Miscellaneous News

Twitter usually isn’t the most reliable place for inside gaming news and rumors as it’s often a pit of garbage. But there is one reliable source of juicy gaming news on Twitter, and that's Veracious Shit. In the past Veracious Shit has informed us on the history behind L.A. Noire along with dropping the first word on Avalanche Studios (Just Cause 2) working on a game based on an upcoming sci-fi movie.

In case there weren’t already enough mysterious unannounced projects, Square Enix has revealed yet another one they’re working on. Well they haven’t revealed anything in the sense of “this is what we’re doing” as it’s more like “we got something really cool in the pipeline.”  So it’s yet another tease of a forthcoming announcement concerning a major project. Isn’t the video game business a terrific one?

Starting November 1st, Microsoft plans to raise Xbox Live Gold's subscription rates for all 3 of their different monthly term lengths.

A one month Gold subscription will cost you $9.99 (up from $7.99), three month Gold subscriptions will cost you $24.99 (up from $19.99) and a full one year Gold subscription will cost you now $59.99 (up from $49.99).

A benefit can be a curse

In my career as a writer I've covered the subject of Gamerscore and whether it's a blessing or a curse to us gamers. The argument is never ending, but this is how I see it.

In my every day and my profession, my conversations always drift to video games. No matter who I speak with they are always quick to jump on their stories. The most common story told by a stranger is the "how I got started gaming" story. I have never really understood why that is the first story told by gamers, maybe it reveals more then we think.

With the era ever changing, Playboy Enterprises, you know the one that releases the famous men’s magazine featuring nude ladies, has announced that they’re launching a video games label in late 2010. The label will focus on releasing online games geared unsurprisingly towards the male market. I know, it’s such a shocker that Playboy will be releasing games catered towards men. Damn those chauvinists!

In a departure from what we usually post on Shogun, I’m actually doing a quasi review for a PC product. Now we here at Shogun Gamer all love our PC games and our actual PC’s, well at least the five community members + 1 staff member (that’s me) who doesn’t own a Macbook. But as we now, it’s somewhat easy for our beloved PC’s to slowly degrade or fall to the much dreaded viruses that occasionally pop up. Well one solution that’s out there to protect your PC and as a whole improve it is System Mechanic.

After giving us the amazing experience that was Shatter, developer Sidhe is now working on another project. I know, news of game developer X working on new game is somewhat of a non-news story but Shatter was amazing so Sidhe’s next effort deserves to be hyped a little bit.

This is the love/hate relationship between me and plenty of other people in the world of gaming. Every week I will pick someone who gets my Fist-bump for doing a good deed, someone who gets my undesirable Bitch-Slap for doing something wrong (or just something that pisses me off), and I'll share my experience/opinion along the way.

This week in August will be remembered for two things: the surprise reveal of BioShock Infinite and the amazing prank Sega America pulled.  After weeks, no rather years of waiting, BioShock developer Irrational Games revealed that they would be following up BioShock with yet more BioShock game. With only a pre-rendered trailer and a few in-game screens being released so far, the hype for BioShock Infinite has already reached near epic proportions in the gaming community.

A few days ago, we caught wind of a hilarious prank that occurred at the Sega America offices.

At this point I fully believe that Hideo Kojima’s second passion after making games is teasing the video game community.  In the past Kojima’s teases have come to fruition often in cool reveals such as the Monster Hunter cross-over in MGS: Peace Walker. But I think Kojima secretly loves typing Twitter messages that get the gaming community and game “press” in a tizzy over what it could possibly be about.

As always, Kojima’s latest Twitter tease doesn’t reveal a whole lot so that means it’s time for random speculation time which will only lead to huge disappointment.

Violence in video games has been a touchy subject for the past fifteen years. While early on video games were looked at as a source of entertainment for kids that quickly changed with one key release: Midway’s Mortal Kombat.  Depicting violence that involved heads being removed (complete with spine) Mortal Kombat spurned a whole political debat concerning violence in video games that still exists to this day.

The video game industry is usually a fun one to work in, that is when there aren’t massive lay-offs occurring or talented devs are stuck working on My Little Pony 4.  Of course the friendships established in a video game company, whether it’s amongst developers or support staff can often lead to terrific pranks.  We haven’t gotten wind of the many pranks game devs pull as it would be like breaking the secret bond of a fraternity.

THQ developer Volition looks to be going in a different route with their next game. I’m of course not referring to either Red Faction: Armageddon or Saints Row 3.  Instead it looks like the studio will be creating a RPG. Yup, the studio known for giving us Mars based action and brutal gang battles in the city of Stilwater could be giving us their first attempt at an RPG game since the PS2 title Summoner 2.