by Dave Parrack
Electronic Arts desperately wants to acquire Take-Two Interactive. It already wanted it before Grand Theft Auto IV was released but now that the game has made $500 million in its first week on sale, and proved once again the value of the franchise, EA are even keener.
Take-Two, who publish the Grand Theft Auto games, have already rejected a bid from EA back in February. So now EA are going hostile, and have offered the shareholders a $2.1 billion all cash offer. The shareholders have until May 16th to consider the bid and decide if it’s enough to warrant a mass sell out or not.
The problem is, EA doesn’t actually have $2.1 billion in the bank, and has had to take out a $1 billion loan to cover the costs of the investment if and when it happens. The huge financing will come from Morgan Stanley, the bank of Nova Scotia, and several other financial organisations.
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by Paul
Feeling emo? Or do you feel like rocking out to songs that drive the teens in Hot Topic crazy? Well, this week’s Rock Band songs are just what you are looking for then. The songs are available as a discounted “Scene Pack” for $5.49 (440 Microsoft pretend points) or 1.99 (160 Microsoft imaginarium dollars).
The songs are:
* “This Ain’t A Scene, It’s An Arms Race” - Fallout Boy
* “Date With The Night” - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
* “It Hurts” - Angels & Airwaves
Remember, my thoughts and videos after the break!
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by Paul
There’s a rumor going around that in the next South Park DVD release (volume 11) will feature some downloadable songs for Rock Band. This rumor came about from some retailers who received advanced notice of the possibility.
So far there’s no word on which version of Rock Band the songs would work on (please be all versions so it’s no useless to PS3 owners or vice versa). There’s also no word on what the songs could possibly be. While most of the songs featured on the show are okay to air on television, Rock Band is a family game so that would probably leave out 90% of Chef’s songs at least. If I’d had to guess, I’d think they could be stuff like Taco Flavored kisses or Cartman’s big Christian Rock song.
This is of course not the first time that South Park and Harmonix have teamed up. Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld are an unlockable song on the release disc, so that would should be out on principle.
by Paul
In the latest edition of The Official X-Box Magazine a rumor that should get both fans of Bioshock and fans of the classic PC (and PSX) game X-Com: UFO Defense in a tizzy. Bioshock creator Ken Levine is rumored to be working with 2K Games on a sequel to the space alien fighting game. If any franchise needs an awesome revival, it’s X-Com: UFO Defense.
If you’ve never played X-Com: UFO Defense (or unfortunate enough to play it’s lame sequels), I can’t stress to you how awesome that first game was. Not only did you have to fight aliens in super intense (and incredibly difficult) turned based combat with a team of badass commandos (that you recruited and trained), but you also controlled funding for research and were the sole hope for humanity against the threat of death by alien invaders.
It’s what dreams are made out of… awesome dreams.
by Dave Parrack
Last week saw various media types getting themselves in a tizzy over the so-called clash between the release of Grand Theft Auto IV last Tuesday, and the long awaited Iron Man movie starring Robert Downey Jr. The argument was that the timing of the multi-format GTA 4 coming out was going to play havoc with the box office takings for the film, as millions of gamers would be too busy indoors playing the game to venture out to the cinema to see the film.
And surprise surprise, here we are the week after, and as well as GTA 4 selling in phenomenal numbers, the Iron Man movie did spectacularly well, taking $100 million in the States, and $200 million elsewhere in the world. The movie also ended up being the 10th largest opening movie ever, and the second biggest ever original (non-sequel) film, just behind the first Spider-Man movie.
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by Dave Parrack
Grand Theft Auto 4 has now been out for 5 days, and with this being the first weekend since it’s release, I expect a lot of people will just be getting to grips with the game. So I thought we should take a look at what’s happened around the release, and how the game has been received in different quarters.
The sales bale began on Tuesday at Midnight, with many gamers queuing up at their local games retailer to be the first to get their hands on the game. 5 days later, and both Sony and Microsoft are already arguing over which console has seen the best return on the game. The only sales figures we actually have to go on at the point are from the UK, where the game sold 600,000 copies in 24 hours, making it the new one day record holder.
From the reviews of the game, it seems the PS3 version had a slight edge in the graphics department, looking sexier, and suffering from less frame-rate issues. Both versions have however shipped with bugs, with the PS3 reportedly suffering worse from Rockstar’s seeming inability to release a game without some sort of problem.
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by Paul
Gross.
It looks like Aerosmith is doing a huge favor to fans of Rock Band by agreeing to keep their “awesome” music exclusive to the Guitar Hero franchise. Apparently, Activision shoved bucketfuls of money Aerosmith’s way to help seal this kind of deal. I bet this comes at a much needed time, I hear Steven Tyler has been saving up for a new solid gold rocket car.
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by Paul
While everyone in the world is either waiting in breathless anticipation to get their hands on a copy of GTA IV or already in their non-stop GTA IV sessions, I’m one of the few people that doesn’t have any plans on playing the game any time soon. Why? Well, here’s my top five reasons I’m not playing the greatest game in the entire universe:
1. I’m Old:
There used to be a time where I got so excited about a video game release that I couldn’t sleep at night. Now I’m 29 years old and in gamer years that’s like ten billion. In my advanced stage of life I’ve got a whole host of other things going on that distract me from playing GTA IV. When I was a kid I’d get the newest game (If my parent’s would buy it for me) and spend every waking minute playing it. Now I’ve got a full time job along with writing on the internets. I’ve got a lady in my life that’s like a plant that needs constant watering. And by watering, I don’t mean sex unfortunately. In the few hours a week I get to play games, I’ve got a ton of them that haven’t been touched or beaten. The last thing I need to do is to get another game that I can’t devote any time to when I have tons of other games collecting dust.
