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Sunday , March 25, 2007 |
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GameStop Selling Opened Games as New 05:22 pm
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- Games: General News
(62 comments)
In other shady news, Joystiq is reporting that GameStop is selling opened games as "new", full price tag and all. After comfronting the clerk for pushing an already opened product after clearly asking for a new one, he responded:
The clerk looked up and said, "This is new. We just take the game out of the box." He then closed up the case and pointed to the front of the box where the sticker said "New: $49.99." He continued to tap the word "new" on the front of the box as if that somehow made this an unopened product. There was no mention of a 10 percent discount for selling an open package, nor was there warning that I'd receive an open package. Meanwhile, there were clearly unopened God of War II games in the security case.
It's moments like this where you think you're dealing with a Ferengi, or imagine channeling Sheneneh from the show Martin and saying something like, "Oh, no you di-in't."
After twenty seconds of truly stunned silence, we walked out of the store, drove to Best Buy and got a new copy of the game. Which wasn't just in its factory-sealed box, but in a second security case.
Grifters Target Xbox Live! 03:25 pm
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- Consoles: Xbox 360
(1 comment)
It looks like some pesky con artists have been picking on Microsoft's Xbox Live! service as of late.
Earlier this week when I first heard about the "Xbox Live network hacked" story, I checked with the people on our end, and then posted about it. As originally posted, Xbox Live has not been hacked. That is still true. A security researcher, Kevin Finisterre, discovered not a hack, but the fact that some accounts may have been compromised as a result of 'social engineering', also known as 'pre-texting', through our support center. Kevin gave me a call directly and once I realized what he was talking about (he sent me some painful-to-listen-to audio files) I confirmed that the team is fully aware of this issue. They are examining the policies, and have already begun re-training the support staff and partners to help make sure we reduce this type of social engineering attack.
There's no other way to say it; this situation shouldn't have happened. Our customers deserve better.
Lets just hope they aren't giving away your passwords to Princes in Nigera, in exchange for a piece of their frozen assets in Switzerland.
Sunday Rewind 01:00 am
- Andrew Burnes
- Games: General News
(5 comments)
The best of last week!
Latin America Upset at GRAW2 & Mercs2 - People get their panties in a bunch because of some fictional games. And for once, one of them isn't Jack Thompson.
GFW Gone Wild: Germany Edition - I hit up Munich to attend a Games For Windows event. Hands-on impressions of Crysis, World In Conflict, Halo 2: Vista, Age of Conan and Shadowrun included.
Supreme Commander Review - Rob reviews SupCom; likes what he sees.
Oblivion 1.2 Patch - Patch adds new LOD shaders that feature in the newly released PS3 version of the game.
Company of Heroes 2 in GFW - Company of Heroes expansion pack to be unveiled in newest issue of Games For Windoze Magazine.
Clive Barker's Jericho Trailer - We start hosting vids on the front page.
Sony May Cry - Sony loses yet another exclusive thanks to the rising cost of development for the latest consoles.
Your Xbox 360 Is Now Obsolete - Microsoft getting ready to launch a new version of the 360 with a 120GB hard drive and a black paint job.
Lord British Robbed, Thieves leave Photos - Lord British's super fancy house got burgled, presumably because the stupid thieves saw it on a TV program.
Oblivion PS3 Ships - Playstation 3 gets brand new title! Oh wait...
In Other News... 12:01 am
- Andrew Burnes
- In-House: In Other News...
(20 comments)
The clocks have changed again, which is great for me as the a new day on the site now begins at 9am, rather than the slightly-too-early-for-my-lazy-ass 8am. And being the weekend there's no new interesting news to post, unless you're into Mario clocks that is.
Yesterday I spent time with my two new games, and well, things didn't go so well. In S.T.A.L.K.E.R. I somehow reached the end of the game, watched a video that made absolutely no sense, and then was kicked to the main menu. Err? What the fuck? In bold and italics. All the cinematics throughout the game had no bearing on this end and I wasn't allowed to reenter the world and continue questing, so all I could do was either load an earlier save (thank god I kept some) or quit the game. I quit.
