This Week Kevin and Brian get together and take a hard look at Left4Dead 2 looking at the changes between the newer version and Left4Dead both in tone and gameplay. Then it’s on to the news including EA’s future DLC plans, Nintendo’s newly announced handheld, and a word of caution for a selective group of software pirates.

Life Inside the Box – 087 – Duet Power Hour 3: Hour Harder [ 45:01 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

By Brian Perry

The weekend has come around and it’s time to play, so here’s your weekly guide to what’s on sale at your favorite downloadable services.

Impulse - This week’s Impulse buys:
Hacker Evolution – Untold $12.48
X-Com Complete $9.99
The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Director’s Cut $9.99

Steam - Weekend Deals:
Torchlight $5.00 Our Review
Star Trek Online $33.49
Star Trek Online Digital Deluxe Edition $40.19

Good Old Games –
Commandos 2+3 $6.99
Commandos Ammo Pack $4.19
Imperial Glory $4.19
Patrician 1+2 $4.19
Port Royale $4.19
Praetorians $4.19
Tropico Reloaded $6.99

Direct2Drive
The Path $4.95
Iron Man $4.95
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction w/ Free Splinter cell $54.95 Use Code 5OFFCONVICTION at checkout

Gamers Gate
Colony Defense $7.96
Torchlight $4.95
Planet Alcatraz $4.98
Iron Man $4.95
Command & Conquer 4 Tiberian Twilight $41.95
Tropico 3 $14.97

XBLA
Fallout 3
Including:
Mothership Zeta 0400 msp
Point Lookout 0400 msp
Broken Steel 0400 msp
The Pitt 0400 msp
Operation: Anchorage 0400 msp

Amazon (Friday only)
Academy of Champions: Soccer $14.99
Supreme Commander 2 $34.99

We’re not simply talking about a DS redesign either. Via a press release straight from Nintendo:

March 23, 2010

To Whom It May Concern:
Re: Launch of New Portable Game Machine

Nintendo Co., Ltd. (Minami-ward of Kyoto-city, President Satoru Iwata) will launch “Nintendo 3DS”(temp) during the fiscal year ending March 2011, on which games can be enjoyed with 3D effects without the need for any special glasses.

“Nintendo 3DS”(temp) is going to be the new portable game machine to succeed “Nintendo DS series”, whose cumulative consolidated sales from Nintendo amounted to 125million units as of the end of December 2009, and will include backward compatibility so that the software for Nintendo DS series, including the ones for Nintendo DSi, can also be enjoyed.

We are planning to announce additional details at E3 show, which is scheduled to be held from June 15, 2010 at Los Angeles in the U.S.

I got nothing. – The Ben

Via Gamasutra, Michael Pachter today described a new strategy after an invester visit with EA concerning the company’s focus on releasing PDLC (premium downloadable content) before the game is actually released.

According to Pachter the General Manager of Visceral Games stated the PLDC would be “essentially a very long demo, along the lines of 2009′s Battlefield 1943″ and that “A full-blown packaged game would follow shortly after the release of the PDLC, bearing a full retail price. Mr. Earl believes that the release of the PDLC first limits the risk of completing and marketing the full packaged version, and serves as a low-cost marketing tool.”

The article goes on to say that Pachter later told them that, “I think that the plan is to release PDLC at $15 that has 3-4 hours of gameplay, so [it has] a very high perceived value, then [EA will] take the feedback from the community (press and players) to tweak the follow-on full game that will be released at a normal packaged price point.” also adding that he believes Battlefield 1943 would have been a bigger success had they released a full-blown version of the game a few months after release.

Interestingly, the article ends with these investor specific nuggets of info from Pachter:

“We’ve been wrong about this stock for almost five years. Either we’re stupid, stubborn, or unlucky, but we’ve been wrong. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, each time hoping for a different result,” Pachter wrote.

“This time, while we are again hoping for a different result, we see evidence that the company is not doing the same things over and over again: lower headcount, fewer facilities, fewer games, a greater use of outsourcing, innovative combinations of digital and packaged goods content, a better greenlight process and a growing digital business,” the analyst said. “This time, we think that EA is on the right path.”

He’s been wrong on EA for almost five years now but he’s got a good feeling this time around! – The Ben

This week Kevin, Brian, and Stephen get together to talk about what they have been playing, going into depth about the newest pokemon release, and it’s new pedometer addon, as well as what could be the webgame of the year Robot Unicorn Attack. Then they move onto the news where they discuss what happened during the week, and touch on the announced IGN layoffs.

