Lindsay Lohan’s back with a 67-page complaint against Grand Theft Auto V, NBA 2K15 opened the Ark of the Covenant and everyone’s face is melting, and people overthrew Ubisoft’s Bastille to free the 60 frames per second prisoners kept inside—this is gaming news for the week of October 6.
You matter
Hey there, PC games enthusiast—Xbox head Phil Spencer has some words for you, and those words are that you are “incredibly important” to Microsoft. Again. For the third time.
Oh wait, what’s that big Microsoft game coming out on the PC this fall? None of them? Wow Microsoft, it’s like I leaned on you for support and you slipped a knife between my ribs while I wasn’t looking. At least it’s a really pretty knife because it’s running on DirectX 12 and Windows 10.
A disturbance in the force
I really, really don’t care about BioWare’s Star Wars: The Old Republic. And I don’t want to care. Most days I don’t even remember the game exists, and that’s absolutely fine with me—I’m not a huge fan of MMOs.
BioWare announced this week though that the latest expansion, coming December 9, will revisit Knights of the Old Republic character Darth Revan and…well, damn. Now I might have to start caring about The Old Republic.
Framed
People are really angry about framerates this week! The Evil Within, the latest game from Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami, is capped at 30 frames per second, even though both the minimum and recommended PC specs are absurdly high. Also, the game is letterboxed. However, Bethesda claims you can force a higher resolution and framerate through the console. We’ll know more when we get our hands on review codes, but right now I don’t anticipate that happening prior to Tuesday’s launch so… if you preordered, you’re on your own.
And people are even angrier about Assassin’s Creed: Unity after one of the designers told Videogamer.com that the game will run at 900p, 30 frames per second across both the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 to “avoid debates.” Like, people are furious. PlayStation users are out there yelling about how their version of the game has been purposefully hobbled to work on that feeble Xbox One hardware.
I guess PlayStation 4 owners now understand how it feels to be a PC gamer every day that consoles still exist.
Alph-again
Four-versus-one monster hunter Evolve is back for a second round of alpha testing, this one kicking off at the end of October. To get in, go here and enter in this code when prompted: 71687-90535-46031. Just like the previous round only a portion of applicants will get in, so good luck.
Will hype for images
Telltale released a teaser for that Game of Thrones adventure game it’s making. Are you a person who gets easily excited by quotes on a smoky-black background? Because if so, this picture is going to get you so hyped:
Frivolity
Your weekly legal update: Activision claims that former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega’s lawsuit against Call of Duty: Black Ops II is “frivolous” and that “If successful, this case would obliterate the entire genre of historical fiction.”
Meanwhile, Lindsay Lohan’s similar likeness lawsuit against Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V was bumped this week from a 10-page brief to a Moby Dick- style 67-page coffee table book of a complaint.
Less frivolous
We also got a new rash of delays this week. Ubisoft’s racer The Crew has been pushed back from mid-November to December 2, while Hotline Miami 2 will come out either late this year or early 2015 (moved from its original September 2014 release date).
Irrational alumni
Two separate groups of ex-BioShock developers took to Kickstarter this week.
One group is making an “eerie, surrealistic first-person game experience” called The Black Glove. The description reads, “Welcome to The Equinox, an eerie 1920s theatre that appears unstuck from conventional reality. A venue pervaded by weird dream logic, inexplicable holes in space, unshielded x-ray art installations, and tasteful use of crushed velvet.” Trailer below.
The other group is making “a rogue-lite river journey through the backwaters of a forgotten post-societal America” a.k.a. a survival game.
I guess now would not be a good time to mention that funding for Kickstarter games has dropped over 50% this year, eh?
I’m a monster
2K Sports executive Greg Thomas said in a statement this week, “We’ve surpassed our own goals to move this franchise in new directions by pushing the boundaries of both hardware and software technologies to create a game that will change what fans can expect from sports simulations.”
Key to changing what fans expect? The face-scan technology. With the Xbox One’s Kinect or PlayStation 4 camera, players can scan their own faces into the game and make themselves into a player! And it might work! Or you might end up looking like one of these nightmares:
It’s safe to say this is now my favorite game feature of all time.
More reading
So we talked a lot about Myst and it’s spiritual successor Obduction this week. Here’s an exclusive preview of Obduction, a Q&A with Cyan studio head and Myst co-creator Rand Miller, and a tour of Cyan’s office in Spokane, WA (including the fabled “Myst Vault”). Plus, there’s a Myst TV show in the works.
EA’s giving away Dragon Age: Origins for free until October 14, Microsoft’s Project Spark game creation tool is officially a full release, the Xbox One is getting Plex support, and modders hacked together unofficial VR support for Alien: Isolation from Sega’s demo code.
And as the fall review season continues, I checked out stealth game Styx: Master of Shadows and Crytek’s beauty-is-only-skin-deep action game Ryse: Son of Rome.
I’m at Indiecade in Los Angeles all weekend so if you’re in the area come out and say hi—Indiecade is open to the public, and there should be a great collection of game on-hand. We’ll most likely have photos of the event and previews of some of the games I saw there early next week, if you can’t make it out.