A Gamer’s Week: July 8

The heat is oppressive and that means that it’s a good time to stay indoors and play as much as possible, doing some much needed catch-up work during this rather barren launch period before fall comes and the flood gates open up once again.

When it comes to recent releases, we have two full Softpedia reviews this week: one for Resonance, an old school adventure game with a very cool story and some interesting memory mechanics, and one for Spec Ops: The Line, the Dubai-based shooter from Yager Interactive, which comes with its own interesting narrative.

We also have the Gamer Diary series linked to Pro Cycling Manager 2012, which shows how I do during the first week in Le Tour de France, and lovers of strategy experiences can also read about my exploits in Sins of a Solar Empire – Rebellion.

You can also read the Quick Look for Path of Exile.

We also have the usual Weekend Reading features: one about how disappointment-based gaming might impact the industry and another about the oversaturation in the dungeon crawler genre.

As usual, we also write about our free time in the EndWeekGame piece and we deliver a selection of the most interesting news of the past week.

On Monday, Sony announced that it would be buying digital streaming service Gaikai, but failed to offer exact information on how it would use it, while 343 Industries revealed that Halo 4 was close to being complete.

On Tuesday, Sony introduced a new firmware for the PlayStation 3, labeled 4.20, which quickly went to cause problems with some consoles, while The Creative Assembly released information about the new Total War: Rome 2.

On Wednesday, Microsoft revealed that the Wii U was about as powerful as the Xbox 360, while Nintendo said that its rivals could not deliver a better console.

On Thursday, Blizzard admitted a lack of end-game content for Diablo III, while Nintendo expressed worries about potential smear campaigns on the Miiverse.

On Friday, Ubisoft offered some more details on Far Cry 3 and female gamers launched a petition to get representation in the multiplayer of Colonial Marines.

On Saturday, Funcom defended the subscription model for The Secret World and even the mighty GTA V was judged unable to improve the fortunes of the video game industry this year.