Life Inside the Box – 086 – My Pokemans, Let Me Show You Them [ 1:00:41 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

By Brian Perry

The weekend has come around and it’s time to play, so here’s your weekly guide to what’s on sale at your favorite downloadable services.

Impulse - This week’s Impulse buys:
Mass Effect 2 $29.95
Mass Effect 2 Digital Deluxe Edition $39.95
World of Goo $9.97

Steam - Weekend Deals:
Aliens vs Predator™ $33.49
EverQuest® Starter Pack $2.50
Sniper Elite $2.00

Good Old Games –
Sanitarium $4.99
The Longest Journey $4.99

Direct2Drive
Star Trek Online $29.95
Fallen Earth $19.95
Braid $9.95

Gamers Gate
Neverwinter Nights 2 Gold $14.97
Neverwinter Nights 2 Mask of the Betrayer $9.97
Mass Effect 2 $29.95
Chronicles of Riddick Assault on Dark Athena $9.97

XBLA
Game
Including:
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas™ 0800 msp
Max Payne® 2: The Fall of Max Payne 0800 msp
Fable 0800 msp

This week Brian, Kyle and Stephen start off with the usual discussion of the games they have been playing, then the look at the latest news on Ubisoft’s PC DRM scheme. Additionally they cover the latest news about Onlive, Red Faction 3 and more.

Life Inside the Box – 085 – EA did it I tell you! [ 53:50 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

By Stephen Holowczyk

Here it is, the long-awaited Resident Evil 5 review. No jokes allowed.

If you’re like me (in that you’re charming, witty, attractive, and have great taste in games), Resident Evil 4 is most likely one of your favorite games of all time. It’s the action game perfected, and one of the very few games I would give a ten out of ten. Don’t expect that review anytime soon, though. . Chances are, if you’re like me, you bought RE5 on launch day and you don’t really need to read this review. Let’s review it anyway.

For Resident Evil 5, we return to the series’ favorite meat head, Chris Redfield. Chris has been keeping busy since his last appearance, working with the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance (BSAA), hunting down bio-engineered monsters left over from Umbrella’s evil experiments. His latest assignment brings him to Africa, where for the most part, the actual gameplay is just Resident Evil 4 on steroids. There are some minor changes here and there.

Let’s stick with the major changes, as I’m sure that’s what most of you care about anyway.Weapons no longer have an exclusive power. While some weapons do have different attributes from others (increased head shot chance, piercing, etc) these are all upgraded right alongside damage, capacity, and so on. Treasures have also been simplified, with very few “hidden” treasures and none that can be combined. That’s about it regarding most of the major changes.

Well, of course, besides coop. Yes, now you can a friend can be racist together. Now, even though this is a game designed to be played with a friend as Sheva (Or Chris), there are of course going to be times when that simply isn’t an option. Sheva’s AI is schizophrenic, to say the least She’ll do an excellent job of keeping up with you, and there was only one time in my +30 hours of gameplay that she got stuck behind something. Sheva’s AI also does a great job with her inventory, giving you the ammunition she finds for a weapon that only you have (unless you give it to her for storage purposes, in which case she won’t just turn around and give it to you). The AI tends to be a little loose with healing items, but then again, I’d rather her be more using of those then never.

There are some serious faults, however. She will never use grenades, and the two tactical settings you are given simply aren’t enough to control her during certain parts of the game. She’ll either use her most powerful weapon or her weakest weapon, and will never switch to a better weapon for a certain situation (she won’t take out a rifle to shoot at a distant enemy, for example). She also wastes ammo like there’s no tomorrow, putting rounds into downed enemies instead of just finishing them off with a melee attack. In fact, she almost never goes out of her way to use melee, only using it when she’s right next to an enemy. She will never run forward more then a foot or so to melee a stunned or downed enemy. Needless to say, this frequently leads to you rationing her ammo as if she was a child. I really wish that there was some sort of more in-depth combat settings for her, a la Fallout 2, being able to set her weapon priority, distance from you, use of medical items, and so on. While this certainly would have led to slowdown of the gameplay, I would rather that then having her getting killed during a frantic boss fight.

The graphics are astounding, and honestly even a year later very little has surpassed this game. All of the character models are amazing and have great expressions during the cut scenes, which are all rendered using the in-game engine. It’s said that this was Capcom’s most expensive game to date, and it shows.

Level design is pretty stellar throughout, with the settings and locales changing often enough that you won’t get bored. You’ll go from African shanty towns (honestly, I do wish the game hadn’t had gone by this setting so fast, as it’s the best part of the game) to tribal villages to oil rigs and about six other different settings. I can’t give away everything in the review, can I?

