Posted by: Trent Polack at November 20, 2009 1:06:28 AM
It's a Daily! Drew wanted me to apologize to you for his lack of a Daily yesterday. I am apologizing for me for a quick Daily today because I just got home (it's late) and I have God of War Collection and Assassin's Creed 2 in my bag and those games need playing.
Speaking of things which are awesome: 3D Dot Game Heroes is also getting a US release in May 11, 2011. This is also brilliant news. 3D Dot Game Heroes is being brought to us by From Software (developer of Demon's Souls!) and Atlus (US publisher of Demon's Souls!) is aimed at making an awesome game that appeals to the inner video gaming child in all of us by emulating Zelda except awesomer.
And speaking of more things which are absolutely rad, the Playstation 3 beta of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 started today. Bad Company was pretty much one of the best multiplayer games of all time (as fellow Daily writer, Mike, and I can attest to) and it looks like DICE is just improving on it in every way possible for the sequel.
In case you were unaware or missed the Daily earlier this week, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 sold a whole lot of copies. In the game's first five days of sales Activision claims that a "'new worldwide estimated five-day sell-through record' of $550 million" was reached. That's just an absurd number. Source Shacknews relays the information that Activision included in the press release at the aforementioned link. In tangentially related news, game blogger Matthew Kaplan wrote up a no doubt spoiler-laden summary of Modern Warfare 2's "No Russian" mission with contributions from around the Internet. As I indicated last week I think this is an interesting topic of discussion.
Game developer, publisher, and desktop enhancement developer Stardock released its yearly consumer report this week which has all sorts of stats on the company's consumer demographic information and digital distribution and other such numbers. This is the kind of plan a lot of publicly-held companies make for their share-holders every year but Stardock is a privately-held company and, as such, releases this information for the sake of its customers. Check it out. The statistic which saddened me is that, apparently, 96% of Stardock's customer base is male. That's just... Ugh.
Marvelous Entertainment reports better luck with games on the PSP than the Wii. The company cites poor sales for its huge critical hit Little King's Story on the Wii, which is sad, because while I haven't played the game I've heard nothing but praise (and keep meaning to pick it up). Presumably Muramasa: The Demon Blade saw similarly poor sales given the point of the article, but only the Japanese sales data was given. The company has, however, had good luck with its PSP releases due to sales and lower development costs. This is particularly fantastic because Marvelous made Half-Minute Hero which is, actually, one of my favorite games of the year. Not to keep linking my site in Dailies, but I want you to share in the glory of this super clever game. It's brilliant.
Now. Friday. Let's have some fun this weekend, shall we? I know I said this was a quick Daily (and it was, for the most part), but it ended up being long. This is because I pretty much just talked about video games. I like video games. OH I HAVE ASSASSIN'S CREED TO PLAY, HAVE A NICE WEE--
DemosthenesGDNet+Member since: 4/2/2001 From: Porto, Porto
Posted - 11/20/2009 9:26:48 AM
Quote:
In case you were unaware or missed the Daily earlier this week, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 sold a whole lot of copies. In the game's first five days of sales Activision claims that a "'new worldwide estimated five-day sell-through record' of $550 million" was reached. That's just an absurd number. Source Shacknews relays the information that Activision included in the press release at the aforementioned link. In tangentially related news, game blogger Matthew Kaplan wrote up a no doubt spoiler-laden summary of Modern Warfare 2's "No Russian" mission with contributions from around the Internet. As I indicated last week I think this is an interesting topic of discussion.
* SPOILERS BEWARE *
I'm currently in the third act of the game and the "No Russian" mission is just one chapter of a contrived and unrealistic story. Why doesn't the American agent kill the terrorists before the massacre? What did he have to win by "playing along"? There's no moral conflict because there are no morals at all. And an American corpse in an airport massacre would trigger an USA-Russia war?
After that mission, Russia invades the USA mostly undetected, flying over the Atlantic??? And sends the army to Washington instead of nukes? Please. The missions themselves are barely connected, just excuses to keep you going from exotic scenery to exotic scenery.
It's incredible that this game is so much fun and so dumb at the same time. The story in CoD 4 was much more grounded.
I'm still puzzled on how CoD4 and MW2 have become so popular. Were they released at a really good time when no other good games were being released? Maybe I'll have to give the CoD4 demo another shot, but the first time through it I really didn't think it was anything special. It seemed more or less like CoD2, but with a different setting (modern day instead of WWII).
Original post by Demosthenes
I'm currently in the third act of the game and the "No Russian" mission is just one chapter of a contrived and unrealistic story. Why doesn't the American agent kill the terrorists before the massacre? What did he have to win by "playing along"? There's no moral conflict because there are no morals at all. And an American corpse in an airport massacre would trigger an USA-Russia war?
SPOILERS
A dead American that was seen shooting up the place in a Russia that was already looking for an excuse to do something. As for not just shooting them when you step out of the elevator that is a little daft. And the Russians had figured out the secret to the satellite defense network so why can't they be invisible? Ground based radar wouldn't have detected the planes in the middle of the ocean I don't think. I'm sure they didn't just nuke the place because of the whole M.A.D. issue. I don't know why I'm trying to rationalize the story as its just a bit of filler to give a reason to blow lots of stuff up.
I saw Half Minute Hero on Amazon's Video Game Deal of the Day on Wednesday for $19 but I didn't jump on it. The whole under pressure from the clock thing doesn't do it for me, even when it's barely there like in Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter.
As for this weekend, well, I just got into Dwarf Fortress (the native Linux version of course). And by "got into" I mean neglected my family by playing from after dinner until I went to bed. And there I played until my laptop battery was just about to die sometime after midnight. Then I woke up at 6 AM and played until my wife kicked me out of the house to go to work.
Man, I'm gonna be in so much trouble this weekend.
previous story
next story 
Demosthenes GDNet+
Member since: 4/2/2001 From: Porto, Porto
Posted - 11/20/2009 9:26:48 AM
Posted - 11/20/2009 10:56:08 AM
Posted - 11/20/2009 11:24:09 AM
