NEWS:

This is crazy, somebody should start a family sitcom. Call it “My publisha.”

Activision Created Modern Warfare “Police State”

●     Sounds like it’s just all about the money, on both sides.

○     Original lawsuit filed by former employees was requesting $500 MILLION in damages.

●     Seen posts by other Activision employees saying the work environment is even worse than what is reported here.

●     Activision withheld half of Infinity Ward’s bonus payouts, unless they published MW3 by Nov 2011.

●     When a group of employees met with CFO Thomas Tippl in April to demand the bonus, according to the suit, Tippl responded “Get over it.”

●     There will be a hearing in front of a judge on Aug. 5 to see the trials of both suits against Activision will be consolidated into one trial. A trial date was set for May 23, two weeks before next year’s E3 is set to get underway.

If you’re not up to date on this story, check out this article:

https://kotaku.com/5513694/the-modern-warfare-fight-your-guide-to-activision-vs-infinity-ward

BioWare: Consoles Are The Past, Not The Future

https://m.kotaku.com/5587557/bioware-consoles-are-the-past-not-the-future

better, original article:

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/bioware-working-on-small-scale-mmo

○     They’re still going to work on “Triple-A Console Games” but believe that the future of gaming is in social networking, handheld devices, and MMOs.

○     Specific mentions of iPhones, iPads and the 3DS, as well as browser MMOs.

○     “There will be some stuff you’ll see down the road, within the next year, that shows what we’re doing in that regard.”

Alien Swarm, free Steam game: alienswarm.com

REVIEWS:

DeathSpank

From creator Ron Gilbert, who created “Maniac Mansion” and “Monkey Island”

              + Art Style

              + Scripting

              + A lot of equipment-driven customization

              + Cheap!  It’s only US$15

              – Boring, repetitive quests

              – Only ~8 hours of gameplay

              – Co-op mode features a stripped-down secondary character with few                                             abilites and no customization.  Lame.

Deathspank Visuals:

https://gamevideos.1up.com/do/search?searchQuery=deathspank

Crackdown 2

Three years since the original, yet very little has changed or been improved.

More of the same, with just a few extras thrown in:

              4-player Co-Op mode                 -AND- 16-player Arena mode

              + Skill progression is a neat “use it to improve it” system (kinda like Fable2)

              + Very sandboxy – wide open exploration with orb collection being the primary goal.

              + The game is very fun, but all the best parts were present in the original.

              – Multi-player modes feel half-assed, missing key co-operative features.

              – No storyline to speak of

              – Graphics aren’t very good, and game has been known to stutter

              – Camera sometimes moves erratically