A Gamer’s Week: August 12

Our review this week is linked to the new Sword of Islam expansion for Crusader Kings II, which introduces a number of new mechanics associated with Muslim rulers.


In the Quick Look department, we offer a fast evaluation of Hybrid, a new Xbox Live Arcade based shooter.

In terms of Gamer Diaries, we offer a look at a very warlike campaign using the Maya in the Gods & Kings expansion for Civilization V and a look at the gameplay changes that the Sword of Islam expansion has introduced to the grand strategy title Crusader Kings II.

We also have the usual Weekend Reading features: one dealing with the recent Blizzard security breach and one about downer endings in video games.

And we also deliver the most interesting news of the past week and out customary EndWeekGame piece.

On Monday, one analyst wondered whether Call of Duty: Black Ops II will be the first game in the series to actually see a decline in sales over its predecessor while the makers of mobile title Dead Trigger have acknowledged that piracy for video games cannot be completely eliminated.

Tuesday saw BioWare talk about the Leviathan downloadable content for their action and role-playing hybrid Mass Effect 3 and LucasArts wonder how a revolution in graphics quality might change the game industry in the next ten years.

On Wednesday, a big new update was delivered to the Xbox 360 version of Minecraft, fixing most of the issues that gamers reported with the game, just as Crytek maintained that despite the introduction of the new Unreal Engine 4, the third edition of the CryEngine is still the most advanced technology on the market.

On Thursday, Blizzard gave away the first details of the 1.0.4 patch for Diablo III while a leaked list revealed both the Killstreaks and many of the Perks linked to the multiplayer modes in the upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.

On Friday, a job listing mentioned a Xbox 720 launch in 18 months and Blizzard announced that Battle.net had been hacked.

Saturday saw a new detailed patch for Diablo III and Paradox Interactive announced the features of the new Europa Universalis IV.