Just a warning never to buy anything that looks like it's been opened and resealed. I've heard of gamestore employees popping boxes of Q3 open for the CD-key, then resealing it and putting it back on the shelf. I guess this warning is especially applicable to stores with lenient return policies...

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but isn't part of a company's job to provide support for a game after its release? And wouldn't any prudent publisher want to make sure their titles are supported by the company that developed them?

Ah, christ. This sucks for these guys, but I can't say I'm really surprised by anything that happens in the game business anymore. Take 2 can kiss my ass; would anyone really want to buy a game if they didn't think that it would be patched properly?

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I love it when IGN writers condescend to me. "Oh, here, I'm going to throw out a word: distaff. You probably don't know what that means, so I'll say it again. Still don't get it? Here, I'll give you the definition! And now I'll put a visual confirmation of that definition in the screenshots section!"

Christ. I know what distaff means; it's not something obscure like naprapathy or abraxas or anything like that. I'll take a little condescension if I'm reading a Nabokov interview, or an essay by David Foster Wallace, but if you're on IGN, I think it'd be wise to either throw a word out and expect the audience to look it up, or just say "You can play as a woman."

English major rant over. And yeah, I realize that part is like four months old.

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True enough; my mistake. I suppose I assumed that they were doing Wolf because it was on the Achtung Wolfenstein. (Of course, if they were publishing Wolf, they probably wouldn't have had a CD packed in with Maxim featuring "The Girls of Wolfenstein". How I wish that weren't the truth.)

Definitely right about the point of him simply selling the rights - god knows every other publisher seems to take an Ariel-like glee in leading developers along and then snatching the feast away at the last second. Sierra comes to mind...

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"My give up! MY GIVE UP!"

www.matthewrorie.com

testing.

<a href="http://www.matthewrorie.com">www.matthewrorie.com</a>

I think it's a pretty justifiable view on his part; certainly not something to mock him for. Wolfenstein doesn't look like it's going to be holding back on the vicarious violence, but no one's going to criticize Infogrames for letting people kill Nazis. Max Payne was also pretty violent, but you'll notice the streets were suspiciously empty of civilians and law enforcement officers, even though the "massive" snowstorm petered out once there was three inches of snow on the ground.

And you'll note he said that Duke Nukem Forever, not Duke Nukem 3D. Some of the screenshots I've seen have shown regular cops, not noticeably alien or anything like that. Maybe they'll be evil cops in the game, but any mom walking by a software store and seeing screenshots of cops getting killed isn't going to know that. So whatever the guy's reasons for selling the publishing rights, whether he found something morally objectionable or just didn't want to have his company dragged into a controversy, who cares. It's going to come out anyway.

I'm no bleeding heart, but I sure wouldn't want to publish anything from a company that pretty much relies on controversy as free advertising (*cough* Shadow Warrior was racist *cough*). Seems a particularly whorish thing to do. But what do I know; I'm sure not going to buy DNF.

Clarification: I'm not going to not buy DNF because there may or may not be cop-killing in it; I don't think that's an automatically unjustifiable element in a game. (God knows I had a blast with GTA3.) I'm not going to buy it because I find 3DR's business practices fairly "asstastic", to use the appellation of another poster. What with all the copyrighting of lines first used in Army of Darkness, on top of releasing screenshots where Duke's hand is replaced with a chainsaw (in an effort to piss people off?), while saying they won't let people use screenshots to make Internet guides and walkthroughs with, I think 3DR is about the least likable games developer of all time at this point; The Darth Vader of electronic entertainment. Flame away.

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www.stratosgroup.com
This comment was edited on Nov 12, 00:31.

Blue lives...again.

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www.stratosgroup.com

When is this game ever going to come out? Are they even in beta yet? Wasn't this originally supposed to come out contemporaneously with StarLancer? Doesn't sound like it's going to be all that soon. Still, I'll wait with baited breath; need another good space shooter. Nice poly counts on the ships, too, should be interesting.

Salon.com has really gone to the shit since the internet troubles began. So, rampant conjecturing is a replacement for journalism these days? I doubt most gamers would know where to buy cold medicine, much less pot.

It's a good thing they've decided to use a decent influence; there are too many indecent games out there today.

Too bad there weren't more Descent clones; that was a fun ass game. Forsaken was alright, but it was pretty much just mindless blasting away. Pretty, though.

"And plus, our publisher can now come up with an edgy "I'm gonna get Medieval On Yo Ass!" advertising strategy!"

Admit it, this slogan getting tied to this game is about as inevitable as Blue showing up for work tomorrow. Which is to say, completely inevitable.

I think the problem is that the reviews simply aren't all that interesting to read. You need to use compound sentences, dude. Try taking two sentences and throwing a comma and a conjunction in there. I'm not trying to be patronizing or anything, but I think most people enjoy sentences that are longer than five or six words; if you're going to rattle off short sentences about what you like and dislike about a game, it might be best to use a pro and con format, with bulleted lists, and go into more detail in the paragraphs.

I hope you don't think I'm being insulting. It's just that I've written a few reviews myself, and I think getting constructive criticism from an objective source can help a lot. And if you really want to take it to the next level, you'll need to get some kind of punctuation and usage guide, like a Writer's Reference by Diana Hacker.

I'm not above pimping myself, so I'll throw out a recent review I did, that I think is somewhat good.

http://www.stratosgroup.com/reviews/games/devilmaycry/

You're obviously focusing on a specific aspect of games, their morality, which I think is admirable, but I think making it more readable all-around will attract more visitors to your site. Again, I hope you don't think I'm sitting on a high horse, but being an English major and all, I really can't help but use my little red marker.

the World Series? I'm sorry, but...HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! That was the best ending to a sporting event since...since...since the Bears scored 14 points in 30 seconds to send the game to overtime and then won it after an interception was returned for a TD. And that was only a few hours before the baseball game. A good week for sports.

I wonder how many articles that looked halfway interesting I've passed up because the NYTimes website requires registration. It seems like such a hassle.

No, he was right, it does suck, though I'm sure there's a tacit "FHM is better" argument somewhere in there. There are plenty of "humorous and well-written" magazines that don't involve rampant misogyny, replacement of acquisition of expensive electronic gadgets for honest intellectual growth (let's not forget these are the same people who make Gear: Stuff for Men), glossy photo-spread masturbation material, etc. Just because we're witnessing a (justified) backlash to all things PC doesn't give everyone license to be jerks or frat boys, which is pretty much the only outcome of reading drivel like Maxim.

This comment was edited on Nov 3, 00:00.

If I was a frat boy that subscribed to Maxim, I guess I'd be looking forward to this. I wonder if Caryn Law ever shudders as she sends out press releases like this?

As opposed to Outer Heaven, of course.

Well, certainly the Total Annihilation community proves that point. Still going strong many years after the game dropped out of the mainstream gamin eye...an incredible community. Hopefully DS will inspire the same creativity.

I think this is either going to be a triumph, and one of the best games of the year, or one of the biggest bombs in gaming history. I think he said back at E3 in one of the conferences that the budget was pushing five or six million; adding another six months onto the schedule can't be good for it's profit margins. But what the fuck do I care, if it doesn't recoup its expenses, it's Microsoft losing money. No biggie.

I just really, really hope this game is everything it's been made out to be. Total Annihilation and the Core Contigency are still the funnest RTS' I've ever played. Maybe Dungeon Siege will be a worthy successor...