Posts tagged Valve
The Backlog: Pre-Tryptophan Tidings of Gamedom edition
Nov 20th
The Holidays approach. For some that means quality time with family members not seen for a year — maybe more. Others, well…can I get a “what what” if at some point during your life you hid away in the midst of celebrations to finish Earthbound (or, insert other game reference here). However, my adult years have made me more personable when it comes to the holidays; I’m now infinitely more interested in the going-ons of my kin.
Still, I won’t lie that this year I’d prefer to mow down more of Left 4 Dead 2′s cajunized zombies with a giant plate of delicious turkey and fixins on my lap. I’m thankful for me.
We’re back on track for backlogs, and this week is mega-sized to make up for our absence. To summarize: Nick informs us he essentially played everything ever released this month, Doug gushes about his beloved Forza 3 between study sessions, and I write about why two wonderful November-born titles should be played on the PC.
Daily Recap: May 15, 2009
May 15th
The all-glorious Friday is upon us once again, so being the casual day it is let’s just get down to the news. No introductory hyperbole from me this time–a shame, I know.
Guitar Hero 5 is coming and it has songs (surprise!), free-to-play MMO Free Realms has racked up quite the player base in its first few weeks of existence, Valve’s sneaky with its surprises as usual, and Mass Effect 2 footage is available for your viewing pleasure.
Not Guitar Hero 5–but close enough
Though the game has been known about for a while now, Activision today tossed out a few official scraps of details on the upcoming Guitar Hero 5. Players will be able to tackle the game’s tracks with any instrument combination they see fit. Want to sing through a song with three other friends all using microphones? Go ahead.
It’s an interesting mechanic to put into a rhythm game–certainly one that isn’t “authentic” as far real bands go (though, yes, these games aren’t meant to be taken literally). And while we’ve been somewhat biased in favor of Harmonix’s Rock Band titles (or, at least Nick and Doug have), I personally find the gameplay freedom Neversoft’s offering to be great. Add-in the beginnings of a solid-looking track list and the new instant difficulty/instrument swapping, and the next Guitar Hero game might turn out to be one actually worthy of the franchise’s name.
Daily Recap: May 12, 2009
May 12th
In a bit of site-related news, today was our most active day ever in terms of unique page views. We can attribute such a solid boost in numbers to Nick’s wonderful review of Peggle for the iPhone (apparently one of the first online, even before the big-name blogs and sites), as it was our top story for the day.
"Awesome!" indeed
So, we want to extend a ginormous gracias to those of you who read Silicon Sasquatch daily and continue to direct your comrades to our corner of the web. We promise to keep bringing you things of a decidedly awesome and videogame-related nature.
Now, it’s time for the real news: Atari gets cold feet, the telenovela that is Midway’s financial woes gets juicier, we get to know Modern Warfare 2 a bit better and Valve’s Team Fortress 2 team takes a “bow.” (You’ll get the pun in a bit.)
Review: Left 4 Dead DLC (PC)
Apr 24th
Left 4 Dead (L4D) is still the paramount zombie apocalypse videogame — there are no contenders, no second place awards. It’s a frenetic, hair-trigger suicide mission into an infected wasteland that doses players with relentless fun.
Even five months after its release, the original Campaign mode continues to be both exciting and trying, while Versus still turns up the intensity by forcing players to alternate between the roles of survivor and infected.
But despite the release version’s polish, there was always some tiny element missing, something teased but never fully delivered: unadulterated intensity free from the stairstep pacing of the campaign. The strongest moments of L4D lay in its massive NPC crescendos, where a horde of the undead claw, vomit, smash, strangle and pounce to ensure every survivor is indeed, left for dead.
Valve finally realized it could hack all of that terror and confusion into one sanguine slab of gameplay, resulting in the recently added DLC pack.
Daily Recap: April 16, 2009
Apr 17th
Another day, another dollar, another set of news that you can use. Even better, today is…drumroll please…NPD DAY!
For those that don’t know, the NPD Group is the data analysis group that keeps track of video game sales data, which they then release to the masses on a monthly basis. While in some seedy parts of the Internet the NPDs may be nothing more than “troll food,” providing console crusaders proof that THIER CONSOLE IS TEH BEST EVAR for message board flame wars, the sales data are useful to show a few things we can dig into and analyze.
Resident Evil 5 was the sales leader in March, nearing 1.5 million total copies on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Image from residentevil.com.
A full list of console and game sales totals for March can be found at 1up.com’s news article on the topic. Salient analysis? Resident Evil 5 was popular – selling more than 900,000 copies on Xbox 360, and 580,000 on the PlayStation 3. On the console side, the Wii just keeps selling – moving more than 600,000 units in March, and 700,000 in February. Yowza. RE5 360, Pokemon Platinum on DS, Halo Wars, RE5 PS3 and Wii Fit are the top five games for March, and Wii Fit, Street Fighter 4 360 and then PS3, Wii Play and Killzone 2 are the top five for February.