It feels like it has been a good year since I did a Week in Review. I have been so busy working on Version 2 of the site and working that, quite frankly, I am just plain worn out. Alas, here I am, slaving away to make sure you people have something fresh to read on this wonderful Monday. Actually, it is still Sunday and for the first time ever, I am doing my article ahead of schedule. Ain’t that a novel idea?
Anyway, there was not a ton of news this past week that just made me jump for joy, so don’t expect this to have some shocking news you missed. I do have a story to lead off with that just annoyed the crud out of me. Apparently crime novelist Robert Crais is suing Activision over the release of the game True Crime. Crais alleges that the main character in True Crime too closely resembles a character that starred in 9 of his novels. Since when did this guy get the rights to the “disgruntled loner cop who takes pride in beating up thugs” personality? Whatever. I also like how he waited till the game went gold and was set to ship in 3 weeks before saying anything.
For you Halo fanatics, Joyride Studios is releasing a second wave of action figures. The new sets includes a blue Elite, the Ghost, and a pair of 3″ figure sets. You can see the upcoming toys at the Joyride website.
In other Halo news, many people complained of poor performance in regards to the release of Halo PC. Some very high end computers were having difficulty running the game while other lower end machines had no trouble. I am slightly disappointed as I know this caused lower sales than was originally expected. At any rate, Gearbox posted a Performance Tuning FAQ on the site this past week to help everyone get Halo running smoothly.
In more Gamecube canceling news this week, Gotham Games killed off Celebrity Death Match for GC citing “programming issues”. C’mon people, the GC is selling now, stop canceling games for it!
While the GC may be doing well in retail sales now, the N-Gage certainly is not. Nokia has been pushing the N-Gage hard since its launch just a few short weeks ago. Apparently in its first week in the UK, fewer than 500 were sold at game retail stores. Ouch. That can’t feel good. The newest handheld phone/console is now available in over 30,000 stores which probably means the average store has sold less than 1 or 2 units since launch. If someone wants to start making funeral arrangements for the N-Gage now, it might not be a bad idea, as I can’t see this thing lasting all that long before Nokia execs decide to pull the plug.
I have 2 final stories for this week. The first concerns a game I am very much eager to play, The Hobbit. The Hobbit has gone gold and should be on store shelves next month. The other tidbit of news is that a sequel for Ground Control is planned for Q2 of 2004. If you don’t know, Ground Control was an excellent RTS that was vastly overlooked by many gamers. I quite enjoyed the game as it had a level of control not nor
mally seen by RTS games. I don’t play many PC games anymore so my time with it was short but well spent. The sequel will be titled Ground Control II: Operation Exodus and more details are available at the official website.
That is all that I have for you this week. We have a lot of articles and reviews just waiting to go online this week so stay tuned.
