The stories for this week:
- 3D Realms Shuts Down
- Eurogamer Review Situation
- Space Invaders Extreme Contest
- Civilization IV: Complete This Week
- PC Dragon Age to Needs Only Disc Check
3D Realms Shuts Down
Probably the biggest news of the week. After over 12 years in development, 3D Realms went to Take Two saying 90% of Duke Nukem Forever was done and if they could get some bling to finish the last 10%. Take Two denied it and 3D Realms officially closed up shop. I don’t blame Take Two for doing that because 3D Realms has only done about 7% per year on the game and it could be another 2+ years before they finish it. DNF is already the biggest laughingstock in the industry, they’d have to make something truly remarkable to erase all the bad stuff surrounding the long development process.
The people behind 3D Realms are not totally gone though, they started up another company called RADAR that will use the assets from DNF and make a new game. The Duke name and likeness is evidently now owned by Take Two. Should be interesting to see if this new game generates any interesting. Both Scott Miller and George Broussard have to know that their history follows them wherever they go, right?
I also hope that Take Two hands the reins of Duke over to one of their internal developers and they get a Duke game out before the DNF-like game comes out. That would be sweet justice right there!
Source: Colony of Gamers via Shacknews
Eurogamer Review Situation
Another rather large news item this week was a fight between Eurogamer and Darkfall Lead Developer Tasos Flambouras. It seems Eurogamer had a freelance reviewer review Darkfall and he gave it a 2 out of 10. Tasos then came back saying that of the two accounts they gave Eurogamer that one was barely used and the other only had 2 hours on it. Eurogamer came back saying that the reviewer said he played it for 9+ hours. Guess it depends on who you’re going to believe.
Eurogamer is having another reviewer review the game (one of their top reviewers on staff) and it should be interesting to see if there is a difference in the reviews or not. MMOs are notoriously tough to review and I personally try to stay away from them because there is no way to find a happy medium between those that want to know if it is good or not and those that want to know if it is good or not through long play.
Source: Colony of Gamers via Massively
Space Invaders Extreme Contest
Sister site Colony of Gamers is doing a contest for Space Invaders Extreme on XBLA. You could win a signed lithograph by the original creator of Space Invaders, Tomohiro Nishikado. The trick here is that this isn’t any normal contest since the prize is honestly pretty cool. You have to play the game and take a picture of your top score (you can only do one score, so be sure you get as high as you can) with your GamerTag and CoG username (have to be a member of CoG, easy to sign up) by next Tuesday. Co-Optimus did a story on this and more information is here.
Source: Colony of Gamers
Civilization IV: Complete This Week
This is easily the highlight of the week upcoming. You get Civilization IV, the 2 Expansion packs and Colonization expansion for $39.99. I have to say this is one of the best Turn-based strategy games in recent memory and this is quite a cheap way to get it all in one shot. It is PC only, but this is well worth it.
Source: me
PC Dragon Age to Need Only Disc Check
In a move away from EA’s past SecureROM debacles and from DRM in general, BioWare announced that the upcoming Dragon Age on PC will only require a disc check. This is excellent news and hopefully will reverberate throughout the rest of EA and its properties.
Source: Colony of Gamers