Video Game News and Miscellany

GasBandit

Staff member
Wow. I never even heard of that game.

Oy, those early CD-ROM games with the live-action footage and the terrible, terrible acting.
I had this utterly shit-tastic one called "Terror TRAX: Track of the Vampire"

Ha ha ha ha... I soldiered through and managed to beat it. But oh god it was awful.

 
That's crazy, it's easily one of the most infamous games of all time.





IT SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKS.
From everything I've seen of it, it REALLY does suck all the balls.

But I still want a copy of it just for shits and giggles.
 
NightTrap is the suck for sure.

If you think you will be titillated... you won't. If you think you will see scantily clad girls.... well... they are there but if you are actually trying to advance the game you are never looking in the house were said scantily clad girls are. Instead you are trying to capture the creeps.... sad, sad individuals in cheap costumes that look like a cross between ninjas and the borg but not at all in a good way.

My opinion... skip it. Even remastering it won't help.
 
NightTrap is the suck for sure.

If you think you will be titillated... you won't. If you think you will see scantily clad girls.... well... they are there but if you are actually trying to advance the game you are never looking in the house were said scantily clad girls are. Instead you are trying to capture the creeps.... sad, sad individuals in cheap costumes that look like a cross between ninjas and the borg but not at all in a good way.

My opinion... skip it. Even remastering it won't help.
I think it falls into the "It's so bad that it's funny" camp for some people. Not me, but definitely others. That is its only appeal.
 
Here's hoping someday he does something similar about the Calico.

--Patrick
Ahh... the Calico. Cool as fuck, but those mags were notorious for being unreliable. That is, the old ones. I've heard someone is sort of bringing them back and they've been working a lot better since.
 
SO I know it was mentioned recently in the games forum somewhere, the talk about how shitty Zenimax/Bethesda is about game names that even remotely resemble one of theirs (share common English words). Like how they went after Notch because he had Scrolls in the title of his game. Well, they're going after a 3-person indie team making a game called Prey for the Gods because it has the name Prey in the title.

https://www.praeyforthegods.com/praey-for-the-gods-newsletter-8/

Well, this tiny team doesn't have any resources to fight Zenimax like Notch could, so they capitulated and changed the name to the idiotic looking Praey.

Zenimax is such a shitty bully of a company. Fucking assholes. No one is going to misconstrue an indie title called Prey for the Gods with your massively advertised AAA title Prey you shitty, abusive, litigious cocks.
 
SO I know it was mentioned recently in the games forum somewhere, the talk about how shitty Zenimax/Bethesda is about game names that even remotely resemble one of theirs (share common English words). Like how they went after Notch because he had Scrolls in the title of his game. Well, they're going after a 3-person indie team making a game called Prey for the Gods because it has the name Prey in the title.

https://www.praeyforthegods.com/praey-for-the-gods-newsletter-8/

Well, this tiny team doesn't have any resources to fight Zenimax like Notch could, so they capitulated and changed the name to the idiotic looking Praey.

Zenimax is such a shitty bully of a company. Fucking assholes. No one is going to misconstrue an indie title called Prey for the Gods with your massively advertised AAA title Prey you shitty, abusive, litigious cocks.
Yeah, people might actually be interested in an indie game, over a reboot of a one part franchise no one liked
 


So, Square decided that splitting up Hitman into episodes to increase sales was a good idea. They also did this with the new Deus Ex game. Neither sold well, but, were both excellent games.

They keep the Hitman IP, kick IO to the curb and cancel the sequel to Deus Ex, leaving it unfinished.

Squeenix sucks so bad.

Christ, Hitman Absolution (which sucked balls) sold 5 times as much as Hitman (episodic, amazing). This world doesn't deserve good things.

But go ahead Square. Keep gutting your western developers and funding millennia long vanity projects by belt obsessed character designers that sell equally poorly. You know best.
 
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They did a super bad job communicating and pricing around the episodic stuff. There was comparably zero marketing for the game compared to other titles in the same IP class, and they changed the pricing structure of the game entirely two months before release. Unless you're a real Hitman fan, you're not going to take the time to figure that out versus playing other games, you're going to wait for the discounted full version.

Throw in the fact that Square (like many big AAA publishers) basically looks at anything with less than 100% margin as a a failure, and it was pretty much the end.

Had the pricing structure been set in stone and communicated 6-months or more ahead of time and they had showed a lot more around how they're taking advantage of the chunks and what it means for the player, they would have almost certainly done better.
 
Update on HBS' Battletech pre-Beta. Looks pretty good, in my opinion.



Also, some news:

New Partnership

Right now, somewhere in Sweden, BattleTech & MechWarrior creator Jordan Weisman is announcing a partnership between Harebrained Schemes and Paradox Interactive to publish BATTLETECH on PC. As our Backers, we feel it’s important that you get this information straight from us before it hits the press, so here’s the deal in a nutshell: Paradox will provide marketing support, localization services, and funds for additional testing in exchange for a cut of the game’s sales. This allows us to focus all our efforts on making a great game while maintaining complete creative control.

I’m really excited that HBS will have the chance to work with Paradox as they are the clear category leader for PC strategy games. We respect the quality and depth of their games and they have lots of players and fans in our studio. Equally important to us is the way that Paradox respects and engages with their community, values we share.

(Plus, they’re huge fans of our work on the Shadowrun Returns series and are really excited about our game - good qualities in a publisher, right?)

So why is this a good thing?

  • Because with Paradox’s additional test funding, we’ll have more professional testers banging on the game earlier so we ship the highest quality game we can.
  • Because with their help, we can also deliver higher quality localized versions of the game to our overseas players and spend far less time managing the process.
  • Because we won’t need to divide our attention away from making the game in order to sell the game. We’re not marketers - we’re game developers, and we want our focus to be firmly on delivering the best BATTLETECH experience we can.
  • Because we all love BattleTech and the more attention that Paradox can bring to the game, the better its chances for success in an incredibly crowded and competitive marketplace. As I’m often quoted, “In success, all things are possible.” Paradox’s marketing support will hopefully result in increased sales of the game and allow for years of BATTLETECH expansions and sequels for all of us to enjoy.
We’re happy to be working with a publisher who knows how to make great strategy games, loves BattleTech, and respects BattleTech fans. Nothing has changed, except that our chances for success are now even higher.

How ‘bout a little video to get the hype train rolling???
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyoBwysAWVo

We figured you might have questions so we wrote a little FAQ about our partnership. Please take a look and let us know if you have any other questions on the BattleTech Forums.
 
Wasn't downsized, move to "another studio" to work on another game.

Like fucking cattle.
They're going to EA Motive, which is in the same building on a different floor. They might not even physically move them off their current floor since it's all EA property.

I'm all for criticizing the game industry for the built-in practice of shuffling people around the country, but this one does not seem to be one of the offenders.
 
If you've never purchased Alan Wake, now's the time. It's about to be 90% off on the 13th because as of the 15th it's going away forever. Music licensing rights strike again.
 
American copyright law ruins everything. Needs to go back to what it was at inception - 7 years, no extensions.
On the one hand, sure.
On the other hand, GoogleSoftMax Arts can easily tie you up in legal crap for seven years, then release their version of your thing and screw you over.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
On the one hand, sure.
On the other hand, GoogleSoftMax Arts can easily tie you up in legal crap for seven years, then release their version of your thing and screw you over.
That's another thing we need - a loser-pays legal system, so that little guys can fight.
 
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