What A Bunch Of Squares!

 

"We're not gonna do a Microsoft. We'll keep DRM, instead of getting rid of it!" (John Square Enix, 2014)

It's a double whammy of Square Enix news today, as Square Enix have openly said that they support DRM because it's the only way to make profit. In case you don't know, DRM, or Digital Rights Management, is a system that means a game is only playable on one system, and it's controversial because if it's widely used, then no one will be able to buy used games, there's no way to sell games to shops and all games have to be bought at full price. However, it means that developers will get more money from their games, and Square Enix have said that it's essential to profits for the "forseeable future". YOU NEED A CODE TO PLAY A GAME? THAT'S STUPID! SQUARE ENIX ONLY CARES ABOUT YOUR MONEY! I'M NEVER BUYING A SQUARE ENIX GAME AGAIN, YOU COULDN'T PAY ME!

Oh, wait, I've found the code.

(Cheeky Come Fly With Me reference)

Also, Sony have sold all of their 9,520,000 Square Enix shares for £28 million to a company called SMBC Nikko Securities, a security company (Duh), for a reason that hasn't been disclosed. Sony has owned those shares for more than a decade, and it's weird that they've decided to sell them now as stock prices are down for Square. I'm guessing the reason is that Square Enix are making games for Xbox consoles now, so Sony don't feel the need to support them any more.

What do you guys think? Should DRM be used because developers get more money? Or should it not be used? Tell us in the comments below!

There Are Other Ways To Watch Dogs!

Normally I wouldn't do an extra news story, but this one literally happened just now!

Ubisoft have just announced that Watch Dogs is getting an ebook titled Watch_Dogs //n/Dark Clouds by John Shirley, who also wrote Borderlands: The Fallen and Bioshock Rapture. It will be released the same day as Watch Dogs, and will be a direct sequel to the events in the game! Ubisoft, in a press release, said that John Shirley was chosen because he's a known figure in the hacker movement. This will be the first ever ebook Ubisoft have released!

Watch_Dogs //n/Dark Clouds will be be released on May 27th in English, French, Italian, German (Hooray for the loyal German viewer we have!) and Spanish, and will be available in two editions: a standard ebook and an upgraded ebook with interactive elements.

What do you guys think? Should books be written about videogames? Or should they be original? Tell us in the comments below!

Kickstarting Thursday: Who Made It?

Hi Guys!

Bit of a different Kickstarting Thursday article today. This time, I'm going to tell you which of the projects I've mentioned have been funded, and which haven't!

Kingdom Come: Deliverance!

SUCCESSFUL! Kingdom Come: Deliverance passed it's £300,000 goal, and hit many stretch goals! Along with the original concepts and mechanics, Kingdom Come: Deliverance will also be getting proper medieval music, a symphonic orchestra, a playable female character, proper motion capture, an in game combat academy, a tournament mode and a dog companion for the character!

Cashtronauts

UNSUCCESSFUL. Sadly, Cashtronauts didn't meet it's $10,000 CAD goal.

Galactic Princess

SUCCESSFUL! Galactic Princess passed it's £20,000 goal, and met 3 stretch goals! Galactic Princess will now have more races, weapons, sidequests, pets, spaceship parts and a mining system!

Koe

SUCCESSFUL! Koe passed it's £35,000 goal and met 3 stretch goals! Koe will now have a PS VITA version, a battle arena and a bigger world!

Chaos Reborn

SUCCESSFUL! Chaos Reborn passed it's $180,000 goal and hit a stretch goal! Chaos Reborn will now have more languages supported.

"We Need Big Tyres On Our Spaceships!"

"I mean, how else would we tackle those space mountains?" (Land Rover Person, 2014)

Did you ever think that rugged jeeps and big SUVs were the future of space travel? Well, think again, person with common sense, because Land Rover, creator of that "finely tuned" beast pictured, have become the first commercial partners of Virgin Galactic, the commercial space flight company created by Richard "Santa but loaded with money instead of being magical." Branson! On a YouTube video, Branson said that he was "really delighted to be working alongside a brand that over the years has become identified around the world for its spirit of adventure.". Well, if you put it that way...

Virgin Galactic will launch their space planes by carrying them with other aircraft so they can get to higher speeds than a ground takeoff. There have so far been two passenger spaceplanes announced; the VSS Enterprise and the VSS Voyager. Oh yeah, those ships from Star Wars!

(Gunshot)

What do you guys think? Will space travel be popular? Or will it just be a huge luxury that only millionaires will be able to go on? Tell us in the comments below!

