Peoww News

Word reaches us of CD Projekt going after German Bittorrrent downloaders of their medieval bastard-em-up The Witcher 2. They’re demanding €911 (£775) per violation to avoid further legal action. A conservative estimate by company co-founder Marcin Iwinski puts 4.5 million pirates as having downloaded the game, which even at the lower PC pricepoint is a fair chunk of revenue. The Polish dev have been an advocate of DRM free PC games so you could hardly blame them if they implemented restrictions on their next release.

In other news, casual gaming giant Zynga have made $1 billion from an initial public offering at $10 per share. Proof that is money in Facebook gaming after all. Though how long it takes until that bubble bursts or they’re bought by EA remains to be seen. Ian

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The ongoing battle between EA and Activision to see who can be the most evil publisher in gaming has taken a scarcely-believable turn thanks to this story that we hope isn’t true.

EA’s online MMO racer, Need For Speed World, is offering players the chance to purchase the CCX Elite car for the reduced price of $75 (£48).  Yes.  Reduced.  From $100 (£64).  Yes.  I know, right?

Now this may just be an online hoax and if that’s the case, we’re happy to be victims of it.  But if it’s true… fuck.  We, as gamers, may as well get down on our knees with our mouths open and drink EA’s actual piss because we’re somehow all responsible for letting this happen.  Gaming sucks now.  Rich

Remember the Tony Hawk games?  They were big news about ten years ago but a succession of shit sequels did for the series, culminating the epic fail of Shred and Ride, two games that used a fake skateboard peripheral.  Of course by then no-one gave the slightest fuck about the series.  For us it all came crashing down when Bam Margera became a main character and you got involved in shopping trolley races or something.  Fuck.

EA took over the genre with their excellent SKATE series (although that’s starting to go through the motions a bit and the DLC sucks infinite cock) and that was that.  Tony’s smug face became a faded memory.

Well, Activision have finally come to their senses and announced that THPS1 and THPS2 are getting the HD remake treatment.  Of course, they’ve got to mess with it slightly – these won’t be seperate ports but rather a big mash-up of the first two games – but if they can keep the gameplay solid (no shitty slo-mo focus mode plz) then they may be onto a winner.

The soundtrack is likely to change so don’t expect too much in the way of bouncy ska-punk (the default skating music genre of the 90s) but hopefully they’ll avoid whatever shit the kids of today are calling punk.

In the meantime, read this account of us reacquainting ourselves with Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1.  Rich

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Despite looking like a mentally disadvantaged, chubby girl, Barcelona’s Lionel Messi does take the piss somewhat with his excellent feet.  The undisputed best player in the world (apart from during the three seconds where John Terry fucked up that penalty), he’s been one of the cover stars for the Pro Evolution Soccer series in recent years (although Cristiano Ronaldo with his ludicrous neck appears on the latest iteration).

Well, like most of us, he’s jumped ship over to the FIFA camp.  Yesterday saw the game adding his face all over the Ultimate Team store as well as bringing in a ‘rare in-form’ version of his Ultimate Team card that makes him the best player in the game, if you’re lucky enough to get him.

What this really means is that he’ll be all over the marketing for the upcoming FIFA Street debacle and probably the next few FIFAs whilst Wayne Rooney will be relegated to either standing behind him on the cover art or getting dropped entirely.  Rich

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A lack of decent game news (unless you really care that Modern Warfare 3 has just set a new record for simultaneous online play or that the Japanese are buying shitloads of 3DS consoles because of Mario 3D Land), late-in-the-year holidays and just too many games have slowed us down a bit.

So far we’re all coming to terms with all the good games being released all at once but expect reviews of the following November releases soon;

Dodonpachi Resurrection – more vertically-scrolling shoot ’em up madness from genre-masters Cave.  So far we like it but it is fucking nails hard.

Skyrim – fuck trying to get exclusives, games like this need to be played, experienced and judged on their merits, not their press-releases.  We’ll get you our thoughts on it once we’ve broken the back of it.  So far though, looking promising.

