The Big News

Unlike E3, Gamescon and the Tokyo Game Show, the Penny Arcade Expo is a fan show for gamers. Set up and painstakingly executed by people who love games, for people who love games. If I didn’t live on ass side of the world (description based on location not personal attitude, I do love my sunburnt country) and actually had a choice of events to attend I’d be lining up for PAX 2012.

So here’s a quick highlight reel of what you missed at PAX 2011.

• Halo 4 Will kick of a new trilogy titled The Reclaimer Trilogy. Other details are pretty scarce, other than it will be epic, like literally big and epic, and the goal is to turn Master Chief into an ass kicker and a ‘fighter jet’. So expect more armour powers.

• Randy Pitchford from Gearbox was literally giving away Borderlands 2. Hundreds of cards with download codes for the game were handed out to attendees at the show. That’s certainly one way to generate word of mouth marketing.
• Likewise the OnLive folks were giving out free consoles to attendees. Holy crap, PAX is like Oprah for gamers.
• The next Minecraft update is so big it’s getting split into two updates.  Expect a lot more adventure, goals and quests, new equipment like a bow and arrow and greater control over things like lighting. Overall it sounds like Minecraft is evolving from more than just a world of blocks (even though that world of blocks is crazy addictive fun) and building.

• Counter Strike: Global Offensive, the latest incarnation of the online war game shooter people played before it was cool, had the longest lines of the show with people watching live matches on a big screen while they waited to play. Kinda cruel really. The new Counterstrike is coming early 2012 to Xbox, PS3, PC and Mac through Steam and Xbox Live and promises to cater to both crusty old fans still spawn killing away on maps they could build from memory in the dark out of sugar cubes, and the younger feister types who will likely keep trying to work out how to use a nuke. I look forward to being bad at it either way.

• There’s a new Trials games coming out soon titled Trials Evolution. Which will no doubt cause as many controller breakages as the last one. (Apparently this was playable at E3 but I never read a mention of it, sorry! To make up for it here's a six minute video of multiplayer gameplay from PAX)

So overall PAX looked like it was a lot of fun. And I'm willing to bet that's mostly down to the culture and climate of the show, everyone seems to be there to have fun and that seemed to carry over to the reporting by journos attending the show. Overall there wasn't anything particularly new there much like the rest of the year, but it just seems like the best show to attend if your a real geek gamer

Crappy News

Yes, I love living in Australia, but sometimes it really sucks being the last part of the English speaking world to get access to most forms of pop culture. Witness Nintendo of Australia, not only unable to give us a release date for Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword but also unable to confirm whether or not the Special Edition of the game, with it’s exotic Wii-mote Motion+ will even be released here.

While I’m unlikely to buy it myself (my Wii is holding up part of my desk to stop it wobbling) I feel the pain of my fellow gamers. Then again I’m sure they’ll just import it. Hopefully Nintendo of Australia cocking up another game release as they have in the past with Smash Brothers (which resulted in stores selling imported copies themselves) might be the tipping point to get some serious changes happening. We can live and dream at least.

Cool News

Holy Flipping Shirt! This is a Fallout edition of Monopoly.

As seen on DeviantART, it was created by some lucky gentlemans better half going by the name Pinkaxolotl for his, very likely, daily use and enjoyment. Wow, just wow. I don’t suppose there’s much chance of Hasbro paying them some epic sum of money and getting a retail version of this in stores for Christmas?

You can see the rest of Pinkaxolotl's deviantart page here: http://pinkaxolotl.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d483agk

Sony News

In a shocking move fake Sony representative Kevin Butler has announced he’s leaving Sony to take up a senior position at his family flooring business.

Naturally this was an attention grabbing precursor to the new Sony campaign titled Long Live Play. Definitely more suitable to the monumentally crap It Only Does Everything. Especially for people waiting on party chat.

I don't... I don't get Kevin Butler. I guess I can see why people do. But I liked Sony ads when they made absolutely no sense, eskimos falling out of fridges, women going to the bathroom, acid trips, Playstation ads used to have all these things. Bring back those freaky ads I say.

Stupid News

At PAX Gearbox big guy Randy Pitchford, in addition to gaining crowd worship with free Borderlands 2 coupons, also said some odd things about Duke Nukem while announcing Gearbox would be working on a sequel, which he cleverly termed ‘our own Duke game’, divorcing his development team in peoples minds from the last crummy one. He claimed reviewers were ‘Full of shit’ and pointed to a graph showing two overall bell curl averages for the game, one negative and one kind of positive... ish, as opposed to the general one curve most games even out to with review scores. His argument was down to some reviewers just not ‘getting’ Duke Nukem.

I haven’t played the game, but that seems like a pretty big reach to me. Assuming his data is solid, and based on the reviews I’ve read, I’d suggest the cluster of positive reviews is down to several reviewers being long time gamers and giving the game extra points for nostalgia. This would seem to be backed up by negative reviews picking on the games technical failings and general gameplay that just wasn’t any fun. The puerile and titillating elements of the game, the things that make it a Duke game, seemed to mostly illicit a shrug and a ‘you can take it or leave it’ attitude amongst all reviews rather than polarising stances.

But as I said I haven’t played it, still I'm yet to read about or hear about someone who actually really enjoyed the game. Lots of 'I bought it just so Gearbox could make a good Duke game next time' and 'at least we finally get another Duke game', but the real compliments are pretty thin on the ground. I think Gearbox are labouring under the false impression people want more Duke Nukem. It might be time to cut their losses and tuck in the aging icon of 90’s gaming, apply a catheter, turn over to the Hustler channel and let him pass away in his sleep.

Douche Move News

In an action that can only be described by my son as ‘incredibly douchetastic’, US retailer Gamestop in the had been opening new copies of the PC version of Deus Ex, removing the enclosed coupon for an On Live version of the game, then resealing them and selling them as new.

Gamespy ran the story with a photo of an official memo from Gamestop to stores directing them to take this action. And even more damning, they admitted as much when they were contacted for comment, yeah that kinda took the teeth out of the whole conspiracy there.

In response to the bad press Gamestop have now pulled all the PC copies of their shelves in the US and returned them to Square Enix, who are reportedly unconcerned about the whole debacle and don’t see Gamestop’s decision as impacting their sales targets. Ouch.

Gamestop’s argument is that they weren’t advised the PC copy would contain the coupon and as it promotes a competitors service they are well within their rights to remove it.

Despite the fact it sounds like an incredibly illegal thing for a business to do, the legal implications are far murkier. The packaging doesn’t mention the coupon at all and the On Live promotion was never advertised or mentioned to Gamestop by either Square Enix or On Live. So as a retailer they may be within their rights.

But it’s still a terribly bad move PR wise. They’re essentially reducing the value of the product by removing a coupon and not advising their customers of the fact. Not to mention they’re still selling the product as new. Publisher Square Enix's reaction is basically to shrug, and manage a 'meh', possibly followed by a 'so what?'. On Live are just happy for the free PR for their emerging technology.

In more important news my copy of Deus Ex hasn't shown up in the post yet causing me extreme stress and fatigue from running out to the mailbox every time I hear a lawnmower I mistake for a postie bike. Geddemmit.

Hope you enjoyed this TTC, apologies for the tardiness, all complaints can be directed to the forums.