while the rest of the gaming world is off playing Diablo 3, I am the wrong side of poor to be able to justify it for a couple of weeks. Instead, because it's kind of the same thing (like when I bought Fatal Fury on the Megadrive because Street Fighter 2 was £60 and FF was £8 in the local video shop), I loaded up Dungeon Siege 3.

It meant redownloading it, which was stupid as I have the disc for it, and let me tell you, it is NOT the same thing. And to add salt to the wound my game saves have vanished, possibly over-written by the new install, possibly deleted when I uninstalled. The game is a steamworks and I have steam cloud saves, which were probably an hour further back than they should have been

I was talking to someone the other day about why Dungeon Siege 3 wasn't as good as Torchlight or Diablo 3, I'm still not entirely sure, but I think it's the pacing. You don't get in as many fights, like in Torchlight it was rare you weren't killing something, and in Diablo you feel more powerful than in Dungeon Siege.

The biggest thing that struck me tonight though is how it controls. It doesn't feel like a pc game, it looks like a pc game, and it should be a pc game, but you use the A&D to move the camera around as much as the mouse because the mouse takes too long to spin the view. It's awkward and noticeably detrimental to how the game plays.

You also level so slowly, I know I've lost progress, I'm not entirely sure how much, but my character is only level 4. Thing is I know that I wasn't miles ahead of that, you just don't gain solid levels all that often

This is quite interesting- the fourth title in the Lost Planet franchise has been announced well ahead of the third game's release, and it's a cel-shaded spinoff for PS3 and DS, subtitled EX Troopers.

The game, which is being looked after by Monster Hunter producer Shintaro Kojima sets out to be a "lighter" shooting game experience for beginners, and the story follows Snow Pirate trainee Bren Turner as he transfers to a new training academy and everybody fights those same Akrids from the other two/three games.

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The reportage so far- such as this CVG article, which has magazine scans- make comparisons to the popular anime trope of high school transfer students whcih feel like they've been typed with rolled eyes, suggesting that the spinoff might put a few people off, but it is interesting to see a spin-off title change direction so much from its source material.

No release date set as yet, but there's supposed to be a demo next month.

Specialist, bricks and mortar, games stores cannot survive without the pre-owned market, according to Blockbuster commercial director Gerry Butler.


In a recent discussion with MCV, Butler stated that issues with games retail essentially fall at the feet of platform providers who charge licensing fee's to publishers for the right to release their games on those systems. This then feeds down into stores and the distribution strategy employed by publishers.

“If you’re a specialist you need certain margins to run your business,” he said. “When you are in a commoditised industry, those margins evaporate.

"And supermarkets use games as potential loss-leaders, so specialists can’t survive. That’s why there are less games shops than there were three years ago. Without pre-owned, those companies cannot survive.

“When the market was growing, nobody spoke about trade-in. It didn’t matter. Everyone was hitting their numbers. But as soon as someone starts missing the numbers, they are like: ‘Well this trade-in is killing us. How do we stop it?’”

“I think the distribution strategy employed by the publishing world is broken and needs to be fixed,” he added. “It is the whole way the industry is structured. Just think about consumer brands like Coca-Cola and how they are built. You create huge pre-awareness and then make sure you have full availability in the marketplace. “In video games, the publisher has to pay substantial royalty payments to the platform holder upfront, which makes the cost of games high. Then they go to the retailer, and the retailer has to guess the number of units it is likely to sell. Then the marketing begins, and it might turn out we don’t have any stock left.

“It’s not a good situation if the TV ads are running and you’ve no stock.

“Let’s come up with a model that is fair and equitable and long-term and sustainable. This current model is not long-term and sustainable.”

Admittedly this news is a week old, but it does raise some interesting questions and my own personal experiences of games retail lead me to agree with certain aspects of what Butler has to say.

It's also an interesting viewpoint considering the noise about Ubisoft considering looking at Free-2-Play software models on the next generation of consoles.

After the success of making both Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online Free-2-Play, Turbine have stated that it could be argued that Free-2-Play is "the only sustainable model" for most MMO's.

In an interview with Games on Net, the company talks about new additions to Dungeons and Dragons Online but also went ahead and added:

The great thing about F2P is that it makes it a lot easier for players to check out the game or even come and go from another game,”

“We continue to have hundreds of thousands of players in DDO every month and I doubt that could be the case if we were in a classic subscription model. It also allows different players to spend more or less in the game and everyone can contribute to the community in different ways and we can focus on improving the service for everyone. Overall it was and continues to be a great change for our game.

“Is it sustainable? We would argue that it might be the only sustainable option.”

Probably the strangest news I've heard this morning, but French sex toy firm Absoloo have started up a new campaign to appease Diablo 3 widows.

I've no idea if this would work outside of France, but anyone wishing to claim a free sex toy (and happens to be female, no news on if they're trying something similar for gay men who find themselves in a similar situation) has to post a picture of themselves holding a copy of Diablo 3 on the companies Facebook page in order to receive a code to claim their free Rubber Wand of Penetration.

Activision have released information stating that a brand new trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 will air during Saturdays UEFA Champions League final between Chelsea and Bayern Munich. Theres no news on what to expect from said trailer, but it will go out on both ITV1 and Sky Sports 1 HD at the same time.



Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 launches on XBox 360, PC and PlayStation 3 on November 15 2012.

Blockbuster have announced a new trade-in offer for people planning on buying Max Payne 3, with advertisements also placed throughout the national press.

For this weekend only, gamers wanting to trade their games in towards a copy of Max Payne 3 will receive an extra 50% of credit. The offer is only available on software and not on hardware.

In news that will surprise absolutely no one who has paid attention to the upstart company Mind Candy and their Moshi Monsters product, the company is planning a sequel to the incredibly popular Moshi Monsters: Moshling Zoo.

The original game, released on Nintendo DS last year, managed to topple Nintendo's Dr Kawashima's Brain Training from the position of being the DS's longest running Chart Number 1 title.

“We are extremely passionate about increasing the brand experience in as many ways as possible,” Mind Candy’s senior category marketing manager Andrew Matjaszek told MCV. “[The sequel] offers a completely new take on the Moshi universe. We focus on the key characters in a similar way to Moshling Zoo. However, players will once again experience new locations, new characters and loads of new games to enjoy.” “We’ve loved taking Moshi to the DS and don’t see any reason why we wouldn’t look to expand the Moshi universe even further in the near future. Stay tuned.”

Andriasang have an interesting translation of an article on the development of Final Fantasy VII detailing the roles of staff members where Yoshinori Kitase, Kazushige Nojima, Tetsuya Nomura aswell as giving an insight into some of the inspirations that led to the final product.



This article comes on the back of Nomura saying he's busy working on new games that he hopes surpass the PlayStation classic rather than working on the much in demand remake of said game.

It always seems like when Cave appear on bitparade just recently its bad news.



This time its no different really, with the news emerging that the companies Chief Operating Officer Miko Watanabe has resigned from the company.

His resignation will take effect from May 31 and is believed to be for personal reasons, although he will keep hold of his Representative Director role until the company holds its annual shareholders meeting in August.

Cave have also strived to make it known that Ito Mashito (Representative Director, CEO and President) will become the company's sole Representative Director following the resignation of Watanabe.

In other bad Cave news, despite pledging support for Sony's PlayStation Vita at TGS last year, the company appears to have cancelled two of its upcoming releases for the system if Famitsu's release schedule is to be believed.