While the game is polished to a sheen, there are some minor quirks throughout. Unlike Resident Evil 4, quick-time events aren’t exactly integrated into the story as much. It’s kind of strange. In RE4, every level had at least one quick-time event, and whenever a enemy had an instant-kill attack, you were either given a lot of warning in advance or you were given a QTE to get out of it. In RE5, there are nowhere near as many QTE situations in cut scenes. This led to quite a few deaths on my part, since by the time a QTE showed up, I had completely forgotten about them and had laid my controller down to watch the cut-scene. Whoops. Also, one enemy in particular doesn’t give you a QTE that really should have, and has thus won my award for lamest enemy (Hint: It’s in level 3-1 and the star of many SyFy original channel movies).

I suppose I must talk about this in my review, even though I may come off as a jackass. I hope I don’t. Is the game racist? Yes, it is. There is a sequence in the game where you shoot tribal Africans dressed in warpaint and armed with spears and then steal their tribal gold. The game is racist, there’s no doubt. However, I doubt that Capcom is made up of Japanese Klu Klux Klan members. The Japanese are known for taking stereotypes to the extreme, it’s what they do. Chris himself is basically what you’d imagine Americans to be like if you only watched 80’s action movies. It just so happens that the elements of culture that the Japanese played up for RE5 happen to be considered offensive in our culture. You can’t really blame for that, can you? It wasn’t done with any sort of intentional commentary.

So, in the end, is the game just perfection with more things added? Sadly, no. There are a few too many quirks for me to rate it as highly as Resident Evil 4. Regardless, the game is an absolute must-own for any action gamer.

Final Rating: 9 out of 10

By Brian Perry

The weekend has come around and it’s time to play, so here’s your weekly guide to what’s on sale at your favorite downloadable services.

Impulse - This week’s Impulse buys:

Dragon Age: Origins $37.46
Tropico 3 $19.99
King’s Bounty Gold Edition $22.49
Time of Shadows $14.99
Star Assault $7.49

Steam - Weekend Deals:
Batman: Arkham Asylum + Just Cause Bundle $22.09
including:
Batman: Arkham Asylum
Just Cause

Good Old Games –
UFO: Aftermath $4.19
UFO: Aftershock $6.99>

Direct2Drive
Football Manager 2010 $19.95
Fallen Earth $19.95

Gamers Gate
Deus Ex & Deus Ex 2 $14.95
Amnesia: The Dark Descent $15.98
Mount and Blade $5.00

XBLA (Gold Members)
Call of Duty: World at War Map Pack Bundle 1200 msp

Via Neogaf:

Data care of NPD Group
Reporting Period: 1/31/2010 through 2/27/2010

PlayStation 2 101.9K
PlayStation 3 360.1K
PSP 133.4K
Xbox 360 422.0K
Wii 397.9K
Nintendo DS 613.2K

BIOSHOCK 2* 360 TAKE 2 INTERACTIVE Feb-10 562.9K
NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. WII WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Nov-09 555.6K
CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 2* 360 ACTIVISION BLIZZARD Nov-09 314.3K
JUST DANCE WII UBISOFT Nov-09 275.4K
SPORTS RESORT W/ WII MOTION PLUS* WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Jul-09 272.5K
CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 2* PS3 ACTIVISION BLIZZARD Nov-09 252.8K
MASS EFFECT 2 360 ELECTRONIC ARTS Jan-10 246.5K
DANTE’S INFERNO: DIVINE EDITION PS3 ELECTRONIC ARTS Feb-10 242.5K
DANTE’S INFERNO 360 ELECTRONIC ARTS Feb-10 224.7K
HEAVY RAIN PS3 SONY Feb-10 219.3K

Analysis from NPD’s Anita Frazier:

Overall

“The industry realized another month of decreased sales as compared to last year. In fact, for most categories, unit sales declines were greater than dollar sales. Higher average retail prices on all categories except console hardware boosted dollar sales performance somewhat.”

“Honestly, I had expected the industry to perform somewhat better this month. Nonetheless, strong new releases, and Easter gift-buying bodes well for industry performance in March.”

Hardware

“Overall hardware unit sales were down, but certain platforms enjoyed an increase over last year. Xbox 360 nabbed the top-spot among the three console systems for the first time since September 2007 when Halo 3 as released. PS3 enjoyed a 30% increase over last year, even while retail supply is reported to remain constrained.”

