Video Games Thread

[Late]

Alarmingly, that 34k sales includes the games bundled with the console.

Not to worry, though, as they probably sold 3.7 billion digital games at full price. Per day. To the UK.

[jman]

lol... if only nintendo hadn't "stealth released" the actual existence of the Wii U and its entire software library to the world though - then Im sure the physical sales would be on fire 

Edit : Ouch just seen the early review scores of Aliens Colonial Marines.. lets just say they are not good.. not good at all    Another average title to land on the doorstep of the Wii U

[Late]

Don't know whether to be happy or sad at that news (Colonial Marines not being as good as we'd hoped).
It's one of only two titles (along with Lego City Undercover) that had me wondering if the U might actually be worth getting. TBH even if both were fantastic I wouldn't have bought the console - you'd need more than two titles if you want the contents of my wallet - but if one of those turns out to be a bit duff then it's another nail in the coffin. They need more titles that fire the imagination, but lately they're getting less and less what with exclusives going multiplatform and games not living up to expectations.

FFS, Nintendo, get some console cabinets out in the UK. Everyone's slating the console but most of us haven't actually seen one - and they themselves say you need to see it to actually get it. I've still not seen a single advert for the console on the TV, and I've never seen a Wii U set up in a shop or "mall".


Change of subject...
Assassin's Creed III didn't get the best of reviews from many folk, but I'm thoroughly enjoying it and largely agree with Chris's review. Didn't like the first few chapters, but once you switch to controlling Connor it's a lot more fun. I'm particularly enjoying traversing the cliffs and treetops, and hunting animals (despite half the kills becoming QTEs. I hate QTEs but these are okay).
It's definitely got it's weaknesses - duff voice talent for Connor, terrible pop-in, and occasionally glitches through objects/the map. But it's good points by far outweigh it's bad, in my opinion.
I can't give a full review as I've not actually done much of the story. I'm probably less than half-way through it - I haven't yet unlocked the second city, for instance - but I've put in around 35 hours so far. And if you can put in 35 hours on a single-player game, enjoy it, and still only be halfway through the game then the game's alright in my book! (I hear the ending is weak, and that there's a lot more cut-scenes in the last part of the story - plus over 20 minutes of credits that you can't skip but you get bonus missions if you let run, so there's potential frustration ahead - I might yet change my opinion and lower my score!)
It's an 8/10 for me.*






*Subject to change if the ending's really bad!

[harv]

lol... if only nintendo hadn't "stealth release" the actual existence of the Wii U and its entire software library to the world though - then Im sure the physical sales would be on fire 

Edit : Ouch just seen the early review scores of Aliens Colonial Marines.. lets just say they are not good.. not good at all    Another average title to land on the doorstep of the Wii U

That's the PS3 and 360 SKUs of Aliens Colonial Marines...hopefully the U SKU, being done by a different developer, is less of a clusterfuck lol

Apparently Gearbox only did the multiplayer...another daft decision by Sega. They should never have released a game this flawed for the PS3 and 360, and there's only so many iterations of Mario and Sonic At The Olympics that people will buy. I can see them going under during these next couple of years if they don't pull their fingers out

Sonic Racing isn't doing too bad across all platforms though so there's hope for them yet perhaps.

And I've never stated that digital distribution is selling millions, but you can easily add around 20% of sales at least of ZombiU, Sonic Racing and Assassin's Creed III to the brick and mortar sales going by the comments on Miiverse. Can't understand it myself because you end up paying more with DD when it should be considerably less. Perhaps they get a better deal in the States when buying digitally..?

Ancel and his dev team have joined the Rayman Legends protest. Nice.

And I've just started playing Assassin's Creed III too and am really enjoying it. Am only on Sequence 2 so far so I haven't experienced the benefits of having the larger map displayed on the touchscreen yet but can see it being a boon when going into larger areas. And I'm sure that plenty of people with girlfriends/wives will be appreciative of the Off-TV Play too...not a problem for me though cos nobody loves me lol

I'm enjoying it more than the first two myself, I think the climbing and movement have improved, partly down to improved animation and partly down to better level design I think.

[harv]

And late, if you do decide to get one then ZombiU is an essential purchase. Best game I've played for years. I saw on hotukdeals that Argos were doing the Premium for £199.99, can't really go wrong for that price tbh.

[Late]

If it'd been £200 at launch I might've gone for it - partly as a Christmas present for the kids. I could just about justify it, as a bonus Xmas gift.
But Christmas is long gone, we're closer to ps4/nextbox, the exclusives are disappearing, games are being pushed back, and performance is proving to be fairly  uninspiring - so I'm not even remotely tempted.
£100 including zombiu and I might consider it. That's a big "might" though, and moot as we won't see that offer happening.

[harv]

Lol, you won't even find a previous gen console for a hundred quid without a game let alone with one packed in.

[Late]

Indeed. No sale, as I say.


New Arkham game coming this year, from Warner Bros Interactive - fantastic news.
Won't be from Rocksteady, though. Hope the new development team don't screw it up, but new blood could be a good thing.

[harv]

Only 800 signatures needed for the Rayman Legends petition before it reaches 10,000. Pretty impressive in a few days, Ancel and his dev team have signed it too. The population of the U Play community is growing fairly well too by around a thousand people per day.

Going to be interesting to see what happens during these next few days. With the boycotts of both Rayman Legends as well as Ubisoft software in general Ubisoft could end up losing millions over this.

[Late]

Pmsl.
Think it through, Harv. How many unit sales will they lose on the U? How many unit sales will they make on the ps3 & 360?

[harv]

They'll make bugger all sales on the PS3 and 360. They've chosen the worst possible time to release it. You're going to have GTA V, FIFA and probably Assassin's Creed IV being released at the same sort of time and people will be putting money aside for the PS4 and 720. There probably isn't a worse time they could have chosen tbh. It's going to bomb.

[harv]

Instant Win With Awesome Sauce.

And I've managed to pre-order it for 24 quid too!

[jman]

Its going to make bugger all sales if they sold it exclusively on the Wii U though - AC3 - 150k - nuff said...    I love the fact that this is causing so much uproar though.. I mean its not even a AAA title.. but nintendo fanboys are treating it like it is because theres sod all else on their console 

Then they come back with.. oh but GTA 5 will crush it in september.. yet any nintendo fanboy will tell you that Lego City Undercover is the Wii U equivalent of GTA5 (we all know its not).... and LCU is coming out quite soon...so that wont crush it?   

Ubisoft will be loving all the press attention - theres no such news as bad news... all the furore the Wii U fanboys have whipped up will actually do the opposite and increase sales of the game when it finally does appear.

[jman]

That's the PS3 and 360 SKUs of Aliens Colonial Marines...hopefully the U SKU, being done by a different developer, is less of a clusterfuck lol

Apparently Gearbox only did the multiplayer...another daft decision by Sega. They should never have released a game this flawed for the PS3 and 360, and there's only so many iterations of Mario and Sonic At The Olympics that people will buy. I can see them going under during these next couple of years if they don't pull their fingers out

But if you read the reviews, they all slate the campaign, including a weak short story (5 hours at best), terrible combat, graphical issues and there are loads of issues relating to the game engine that wont get resolved on the Wii U - nor by the gamepad.  It earns praise in one area only - multiplayer... since nobody is buying the Wii U - the other SKUs should score higher in that aspect... so it wouldnt suprise me if the Wii U version is the worst of the lot... how come the Wii U version isn't out yet though.. lol another fuck-up by someone ?  Does it even have a release date ?

[Late]

Investors seem to think Ubisoft are doing the right thing - share continue to rise