San Francisco didn’t riot hard enough to burn this city to the ground yet, so I’ve lived to see another Friday and thus another iteration of your favorite column, Missing Pieces, where we wrap up the week’s gaming news.
This week Mike Tyson fights himself, fake-Morgan Freeman and fake-Arnold Schwarzenegger play Assassin’s Creed: Unity, and James Cameron poo-poos the Oculus Rift.
Naysaying
For a guy who singlehandedly tried to force us all to wear 3D glasses at the movie theater, James Cameron’s “meh” opinion of the Oculus Rift is a bit ironic. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Cameron this week said, “There seems to be a lot of excitement around something that, to me, is a yawn, frankly.”
Funny, that’s exactly how I felt about Avatar.
See you at the party, Richter
What does the French Revolution have in common with David Attenborough, Alan Carr, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Morgan Freeman?
Trick question. The answer is absolutely nothing. Regardless, you can watch this fake Let’s Play video from Ubisoft where celebrity impressionists mimic the famous stars over top of a four-player co-op mission in Assassin’s Creed: Unity. It’s just as dumb as it sounds.
In other Assassin’s Creed news, if you want to look like a psychopath and just aren’t satisfied with the usual hockey mask/machete combo, Ubisoft now sells a replica of the stabby-wrist-gauntlet thing from Assassin’s Creed: Unity (known in more uptight circles as the “Phantom Blade”).
A world of choices
Dragon Age is a series about choices, but oddly enough the upcoming Dragon Age: Inquisition doesn’t let you import previous save games to access those choices. Instead, you’ll have to go through a separate app known as The Keep in order to spoof your actions in the previous games. With The Keep you’ll toggle 300 different decisions to create “your” save game. Do you even remember most of them? Because I certainly don’t.
It’s a bit of a mess, honestly, though great if you switched platforms in the intervening years or had a hard drive crash.
Less evil
The Evil Within gets a patch on PC this week to enable a 60 (rather than 30) frames-per-second cap and allow you to disable the “cinematic” black bars without needing a console command, thus removing two of the most egregious features from the port.
“Surprise! Prey 2 is canceled!”
Bethesda officially confirmed to CNET that the Human Head version of Prey 2, sequel to 2006’s alien invasion game Prey, is canceled.
If you’re experiencing déjà vu right now, it’s probably because Kotaku uncovered this fact over a year ago, discovering in the process that Bethesda subsidiary Arkane is working on a different version of Prey 2 now.
Call of Dewty
Another year, another live-action, bro-heavy, Dew-and-Dorito fueled Call of Duty trailer:
No buyer’s remorse
EA’s next “On the House” game is out, and it’s 1995’s Crusader: No Remorse. You’re a merc gone rogue, and the only way to solve your problems is murder. Lots and lots of isometric murder. There’s no telling when the promotion will end, so best break out that Origin account today if you want a copy.
Forced hands
EA announced this week that Star Wars: Battlefront will launch in holiday 2015, a mere decade after the last Battlefront game. And there was much weeping in the streets and rejoicing, and people knelt to kiss EA and Disney’s feet for bringing this blessing unto the world.
Oh wait, actually people just got annoyed because EA confirmed it would be a first-person shooter instead of the third-person/first-person hybrid of previous games. And mad about potential DLC plans. And mad because Battlefield Hardline‘s new trailer still looks like garbage. And mad that Battlefield 5 won’t launch until 2016.
I guess what I’m saying is that people are mad. Especially when it comes to EA.
The proverbial third time
Dennis Dyack, whom you might know from one of the best horror games of all time (Eternal Darkness) but instead probably know because he sued Epic, has started a new company called Quantum Entanglement Entertainment (via IGN).
This is the second company Dyack has been a part of after the implosion of former studio Silicon Knights, due in large part to Dyack’s controversial reputation and a host of failed crowd-funding campaigns. His new studio will revisit the project Dyack was trying to crowd-fund last year—a spiritual successor to Eternal Darkness. Whether he’ll be successful this time…well, we’ll see.
Mike Tyson v. Mike Tyson
Jimmy Fallon had Mike Tyson on the show this week and persuaded the aging boxer to literally fight himself, using a copy of the NES classic Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out. Spoiler: Mike Tyson gets knocked out.
More reading
- The Steam Halloween Sale is running this weekend, so don’t miss some great deals on spooky (and not-so-spooky) games.
- YouTube finally added support for 60 frames-per-second video this week, which is a huge boon for Let’s Players and other video game footage.
- Microsoft, no doubt realizing that this holiday season might be the last chance to turn around the Xbox One’s sales narrative, discounted the system to $350.
- MSI fit a full mechanical keyboard into its new laptop.
- GOG.com started a partnership with Disney and LucasArts, and it started by bringing classics X-Wing and Tie Fighter to digital retail for the first time ever.
- Telltale swears winter is on-schedule this year—its Game of Thrones adventure game is expected to launch by the end of 2014 .
- I finally got to review the long-awaited sequel to one of my favorite franchises, with Dreamfall: Chapters. It was worth the wait.
- And following on all of our graphics card and rig-building discussion this week, we rounded up ten graphically punishing games to sweat-test your new rig.