“DS sales continue to remain quite strong, even leading up to the launch of the Dsi XL later this month on March 28th, which will have 7 days of sales during our March reporting month.”

Software

“The top 10 list this month is quite balanced between the three console platforms with three each for the PS3 and Wii platforms, and four for the 360.”

“Bioshock 2 was the best-selling game in February, selling over 750K units at retail across platforms. The 360 version was the top-selling SKU for the month.”

“Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has become the third-best-selling game of all-time, now at just under 10 million units life-to-date.”

Accessories

“Year-to-date, accessories is the only category to have eeked out a modest increase versus last year. Unit sales, however, are down so the increase is solely due to an increase in pricing, which is up 13%.”

Guess Sony and Nintendo weren’t kidding when they said that hardware supply would be constrained after the holidays. – The Ben

Edit: Wait I guess that title doesn’t really make sense if the DS still sold more than the 360….still was the highest selling console of the month though.

By Brian Perry

Anyone who has listened to the Life Inside the Box podcast knows my reluctance for reliance in the cloud for gaming. Cloud Computing is the concept of converting our points of interaction, be it computers or consoles,from isolated units to terminal access locations. Over the last few years we have seen a steady move to this system. Some beneficial to users, like external backups of save files and game configurations ala SteamCloud. Some dubious, such as OnLive’s proposed gaming service. Lastly, some draconian like Ubisofts recent DRM scheme requiring gamers to be online and connected to authentication servers the ENTIRE time they are playing.

More and more we trust our data, our games, and our rights as consumers to third parties. Services such as Xbox live Arcade, PSN, Steam, and Impulse are all digital distributors of our games, they provide us with service to access the games we want without having to obtain and keep physical media. by doing so we are losing our rights as consumers to exercise our privilege to resell these games through the first sale doctrine as established by the American supreme court in the 1908 Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus case (apologies to our foreign readers as this may not apply to you.) We are trading security for convenience. The quick and easy access to the games we want without leaving the home, or not having to look for that CD/DVD case for hope that the service we use will remain to work in the future.

This is the side of digital distribution and cloud computing people seem to forget. These are services offered by corporations. Services that cost them money to maintain. in the between February and March of 2010, Electronic Arts will shut down 30 multi-player servers for online games purchased between 2007 and 2008. Why? Because, it is no longer profitable to maintain support for games that are not actively being played by a large audience. These closures by the way are steadily becoming an annual event with Electronic Arts.

Electronic Arts states the reason for these closings as prioritizing to the majority of their customers:

Despite some people’s perception, there is a lot of behind-the-scenes work involved with keeping these older games up and running. We would rather our hard-working engineering and IT staff focus on keeping a positive experience for the other 99.7% of customers playing our more popular games.

As time goes on however we should ask ourselves do we really want our purchases to be at the mercy of someone who, by law through their fiduciary responsibilities, is not looking out for our best interest, but instead looking out for their shareholders pocketbooks?

Even Valve a development house known for it’s loyalty to customers and fans has not definitively stated how they would handle such as situation as evidenced in this quote credited to Gabe Newell:

“If you right click on a game in Steam, you’ll see that you can back up the files yourself. Unless there was some situation I don’t understand, we would presumably disable authentication before any event that would preclude the authentication servers from being available.

We’ve tested disabling authentication and it works.”

But most recent events are even more troubling. Over the last weekend the Ubisoft Authentication Servers suffered a denial of service attack preventing users from authenticating their games. For over 7 hours people who purchased legitimate copies of an Ubisoft product, and adhered to the DRM scheme were denied access to the ability to enjoy their game because Ubisoft was unable to authenticate their product license.

Sometimes when you look up into a thundercloud you can see the lightning inside. This weekends outage is that self same thunderbolt. The Cloud Computing can have its benefits, but there is danger for consumers as well. Caveat Emptor.

This week the guys sit down for the usual what you been playing including talk about the new viral announcement for portal 2. Then they quickly move into the news where they talk about the big story of the week, the shake up in the Infinity Ward offices, and the effects they will have for the Call of Duty franchise. All that and more in this weeks episode of Life Inside the Box.

Life Inside the Box – 084 – All Activision, All the Time. [ 56:58 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

By Brian Perry

The weekend has come around and it’s time to play, so here’s your weekly guide to what’s on sale at your favorite downloadable services.

