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.