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• The Problem With XBLA Pricing

  When the amazing Bionic Commando: Rearmed launched last summer at the cost of 800 Microsoft Points (10 dollars), fans of the old-school franchise were relieved--and some were even worried that Capcom wasn't charging enough. But just a week before this, the 1200-Point price tag attached to the equally-amazing Braid caused a bit of alarm--though most agreed that an extra five bucks was more than worth it for such a unique and unforgettable experience. These days, the 800 Point-and-under pricing structure of XBLA games is seemingly becoming a thing of the past; this week's releases of Puzzle Quest: Galactrix and Flock are available for 20 and 15 dollars, respectively. For the gamer on a budget--or me, anyway--the 10-dollar price point is the sweet spot for XBLA game prices. And as new XBLA releases find themselves slipping further and further from this comfortable territory, I'm finding myself less and less interested in what's available in the marketplace. Read More... Posted Apr 09 2009, 02:15 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: xbla, bob mackey, dlc, xbox live arcade, flock, puzzle quest: galactrix

• Burnout: The Gift That Keeps On Giving

  I gotta hand it to the charitable folks over at Criterion; since last January's release of Burnout: Paradise, they've released quite a few substantial DLC updates at absolutely no cost to the consumer. Where companies like Namco-Bandai are content to find ridiculous ways to get their hands on your hard-earned money, Criterion doesn't seem to mind playing Santa three times a year to support one of the greatest racing games we've seen this generation. And even though they plan on charging for their upcoming pack of downloadable cars that absolutely don't infringe on any copyrights whatsoever, the creators of Burnout have at least one more free update coming out on February 6. While the last free Burnout updates were largely content-related, this new one appears to be a complete under-the-hood overhaul; and the addition of one hugely-missed option is definitely going to bring me back to a game I should have honestly played a lot longer. The big announcement? You ask – we deliver. Restart is in! You can now quit or fail an event and choose to restart it. You’ll be transferred to the start location ready for action. We’ve always enjoyed the feeling of freedom that Paradise City’s open world delivers, but we appreciate that as you run low on events towards the end of the game, you can spend a little too long in transit. While I certainly thought the open-world nature of Paradise was a nice change of pace, the annoyance of having to drive back to the starting point of failed events made the game much more tedious than it needed to be. Read More... Posted Jan 26 2009, 12:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: burnout, bob mackey, dlc, burnout paradise, racing, criterion

• The GTAIV DLC: Does Anyone Still Care?

  The ending of Grand Theft Auto IV left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth, if only because it was just so cruel and heartless to its affable main character; Nico Bellic's reward for 60 hours of revenge was nothing but a post-game purgatory in which he had free reign of a sterile city without the underlying social network so much of his pre-ending life was built upon. And while my backlash against GTAIV isn't quite as harsh as the current opinion held by quite a few games journalists, I never really felt the desire to play the game again after Nico's story was abandoned without anything even resembling an epilogue. Admittedly, the game's obsession with narrative over gameplay really made it suffer, but even so, the second Nico became an aimless NPC was when I stopped caring about anything GTAIV. So now that we're a less than a month away from The Lost and the Damned, GTAIV's first DLC expansion, I can't help but utter the overused apathy signifier known as "Meh." Read More... Posted Jan 22 2009, 10:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: xbox 360, gta iv, bob mackey, dlc, the lost and the damned

• We are Skeptical of Cave Story's DLC

  Where this would usually be cause to celebrate, I can't help but think that anything added to this game is going to bring it down. Here's some news from the port's team: We’re still working away at Cave Story trying to make sure it’s faithful to Amaya-san’s original while adding a few things for the console release. One of these new additions, I’m happy to announce is Download Content. I think we received enough e-mails demanding it that we’re doing our best to include some new surprises in the WiiWare release. You’re going to have to wait for more info on that. Even hearing the phrase "graphical facelift" makes me cringe. One of the game's biggest appeals is it's charictaristically pixellated style. Hopefully they won't change things too much. Read More... Posted Jan 09 2009, 01:00 PM by Cole Stryker with | with 5 comment(s) Filed under: wii, cole stryker, cave story, action button, dlc, tim rogers

