Capcom's new IP, Dragon's Dogma now dated

If you remember back in April, Capcom's mystery game was revealed to be a new IP called Dragon's Dogma that gave us that Monster Hunter-ish gameplay where you go off to slay huge monsters.  Well the game has finally been dated and whether it's not you're kind of game or not, a new title is always good to experience.

March 27 , 2012 is the release for the US with a Europe release following right after on May 1, 2012.If you've seen footage of the game when it was released, I'm sure you're also with me that this game is the one to look out for on 2012. Dragon's Dogma will be set in a fantasy world were you get to roam around the world, hunt down monsters with a group of NPC characters and on a quest to retrieve your heart stolen by a Dragon. Yes, I have no idea how that works but hunting for a dragon always sounds good. This will be an open-world game with Capcom revealing it to be around 30-100 hours long depending if you're a side quest junkie.

The key feature with this game is the ability to climb on this huge monsters.Inspired by Shadow of Collossus(must play btw), instead of just hacking away  on creatures side, you climb on to either it's back, wing or head to deal significant damage.  Clinging on a flying Gryphon to stop it from flying away with the help of your AI companions is what makes it unique from other games. I like this direction since the player get's to experience the full encounter of facing a huge monster.

The biggest question is, why no online co-op? With a game like this, it would seem rather ideal to place that as an option, even a main focus. Sadly, with regards to online capabilities - the only thing you can do online is grab other player's characters to be used as one of your AI controlled buddies. Hopefully they surprise us in the end that we can actually play this with a friend, but with the March release, seems unlikely.

Most triple titles are either a sequel or a game that has a number right after its title, especially this year. That's good and all but I actually prefer fresh titles coming out more often. To have a good mix of the well known and the unknown. Wouldn't you want to take a risk and surprise yourself on how blown away you were? or prefer to play it safe and purchase a title that you know will be worth you're while? Depends, I know. With games priced at the standard $59.99 or PHP 2,000+ range, playing it safe is the preferred choice for most nowadays  which is why most company's stick with what works if they find that golden title. Is Dragon's Dogma worth the risk though? I definitely think so.

Mods: The reason to why it's better to play on a PC

So, it's almost been a month since we were given the gift of Skyrim. With that said, there has been a whole lot of time for the great modding community to work on their mods!  Now, if you're anything like me, the first few mods you'd be looking for are the texture mods (better facial textures, surroundings, and bodies), and that's exactly what I did.

You can get easy access to community mods at Skyrim Nexus. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there are other places to get mods, besides nexus, but nexus offers us lazy skeevers something other sides don't; a download manager. If you're familiar with the Curse Client, used for WoW addons, then this won't be a new thing to you. All you have to do is click on the download link (found in any of the pages in the site), and the manager does everything else for you. Please keep in mind, that not all mods work together, so make sure to read up on the specifics, before installing stuff!

For this test, I decided to run with the following mods:

Now, since the game is still fairly new, you can expect the mods to be somewhat buggy at times. In my case, I experienced a minuscule amount of frame-rate drops, but only during large scale fights, in intense weather conditions. I also encountered an odd bug, with regards to models bugging, and not being rendered properly.

Apart from that, all the other mods worked pefrectly! The blood-spatter seemed more realistic, the environment was a little more detailed, and the NPCs were more detailed too! Just once word of advice before modding: MAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR CURRENT FOLDER! Some mods require you to install them the old-fashioned way, meaning you'll have to cut and paste stuff onto your Skyrim folder... and if the mod doesn't work properly, you get royally screwed...so yeah, make sure that you make a backup folder, before modding.

Happy (dragon) hunting!

Awesome digital sales to check out now for PSN, Xbox Live and Steam

If you still want to buy some games for cheap, I think the best time is now. Regardless of the platform; Xbox Live, PSN Store, and Steam is showing awesome sales this week. If you have the spare change to buy games/add ons online, check out what's on sale.

Why are there big sales happening? well because it's Black Friday in the states, and Xbox Live PSN and Steam is no exception. We don't have Black Friday, and I'm okay with it because I really don't want to fight for specific 50% off games over a 12-year-old.

Xbox Live

The marketplace is having this Fan Appreciation Sale that started on Tuesday with special one-day offers on Fridays and Mondays.

The week sale will happening from 22-28, it's 26 now so you better check out what's worth buying, especially the friday only and monday only sales:

One-Week Sale Page 1 One-Week Sale Page 2

Friday only sales

The one's worth mentioning for me is Super Meat Boy which is on sale for 400 MS Points($5) down from 1,200 MS Points(I bought this game without hesitation) The Baconing which is now half the price(600 MS Points) if you want a Diablo-ish style of gameplay, and Marvel vs Capcom 2 down to 320 MS because MvC 2 is never a wrong choice.