Saints Row: The Third – THQ’s GTA-killing series is back a fortnight too early for our tastes (Skyrim, man) but we’ll be diving into this four-player gangster game next week and reviewing it as soon as we can.

Modern Warfare 3 – fuck, man.  We’ve had it here all week and haven’t touched it.  Skyrim, man.  We will though.

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations – we really need to open up that sealed copy of Brotherhood first.

So expect plenty of review sauce in your faces nice and soon.  In the meantime, the only news we got is that Scribblenauts is temporarily 69p on iTunes.  Probably worth a look then.  Rich

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Depending on your viewpoint, esteemed long standing journal/overpriced glossy pretentious tossrag Edge have awarded Zelda: Skyward Sword their most recent 10. It joins such notable alumni as the two Mario Galaxies, The Orange Box, Zelda: Ocarina of Time & Bayonetta. The last is slightly dubious admittedly, but their scoring system does reward the exceptional. This is all well and good, but it’s on the wrong damn format since Wii is about as relevant to our gaming these days as the Top 40 is to our musical tastes. At least until Tom Waits & Die Antwoord start getting number ones. Expect a review sometime if any of our guys still own a Wii.

In other Nintendo news, the Kyoto giant have announced losses of 70.3 billion yen* (£579m) for the six months prior to September. No doubt this is due in no small part to the spectacular failure that is the 3DS (by Nintendo’s standards at least). Worryingly the key demographic they seem to be aiming for this Christmas is the sub-12 year old Twilight obsessed Saturdays fan. Sales for the Wii have plateaued too, since everyone and their grandmother already owns one by now. If you believe the hype, even Harry Redknapp likes a bit of Mario Kart Wii, though he’d probably shill chocolate coated crack if they paid him enough money. Ian

*we're so classy, we steal from the BBC!

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Toshihiro Nagoshi is busy.  Not with Shenmue 3, that fucker’s never coming out, but with Yakuza 5, the new addition to the long-running finger-chopping sandbox series.

It will be set in Kamurocho and will feature series regular, Kazuma Kiryu.  The PSP will also be getting a sequel to Yakuza Black Panther, the catchy-named Kurohyou 2 Ryu ga Gotoku.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was some shamefully stolen news.  See, we’re all yakuza now.  Rich

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For whatever fucking reason, EA still insist on using their own servers for their games and typically the servers being used for FIFA 12 will crap out on you if you try to do anything from saving a replay to trying to play Ultimate Team. 

Despite this, 271 million matches have already been played online by the game’s five million or so owners, making this the biggest selling sports game ever.  Yep, even more than Ashes 2009 and Jimmy White’s Snooker.

Let’s hope EA reinvest some of those profits on a server that’s not made out of canabalised Amstrad CPC464s.  Rich

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You may have tried PSV Eindhoven at Eurogamer, just as we did. You may have even pre-ordered one. At any rate, Sony have announced that their all-singing-all-dancing handheld will be released on February 22nd 2012 at a frankly extortionate €299 / €249 for the 3G / Wi-fi only models respectively. That’s £261 and £218 in proper money, so no doubt £269 and £229 over here.

 Yes, it might be technically impressive, but we can’t help feel that it’s a teeny bit expensive. The high price may be due to local VAT & the weak Euro, but still seems a bit inflated. After all, We could buy a bottle of gin for each of our forum regulars and still have change for a 3DS at that price.

In unrelated news, EA have released a patch for FIFA 2012 (our review here) that fixes, amongst other things, the egregious ability to control just your keeper in online games and let the AI handle your outfield players. This can only be good news as in our experience, FIFA online versus randoms is hateful enough as it is. Ian

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Or more accurately, the case of the EA account hacking tossbags.

This is more of a public service announcement than anything. Word reaches us of an exploit where people having their XBox Live accounts hacked and stored credit card information being used to buy lots of MS points and subsequently EA Ultimate Team DLC for FIFA 2011. The weak link seems to the EA account end.

Although if they have access there’s nothing to stop them buying any DLC, not just FIFA stuff.

If your password is “12345” then we advise you check your Xbox Live billing page ASAP to check for any unusual activity. Ian