In case you haven’t tried Call of Duty Black Ops — one of the few ones out there — Target has a deal on the game taking $13 off the regular $60 price tag, and you can now get it for $47. Other games are $10 off as well, including: Fable 3, Red Dead Redemption, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood and Medal of Honor — all new games that have been released a few months ago (or more, in the case of Red Dead Redemption). Great time for Christmas shopping for some games if you haven’t already done that. The offer lasts until Saturday, Dec. 18.
EA has released an iPhone version of Bad Company 2, which was announced back at E3. The iPhone version has both single and multiplayer gameplay, with single player offering 14 single player missions in 5 battle zones, and also supports 4 player multiplayer in Free for All and Squad Deathmatch game modes.
Best of all, the game is on sale right now for just 99 cents — that’s right, 99 cents. It’s regular price isn’t far off: $1.29. You can find it on iTunes here.
The PlayStation 3 is definitely one of the most popular consoles on the market, frequently applauded for its high definition graphics and beefy hardware. However, one of the biggest gripes consumers have with the PS3 are the painstakingly long load times that are associated with some titles. Luckily, there is hope, as some members in the community have discovered that swapping out the PS3′s stock SATA hard drive for a snappier solid state drive (SSD) cuts the load times considerably.
As you can see from the above chart, loading times for some of Gran Turismo 5‘s tracks are cut in half in addition to actually loading the game.
Sounds great to me but unfrotunately owners of the newer PS3 Slim need not apply as this mod is incompatible with this hardware.
Usually when a game is in development for more than 5 years, it’s usually considered vapor ware (read: never coming out) as is the case with Duke Nuke: Forever. However, this was not the case with Gran Turismo 5 as despite being in development for quite some time, it eventually made its way onto store shelves. Unfortunately, with all of the hype surrounding Gran Turismo 5′s ultra-realistic gameplay, it set the bar quite high for the actual game – a bar that would have been impossible to meet.
Luckily, it seems that there is hope as Polyphony Digital’s Kazunori Yamauchi (a.k.a the creator of Gran Turismo) has come forth to let us know that the studio believes one GT5 update per month sounds like a good idea. What exactly these updates will entail is any one’s guess but lets hope it brings with it some hefty new features. Additionally, he also goes on to state that he believes new premium cars will eventually be available as DLC. Of course, this doesn’t actually mean NEW cars but instead updates resolutions, fully modeled interiors and more for the ~800 cars that didn’t get the feature on launch.
As for new tracks and cars? Probably not. Yamauchi says there may be an expansion pack or they may just leave this content for the next title. In other words, don’t hold your breath.
Microsof’t Xbox 360 has long been applauded for its top notch online service appropriately dubbed Xbox Live. While this service requires users to pay a subscription fee, Microsoft prides themselves in offering consumers a grade-A experience. Not only that, but thanks to some deals from retailers, the subscription fee isn’t half bad.
In fact, Walmart has just announced today that they will be offering 1-year of Xbox Live plus a game of your choice for $81. Now you’re probably assuming you only get to choose from a line up of crappy games, but that’s not the case. Included in the line up of games that qualify for this deal include Halo: Reach, Call of Duty: Black Ops and Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, just to name a few.
This is a great deal as a 1-year Xbox Live subscription usually goes for $60 alongside these games which go for $60 as well.
It was only a matter of time before one of the major online game retailers slashed their prices for the holidays, and gog.com has drawn first blood. They have over 290 games on discount, some up to 50% off.
Here are some of the nicer deals: Duke Nukem 3D for $3, Baldur’s Gate 2 for $7, Empire Earth for $3, and Serious Sam 2 for $3, among others. Now we’re waiting for the Steam holiday sale.
The turn based strategy game Civilization 5 (read our Civilization 5 review here), has received a massive patch fixing over a hundred issues, tweaking lots of settings, additions and what not.
The fixes include, among many others, over two dozen AI fixes, lots of campaign and strategy tweaks, and updates to the modding aspect of Civ 5. Full details on the patch here.
If you’re interested in trying out Age of Empires Online, the new, free to play Age of Empires game, then you should head out to Alienware’s site right now and get yourself a beta key while you can. Note that you are required to create an Alienware account, which shouldn’t be too much of a hassle if you’ll be one of the first to try out the new Age of Empires game.
Many have tried to create a game based on the popular Rubik’s Cube puzzle. Which is kinda hard, since a Rubik’s Cube is something you get your hands on and try and solve. But a series of puzzle games bearing the Rubik’s name were released on the Wii under the name Rubik’s World, which was so and so. Then came Rubik’s Puzzle Galaxy: Rush, which was a bit better, and now it has been improved and released on the PC under the title Rush, because they don’t have the Rubik’s license any longer. That has you puzzled, right? Anyways…
In Rush, the objective is to lead a series of colored cubes to their respective exits by laying down arrows on a board. And that’s about it, that’s all there is to it. However, you only have a limited amount of arrows, so there is some thinking involved, but Rush isn’t the hardest puzzle game you’ll find today. After you’ve set your arrows, you release the cubes and the arrows guide them to their destination. However, everything looks the same, every level has the same colors and layout, and one wonders if they could at least throw in some different backgrounds in there.
All in all, Rush is an okay puzzle game. There isn’t much variety, but if you’re into the gameplay, you’ll be happy to know there’s 70 levels and that Rush only retails for $5. Personally, we got tired after the first dozen levels, as everything appears to be the same, sans the difficulty. Overall, recommended for those who are very into puzzles, for everyone else, you’re better off getting Plants vs Zombies or something from PopCap.
As promised, Uncharted 3 gameplay debuted on the Jimmy Fallon show yesterday, showing some nice, great looking action wiht Nathan Drake fighting his way through a burning building.
Uncharted 3 is set for release on November 1 next year, which makes the date 11.1.11 – lots of ones there, as Jimmy Fallon also notes.
