To celebrate the beginning of Downloadable Suicide’s third year, I’m looking toward the future and sorting out which of 2010′s games I want to play. Only two games from last year’s post actually came out (Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor, Dragon Age: Origins), but I’ve managed to play them both. This time I’ve tried to choose games that I’m pretty sure will launch this year, and I’ve added a section for games that might be announced.
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This could be what saves mods from being marginalized into extinction. Bringing mods to the fore of a digital distribution platform could be what gives mods which don’t get attention from press or developers (which is most of them) a chance at being played.

Never have I wanted to be a Korean citizen so hard.

Considering Carmack’s talk of not wanting to compete against their publisher’s own games — BRINK, in this instance — I’m lead to think we won’t be playing Rage until at least 2011.

Enjoy the first 30 minutes of Indigo Prophecy — with commentary. I’ve played through these opening scenes many times, but I never get over them.

For now, I’m in favor of this. Although Microsoft’s efforts with the Games For Windows Live software have done little but bring the Xbox experience to PC gamers, so have Valve’s efforts with Steamworks and Modern Warfare 2. And if anyone’s capable of muscling some marketshare away from Steam, it’s Microsoft.

I was skeptical of Stardock’s claims as well. It makes sense to me that, based on seniority alone, Direct 2 Drive’s marketshare would be larger than Impulse’s. But is Impulse’s share really so small that it doesn’t even chart?

Happy 10th Birthday to my second favorite game of all time.

This story originally reported that Threewave was to shut down, and I’m glad to see that’s not the case. I have no affinity for their recent games, but I was an avid Threewave CTF player in Quake 3. I would hate to see them simply run out of work.

I’ve read four novels based on BioWare games and haven’t been disappointed yet, but I may skip these. Maybe. Okay, probably not.

I’ve never played a Medal of Honor game, but bully to EA for the timing of this announcement.

And Area 5, too. I hope this relaunch works out; I’ve gotten nothing but bad vibes from the idea of it until now.

To clarify, these same bans (in addition to server-specific bans) could have still happened with dedicated servers.

There’s nothing remarkable about this post except that the headline is ridiculous. But do check out all this Brink gameplay footage.

It’s justice, and it wants to eat your brains.

Ah, so it’s “BRINK.” I’ve been saying it wrong. There’s a lot of technical language in this interview with Splash Damage’s Technical Director Arnout van Meer. In summary: BRINK is building upon the Quake Wars tech; these revisions should, among other things, allow BRINK to take advantage of multi-core processors on PC. Finally, there’s talk about things that Splash Damage isn’t doing, such as moving from OpenGL to DirectX 11.

“… it says on the box: ‘No Hispanics’.”

Paul Wedgwood of Splash Damage brings to our attention what seems to be common sense, but may not be. I’ve never considered, for example (and maybe I’m just out of touch here), that I can’t think of a single developer who has a history of making licensed games and/or ports that eventually went on to make a break-out hit. I’m sure there has to be some exception to the rule, but I can’t think of one.

Maybe I didn’t react as harshly as John Romero did, but I was definitely caught way off guard by the news of ZeniMax buying out id Software. Once my brain caught up with my gut, though, I decided it might not be such a bad thing for id to have some stability in a publisher. Reading this interview earlier today put me further at ease.

The only thing I’m left wondering about now is, how does Splash Damage and their collaboration with Bethesda on Brink fit into all of this? Did SD play matchmaker? Is an acquisition in their future as well? After all, the partnership was announced way back in May of 2008, well before the E3 meeting between id Software and ZeniMax.

Ah! News like this frightens me. Remember Westwood? What’s left of them are called EA LA now. Admittedly, this is a different EA than the one that acquired Westwood, but this development still gives me pause. For purely selfish reasons, I’m glad to see that BioWare seems to be The Top in the relationship.

It’s impossible to not make this weeks’ Bearly Noteworthy post completely about E3 and E3-related announcements. Since most of the E3 coverage that I consumed originated at GiantBomb.com, I’m also finding it difficult not to make this a post that links solely to GiantBomb.com. So fuck it. They simply killed it on coverage with basically five dudes. Tons of video content, daily podcasts, interviews, wrap-up posts, and very little of the premature, judgmental snark that is endemic to rapid-fire coverage.

Bullet-point highlights from the Microsoft, EA and Ubisoft conferences. My favorites from Microsoft: Crackdown 2, Alan Wake. From EA: Crysis 2, hooray! The Saboteur looks rad. And Ubisoft: I am stupid amounts of excited for Splinter Cell. Rabbids make me sick.

Sequels! More Mario looks good.

Price drop? Aw. Really, though, I was glad to see Final Fantasy XIV will be coming to PC in addition to PS3 just as XI did.

Brink is the game that I most wanted information about when going into E3. I haven’t made up my mind on S.M.A.R.T. yet (it’s explained in the video embedded below), but I think it may make more sense within the context of the game. I hope we get to see some gameplay soon. I’d also like to know what Bethesda’s involvement is with this project; they haven’t said much, only Splash Damage has. I’ve got a feeling Bethesda may just be publishing on this one.

While I always enjoyed swinging with a mouse instead of a toggle stick, the PC versions of Tiger Woods were getting the shaft on features for a few years. I’m very glad to see that Tiger’s coming back in such a “PC” way.

A very interesting development. This is no doubt to cater more to the console audience, as the Sam & Max games have been appearing places like XBLA and WiiWare. But as I recently expressed in my Broken Sword 3 post, I’m not married to the point-and-click control scheme in adventure games, as long as the alternative is well implemented. I’m not gonna lie, I do enjoy leaning back in my desk chair with a gamepad from time to time, when playing an appropriate game.

Dude, E3!!