PSN Store

For Playstation Store, they have the Winter Sale.Which I believe is worth looking at thanks to a sale on Limbo, Outland, and Gatling Gears

Here's the full list thanks to the US PS Blog:

Limbo - Sale price: $10.49; PS Plus price: $7.34; Regular price: $14.9 Might & Magic Clash Of Heroes - Sale price: $10.49; PS Plus price: $7.34; Regular price: $14.99 Outland - Sale price: $6.99; PS Plus price: $4.89; Regular price: $9.99 Gatling Gears - Sale price: $6.99; PS Plus price: $4.89; Regular price: $9.99 Galaga Legions DX - Sale price: $6.99; PS Plus price: $4.89; Regular price: $9.99 The Fancy Pants Adventures - Sale price: $6.99; PS Plus price: $4.89; Regular price: $9.99 Section 8: Prejudice - Sale price: $10.49; PS Plus price: $7.34; Regular price: $14.99 Section 8: Prejudice – Blitz Pack - Sale price: $1.99; PS Plus price: $1.39; Regular price: $2.99 Section 8: Prejudice – Frontier Colonies Map Pack - Sale price: $2.99; PS Plus price: $2.09; Regular price: $3.99 Section 8: Prejudice – Overdrive Map Pack - Sale price: $2.99; PS Plus price: $2.09; Regular price: $3.99 Akimi Village - Sale price: $6.99; PS Plus price: $4.89; Regular price: $9.99 Dungeon Hunter Alliance - Sale price: $8.99; PS Plus price: $6.29; Regular price: $12.99 PlayStation Move Ape Escape - Sale price: $13.99; PS Plus price: $9.79; Regular price: $19.99

Steam

Steam is the one to check out ASAP compared to the rest. The Autumn Sale, for only on November 23 to 27 has amazing huge discounts on full games, like full games being cut by 50%. the Catch? they are day-one only sales that change each day so better check it out. Like today Dead Island is now 50% off only happening today on the 26th. How I wish I new about this sooner...

Head over to Steam NOW to not miss out on these discounts. They also have one-week only sales from other game developers also check out each publisher, one might catch your eye.

EA giving BF 3 PS3 players a copy of Battlefield 1943 after all

Just when I was about to retire for the day, something interesting has come up. EA is finally living up to their promise a few months back, each player who owns a Playstation 3 version of Battlefield 3 will get a free digital copy of Battlefield 1943 by simply activating your online pass. They say there was a "Misunderstanding" over the affair but we know what really happened. To get everybody updated: EA announced way back that each Playstation 3 copy of battlefield 3 will come with a free copy of Battlefield 1943, all was happy with the news. Release day comes, and the free copy that was promised was nowhere to be found. It was later announced that instead of giving a free copy of Battlefield 1943, they would give PS3 players access to DLC a week earlier. Access to DLC a week in advance or a free full game?  yep, complete rip-off.

With EA taking back that promise of a free game, they now have a case filed on them for not living to that promise. Ouch. Legal firm Edelson McGuire has filed a class-action lawsuit against EA on behalf of consumers who were promise a free copy of Battlefield 1943. The free copy of a full game is a strong incentive to choose the PS3 version over other versions of the game, for them to take back that promise after consumers have bought the game is the issue here. The firm also claims that EA has misled their costumers to buy the PS3 version for an exclusive content they were not planning to provide in the end.  They announced the change of exclusive content on the PS3 version via Twitter after the release of the game.

A few days have passed since the case was filed and EA announces that they will be releasing the said Exclusive content to owners of the PS3 version of Battlefield 3 after all.  Funny how everything turns out.

They have released the date to when we can redeem our free copy. Europe gets first dibs on November 26 with North America to follow on December 10. Asia and Japan will get it last on December 17(dammit! why we always last!) If you have a copy of Battlefield 3, you can get your instructions on how to get your free Battlefield 1943 copy here.

[Source: VG247]

The only reason why Minecon happened

The reason behind Minecon was a very simple and somewhat a bit of a shallow thing. Aside from it happening on the day of Minecrafts official full version launch. Notch wanted it to be a bit more special.

The only real reason as to why Minecon happened was because Notch wanted to go on a stage infront of a crown and press a button (in this case it was a Minecraft switch) that officially releases the game. That's about it. Sure Minecraft is a pretty cool game and all. With it's sandbox style world and giving you the ability to create what ever the hell you want. The first thing that came to my mind when I first heard about Minecon was "lol". But hey, atleast someone got a marriage proposal out of it.

Doesn't Notch look like Al, owner of Al's Toy Barn, from Toy Story 2?