VideoGamer.com
quotes Intel's Randy Stude, president of the
PC Gaming Alliance,
criticizing LucasArts over the lack of a PC edition of
Star Wars: Force
Unleashed, which LucasArts has said was based on the difficulty getting the
game to work on lower-end PC systems. The quotes, excerpted from a full
interview to be published later this week, call the decision to avoid the PC
"uneducated," and Stude also says LucasArts "hasn't made a good PC game in a
long time," not that
reviews for Force Unleashed are that stellar, either. Here's a bit more:
"They're not really creating product within LucasArts themselves. They're going
at it job shopping their IP. That may be a little controversial for me to say,
but that's what I see. There's no development team necessarily within LucasArts
any more, they've basically turned into an intellectual property machine and
supporting the PC, why should they? It really doesn't fit their property."
Thanks Sepharo and
Kotaku.
Ironclad talks about Sins of a Solar Empire Entrenchment on Big Download
talks with Craig Frazer about the "micro-expansion" for
Sins of a Solar
Empire, Ironclad's 4X strategy game. In discussing the add-on's $9.99 price
point, Craig reveals they have inadvertently priced the add-on as a bargain:
"Not really, we've kicked ourselves a bit. At this point in development we've
realized the price is too low, but the bar is now set for the other two
expansions. Our team got overly excited, feature-creep sunk in, and we went over
budget in terms of content and features. I suppose from the gamers' point of
view it's a good thing, but [we] are going to try and pace ourselves a little better
next time around!"
WhatIfGaming has a post about the controls in the PC edition of
Dead
Space, after playing around with a prerelease edition of the sci-fi horror
game. They take strong issue with the controls, saying "The smoothness compared
to consoles is just not there, and from what we can tell it doesn’t seem like a
patch can fix most of the issues. Inventory stack access becomes frustrating
when fighting with monsters and aiming for on-the-fly changes." They contacted
EA and got the following explanation: "Dead Space for PC is an equivalent
experience to that on consoles. The controls are different and customizable, but
we feel it’s in the best ability for the players to match what the console
experience is like." Reviews of the PC edition are not yet appearing, it will be
interesting to see whether this is considered an issue for others.
The
StarCraft II Brain Trust Interview on Giantbomb.com talks with producer
Chris Sigaty, lead designer Dustin Browder, and PR rep Bob Colayco about
Blizzard's coming RTS sequel. They discuss complaints about the decision to
split
StarCraft II into three different SKUs (
story),
which they feel is based on "confusion" that they anticipated, sort of, as
Browder says: "We definitely went with this choice and knew that there was going
to be some confusion among the fans. But there was a little more confusion than
I thought there [would be]. We had Rob Pardo get up there and do his
presentation and really try to show the fans exactly what we're trying to
accomplish. But I think a lot of guys on the Internet just saw the headline and
just assumed that this meant "Oh my God, I have to buy three different boxes and
they're probably all going to ship at the same time, and they're just trying to
milk me for money." And that's just not the case. These things are going to be a
trilogy; it's chapters of a story. They're going to be months or years apart as
we work on them--obviously, closer to months, we hope. [laughs]" Avoiding
further confusion, Bob Colayco quickly adds: "Minimum, a year between each."
This barebones Mod DB
page offers downloads of the
Mistake -1, a horror-themed modification
for
Half-Life that's a prequel to
Mistake. Details are
surprisingly scant, but there's a write-up on
Planet
Half-Life that's pretty informative. Thanks
Ant.
Well, I'm back on the NFL horse, so to speak, with the Giants game today. I'll
admit that after being thumped by the Browns last Sunday, I could not bring
myself to watch a single sportscast all week. Just call me the jewel of denial.
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