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by Paul
This week’s Rock Band DLC brings us more Smashing Pumpkins and a couple of songs from the Mother Hips. All three songs are master recordings and are not available at a discounted three pack. The songs will cost 1.99 (160 Magical MS Points).
The songs are:
* “Zero” - The Smashing Pumpkins
* “Time Sick Son of a Grizzly Bear” - The Mother Hips
* “Red Tandy” - The Mother Hips
Hipsters unite for more Smashing Pumpkins action on Rock Band. This makes their third entry to the game with one of their most memorable songs.
If you’re not familiar with the Mother Hips, they had a serviceable song that came as “bonus” music on the Rock Band disc. What’s funny is that somehow they’ve been promoted to real band status because the price for their songs is equal to that of Zero. Who knows, maybe enough people liked that first song so they thought they were in the big leagues now or something.
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by Paul
Who doesn’t like Ghostbusters? Okay, Ghostbusters II kind of sucked but the original is a sci-fi comedy classic without equal. I’ve got some high hopes for Sierra and Terminal Reality’s Ghostbusters game that they have in development for the PS3 and Xbox 360 with the lame ass name Ghost Busters: The Video Game. You can head on over to IGN for some screen shots that, put frankly, rock my socks off.
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by Dave Parrack
There is a big debate currently raging over whether Wii Fit, the fitness simulator and computerised exercise trainer already out for the Wii in Japan and Europe, and due out in the U.S. soon, could ever be a viable option for real exercise. That game, combined with the massively popular Wii Sports, means kids can potentially get a wide ranging session of exercise all from the comfort of their own home, and playing their games console.
Greg Chin, a teacher at Archbishop Joseph MacNeil in Edmonton, Vancouver, decided to test the games out to see how much of a good workout they actually gave his class full of junior high school students.
He had them compare real exercise with playing Wii Sports, and came up with some interesting results. While he won’t know the results in full until next week, he has already noted that some of the kids heart rates reached 170 beats per minute, only 10 beats off the 180bpm expected of someone at that age taking part in a proper workout.
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by Paul
Over on 1up a couple of guys with one of the coolest jobs in the world (one of them is in charge of overseeing interactive game content done with Marvel’s characters) have a blog where they intermittently post articles of high interest to geeks like me. One (planned) series of articles of most interest to me is the history of Iron Man in video games. The first post and only one that is up right now deal with Iron Man’s appearances in such classics as Captain America and the Avengers and Marvel Super Heroes in War of the Gems. Okay, I’m sure you never heard of the second game, unless your a true comic book loving video game geek. I hope they keep up with the posts, I love comics and history so this is a marriage made in heaven.
Link: Here’s a super awesome review of Captain America and the Avengers. Yes, it is a shameless plug. Also, the sketch is from my buddy Jacon who is an awesome artist and funny guy. Check out his stuff here.
by Paul
I had a feeling this would happen. What do you do when you have a kick ass game featuring guitars and some other company makes a game that’s as great as yours, but adds more instruments? Add more instruments to your game in the sequel! The Activision CEO, Bobby Kotick, has been quoted as saying, “It’s not just about guitars. We’ll include a lot of other instruments, vocals. It will help us expand internationally.” What other instruments? Well, common sense would dictate that we’re at least talking about drums and a microphone here. We’ll keep you up to date as the situation progresses.
The CEO also stated, “It’s the first game we’ve had in which we can use local content and local bands.” Oh goody, the prospect of playing songs from some shitty local band is so exciting! I can barely contain myself.
Link: Comic found here. Don’t know who made it though.
by Dave Parrack
Grand Theft Auto IV is still three days away from release, and the vast majority of people won’t have yet had the chance to sample the game. But that doesn’t seem to be stopping no-nothing do-gooders from calling for the game to be banned, before it even hits the streets, and before any of them have even played it.
We’ve already seen adverts for the game being pulled off buses in Chicago due to a biased piece of reporting from Fox News, and now more opinionated people have decided to butt in.
Parents Television Council president Tim Winter started the invented outrage by declaring:
“This brutally violent videogame must be kept out of the hands of children, and we are calling on all major retailers to reconsider any decisions to sell this game.”
The next day, California state senator Leland Yee sent a message to parent urging them to “avoid (the) latest ultraviolent videogame.”
Now hang on a minute Mr. Winter and Mr. Yee, how do you know the game is going to be brutally or ultra violent? You haven’t played it, so you are just guessing based on the old iterations. Now okay, GTA IV is going to have some scenes of violence in it, but then it is a game about criminality, and violence is an unfortunate part of that. We all wish it wasn’t obviously, but life is unfair.
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by Paul
I don’t know how this game passed by my attention thus far, but when my roommate downloaded the demo to Operation Darkness I thought, “Hey, a turned based 3D game based on WII that’s cool.” Sure, it was populated by douschebaggy looking anime characters, but I’ll take it because I have no other choice (check out my side rant below). What sold me though was that some of your soldiers are WEREWOLVES. It was like there was a scientific think tank put together to come up with a game idea that would make my head explode. I love me some werewolves, I love turn based strategy, and I love alternate history, but I love werewolves even more. The game seems to be pretty decent, but even if it turns out to be kind of sucky I’ll have to purchase it on principle alone. I need to encourage the development of more turn based strategy games that take place in significant times in history that features monsters of lore.
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