Post Turkey Day Game News Highlights
So you ate too much turkey and stuffing and sweet potatoes drizzled in butter and brown sugar and maybe topped off with a big snowy pile of lightly seared marshmallows (guess what my favorite side dish is). Or maybe you're a vegetarian (or you have vegetarian relatives, or you're a Bill Maher fan) in which case you perhaps had...I believe the portmanteau is "Tofurkey"?
So what did you play? Mario? Ratchet & Clank? Mass Effect? Crysis?
I spent most of my weekend plugged into The Witcher, set up in a gloriously sequestered cave of a bedroom downstairs at my wife's parents' house with a pair of Princess Leia headphones making my plastic glass frames dig into my temples like a slow vise. Call it the price to game discreetly and put a locked door between myself and someone else's sugar-charged two-and-a-half year old who, incidentally, looks at a PC keyboard the way John Bonham might've eyed his bass and toms and mini-classic lugs right before tearing into 20 minutes of "Moby Dick."
Otherwise, it was a slow news weekend.
But not a slow sales period. According to market analysis firm comScore, online sales of video games, consoles, and accessories were up 134% over 2006 for the November 1st-23rd sales period. Also, no surprise that Nintendo's Wii and Guitar Hero III and Rock Band experienced serious supply issues. I personally had a heck of a time tracking down a copy of Guitar Hero III for the Xbox 360. My local GameStop was out, but for some reason a long shot stroll through Target turned up three copies.
Black Friday's top of the video game hill? The Nintendo Wii. Information Week reports the 134% year-on-year surge was ineluctably shaped by the Wii, but somewhat less predictably by Sony's PlayStation 3 (with sales already up 192%, according to Sony, going into the busiest shopping day of the year) and of course, Microsoft's Halo 3. If I'm reading the latter right, Nintendo took volume honors, but Sony's PS3 may have actually outsold the Xbox 360 unit for unit, owing perhaps to Xbox 360 demographic (per its current price) install base saturation.
The only other news of passing interest? Newly opened studio Eidos Montreal announced Deus Ex 3, which means about as much to me as watching the early previews for 28 Weeks Later. Sure, it turned out to be a brilliant sequel by a team that had nothing to do with the Danny Boyle original. But considering the prior two Deus Ex games weren't (brilliant) and the trailer's just a Matrix-y tease (and the fact that Warren Spector doesn't appear to be involved), color me coin-tossing for now.
The debut Deux Ex 3 teaser trailer. "For centuries, man has struggled to understand his true nature." (Oh yeah? And here I thought Family Guy had that question wrapped...)
PC World's Marketplace
PC World's Free Whitepapers
tech news tech blogs community & forums laptop prices software reviews downloads
My holiday was a vegetarian one, but no Tofurky. If anyone wants good veg recipes, go to www.cok.net.
Kudos for the Maher plug, and 1+ for animal rights!
On topic - and re: violence and bloodshed - I played Assassin's Creed.
Right on, I just picked up AC myself, though out of the gate, I'm a little puzzled by the temporal plot mechanic and the relentless half-explained transitions. I presume the game itself opens up more shortly (with bigger areas and longer missions) because so far, I'm not all that impressed by the fact that...let's be honest here...you're simply playing a slightly more complex game of hide-and-seek with the AI. I trust that's not *all* you do for the game's entirety.