Tag Archives: Games

Finally, Some Mass Effect 3 Single-Player DLC

Alessandro Fillari for Destructoid, previewing Mass Effect 3’s Leviathan DLC:

Just a month after releasing the Extended Cut to their controversial ending, BioWare returns to the Mass Effect 3 universe with their first original add-on to the single-player campaign, called Leviathan. Taking place during Shepard’s war on the Reapers, players will trek across the galaxy in search of a mysterious creature known as the Leviathan that supposedly can combat the Reapers.

Taking influences from the Mass Effect 2’s Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC, BioWare hopes to match the scope and presentation with this new add-on — which will also have an influence on the ending.

This should go well.

Playing to Win in Badminton

David Sirlin:

And now we come to the actual problem with the Olympic badminton situation. There are “pools” of round robin play where the top 2 finishers from a pool advance to a single elimination bracket. Further, the system of seeding in the single elimination bracket is known ahead of time. This creates the situation where you could playing pool matches but *guaranteed* to make top 2 by your record. If you win, you will qualify and play team X. If you lose, you will also qualify, but you will play team Y. If you think you have an easier chance of beating team Y, you absolutely should lose on purpose. If you don’t, you aren’t playing to win, and you are kind of a bad competitor. You also happen to be playing in a tournament with absurdly bad rules.

This is the real hang-up with the badminton mess: the teams that were disqualified were doing their best to win the entire competition based on the structure of the tournament. This is the first year badminton has used a round robin opening round in the Olympics. Hopefully it will be the last.

Zynga Being Sued for Insider Trading

John Koetsier for VentureBeat:

As we reported before, Zynga executives and investors, including CEO Marc Pincus, sold over $500 million in stock just three months before. Pincus sold $200 million of Zynga stock, chief operating officer John Schappert sold $3.9 million, and chief financial officer David Wehner sold stock worth $4.6 million.

Unsurprising.

Every time Zynga’s execs open their mouths, they come off as jackasses. Part of the suit alleges that they basically burned their own employees on the IPO.

Classy.

Max Payne 3 Uses a Multiplayer Cheater Pool

Rockstar Blog:

As promised, we’ve taken steps to quarantine confirmed cheaters in Max Payne 3 Multiplayer. Starting today, anyone we’ve found using hacked saves, modded games, or other exploits has officially been cordoned off in a dedicated cheater pool, confined to wallow with other unscrupulous reprobates.

This is the best solution to multiplayer cheating I have seen in a while. And if they are smart, they can use it as a honeypot to catch even more cheaters.

But the best quote is from the FAQ:

How will I know if I’m in the Cheater Pool?

If you know you have cheated and you find yourself either in empty lobbies or always matched with games full of other cheaters, you are likely in the Cheater Pool.

“King Of Kings”

This is one in a series of images from Okami recently posted at Dead End Thrills.

Seeing games like Okami or Xenoblade Chronicles running in high-definition via Dolphin only reinforces to me that the Wii had some amazing art direction in its games lineup that was hampered by the low resolution of the system’s output.

Not upscaling when using backwards-compatibility on the upcoming Wii U further compounds the error. These games would look great with a little upscaling and full-scene effects love, but we’re not going to get to see it.