Jeff Steitzer is an accomplished broadway actor, but you and I probably know him best as the guy who tells you when you are winning (and losing) in Halo. Double Kill! Triple Kill! OVERKILL.
I always envisioned him as a younger man, though. He pretty much looks nothing like you would think he would. However, I guarantee that the next time you get a medal in Halo, you’ll get a mental image of the avuncular-looking Mr. Steitzer. Enjoy.
CHENEYMANIA!
via GameInformer.com.
I was immensely disappointed when I learned that Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s Kinect title, Child of Eden, was delayed from its late March release date. Out of all the announced titles so far, It’s pretty much the only Kinect title that’s looked like a true killer app.
Ubisoft’s released a new trailer for it, so I guess we’ll have to just be mollified by this thing until the game finally releases in June. I am totally pumped to wave my arms around and make pew pew noises at my tv while feeling like a total boss.
Ohhhhh shit. If it’s one thing you don’t want on the internet it’s the scorn of internet hacker group Anonymous. Previously responsible for taking down Mastercard/Visa websites in defense of Wikileaks as well as the Church of Scientology, Anonymous is a loosely organized group of individuals dispensing online justice as they see fit.
A couple days ago they issued this video statement stating their intent to fight Sony for suing PS3 hacker, Geohot:
I particularly liked this line: “You saw the hive, and you stuck your penis in it.” As a large multinational corporation, i’m sure Sony sticks its penis in lots of hives.
But some people in Anonymous were not satisfied with merely taking down Playstation.com and the Playstation Store via DDoS attacks. They’ve decided to take vengeance to the next level by obtaining personal records of Sony employees and family members:
Sebastian Moss for PlaystationLifestyle:
For example, Robert S. Wiesenthal, Group Executive, Sony Corporation, leading Corporate Development and Mergers and Acquisitions at Sony headquarters’ family history is currently being released onto the internet. His marital status, age, place of address, education and even whether he has children has been discovered. Other main targets include Nicole Seligman and Sony boss Howard Stringer, but multiple Sony employee emails are noted as future targets. In fact, one anon complained “No one found ANY info on Stringers kids?”
Meanwhile, both OpSony and SonyRecon have targeted those involved in the actual lawsuit against Geohot, with members of OpSony singling out the judge of the case.
SonyRecon founder randomtask stated:
sony , the judge and sonys lawyers are all valid targets
I’m not so sure going after individuals and their families is the best way of advancing your agenda, but it’s certainly some frightening shit. Imagine if you were an innocent Sony employee caught in the crossfire of this “war.” The amount of harm that could befall someone by releasing their personal information online is staggering. Hopefully the damage will be limited to juvenile pizza pranks and fake craigslist ads and not something more sinister.
Kinda makes you reflect just how helpless you can be on the internet, doesn’t it?
Lost in the midst of the hubbub over a possible iPhone 5 delay and Amazon’s launch of a cloud music playing service is the fact that Nintendo launched the first glasses-free 3D handheld console this past Sunday, the 3DS. According to a statement issued by The Big N, the first day unit sales of the 3DS were the highest of any Nintendo hand-held system in its history. That includes the original DS, DS Lite, Gameboys, you name it.
U.S. day-one sales numbers for Nintendo 3DS were the highest of any Nintendo hand-held system in our history. More details about U.S. sales numbers will be made public on April 14, when first-week U.S. sales figures will be tallied by the independent NPD Group. Nintendo worked hard to get as much product as possible to retailers on day one to meet demand, and we will continue with these efforts moving forward.
-Nintendo of America
It’s important to note that they are indeed talking about unit numbers, because at $249.99, the 3DS is undoubtedly the most expensive hand-held console Nintendo has ever launched. Reporting the gross revenue as a “new record” would be just… silly.
Personally, I’m just surprised at the number of early adopters Nintendo convinced to buy the 3DS. I’m a self-identified gadget fiend and even I had trouble talking myself into getting one. There just aren’t any titles out for it that justify the splurge for the 3DS. A quick look at Metacritic shows a sea of mediocrity with one stand out title (Super Street Fighter IV). Unfortunately, that title has already been released twice on a multitude of devices prior, so chances are that you’ve already played it in some incarnation.
Greg Miller of IGN also had similar sentiments on the quality of launch titles:
As I write this, 11 3DS games have been reviewed for IGN — I’m counting Nintendogs + Cats once — and the average review score is 6.7. That’s “Okay” on the IGN scale. Admittedly, most of the games reviewed landed in the 7 out of 10 range and just a few crappy games pulled down the average, but that’s still not stellar.
To add insult to injury, the 3DS shipped without internet browsing or Virtual Console support, taking a page out of Motorola’s playbook for its Honeycomb tablet Xoom. “Rush to ship now, patch in the promised features later” is a disturbing trend for hardware manufacturers to be following, but it’s the world we live in.