4 Is Double 3

I'm good at meth maths.

Good news for all you Playstation Punters out there, as the Playstation 4 has sold 7 million consoles in 5 months, doubling the amount of Playstation 3s that were sold in it's first 5 months of release! That's right, all you meth mathheads, the PS3 only sold 3.5 million during it's first five months! Also, 20.5 million games have been sold, meaning that the average PS4 owner has around 3 games. Well, if you're scared that you made the wrong choice of console, don't worry, over the course of 2014 over 120 games will be released, including games that are soon to be cult classics like Blast 'Em Bunnies, Sportsfriends and Sherlock Homes: Crimes And Punishments! Who wouldn't want a PS4 right now?

We're still not sure how many Xbox Ones Microshaft has sold, as the last figure was at the end of last year, when they revealed that they had sold 3 million Xbox Ones in about 2 months. Still, the sales of the Xbox should have increased quite dramatically, as the price has been lowered in many countries and all Xboxes now come with a free copy of Titanfall. So they're literally giving them away.

What do you guys think? Will the Xbox One overtake the PS4 anytime soon? Or will the PS4 dominate for the rest of it's lifespan? Tell us in the comments below! 

Wayback Wednesday: RedLynx!

Trials Fusion, RedLynx's latest game in the Trials franchise, has just been released today, so I'm going to take a look back at the 13 year old Finnish guys! (Disclaimer: RedLynx does not hire 13 year olds)

RedLynx started off in Helsinki, Finland in 2000, where they later made their first ever game, Trials, a Javascript browser game, which was pretty popular. 3 years later, they released a double whammy of Trials browser games, Trials Bike Basic and Trials Bike Pro, two games designed for two types of players. Still, RedLynx weren't going to get anywhere just making Javascript games, they had to make a great game on a big console so they could get noticed. Well, they did just that, but not how you would expect it...

Considering that that RedLynx are famous for their extreme sports games, you would've thought that they would've made a big Trials game for PS2 and Xbox, or something like that. Well, instead they made a real time strategy game named Pathway To Glory for the infamous Nokia N-Gage, the phone that aimed to be a games console as well, and ultimately failed. Not to say the game was bad though; in fact, it's considered a cult classic and forgotten gem among strategy games. It even spawned a sequel the following year! It was truly RedLynx's first great game.

After releasing a couple more N-Gage games and another free entry in the Trials series, the N Gage pretty much started to fizzle out, and RedLynx needed a new game to ensure that they had a future. That game was, in fact, another strategy game, this time set in the Warhammer universe. Yup, I'm talking about Warhammer 40,000: Squad Command, a PSP and DS game released in 2007 that none of you (Or I) have heard of. Still, it was fun, easy to pick up and a good all around game. The same year, the Trials 2 browser game came out, but I won't talk about that yet.

Come 2008, and RedLynx decided that the Nokia N Gage needed one more game of theirs before it finally went under, so they released Reset Generation, a puzzle-strategy game that contained many crude mockups of classic video game characters like Sonic and Mario. It was very well recieved, and was a fitting way for RedLynx (And Nokia) to bow out of the N Gage game. That very same year, Trials 2: Second Edition hit the shops: the game that made Trials famous. It was extremely well received, with an 82 on Metacritic, mainly thanks to it's simple yet challenging gameplay. 

A year later came Trials HD, the first Trials game on consoles. Considered one of the best Xbox Live Arcade games of all time, Trials HD finally brought the "smart" racing game to the (Kinda) big screen in glorious HD graphics, plus it sold 2 million copies in 2 years. Also coming out that year was Monster Trucks Nitro 2, an iOS game that vastly improved on it's "eh" predecessor, mainly because there was much more gameplay options and well designed short and sharp levels. 

The next year, RedLynx released another successful sequel to an iOS game; DrawRace 2, a game where you determine what route your car takes in a race by drawing it, and drawing faster and slower so it knows when to brake and turn. It has an 88 on Metacritic!  The next year came two more amazing mobile games, the first being MotoHeroz, a cute verision Monster Trucks Nitro but with more platforming and doubling back involved, and the second being the weirdly named Nutty Fluffies, a Rollercoaster Tycoon meets Trials game. But I'm forgetting RedLynx's biggest game of 2012...