Impulse - This week’s Impulse buys:
Street Fighter® IV $19.99
Total Annihilation $9.99
SPORE $29.95
Hearts of Iron III $11.99

Steam - Weekend Deals:
Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising $7.49

Good Old Games –
Real Myst $4.49
Uru: Complete Chronicles $7.49

Direct2Drive
The Sims 3 Triple Bundle $54.95
The Sims 2 Mega Bundle $39.95
Best of Indie Bundle Vol. 3 $29.95
Including:
World of Good
Puzzlegeddon
The Maw
Braid
Osmos
Machinarium

Gamers Gate
XIII $4.95
Civilization III $4.95
Ascension to the Throne $4.95
You Are Empty $2.95
Condemned – Criminal Origins $3.73

XBLA
Gears of War Avatar COG Armor (Male) 0240 msp
Gears of War Avatar COG Armor (Female) 0240 msp
Gears of War Avatar COG Helmet (Male) 0080 msp
Gears of War Avatar COG Helmet (Female) 080 msp

GFW Live
Street Fighter® IV $19.99

Amazon.com (DEAL AVAILABLE FRIDAY 3/5/10 ONLY)
SoulCalibur: Broken Destiny $19.99

Via Kotaku, Activision just a little while ago came out with various announcements concerning the future of the Call of Duty franchise.

The key notes of interest:

– New Treyarch developed COD this fall that everyone already knew about.

– New “action-adventure”-esque Call of Duty game by newly formed developer Sledgehammer Games to be released in 2011.

– This corporate speak, straight from the PR:

Activision announced it will form a “dedicated [Call of Duty] business unit that will bring together its various new brand initiatives with focused, dedicated resources around the world.” It plans to expand the Call of Duty brand “with the same focus seen in its Blizzard Entertainment business unit” placing a focus on “high-margin digital online content and further the brand as the leading action entertainment franchise in new geographies, new genres and with new digital business models.”

New digital business models doesn’t quite mean “We wanna charge you all monthly now” but, there aren’t many other things it could mean.

Oh and they also officially confirmed the departure of former Infinity Ward studio heads Jason West and Vince Zampella. – The Ben

G4′s Patrick Klepek has just broken an interesting story that at the moment some aren’t sure what to make of it. According to the story a bunch of “bouncer-types” just showed up outside of the IW offices and would not disclose who exactly they were according to the story’s source.

The team is being described as “on edge” and according to G4′s source the relationship between Infinity Ward and Activision has been “tense” as of late.

While it seems like half of the internet currently reading this story as it breaks on sites everywhere are writing this off as a PR stunt, Forumopolis poster popemobile reminds us that, “Call of Duty is literally the last franchise in the world that needs a PR stunt”. – The Ben

Update: Two major updates from G4 on the story.

UPDATE 10:07 PM: More developments on the situation at Infinity Ward have come to light.

A screen shot surfaced from Infinity Ward CTO Jason West’s Facebook page at Kotaku with the status update “Jason West is drinking. Also, unemployed.” I can confirm from a source that’s friends with West that update did actually come from West’s account.

West also updated his Linkedin profile to appears to reflect a change in employment.

“President/Game Director/CCO/CTO Infinity Ward
January 2001 – March 2010 (9 years 3 months)”

While this doesn’t yet provide much insight into what actually happened at Infinity Ward, it confirms there are changes afoot at the Call of Duty developer. As soon as I know more, you’ll know more.

Read more: http://g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/702911/UPDATE-Security-Appears-At-Infinity-Ward-Studio-Heads-Missing-Activision-Investigating-Insubordination.html#ixzz0h1Eqp1dY

And the second major one:

UPDATE 11:20 PM: It turns out Activision may have showed their hand in this matter earlier today.

In an SEC filing made this morning, Activision cited a human resources investigation into “breaches of contract and insubordination by two senior employees at Infinity Ward.”

Based on the information we currently have, at least one of those employees may have included Infinity Ward CTO Jason West. It’s possible Vince Zampella is the other unmentioned employee.

“This matter is expected to involve the departure of key personnel and litigation,” read the filing. “At present, the Company does not expect this matter to have a material impact on the Company.”

Read more: http://g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/702911/UPDATE-Security-Appears-At-Infinity-Ward-Studio-Heads-Missing-Activision-Investigating-Insubordination.html#ixzz0h1FB39Rx

This ain’t no ARG fellas, this is real.

It’s a slow news week in gaming land this week as Brian, Kyle and Kevin set out to talk about the gaming they have done this week including some talk of the StarCraft 3 beta, and the hilarious picture kyle used to get his way into it. In the news the guys talk about Valves stance on Motion Control, the new Steam UI, and Nintendo’s upcoming release dates.

Life Inside the Box – 083 – Alls Quiet on the Gaming Front. [ 42:14 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download