We Support an R18+ game Classification

Sorry for the late Tuesday Cap but I have a really good excuse this time, that image above is cyclone Heidi which is about to hit where I live, so I spent last night sorting the house out for cyclone conditions. And now, well now things are a bit boring just waiting for it to happen. So I'm taking a moment to post the Cap. It’s week two of 2012 and between shooting down hokey apocalypse theories and generally annoying people, I’ve been combing the air waves for exciting game news.

And there isn’t any, nothing really exciting at any rate. So here’s some other news.

I’ll admit there is one piece of news I’m ridiculously excited for, but I’ll admit I’m probably in a minority of sad old gamers here. Firaxis (developers of civilisation) have announced they are working on their own Xcom: Enemy Unknown game. I’ve been pretty vocal in my feelings on the 2K Marin game, simply titled Xcom, and itss complete lack of connection with the original Xcom game in any way shape or form. The Firaxis game is all ready winning my shallow favour though, because one, it’s a strategy game, two, it has a modern/future setting, and three, it’s a strategy game. Fan-freaking-tastic more details will be appearing in the next issue of Gameinformer.

Firefly and MMO fans will be pleased to learn that other Firefly fans have picked up the slack left by the closure of developer Multiverse and are working to finish the Firefly MMO game that’s been in development since forever. This fan driven group, Multiverse Foundation have the code that was being worked on and are trying to get the game finished. Given the mindless tenacity and past record of Firefly fans I can say without a doubt that they will try very hard, but most likely fail.

Here’s a trailer for a new game in 2012 to get excited about: Shank 2! Like a gleeful mashup of Kym Possible and an R rated Robert Rodriguez film, the original Shank was pretty darn fun. Shank 2 looks bigger and badder (in terms of attitude as opposed to quality) and is easily the game I’m most excited about right this very second.

A few retailers said Diablo 3 was going to come out on February first. Then Blizzard was all like, “Lol, STFU and GTFO here”. So, no Diablo 3 on February first kids.

Starhawk developers are promising some ‘surprising’ DLC for their base creator/shooter game. Which is now the game I am most excited about in 2012.

Star Wars: The Old Republic, in addition to becoming the new darling of the MMO community (world of whatcraft?) has also won a Guinness World Record for having the most voice actors. Over two hundred thousand lines of dialogue are used in the game. That’s a lot of fetch quest descriptions.

The fine people at N Control had a little PR trouble with the sale of a couple of their new Avenger controllers due to some, shall we say, excitable PR personnel. I’m sure you’ve heard the details, in case you haven’t you can start with the original Penny Arcade article here http://penny-arcade.com/2011/12/27 scroll down for Gabe’s write up and then follow the madness from there.

Love it or hate it, the Steam service continues to grow with its sales increasing 100% for the seventh year in a row.

In an interview with Zoomin Games the face of Nintendo Shigeru Miyamoto announced that in addition to Luigi’s Mansion 2 and Pikmin 3 for the 3DS and Wii U respectively, he was working on an original game.

A few forum posters, and when I say a few I mean a lot, have complained that Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic has some performance issues. The dev position is that gamers rigs aren't quite up to the task. Oh, burn, nasty spec burn. It's an old story though. Gamers claim an issue, developers say it's your fault, gamers provide over whelming technical evidence it isn't, developers patch something, something else breaks when they patch it. We're just at stage two right now.

A Giant Bomb user pointed out a technical issue on the Xbox website that could lead to people accidentally buying content they only wanted to Demo. If you have not logged in, and after you click the Try Game button, and then login, the system mistakenly prompts you with a confirmation button asking if you are sure you want to buy the game. Many people would (and likely have) assume they were only downloading the demo and clicked yes. Xbox have announced they’re aware of the issue and are correcting it. No word on a potential refund for users though.

Flight simulators are the definition of a niche genre in video games. Despite this many current gamers likely got their start playing flight simulator games like F/A-18 Hornet on the Amiga 500 in the 80’s an early 90’s. Personally Microsoft’s recent announcement of offering their detailed sim game, Microsoft Flight, makes me a little nostalgic. Players who login to the title with their Games for Windows Live account get special access to a few planes and missions as well.

Xbox Live Avatars can now get tattoos. Well, not real fake tattoos, but fake fake tattoos, tshirts and sleaves with tattoos on them that your avatar wears. All the expected classy kanji symbols and tribal swirls are on there. Strangely no Windows logo option available. Not for me though, wasted underneath the Batman costume that my Avatar will NEVER TAKE OFF.

The most torrented (ie. downloaded illegally) game in 2011 was Crysis 2. So that’s something for Crytek to be proud off... kinda.

The Fallout brand stoush between the litigant hungry Bethesda and Interplay had reached a settlement that will allow Interplay to release their Fallout MMO sometime in 2012. No details are yet available on how things were settled, money, arm wrestle or nipple twist who screams first loses challenge, but we’ll know something soon.

Rise of Nightmares has a demo out if you wanted to try out one of the more interesting Kinect titles from last year.

God of War IV, while not officially confirmed by Sony, has been outed for all intents and purposes through the resume of a game composer named Timothy Williams who is currently working on the music for Valve’s upcoming title DOTA 2.

So that's it for the week, oh and last week's screenshot was from Knights of the Old Republic