Working as intended?

It seems to be a growing trend with major releases over the past few months of getting, what can only be described as beta releases for games on Steam. First we had Rage, with lack of proper porting from console to PC (not game breaking), causing the loyal PC gamers to have to manually alter cofig files to get the promised graphics. Then came Might and Magic Heroes VI, a game so full of bugs, many people have shelved it until it's all fixed, which considering the public beta had been active since early this year was a bit of a kick in the teeth, to many fans of the series. All quiet on the forums from the devs though, do you think the fans are feeling a bit cheated right now?

The worst of the bunch? Sword of the Stars 2. A game so rushed, even the developers have had to issue a public apology and admit they hadnt finished the game.

BUT, at least the CEO of Kerberos has had the decency to release a statement and an apology for this fiasco. Let's hope it's fixed soon right?

Free copy of the first game? Go on then. Thanks!

Oh who am I kidding. Skyrim's out soon, surely THAT game wont be broken right? What do you think of the state of these releases lately - leave your thoughts below in the comments.

THQ reports quarterly loss of $92.4m

It seems things are not at all rosy in the THQ camp, as they have just reported quarterly losses of $92.4m with sales of $146m, resulting in a share price drop of $1.32. Whats worse is that this time last year THQ were reporting losses of $46.9m, with revenues of only $77.1m.

It seems most of the money earned this quarter has come from Warhammer 40K: Space Marine along side impressive sales of the uDraw tablet for Wii. It seems that THQ's money will be heavily riding on Saints Row: The Third which is set to become a smash hit.

CEO Brian Farrell optimistically said ""We are encouraged that our second quarter performance exceeded our expectations, particularly in a quarter with a light release schedule,"

"Our two biggest quarters of the year remain ahead of us, and we are focused on execution. In Q3 we are planning for the largest quarter in our history, in terms of sales and earnings, driven by Saints Row: The Third, the uDraw GameTablet, and WWE '12. With UFC Undisputed 3 launching in the fourth quarter, we are well-positioned to deliver a strong second half of fiscal 2012."

Dark Souls hits 1.5 million shipped worldwide

Despite being the spiritual sequel to one of the PS3's unforgiving game and being as equally challenging, Dark Souls has netted 1.5 million undead souls into it's dark world.

North America has the largest amount of copies (620,000), followed by Europe (470,000) and then Japan (370,000), despite Dark Souls being released on PS3 only in Japan which From Software themselves published.

Source: Andrisang

FFXIII-2 rewards players of the orginal

Sadly unlike certain RPG games these days, Final Fantasy XIII-2 will not be carrying over players save data from it's previous game FFXIII instead the game will reward players just for having played the original game.

Watch its Final Fantasy 13 summary without a FFXIII save file on your console and you will get the standard narration, however having the save file unlocks the same footage but with different characters narrating.
Japanese magazine Impress Watch also states there is "almost no difference" between Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 versions - 90 per cent of the cutscenes use real-time rendering instead of pre-rendered video.


Source: Siliconera

Frozen Synapse heads to iPad

Mode 7 has just offically annouced that their epic semi old school 'play by email' indie shooter Frozen Synapse is heading to the iPad in 2012.

"I look forward to flicking my little green men around the place with wanton abandon", said joint Managing Director Paul Taylor. "Not only are we doing this iPad thing, but we are also looking at better ways of updating and supporting the game on its current platforms - expect some new things in the New Year."

The game has sold over 300,000 units on PC, Mac and Linux to date, if you are completely confused about what we are talking about watch Total Biscuit's WTF video of the game after the read more:

DmC no longer a direct prequel apparently

Reported by Siliconera, to add further confusion to the Devil May Cry reboot DmC, it is no longer a direct prequel of the original series despite Devil May Cry 3 taking that role and overwriting the current timeline, but now set in a parallel universe set in the past.

This still means Dante, the one currently staring in Marvel vs Capcom 3, that fans know and love still exists, along with his timeline (meaning Nero still is as well.... sigh). Despite all this Capcom is not keeping the original series to one side just in case this new version doesn't do as well as hoped - it was actually developers of the game, Ninja Theory's idea.

Source: Siliconera

A friendly guide to Warhammer 40K

Warhammer 40,000, or 40k as it is also known amongst its players, is a tabletop wargame played with numerous 6-sided dice. Games usually take about a couple of hours to play through, (for most “average” sized games of 1,500 points per side) and consists of two or more players moving, shooting and attacking with their respective armies.

Bigger games take longer and it is common for games of 4,000 points to take an entire evening - The game itself is played in turns, with each player taking their turn before their opponent does, and each turn is broken up into numerous phases. These phases are movement, shooting and assault.