That game is Trials Evolution! Ditching the desolate factory setting of usual Trials games and changing it to the open road, Trials Evolution was a hoot to play with friends locally and online, and wide variety of tracks made it one of my favorite Xbox 360 games ever. I mean, it got a 90 on Metacritic, so it must be doing something right! Anyways, after going quiet for a year, RedLynx has hit us with a double whammy of Trials goodness, with Trials Frontier there for the mobile gamers, and the console version Trials Fusion. How good are they? Well, I'll leave that for you to find out...

Or you can look it up on Metacritic, I don't really care.

My favorite RedLynx game is: Trials Evolution.

Amazon's On Fi- (Gunshot)

DON'T YOU DARE SAY IT

After announcing their new Fire TV, it turns out that Amazon are going into the smartphone business after the success of their Kindle Fire HDX tablet! However, they're taking a rather Nintendo-esque approach to this and they're making a phone that has it's screen in stereoscopic 3D! Thanks to four front mounted cameras that track head and eye position and movement, you can now type in your credit card details as you pay for another microtransaction *grumble* in THREE DIMENSIONS!

Seriously, this kinda seems unnecessary, especially if it means that the screen will only be 720p, as the rumors suggest. Nothing about that phone will be announced until June, but there have been some rumors that it will have 2GB of RAM (Pretty meaty for a phone) and it will run it's own version of Android that they use for their Kindle Fire tablets. It's also rumored that the phone will have a 4.7 inch diameter screen, which all adds up to the fact that this phone could be quite expensive!

What do you guys think? Is 3D on a phone really necessary? And is Amazon's Fire OS better than the usual Android OS? Tell us in the comments below!

Sam's Opinion Of... Horror Games

It's a slow news day today, so I'm just going to ramble on about stuff!

A couple of days ago I was reading an article on IGN about how horror games are getting too scary to play, and therefore causing the genre to die. Now, I'm not a huge fan of horror games, but seeing a genre that's produced so many great games like Dead Space and Resident Evil 4 die will be a terrible thing for the gaming world. Yes, horror games are getting too scary to play, but that's not the reason that I think the horror genre is in trouble. The real reason is that they are too reliant on jump scares.

Sure, jump scares are damn scary, but they're a cheap, dumb way of scaring people, and they put people off of playing them. Psychologically freaking out the player without jump scaring them makes a great horror game because a) players will still be scared but b) they won't be put off playing the game. The play of The Woman In Black contains only about 3 jumpscares, but that was one of the scariest experiences of my life, just waiting for something to happen, and that's the same with indie game Outlast. Resident Evil 4 doesn't contain a single zombie in it, and you're only ever attacked by slow moving people, yet it's one of the best horror games of all time. I wouldn't say that the genre is dying, but I would say that if it carries on like it is, it could become the PS4 and Xbox One's first-person-shooter: a genre with so many games out every year that lacks innovation.

What do you guys think? Do you "like" jump scares in games? And do you think that the genre is dying? Tell us in the comments below!

Right In The Zucker!

"REEVEENNGGEEEEE!" (Larry Page, 2014)

You know a couple of months ago I said that Facebook were buying Titan Aerospace so they could use solar powered drones to give the world internet? Well, it turns out the deal didn't go through, so Google bought Titan Aerospace instead. For the exact same reason. While Facebook have internet.org, a charity that aims to supply internet to poor countries so they can make money off of them, Google have Project Loon, a project where Google aims to put huge solar powered hot air balloons in the stratosphere so it can provide internet to remote areas of the world. So they're basically the same things, but Project Loon is more kid-friendly.

You may be skeptical about Google thinking it can put big balloons in the sky without them falling, but Titan Aerospace can make drones that last for 5 YEARS. So you have a long time to prepare for Titanfall.

Okay, I'm sorry! Anyways, you may be wondering if Facebook's internet.org project has been put on hiatus, since buying Titan Aerospace was supposed to kickstart the charity, but fear not, Zuckerbirds, as Facebook have bought British solar-powered drone maker Ascenta for $20 million! Sure, you haven't heard of them, but with Facebook's funding, Ascenta could become a big name in the industry!

What do you guys think? Is putting solar powered drones in the sky a good idea? Or are there better ways to provide internet to remote areas? Tell us in the comments below!

An Important PSA (Well, Kinda Public!)

No. This article is SUPER cereal.

You may have heard about the Heartbleed bug that's going around the internet. Well, it's stealing lots of information from websites that use Open SSL, a programming tool, so you might wanna change your passwords. Luckily, this chart from VentureBeat should tell you what passwords to change!

HD TVs? Pfft!