• Industry Predictions for 2009: Doom and Gloom Edition

  Happy New Year, everyone! Please note before continuing that you are unlikely to see the word “happy” in any other place in this entry. My predictions for where gaming is going in 2009 are not particularly rosy, but these are lean times, and lean times do not care so much about your feelings. More closures: As investors pulled money and game sales underperformed, companies closed left and right at the end of 2008. I expect that trend to continue as more Christmas sales results come in. Independent developers, the ones completely unprotected from the financial storm, will be in the most trouble, but publishers will probably close down a significant number of internal studios also. Midway, of course, will be first—there’s a chance some semblance of the company will get out of its current turmoil, but that Midway will bear little resemblance to the one of today. The $60 price ceiling will hold: Late in the year, the news that Call of Duty: World at War was being sold at $50 in some places scared the bejeezus out of some of the big industry analysts, who began to wonder aloud if the $60 price ceiling was viable in a recession of this magnitude. But the answer to that question doesn’t really matter: whether it seems viable or not, there is no way that that maximum price will drop. It took the industry ten years, a lot of hard work and a whole new hardware generation to get to $60. Lowering the price now wouldn’t just hurt bottom lines immediately, it would hurt them long term as publishers would have to do all that hard work again. Price cuts from an initial asking price of $60 may come quickly, but you all know that’s nor new either. After all it wasn’t that difficult to find Call of Duty 4 for $40 prior to Christmas 2007. Read More... Posted Jan 02 2009, 12:00 PM by Joe Keiser with | with no comments Filed under: psp, dlc, joe keiser, recession, 2009, call of duty world at war, predictions

• Holiday DLC for You and Yours

  Harmonix has just announced that next week’s Rock Band DLC content will be holiday themed, proving once again that they really get it when it comes to the music game market. The songs are, of course, pretty decent: Barenaked Ladies – Hanukkah Blessings Billy Squier – Christmas is the Time to Say I Love You The Pretenders – Blue Christmas This is the kind of thing that DLC is built for, especially for games that have built a business model around frequent DLC updates. Such a model allows for the industry to indulge yearly in a little bit of seasonal content, the same way Hollywood spews out the same cheaply-made movie about holiday family awkwardness every first weekend of December. I’m no fan of Christmas movies, but I’m happy and eager to drape games I already like in festive colors for a few days every winter. After the jump there are a few other 2008 holiday DLC things to fool around with next to the fireplace this year. No, Guitar Hero isn’t getting anything (humbug). No, Rock Revolution isn’t getting anything either (hey, if you were Konami, would you support that game?). Read More... Posted Dec 19 2008, 02:00 PM by Joe Keiser with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: xbox 360, rock band, lips, ps3, dlc, joe keiser, christmas, santa hats on pretty girls, soulcalibur iv, singstar, holidays

• Trailer Review: Terrifying New Mirror’s Edge Content

  Ah, Mirror’s Edge. There’s so much to think about when talking about it. It is, without doubt, a flawed, frustrating experience, the kind of game experience that you hate just as much you love. It also just happens to be the most important, must-play AAA title of the year. And it’s beautiful, and also nauseating. It has dizzying production values, and cheap looking Flash-like cutscenes. For every positive point, DICE’s opus has an equally negative counter-point, save for the one negative that stands alone: Mirror’s Edge is pretty darn short. So of course there’s new DLC coming out for it, and it’s not just more of the same—for starters it’s called the Pure Time Trials pack, time trials being the one thing that everyone unequivocally loved about the original. And judging by the trailer, which I’ve just watched for the sixth time in a row, it is also in its way more beautiful than the rooftop playgrounds of the game’s story mode. If you thought that was a clinic in Swedish minimalism, you’ve seen nothing—these new levels are made entirely of blocks of solid color hovering in space. The camera twirls as the mind boggles, searching for the seemingly limitless paths of flow in this pristinely artificial landscape. Here is the game that design mechanic fetishists wanted the original to be, this trailer seems to say. I personally couldn’t be happier. Read More... Posted Dec 04 2008, 04:00 PM by Joe Keiser with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: trailer review, dlc, mirror’s edge, joe keiser, minimalism, time trials

• Pay-Per-Grind: Tales of Vesperia Let’s You Level With Cash

  We’ve been talking a whole hell of a lot about role-playing games around these parts lately. Of course, we’ve also been musing on the amount of time you need to spend playing certain games, RPGs in particular. Cutting the grind out of RPGs is an entire industry when it comes to MMOs. Don’t have two-hundred thirty-nine hours to pour into World of Warcraft? Well, there are a number of fine, trustworthy organizations based out of China and elsewhere that will get you your level-65 character for a few measly sawbucks. When it comes to the single-player, console RPG, though, you have one of two choices for beefing up your characters: you either cheat (in-game exploit or using a Gameshark-style device) or you put in the many, many hours necessary to max out your party. But, like so much in the age of downloadable content, the times are a changin’. Namco’s Tales of Vesperia got its first downloadable content this week and, for just a few hundred Microsoft Points, you can buy your characters ten levels of experience. Call me crazy, but doesn’t this defeat the point of the console RPG? Read More... Posted Aug 22 2008, 04:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, xbox 360, tales of vesperia, namco, dlc