Another edition of your favorite gaming news roundup is here. Wednesday is upon us and Apple just had their big iPhone announcement, RAGE is out today, we have new Portal 2 DLC, Midweek Madness sale is Portal 2 and big ol’ stack of news at the end. Decrypt your files cause it’s go time!
RAGE:
RAGE is out today on PC and from what I have been reading people are not taking to kindly to it. I played for about two hours last night and was having fun with it. As I posted on Google+ earlier. Don’t go off the deep end when a game first comes out. Finish the game and then speak your mind. Hasn’t anybody ever learned to hold judgement till the end? Reading around the net you can find all kinds of idiots out there. People calling the game shit, asking for Carmack’s head, it’s all just nonsense really. It’s a freaking game people, not your life. Hell, Duke Nukem Forever got slammed in the ratings and I felt that it was a pretty fun game. Also, if you read around and get your mind set on the game then yes, you are going to look at every little detail and come out frustrated. The best ways to play games is go in with an open mindset and take it for what it's worth. After reading some of the comments left by trolls around the intertubes, they have pretty much said that the reviews are misleading or in fact trying to cash in on making the game look better than it is. I in fact take reviews with a grain of salt. Does the game run? Will it crash every five seconds? That is the type of stuff that I am looking for. Id has said that they are looking into the pop in that people are experiecing but I can tell you that it isn't bad at all on Nvidia cards. I can't tell you about AMD cards as I don't own one.
RAGE will always be compared to Borderlands no matter what anyone says. It looks a lot like it but better in many ways. There is way more detail as you progress through the story and towns that you are sent to. The vehicle sections are much better than in Borderlands. The cars drive much better and you can really blast through towns without running into stuff. The game isn’t perfect by any means but it is far from the worst that I have played. The game ran fine for me while I was playing it on the LanBox. Sure, it has a Nvidia 580 but it’s not like you couldn’t use a lower end card to play and have a great experience.
I need to finish the game before I let people know how good it is and how well it ran on my machine but so far I haven’t had anywhere near as many problems as people are elating to.
As of this writing I have played 4 hours into the game and I am having a load of fun. I try and stay out of the troll infested RAGE bashing threads that are prevalent around the net and just keep playing. Sure, there is stuff to work on but the game runs fine for me and hasn't crashed my machine. Is all the other stuff worth getting all pissed off about and calling PC gaming dead? No.
Here are some screenshots of the game early on.
Many of you may not know Cory, but I can tell you he is one of the biggest Portal 2 fans that I have ever seen. Well Cory, this is your week my friend. I know that you are going to be playing Portal 2 again and there is a good reason for that. Valve has just released the Portal 2 DLC Peer Review for free on Steam. While this add’s more co-op levels to the game it also expands both the single and multiplayer challenge modes. They have also introduced leaderboards so you can compare what and where you need to improve you gameplay while battling your friends for that all important self indulgence.
Midweek Madness:
If you haven’t picked up Portal 2 now would be a great time to do so. With a savings of 50% for grand total price of $14.99 you can jump in now, save some cash and get the DLC that I mentioned above for free. It’s a great game with a great story and as all Valve games are it will run on just about any PC out there. If you need any more encouragement it has a Metacritic rating of 95.
Left Field:
Anyone else dissapointed in the Apple iPhone announcement? Man, what a let down the iPhone 4S is. I will say this up front. I do own stock in a couple of companies, mostly one’s that I like and support. Google would be one, Apple would be another along with IMAX and Ford. No, I don’t own any stock in gaming companies, that would just be wrong, plus they don’t pay that well anyways. Regardless I am an Android user and I like to see competition and with the iPhone 4S I saw Apple copying as many things as they needed to compete with Android. I will say that more competition is better for consumers and that is what we want. Better phones with more features for less money.
I just picked up a Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 for some extra fun around the house and I must say that I like this way more than the XOOM that I bought awhile back and returned. These are not laptop replacements, so get that out of your head right away. This is something else that you can play around with when you are out and about. I went with the smaller screen because the 10.1 just seemed to big to lug around and the 8.9 does weigh less. I will elaborate on this more in a future Gaming News but as of right now I am really enjoying it.
Have you seen how many Free To Play games are on Steam now? Gesh, there must be 10 or more. Nothing like playing an MMO and not having to pay a monthly fee!
Star Wars Old Republic is dropping on December 20th. That seems a tad bit close to Christmas but with a $15 a month fee to play the game after the 30 days free that comes with the game I can’t see this taking off. There are so many MMO’s that have gone free to play that EA must think that they have a winner on their hands to charge people a monthly fee. I know that with the game requiring Origin to play it is a no sale for me.
Reading around the net I have found out something interesting. The server files for the Battlefield 3 Beta have leaked and people are hosting 100 Rush maps now. Here comes the bad news. If you accidently end up in one of these maps through the Quick Match and have your account compromised aka rank hacking you can have your Origin account banned. So that new Star Wars game that you just purchased and all of you Origin games will be unavailable! And to think that people ask why I am not a fan of Origin. It’s not a bad service but there is absolutely no reason for Battlefield 3 to have it. You do everything through Battlelog and that runs in your browser. So to run Battlefield you need to have the game open, Origin and your default browser open.
How about some League of Legends news. The new mode with the new map Old Dominion has been released. This is more news than anything else. I am not a huge LoL player but I know a couple LanOC’ers play it all the time and enjoy it. I love these types of games because they are free. It’s kinda like crack, give people something for free, get them hooked and they will pay for more, that is a good thing by the way, lol. Starkiller has even been live streaming some of his matches. If you would like to watch him play here is the link.
Thats it for this week everyone. Gaming time is going to become longer and longer in the next few months as it gets colder in Indy and the sun starts setting earlier. Have a great rest of the week and make sure to check out our Daily Deals/Weekend Deals thread that we have going on. It has a over 11,000 views and we are updating it everyday.
Until next week,
Wingless is out!
