l4d demo available

And holy shit, this game is better than I expected. check out the video below:

My favorite thing so far is setting of car alarms and using the butt of my shotgun to knock the hell out of the zerging zombies.

Back from the dead

And posting some hilarious pics of our soon to be president:

That picture just says: Pull My Finger. And there’s this one:

Now if we can only get him to admit he plays a 360 when he’s on the plane.

Somehow, I missed this the first time….

Apparently this girl has ended up on TV. I’d love to know what she’s actually doing on TV.

DSi

New design for the Nintendo DS. They’re calling it the DSi:

Highlights of the new design:

• Thinner body.
• Bigger screens
• Mp3 playback
• Browser build in
• Camera included
• Game Channel access

No release date for the US. The japanese get it Nov 1st.

Venturebeat has more than enough details to satisfy any gamer.

Retro packaging for modern games…

Is it me or does the way that the portals are laid out on this packaging not make sense:

But for the most part, the box art that’s been created to give modern games an atari retro look is freakin’ awesome.

A Prescription for Uptime!!!

And while wordpress won’t let me embed videos other than youtube, you need to go view the video at this site:

http://www.nohardware.com/

It’s taking the office space hardware hate to a new level:

DRM a philosophical issue?

Actually, it’s an issue of ownership.

Valleywag quotes an article from the ars technica guys which concludes:

…and we left wondering if the DRM controversy might be more philosophical in nature than rooted in any real-world inconveniences.

It seems like the Ars guys approached this as if there was a technical problem to solved. DRM is not an issue that is technical but one of ownership. DRM hurts legitimate sales and encourages the pirating of games. Spore is a great example and clearly it was not terribly difficult to circumvent the piracy countermeasures. DRM is a question of property rights and who actually owns the product that is purchased. Better folk have written more clearly on the subject then I can, so I’ll leave it at that.

WotLK date is officially announced…

Only a day late in commenting and only a week off when I reported Nov 4th. According to CNET (and about a billion other sources), it’s Nov 13th. It’s interesting that Blizzard is releasing on a Thursday. It’s as if they’re in cahoots with employers who know that their going to lose employees for the better part of a week. At least in this case, they’re only losing them for 2 days before the weekend.

Also of interest is that this release date is five days before l4d hits steam. It’s going to be a very interesting couple of weeks of gaming. So get your preorders in and start planning that vacation time.

Spore: The most pirated game?

According to TorrentFreak, it is. However, they didn’t link to any actual statistics though the claim is 500k plus. The thing is, I’m not surprised about the number.

I’d bet this would be the case even if DRM wasn’t a problem. With so many crap games out there and the most anticipated ones not meeting expectations, there’s a sense of try before you buy. Demo’s aren’t just cutting it when it comes to displaying game play and video walk throughs don’t do most games justice (good or bad).

Let’s hope the game industry at large is watching this situation and learns from it. Producing stand alone single player games is getting harder for the PC. I’d hate to see PC games go away because the developers didn’t listen to their customers.

Calling Bullshit on Amazon

Been down and out for more than 24 hours do to day job bullshit. But while I was gone, Kotaku and Gamasutra apparently noticed that Amazon pulled and then posted again all of the critical reviews of Spore.

The uproar is around the DRM that EA’s been slapping into the installs of pretty much all of their games lately and specifically about how draconian it’s becoming. Developers from many game companies have been spending a ton of time trying to handle the pirating issue and some are starting to actually listen to their users. But regardless of what you think, amazon pulling the feedback is bullshit.

What’s even more bullshit is the fact that when they got caught and did the right thing by restoring the feedback, they couldn’t tell the truth. Their excuse is a “site glitch”. WTF does that mean, amazon? Was the Spore data the only feedback posts affected or did it affect more than one product? Can you elaborate on what happened? Or…. Did you moderate them or even remove them from the db based upon pressure from EA? Fess up and let the masses really turn the rage on the appropriate party. EA’s being bullying gamers and game developers around for too long.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m having a great time with Spore and yes, I’ve got it installed a mac so that it the DRM won’t fuck with anything but the game. My frustration with this situation is aimed exactly at EA as the publisher. EA needs to continue to feel the pressure of their bullshit tactics so that they will change their ways. Either that or Spore will be the last game I buy from them.