Back in Windows I found a game guide on GameSpot that explained the situation - if the wind had blown in one particular direction and the cow jumped over the moon I would have received a quest telling me to do something in an earlier area that would allow me to see the 'proper' endings (yes, endings). Again, what the fuck? If I were a clueless buyer of games who had got the game and didn't really know about online communities or GameSpot game guides I would be left with a game that made even less sense and no idea of what to do next. Honestly, GSC/that THQ guy who was meant to be making this game make sense for the Western markets, what were you thinking?
That isn't to say that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a bad game however. Far from it - I thoroughly enjoyed the earlier portions of the game though I really did get the feeling that less and less care was placed into the design of the levels the further you advanced. For instance, the very first few zones have interesting, well written quests that make you do a variety of tasks, whereas the later zones simply task you to kill hundreds of heavily tooled up enemies and missile-firing gunships. Even the dialogue goes screwy later on as GSC forgot to translate it from Russian to English...
Beneath all the rough edges and bugs there's a solid game with a lot of potential, but to think it's Oblivion in a first-person shooter setting is just wrong (most of the map you can't visit, loading areas warp you about five miles, paths fenced off). If modding tools are released I can see S.T.A.L.K.E.R. staying on many hard drives. If not, it'll be just another game that few care about anymore.
Oh and for Silent Hunter IV, I stand by my subtitle yesterday, even with the new patch, because I've never experienced a game where pressing 'A' causes a crash to desktop.
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Saturday , March 24, 2007 |
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In Other News... 03:00 pm
- Andrew Burnes
- In-House: In Other News...
(21 comments)
I dislike monopolies, especially when they're in control of my phone line, and therefore my internet connection too. You see, this past week my connection has been all over the place preventing me from using our posting system. I didn't really realise this though for a while as accessing European sites and the majority of U.S. ones too worked just fine, so I was laying the blame with IGN's tech people (sorry). Turns out it was T-COM, the monopoly in question that controls nearly all German telephone lines. You see, T control everything, so if a third party wants to sell net connections they have to go through T and it's exceedingly difficult to beat them on price, so of course I went with T when I got my landline and mobile set up. T has to answer to no-one and they know you can't really do anything if they screw you, and in this particular case they'd decided to diddle with routing to parts of the U.S.. As is my luck, it doesn't stop me visiting silly sites about cats being in your trousers, but does stop me posting on the website I work for. Anyway, I yelled at them a lot, or more specifically, yelled at the German speaking Indian lady in Bangladesh, and it finally got fixed, so I'm back, huzzah.
My inbox has a number of emails about the Games For Windows article and G5 mouse one so I'm gonna the various questions here in abbreviated form:
Q: Why you hating on Halo 2? Bungie won't let no shitty port be released.
A: Halo 2: Vista really does look as bad as I said, and Bungie have next to no involvement with the development of the port.
Q: Does H2:V have co-op play?
A: I didn't see any sign of it, but it could be buried in the Live interface that wasn't shown.
Q: Did Crysis really run that badly?
A: Aye. The game isn't even beta yet so there's no optimisation yet, hence the slow down.
Q: Did World In Conflict really look as good as in those screenshots?
A: Actually, it didn't. The build on show was from November and was running in DirectX 9 mode. It will look like the screenshots by the time it's out though.
Q: Is the middle mouse button any easier to use on the new G5?
A: Yup. The old one was shit I know. No complaints with this however.
Q: When's that mouse out in the U.S.?
A: Very very soon! You can pre-order one for $70 via Logitech's C&C3; promotion
Q: Is the Logitech G7 going to be revised like the G5?
A: Logitech says no, though if you enough of you ask they might do one day.
Q: Why does yours look different from some of the others I've since on the net since your article was posted?
A: The others posted have likely been from Europe where it's already on sale, or may be press samples as the fully turtle-shelled version was shown at a recent hardware convention to press, marked as a sample. The one I have came in retail packaging from the U.S., and the packaging matches the design of the mouse. Logitech's own website shows two different designs, so who knows what the hell is going on...
I believe that about sums it up, so I'm going to go back to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Silent Hunter IV: Bugs & CTDs of the Pacific.
As you may have noticed we've started posting the odd video directly on the front page - do you like this addition to the site? Are there any other items or features you'd like to see added? Tell us via the comments!
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