Gaming Thread 11/24/2013

Yay, new consoles are out and stuff, no more crappy writeups on them. Of course, Black Friday is almost upon us. Only buys I'm looking forward to are the table packs for Pinball Arcade on Steam (own all of them on my Vita and iPad, not paying full price again for them).

And speaking of pinball, the weekly Humble Bundle is a lot of content for a $6 as it contains most of the tables for Pinball FX.

Really wasn't much news this past week.

• EA Sports: We're sorry that NBA Live 14 sucks but keep buying, please

• It was supposed to come out last year but M.U.L.E. Returns is finally coming out for the iOS, this week

• Like Sony's announcement last week, Microsoft announced that they sold 1 million + XBox Ones in the first 24 hours in the 13 countries (Sony only released in the US).

• iFixit's teardown of the Xbox One. Speaker is interesting but it's really simple inside.

• It was coming after he joined Oculus but John Carmack officially leaves id.

• IGN claims that Telltale is working on a Game of Thrones game. Considering how slow they are, I wouldn't expect it for another 4 years.

• Plants VS Zombies: Garden Warfare gets a release date, February 21st on the 360 and Xbox One.

• Polyphony shows off their GPS feature in their upcoming Gran Turismo 6

• Could Sony fall into a trap of Uno porportions? I dunno but this si what you get when you make it easier to get people to stream.

• Awww yeah, Atlus announced that they're bringing over Conception 2 for the 3DS and Vita. You bang chicks and have your kids fight for you and you can have your kids inbreed to create stronger kids. God bless Japan

• eSports getting serious as a reported 32 million people tuned into the League of Legends Season 3 World Championship with a whopping 8.5 million eyeballs during the Championship game.

• New trailer for the upcoming Freedom Wars for the Vita

• Good quarter for Gamestop with $2.1 billion, a 41% bump

Damn is the console and Kinect really big. Would be nice if I could find the Kinect mount from PDP, Amazon lists December 4th but it's supposed to be out in the wild at stores. The TV aspect needs some work as some letter channels just don't work with being recognized. I couldn't for the life of me to get it to go to the HGTV and DIY channels with my voice. As for using the speech recognition with the UI, it works relatively flawless as long as you know the commands and the speech tutorial isn't a bad way to get a gist of it (keep in mind, we're northern flyover country folk with no accent). Just don't expect to use the voice for apps as for the most part, none of the non-MS really have anything. The Kinect isn't "mandatory" but yeah....it's kinda is mandatory due to the ease of use as it adds a ton to the user experience. The facial recognition auto sign in is really nice though it kinda works a little too well in that it doesn't need a full view of your face so even when walking by, it will quickly sign you in. It's no Spyder but it's nice to see that Stacy Spears (currently works for MS) pretty much transplanted his and Don Munsil's HD TV Calibration disk to the console as a built in feature. For it working as a blu-ray player, it does need a little work on the firmware side as the audio syncing can get out of wack on occasion but as for picture, it's pretty good. The audio of the console is a bright spot if you have the setup, it shines remarkably if you play some Forza or Ryse (I rented the eye candy). Though the layout of your personal collection of games and apps may work okay at the moment with what was launched with the system, it's obvious to see that really needs some work as it's a bit of a headache in going through.

Forza - It's Forza with a few things stripped out (wish the marketplace was in at launch). Game looks great in motion (at least in cockpit view, the only way to play racing games), outside of it though you see the rough spots of the aliasing and shimmering. Drivatars are working right this time, sad part is that they're working right this time as there isn't any filters in removing the drivers who shouldn't be on the road with anyone else. Would like to see something akin to the system that iRacing uses with crappy drivers (though obviously not as strict). The fact that there is a specific rumble in the controller giving you a heads up on your tire contact is quite nice. People are complaining about the rate of buying cars with real cash but I honestly haven't run into anything that turned my nose up outside of the lack of them giving you cars when you win events. After 5 hours of play, I've racked up a decent stable of cheap cars all tuned and kitted up.

Ryse - I rented this and IMO, it's worth the rental price as graphically, it's really good. It's hampered by it's simplistic gameplay and though it's borrows on operas with pacing, the story doesn't really go anywhere exciting. Multi isn't deep enough to keep you playing either. I do hope it does well enough so we can get a sequel though as there is enough there to iterate on it's foundation though. But yeah, it's a quick rental, bargain bin or Games for Gold type game.
Killer Instinct - The mechanics are great, it looks great and it's a lot of fun. That being said, it's a fighting game that came out two days ago, give it a month and you will find out how well it's being received and if a player base stays with it. I will say that the game has lead to the discovery of some next level tech when it comes to talking Sh!*. Just a simple "Xbox, record that" will have someone rage at you and if someone pulls that on you, it burns your soul.

Also bought NBA 2K14. Powerstar Golf and Dead Rising 3 but I haven't gotten around to them.

that's about it
I'm out, send hate mail HERE (twitter)
The Dude

posted by Gang of Gaming Morons! at 03:28 PM

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