"Well, if you want to watch pixels, it's your funeral, peasant." (LG G3 Snob)

Sad news for TVs today as it's been revealed that the LG G3 will indeed have a 2K screen, meaning that it will have 2 times the amount of pixels of a normal HD screen. Considering that it's on a phone screen instead of a 40 inch TV screen, the G3 could well be an amazing phone to watch your pictures on! This could mean that LG could have already won the smartphone war this year, as all other phones announced this year don't have 2K screens! That's right, the Samsung Galaxy S5, HTC One M8 and Sony Xperia Z2 all have "petty" HD screens! It's all up to you, Apple!

Mind you, if Apple made a phone with a 2K screen it would probably cost £1000!

The LG G3 is in 1st place in terms of screen resolution, with 2nd, 3rd and 4th places closely fought. The HTC One M8 is 2nd, the Samsung Galaxy S5 in 3rd and the Sony Xperia Z2 is 4th.  Keep in mind that all phones are in HD, it's just that the S5's screen is bigger than the One M8's screen by 0.1 inch, and the same with the Z2. But if you buy one of them, you're a peasant. :)

There are also rumors that the G3 has 3GB of RAM, a quad core CPU and a 13MP camera, but there has only been 1 sighting of these specs, so they aren't confirmed.

What do you guys think? Is a 2K screen necessary for a phone? Or do you prefer to have a better screen on your phone rather than your TV? Tell us in the comments below!

You Need To Be Rich To Watch Dogs!

The game, that is, not the sport where stick thin dogs chase a fluffy rabbit. Unless you want to be thousands of pounds on it.

Playing games on PC in Ultra mode is the ultimate experience for any gamer, as it lets you see a game in a resolution that a no console could handle. Usually it's a slight upgrade from the recommended specs of a game; maybe an extra 2GB of RAM or a a couple more cores in a graphics card. Well, with Watch Dogs, it ain't so cheap! The Ultra specs for the NSA Simulator require some pretty expensive parts! You need an intel Core i7 processor and a GeForce GTX 780, which can set you back just under £500. Plus 8GB of RAM. I better start saving my pennies!

Still, the minimum specs for Watch Dogs are pretty basic. All you need is at least Windows Vista SP2(HA!), a 1GB Graphics Card, a Quad Core CPU, 4GB of RAM and at least 20GB on your hard drive. Even this old laptop could play it on basic! Still, Ubisoft have said that Watch Dogs won't look truly good on basic settings, so if you want a next gen experience, either buy an Xbox One or PS4, or buy the parts needed for the recommended specs! You'll need a 2GB Graphics Card, 8GB of RAM and a four core Intel or eight core AMD CPU, which is quite steep!

What do you guys think? Are the specs for Watch Dogs too demanding? Or are they fair? Tell us in the comments below!

Shoutouts!

Hi Guys!

I just have a couple of shoutouts to do, and just to be clear: I wasn't asked to do these! I just feel like doing them as they deserve more fans!
First up is one of my old friends who has two YouTube channels, one for gaming and one for vlogs. Both channels are extremely entertaining, so if you want more funny in your life, go to channels Brendan Fifield and Brendan Plays!

Last of all I have a friend who does some amazing war poetry, and even though this is a bit off topic, it's still a great Facebook page to visit! It's called War Poetry!

Thanks guys and I hope you enjoy it!

Sam

Poll Results!

Is it me or does the Android mascot look a Canadian from South Park: The Stick Of Truth?

A couple of days ago, I asked you guys if you thought that Android consoles are the future of budget gaming and are worth the money, or if you think that they are unnecessary and pointless, considering that you can play great games on Android phones and tablets! Well, 100% of you guys said that Android consoles are just a fad, and that they are pointless!

I actually agree with you guys here, as, in my eyes, a budget games console is in the £50-£70 region, not £100 like the Ouya or £240 like the Nvidia Shield! I think that Android consoles will only be successful if they have games that are exclusive to the actual consoles, not just exclusive to the Android OS. If the best games on the Ouya or Gamestick are also available on tablets and phones, than everyone will just buy a phone or tablet, as they have more use in them!

I'd also just like to say that there will be a new poll every week, so everyone gets a chance to vote. If you have an opinion that you'd like to share, than tell us in the comments or vote in our polls! We won't bite!

Sorry For The Bad Week!

Hi Guys,

I'd just like to say that I'm sorry for the lack of posts this week; I've had a lot going on and just haven't found the time. However, starting tomorrow, the post schedule will be back to normal, so expect the normal 3 or so posts a day again!

Thanks for being so supportive and cool!

Sam