2 unit on Tatooine. 

Back in the day being a gamer took a bit of imagination and a lot of patience.  As I listened to the galloping beeps of a 90K floppy disk topping off all of the 48K of memory in my Atari 800 I was taken back to my teenage years. 

Back then, games came in boxes.  Digital delivery meant loading up a cassette or floppy and hoping for the "right" noises to come through your TV speakers.  Almost without fail, the box art was always cooler than the actual game.  I actually knew people that would throw away the games and frame the boxes.

Why this trip down memory lane?  Because of an updated version of one of the oldest FPS games predating even the first Unreal engine.  It's Rise of the Triad and now it's been re-released almost two decades after it  picked up where Wolfenstein 3D left off. 

Lots of people went to a lot of trouble to make this "reboot" of the classic title look better while staying true to the original.  From the gameplay videos and screenshots it appears they succeeded.  Well, at least partially.  The game definitely looks better but if we're honest it's on par with Unreal Tournament 3 at best.  In other words, the box art is better than the game. 

Still, if you're the type who wishes their favorite old game could get a more modern upgrade then Rise of the Triad may be worth a look.  Especially when it's only $14.99 on Steam right now. 

EA is still droning on about all the wonderful social networking features of upcoming Battlelog 2.0.  This week they were tweeting  about how you could compare your stats to others based on your geographic location.  Wow, isn't that great.  With all of EA's online "services"(battlelog, autolog) you'd think they could figure out a way to find your friends online without going through the gauntlet of their DRM and authentication BS.  That goes double when those friends happen to be in the same room!  Let's not even get into the requirement for most EA games to be online for single player!

Bah!

On to last month's news...

Microsoft had a big reorganization that ended up doing little more than annoying their employees.  Windows updates don't come from the Windows division anymore and Phones have been thrown in with keyboards and Xbox's. 

Anyway...

Julie Larson-Green took over the reins of the Xbox.  If the name's familiar it's because she occupied one of two spots created after the end of Steven Sinofsky's rule over the former Windows division. 

She oversees the new Devices and Studios Engineering group that includes the Xbox and anything else with a button and a Microsoft logo. 

By the way, if you hate Windows 8 and the Office Ribbon you can send your hate emails to her.  She was in charge of both of them.

Comic Con San Diego was interesting this year and both Sony and Microsoft were there with their next gen consoles...

San Diego Comic Con happened and while it's no E3 the lines definitely blur between gaming and fantasy.showing off games like "Dead Rising 3" for the Xbox 1 and "Octodad: Dadliest Catch" for the PS4 not to mention Batman: Arkham Origins for PC and current gen consoles.

  Considering most of the most popular movies and television shows in the past decade have been based on comics it's no surprise that the event's become a barometer of pop culture.  Games fit perfectly into the medium and any game publisher or console maker would be remiss to ignore the event.  Microsoft and Sony have gotten the message and showed up with their next generation consoles

If you're into Cosplay and gaming you may want to think about attending next time around.

The big Summer Steam sale has come and gone but it left behind a lot of smiles...

The Summer Sale began on July 11th almost to the day it started last year.  This year's edition featured many of the same opportunities including daily, hourly and flash sales.  Voting made a return as well with related discounts generally in the 70% or better range.  . 

Also returning to this year's event was the occasional "503" error on launching Steam when rabid gamers got a little overexcited.  If it happened to you just think of it as delayed gratification.

New this year were the trading cards (badges) which are tied to (discounted) game purchases, random "drops" based on ownership, crafting of new "badges" and of course voting. 

Borderlands 2 was on sale along with most of the DLC (as of 7-12).  Grid 2, Bioshock Infinite and all your favorites were either on sale or soon would be.  Most were discounted 50% or more by the end.

The sale ended July 22nd.  If you want a hint as to when it starts next year keep an eye out for the Killing Floor Summer Sideshow Event.  It usually starts a week before the Summer sale.

That's it for this week's news and last month's as well.