Like Android tablet, without any “killer apps,” you’re essentially buying the 3DS for its potential in the future. Now, being a betting type of man, I would actually expect there to be many reasons to own a 3DS in the future. Nintendo’s had a sterling track record of success, plus with these great day-one numbers, things are looking up for the 3DS to become a successful platform with a large user and developer support base.
But Nintendo’s also had a track record of refreshing their handheld hardware within a couple of years of the original devices’ launches. In the 3DS’s case, this hardware update cannot come soon enough, with battery life being reported at a scant 3-5 hours for the current device. Until we see a truly “must have” title for the 3DS, you’re better off waiting until one of those two things happen before diving in.
Originally posted on lalawag
This video compilation of people doing ridiculous, full-life bar draining combos in Marvel vs Capcom 3 is quite impressive. It’s also why I’m sort of afraid to play online regularly in this game. Although I guess if someone online pulls off a 170+ hit combo with Iron Man and Morrigan on me, then there’s not much else to do but tip your hat and say “Good game, sir.”
/facepalm
At least the delay is only about 5 weeks. Well, until they delay it again in June, of course.
This news is from a little over a week ago and it’s not much more than a short announcement, but screw it, it’s noteworthy.
The National are writing a song to be featured in Portal 2.
I’m still a bit skeptical because though, yes, The National are a “buzzworthy” indie band these days, The original Portal’s signature song, “Still Alive, was great because it was written from the perspective of a whimsically evil yet fun ode from a sardonic computer AI. The only imagery The National conjures up for me is a mid-tempo soundtrack to moping.
I hope I’m proven wrong, but this news doesn’t exactly excite from the point of view of a Portal fan. The good thing is that Jonathan Coulton has already been confirmed to be writing another song for Portal 2. It would have been a shame if Valve dumped him in favor of a “bigger” indie rock artist.
“The inclusion of the original song, Still Alive, in the first Portal game was part of what made the game special,” explained Valve writer Chet Faliszek.
“For Portal 2, we wanted to extend the use of music. When Bug Music mentioned to us that The National might be interested, we jumped at the opportunity to work with them.”
via The National write song for Portal 2 News – Page 1 | Eurogamer.net.
Yes, you read that headline correctly. Someone dubbed and edited some My Little Pony cartoon clips with Mass Effect 2 audio.
The result?
Probably the most fun you’ll have watching My Little Pony ever.
The new online storage feature allows gamers to store up to 150MB of game save data and a maximum of 1000 data files per PSN account. Users also have the ability to back-up “copy-prohibited save data,” and all previously saved data may be restored once per 24 hour period. When the new feature launches, most PS3 titles will be compatible with online storage for game saves, and moving forward, all new titles will have the capability to offer the storage option.
Lately, I’ve been playing a lot of games on friends’ consoles. Naturally, I want to keep my game saves and earn trophies/achievements, so I’ve been lugging around a USB stick with game saves. It’s a big pain the ass to copy files back and forth every time I do this. When I saw the headline that Sony was moving game saves to the cloud, I almost peed myself with anticipation
Bringing game saves to the cloud is an amazing feature and I’m surprised Sony beat Microsoft to the punch on it, given all of Microsoft’s “To the Cloud!” commercials. Nevertheless, I imagine it’s only a matter of time before both all consoles offer up this feature. (Well, maybe not Nintendo given their lack of interest in creating a decent online experience for their users.)
That being said, it still sucks that the only way you can get this feature on the PlayStation Network is by being a PlayStation Plus subscriber. Even with the feature, that service is still massively overpriced at $49.99 for what amounts to 1 week early access to demos and access to 1 hour trial games of old full-version titles.
Also, what’s with the limitations on the “online storage feature,” Sony? 150MB? Every free webmail account gives at least 2GB of space. Most game saves are tiny, usually under 1MB. Why not just advertise a boatload of space, knowing that it would be insanely difficult for most people to use it all? Plus, the caveat that the saved data may only be restored once every 24 hours really gives off the impression that Sony is unnecessarily stingy with its bandwidth. What’s the point of the cloud if you can only access it once every day?
The final wrinkle is that “most” PS3 titles will be compatible with online storage at launch. “Most?” Sooo are you going to tell us which games don’t work with this feature, Sony? It would be some poop on a magical moment if I ponied up $50 a year to be able to access my game saves “anywhere” only to find out that my favorite games don’t work with it.
Sony gets points for being the first major console manufacturer to take game saving to the cloud. Unfortunately, they also get a few demerits for being stingy on execution and tying it to their overpriced PlayStation Plus service. Either give us a boatload more space and unlimited access to our game saves, or don’t charge for it.
Read More: Online Storage for Game Saves Coming to PlayStation Plus – PlayStation Blog.
You know, all of his quotes work surprisingly well in the context of a Call of Duty match commentary. The only way this would be better if they had live video of him playing. Although, I’m sure he would have much more… colorful language to deploy to our friends on Xbox Live.