Peoww News

In a move that’s probably not going to surprise anyone aware of Activision Blizzard’s standard revenue generation practices (I feel dirty even saying that), they’ve unveiled a doozy to rival their forthcoming Call Of Duty MW3 Elite service. In an announcement on their website, the Blizzard tentacle of the drooling multidimensional behemoth that threatens to consume everyone that lies quivering before it; it’s corporeal form represented by the entity known to us as Kotick; unveiled the forthcoming Diablo III beta. Contained therein is information regarding an in-game auction house. Fine you may think, it’ll be just like in WOW where you trade with in-game currency.

Now here’s the kicker, they’ll allow you to list items for actual cash money. I guess they’ll call it ‘monetising the transaction’ on their annual balance sheet. Hypothetically you could get a random drop of a rare item your character class can’t use and as opposed to previous versions where you could sell the item to a merchant upon returning to town, this time you can put it up on the in-game auction site for either virtual or cold hard cash.

The beauty of the system (from Blizzard’s point of view at least) is that you’ll pay to list the item you want rid of, the person buying the loot has to pay too. And once you’ve got the money, if you then buy another item with the balance of your account they get more cash, only swapped around from the selling point of view. The crux being that Blizzard will get paid four times in this process. When you multiply that by the many thousands of transactions that’ll no doubt take place upon the game’s launch, that’s a whole stack of cash Blizzard will add to their coffers.

I’d not be surprised if this were a dry-run for a similar system to be implemented in WOW. As a correspondent in this webcast put it, you’re effectively gold farming for Blizzard. Ni hao! Ian

Peoww News

Dear Vicious Cycle,

I finished EDF: Insect Armageddon today.  At least I think I did.  You appear to have forgotten to put an ending on the game.  A game which has just fifteen near-identical levels that lack all the variety of the original EDF. This is what happens when you entrust a much-loved series to the inept fuckwits who made the risible Eat Lead I guess.

If I see any of you at the Eurogamer Expo in September I’m going to shit in your fucking hair.

(review to follow once we’ve doped ourselves enough to block out the fucking pain).

Peoww News

Square Enix have created an ultra-rare version of the 3DS AKA one that anybody can fucking bother playing?  Amirite?

EA and Manchester City FC have joined forces to piss on what’s left of football’s soul by announcing that upcoming FIFA games will have bespoke Man City content “experiences” which has led some cocksucker at the club to blurt out “”Many of our supporters, not to mention first team players are huge fans of FIFA. The deal with EA Sports was therefore a natural fit and the beginning of what I know will be an exciting partnership.”

And finally, Andy McNabb is writing a tie-in novel for Battlefield 3. We’ll leave you to fill in your own derogatory words. Rich

Peoww News

This video by Microsoft’s Enrique de la Garza has the previously-unknown, hateful shill telling us about Microsoft’s plan for Operation: Global Evil / their plan for interactive TV ads using Kinect.  In the awful five minute video he gleefully watches a Coke advert and explains how he can tweet the ad to his friends simply by saying ‘Xbox.  Tweet’ like some sort of hateful robo-cunt.

Then he goes on about Adidas and wanks off about getting extra info from the advert, like some sort of fucking idiot.

Then he fucking starts going on about some fucking awful X-Factor type show and I’m so fucking filled with hate that I have to stop commenting on it before Microsoft have me killed.   This really is the worst thing I’ve ever seen.  Video below.  Be warned, it’s fucking horrible.

Hateful shit.

Peoww News

We love Mass Effect 2 more than you love your mum, and we’ll literally kill anyone who besmirches its good name and so it was with mixed feelings that we watched EA’s E3 footage of Mass Effect 3.  Sure, it looked beautiful.  Stunningly so.  Unfortunately, it also looked particularly dumbed down with no real evidence of it being anything other than a cover-based shooter.

Well, we’re tentively into it again now with the news that it will feature four-player co-op missions.  Apparently, there will only be a small number of these missions – the idea is that you replay them a lot (for whatever fucking reason) – so expect a lot of DLC in your future.  Start bagsying your characters.  I’ll be Jack.  No, not Sane Jack O’hooligan, the man-hating goat murderer of Dingle Bay.  Rich

Peoww News

Redner, the US PR company for 2K Games, has responded to the overwhelmingly bad reviews that Duke Nukem Forever has been getting in a rather unwise fashion.

“Too many went too far with their reviews…we are reviewing who gets games next time and who doesn’t based on today’s venom,” they twittered, suggesting that only positive reviewers would be subject to review code in the future.

2K Games ditched them immediately and distanced themselves from the comments before their main man, Randy Pitchford, himself twittered in defence of the frankly dogshit sequel.  “”With sales data, It seems like *customers* love Duke.  I guess sometimes we want greasy hamburgers instead of caviar..”

Now we may be missing something but surely buying something is an act of faith, not an endorsement of the product’s quality.  In fact, we’re going to say what everyone has been thinking.  2K Games have gotten shit these days, haven’t they?  Oh well, all will be forgiven if Colonial Marines lives up to our ridiculous expectations.  Rich

Peoww News

The fifth entry in the Hitman series, Absolution, was unveiled at this year’s E3 and judging from the two minutes of gameplay footage , it seems like IO Interactive have done to Agent 47 what Ubisoft did to Sam Fisher. Transforming the patient, calculating silent assassin into a reckless man of action.

These changes can probably be put down to the fact that the original developers of the franchise departed the company in 2008. Presumably the prospect of making another Kane and Lynch game was the deciding factor. I don’t blame them.

In addition, David Bateson, the voice and face of 47, won’t be bringing his softly menacing performance to the role. Most disappointing, however, is the news that long-time series composer, Jesper Kyd, will also not be returning. In a series without much in the way of plot or characters, his music brought a hell of a lot gravitas to each hit.

Disclaimer: The game could still be good.  Adam

Peoww News

It’s the most wonderful time of the year.  For games PR people anyway.  E3 is back and whilst we’re not that fussed with it, we are keeping an eye on proceedings.  Follow us on Twitter – @peoww for her pleasure.

In the meantime, I’m without access to Photoshop so here’s a quick, imageless round up of day one.

Microsoft:  they just don’t care anymore, do they?  Kinect shit flung in the faces of the ‘hardcore’ fans.  Seriously, we don’t even know anyone with a Kinect.  Well, not anyone who still uses the fucking thing.  They showed off Modern Warfare 3.  We were bored.  M$ were great in 2009 but this is two sucky years in a row.

EA:  Battlefield 3 was lapped up by the faithful.  Bit too much tank footage for our liking.  Then they showed off a very gorgeous looking Mass Effect 3.  We were excited until we realised it was a dumbed-down shooter.  Reminded us of Vanquish.  FROWNY FACE.

Ubisoft:  despite being presented by Mr. Cocaine, the most annoying cocksucker we’ve ever seen at E3, Ubisoft rather killed it thanks to a mix of new IPs and decent looking sequels.

Rayman was up first.  Looked harmless and Nintendo-flavoured.  Not our sort of thing but it seemed alright.

Ghost Recon: Future Soldier:  looked fucking tremendous.  Four-player co-op?  Yes please.  Looked faithful to the series but ramped up as well.  They also announced Ghost Recon: Online which was apparently a free PC standalone game.  Nice!

Far Cry 3:  after the fucking abortion that was Far Cry 2 this was a welcome return to the jungle.  Looked big in every sense.  A big game area, amazing graphics, lots to do.  Cautiously optimistic.

Brothers In Arms:  a lack of gameplay footage scuppered this but it looks like a class-based shooter with possible Borderlands influences.  Is by Gearbox, so it could be more of the same.  We’re interested.  Until they fuck it with awful DLC.

Assassins Creed Revelations:  didn’t look very stealthy but the trailer gave us chills.  More of the same but very, very slick.  Just hoping they ditch the multiplayer bollocks.

Skyrim:  the follow up to Elder Scrolls: Oblivion is looking very tasty indeed.  The big change seems to be two-handed combat.  With each hand being able to use individual weapons or magic.   Looks familiar but prettier.

Arkham City:  Similar combat and styling to Arkham Asylum but now with added Catwoman.  Batman can now glide around the city giving this a bit of a Crackdown flavour.  Consider us ‘up for it.’

Sony:  on past our bedtime.  We’ll talk about them tomorrow.

Peoww News

Fuck Call of Duty, clearly, but just because something bad is happening to other people – people with terrible taste in games – it doesn’t mean we can just ignore it. 

Activision have been waiting to wring more cash out of their loyal customer base with this new nefarious scheme but we’d kind of hoped it was just some sort of horrible joke.  It’s not, Actingthecuntivision are really going to do this.